Even given its obvious vanity vehicle motivations, Poker Face is a dire affair. Russell Crowe returns to the director’s chair for Poker Face, an unwieldy, overstuffed,…
Writer/director Wai Ka-fai is likely best known in the West for his collaborations with Johnnie To and their Milkyway Image production house (which the duo…
Any nerve-shredding tendencies present in Nocebo are punctured by its clunky exposition, predictable ending, and insistence on trite messaging. There are two kinds of clinical…
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms is a squeamy good time, as inspired by nonsense sketch comedy as it is Cronenbergian body horror. Whatever…
Soft & Quiet doesn’t know what to do with its thorny subject matter and disturbing imagery, allowing it all to just linger on screen as wanton…
Missing sometimes suffers from unfocused digressions, but it mostly coheres well by the end and marks Katayama as a director to follow. Satoshi Harada (Jirô…
Something in the Dirt is a formidable DIY effort bearing Benson & Moorhead’s expected formal ingenuity, but it’s unfortunately all in service of a rather trite…
Prey for the Devil is boring and self-serious therapy session posing as a horror flick. It’s been a while since Hollywood went truly bugnuts over horror…
Please Baby Please is a gauche and grimy good time, and might wind up as 2022’s best bit of playful kink. It’s the rare film that…
Despite its slightness, Slash/Back still proves a diverting, charming girl power romp. Nyla Innuksuk’s Slash/Back opens to the singular vocal stylings of Inuk throat singer Tanya…
Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday delivers the violence, direct-to-video. Remember Accident Man? It’s OK if you don’t, but DTV actionheads tend to think of it fondly…
McKee’s latest might be enough for his diehard fans, but its stretched runtime makes any interesting happenings too little, too late. Lucky McKee’s best films…
Summit Fever could have climbed to better heights, but it’s base-level take leaves it just a cheesy, overlong mess. With rock-climbing films steadily entering the…
Project Wolf Hunting is a symphony of wanton destruction, a splatter-heavy genre mash-up that’s so cartoonishly garish as to become absurdly funny. A symphony of wanton…
Piggy is a startlingly visceral and bloody affair happy to indict and wreak revenge upon a toxic modern society. The pros and cons of virtual festivals…
Terrifier 2 is a breath of fresh horror air, hilarity, melodrama, brutality, and unhinged schtick rolled into one grisly package, all of it supported by a…
Smile is an obnoxious attempt at subverting trauma horror, sunk not only by its own smug conceit but also its failure to capitalize on its unique…
Masking Threshold is one of the best films ever conceived about what it means to be terminally online, though its final act turn toward more traditional…
Jeepers Creepers: Reborn is an inane and butt-ugly franchise continuation that delivers exactly nothing to the hordes of nobody who asked for it. Jeepers Creepers: Reborn…
Dead for a Dollar is another failed Western outing from Walter Hill, a well-intentioned but visually shoddy film that sags whenever its action disappears. After his…