Mank is a listless, conventional story of embattled genius, safely told from behind a scrim of sentimentality. In her notorious New Yorker article “Raising Kane,”…
Jungleland is a deeply familiar film that injects little energy or originality into its template narrative. Max Winkler’s Jungleland follows bare-knuckle boxer Lion (Jack O’Connell)…
Kindred doesn’t achieve much more than powering through a laundry list of tired indie horror film clichés. A studio releasing its seasonal horror offering one…
Proxima is a markedly incurious film, happy to diminish all complexity of its female protagonist. Alice Winocour’s Proxima is a film constructed around a single…
With The Dark & the Wicked, Bryan Bertino opts for cheap ominousness at the expense of developing the film’s implied psychological subtext. It’s unfortunate…
His House is a formally confident and unsettling debut that fully impresses even as it falls just short of greatness. The new Netflix horror film…
The Mortuary Collection is a gothic, expressionistic, and winning riff on a number of horror influences. Ryan Spindell’s The Mortuary Collection is an absolute blast,…
Unlike Wiseman’s typically nuanced, curious documentary treatments, City Hall doesn’t have much to offer beyond standard homage to contemporary liberalism. What Frederick Wiseman does,…
May the Devil Take You Too is a Raimi-esque bloodbath, gore-fest, and goop-show that understands how to set up and execute its thrillingly gnarly set…
Fire Will Come retains a kind of documentary-based fascination even as it becomes clear capturing the titular blaze was the only real objective here. Oliver…
The Craft: Legacy certainly has its heart in the right place, but the effort ultimately amounts to little more than superficial virtue signaling. The easiest…
Spontaneous tries to be too many things at once, and ultimately doesn’t scratch the surface of any of them. Spontaneous is a lot of…
Ham on Rye is a welcome departure from the typical trappings of a coming-of-age film. Coming-of-age narratives make up a significant proportion of contemporary…
The Antenna is a strange amalgam that might hold some intrigue for horror fans but is otherwise just another drab, generic Eastern Bloc allegory. Director…
La Belle Èpoque is superficial at best, and an endless string of clichés at worst. Time travel is a popular mechanism throughout film history…
Once Upon a River is frequently pretty to look at, but Rose fails to build much depth into the film’s fable-like narrative. Once Upon a…
Let’s Scare Julie fails to deliver on even its most basic promises, leaving the viewer unscared and uninterested. The big hook of the new…
Death of Me begins on a promising note, but lacks any follow-through or unique experience to warrant its making. There’s a scene early on…