Branagh seems more preocuppied with his acting than his directing, but Death on the Nile retains a high enough enjoyment floor according to its playful…
Here Before suggests early promise, but ultimately settles into rote psycho-thriller styling and manipulative table-setting. Stacey Gregg’s Here Before has all the markers of a…
Fabian bears perhaps a thin thesis, but Graf remains a sly evangelist for and director of the dignity of disorder. Early on in Fabian:…
Playground is a penetrating, enveloping, and often brutal portrait of childhood. Playground, Laura Wandel’s first feature, is indeed set on an actual playground, but perhaps…
The Other Me amounts to little more than an empty spectacle banking on David Lynch’s name. Let’s get it out of the way: the most…
There’s some mild fun to be had with Last Looks’ particular soft noir style, but it ultimately registers as a pale imitation of something you’ve…
Lingui is a middlebrow arthouse trifle that offends in its simplicity and deference to narrative convenience. Lingui, The Sacred Bonds, the latest from Chadian director…
Moonfall is big, dumb, exuberant fun and a welcome blockbuster-sized tonic from the endless IP regurgitation clogging theaters. Who’s ready for another disasterpiece from…
Like so much recent horror, Slapface relies too heavily on soft metaphor, but there’s sufficient talent here to still keep things interesting. Jeremiah Kipp’s…
Jackass Forever manages to once again up the ante, delivering not just the series’ best entry, but one of the most truly cinematic films…
Erudite and playful and moving, The Worst Person in the World is brimming with ideas and feeling, and executed with the touch of a master storyteller.…
Black Medusa is cast with a certain austere beauty, but is an otherwise empty exercise in bland, utilitarian form. In a thankless role as one…
Home Team is roughly as awful a film as Sean Payton seems to be a human based on this deflective vanity project. Sean Payton, head…
Compartment No. 6 is a gentle, moving romance that understands the benefit of languor rather than compression in establishing human connection. Single lodgings in a…
The King’s Daughter is a would-be pop confection that would have been stale even if it hadn’t sat on shelves for nearly a decade.…
The Tiger Rising falls flat on its face. Despite a title that would seem to suggest some kind of magic-tinged narrative, The Tiger Rising…
The Free Fall fails to balance camp, horror, and thriller in any meaningful and engaging way. Five years after his debut as a co-director…
Stoker Hills is Exhibits A, B, and C in the case against modern found-footage films. Director Benjamin Louis’s thriller Stoker Hills opens in an…