Lake Forest Park The official synopsis for Kersti Jan Werdal’s Lake Forest Park reads that “a group of teenagers have to come to terms with the…
The Twin is a thoughtless, derivative bit of horror pap that feels like it was written by a bot. Utterly generic in every conceivable way,…
This Much I Know to Be True is a flowing, amorphous music-doc experience, both capturing and emulating the particularity of Nick Cave’s late-career art. The…
Il buco is a rich, poetic film that seeks to articulate man’s existence both within and in tension with nature. Through a constant fusion of…
The Sadness delivers cartoonishly gory entertainment, but is less successful in delivering the Romero tradition of meaningful societal indictments. Canadian director Rob Jabbaz shot The…
Marmaduke is one of the most scatological films you’re ever likely to see, and so it’s fitting that it turns out to be an epic piece…
The Takedown is inoffensive as a buddy cop comedy, but runs into trouble with its reductive neoliberal political invocations. Louis Leterrier’s The Takedown, a sequel…
Like A Rolling Stone excels in conveying a vivid sense of the flesh-and-blood human behind the venerated byline. Ben Fong-Torres, the celebrated music journalist profiled in…
Happening is a film of intense linearity and physicality, but it leaves one wishing for a film that had perhaps widened its scope for more…
Multiverse of Madness is all endless, torturous exposition buried within soulless CGI spectacle, and an insult to Sam Raimi’s presence. Is it worth it to…
After Noé’s career peak with Climax, Lux Æterna represents a disappointing return to the director’s haphazard stylistic tics and overindulgent edgelord sensibilities. Like fellow provocateurs Lars von…
Human Nature’s looping narrative games don’t always work, but overall the film makes for an effective study of middle-class malaise. There’s not one, but two structural/temporal gambits…
The Apartment with Two Women Post-Dardenne social realism all too often functions as safe-enough filler material for international film fest lineups, but director Kim Se-in…
Reflection lacks the scale of Vasyanovych’s Atlantis, but its brutalist Wes Anderson-esque tenor makes for a difficult yet still hopeful study of war. While Ukrainian writer/director…
Inbetween Girl manages to avoid the tepid dramatics of so many teen-screen films, but too often succumbs to bouts of preciousness and self-conscious affectation. The problem…
The Innocents When the director of an arthouse horror film about supernatural children readily admits he was inspired by his own experiences of first-time parenthood,…
RRR once again proves that Rajamouli and co. are virtually unmatched in viscerality and clarity of visionary spectacle. S.S. Rajamouli’s latest epic RRR begins with perhaps…
Fiddler’s Journey isn’t much more substantive than your average love letter doc, and suffers from an ill-conceived late-film detour. Daniel Raim’s chronicling of the pre-production and…
Bubble is an altogether gentler anime product for Araki, aiming for the emotional stakes of films like Your Name, but is slight to the point of…
Los conductos is a disarmingly personal film that is also masterful in its understanding of the way artifice interacts with realism. Camilo Restrepo has made a…
The Earth is Blue As an Orange relies on an immediacy that only somewhat masks its flippant, fleeting nature. It’s difficult to approach a work that’s…