All cinematic technique that makes Snyder a fanboy favorite feels sorely missing in the bloated, ugly Army of the Dead. Recovering from what must have…
The Woman in the Window neither takes advantage of its unique setting nor matches the nuance of its Rear Window inspiration, rendering the whole thing fairly empty-headed.…
The Crime of the Century frustrates by leaving too much of its incisive subject matter dangling, but is still one of the most clear-eyed studies…
Oxygen’s high concept unfortunately hampers Aja’s ability to impress much on either a visual or narrative level. Seriously erratic genre auteur Alexandre Aja is back.…
The Boy from Medellín’s early commitment to emotional and psychological honesty is ultimately subsumed by the doc’s refusal to engage on any political level. With…
Monster is a messy, crude, and politically flaccid throwaway flick that probably should have just stayed on the shelf. Premiering at Sundance in 2018 to no…
Fried Barry’s shock tactics wear thin after a while and its stylistic cribbing leaves much to be desired, but it possesses enough ferocity and ambition…
While The Mitchells vs. the Machines doesn’t live up to obvious touchstone The Incredibles, it rides its own humorous and referential wavelength to mild success. While…
Things Heard and Seen might not thrill horror purists, but its terror-flecked study of domesticity and religion both recalls genre giants and remains mostly fresh.…
Without Remorse is a delicious throwback to a time when a sturdy shoot-em-up was its own reward. Streaming services have absolutely become a pipeline for…
The Disciple’s diptych structure creates a mature, nuanced portrait of the weight of personal and professional compromise. Sharad Nerulkar — the titular disciple in Chaitanya…
Stowaway suffers from a contrived script and poor character-building, but works considerably better when maximizing its budget in service of action spectacle. A three-person mission…
Boys from County Hell boasts a strong premise, but never entirely commits to either its horror or comedy elements. There’s a cairn out in a…
Red Moon Tide offers impressive sonic and visual craft, but is somewhat undermined by its weaker narrative and character elements. An elegiac stillness envelops the…
Ride or Die is overlong, fails to believably sell its central relationship, and ill-advisedly resolves with a bit male gaze exploitation. Whatever the many other…
The Banishing is a welcome-back for director Christopher Smith, rendering fresh what could have been boilerplate, and keeping its human horrors palpably textual. It’s curious that…
IWOW is a work of pure hubris and self-aggrandizement, entirely devoid of the humanity that has informed Allah’s previous works. Over the course of his career,…
Night in Paradise scans like any number of slow-burn gangster flicks, but suffers for lack of originality in both its action and drama. Park Hoon-jung’s…
Not all of the poetic evocations of Jessica Sarah Rinland’s Those That work, but it’s still a lively, playful, and niche document of art creation.…
Unlike Puiu’s similarly-shaped Sieranevada, Malmkrog is all empty abstraction, mistaking prattle for praxis. “For a talking cinema”: that’s the title that a young Maurice Scherer, not yet christened…
Thunder Force is yet another high-concept comedy collab between McCarthy and Falcone that fails at, well, being funny. On its surface, a film like Thunder…