A rare dramatic turn from Anna Kendrick, Alice, Darling surprises with its nuanced, twitchy lead performance. Alice (Kendrick) chooses to lie to her emotionally abusive…
Li Xiaofeng’s Back to the Wharf begins with a tragic accident that escalates, shockingly, to murder. After high school student Song Hao (Zhou Zhengjie) stumbles…
It’s something of a fool’s errand to try to trace broad trends throughout a full festival lineup — most critics don’t see anywhere near the…
Shot on location in New Mexico in early 2021, Pete Ohs’ Jethica is a kind of minimalist sunbaked noir that gradually transforms into something altogether…
Even in the seemingly endless combinations and reconfigurations of tropes that make up horror B-movies, there occasionally needs to be some new input. Dusty old…
While the ongoing Liam Neeson dad-action-movie concern has been producing ever more diminishing returns, over the last decade and change, just about nobody has so…
In only a few short years, writer-director John Swab has churned out a handful of low-budget features that have rarely risen above the mantle of…
Despite being arguably the popular genre of the classical era of Hollywood, the Western has faded over time into the background of mainstream cinema. The…
Violent Night isn’t nearly as nuts as it needed to be, regrettably boasting both a confused tone and bloated length. It’s been a whopping 34…
Nanny promisingly begins as an unsettling study in neoliberal microaggressions but sadly slides into standard-gauge horror tomfoolery in its second half. Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny is the kind…
Hunt proves too twisty for its own good, failing to deliver on the promise of its early going. Hunt, the directorial debut feature of actor Lee…
The Menu is a poor attempt at satire that fails to develop anything more than the shallowest of ideas. Let’s quickly take stock: Triangle of…
Leonor Will Never Die is a sweetly thoughtful drama disguised as loving genre throwback, with perhaps a pinch of cannier discourse creeping beneath its surface.…
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…