Alex Harrison

What enjoyment there is to draw from the action, which has its ups and downs, is tainted by the skepticism of this whole endeavor that's baked into the filmmaking. Even knowing better which direction they should go in, McQuoid & Co. remain frustratingly unwilling to commit to it. What they've made is tellingly at its best when making fun of itself.

In the moment, I thought it was very successful, and quite moving. In retrospect, however, the lens that we're forced to view the film through cheapens what we actually spent most of our time watching. Omaha can't really be seen the same way twice, but it's well worth it for that first viewing experience – and for John Magaro's performance, which will surely be some of the most quietly powerful work of the year.

Though it's an often beautiful showcase for the Arabian desert landscape, Desert Warrior is a slow, awkward jumble, trying so hard to be cool and lacking any of the style or charisma to pull it off. The climactic battle has some redeeming qualities, but after waiting 90 minutes to see it and finding it so choppily edited as to be distracting, the prevailing feeling I carried with me after it ended was still disappointment.

Blue Heron is the kind of movie that begs to be written about at length. For now, I'll have to be content with assuring you that this is one of the year's best movies. If it comes to a theater near you, don't miss it.

Writer-director Lee Cronin holds onto the essential mythology while bringing in elements from a host of other influences, including the Evil Dead series, The Exorcist, and Hereditary, to try and shake up what mummies can be on screen. Discovering the true nature of this film's mummy, and what it's capable of, is part of the fun. The result isn't quite a 28 Days Later moment – one way to understand the film's full title is that this feels like one filmmaker's interpretation of a classic monster, rather than a new template for others to follow – but it's definitely the scariest a mummy movie has been in years.

Despite having a decent budget and some recognizable actors to work with, writer-director Tommy Wirkola, known for Nazi zombie film Dead Snow and his Santa action film Violent Night, ensured what ended up on screen was a pretty fun B picture. It doesn't have the stylistic touch that can sometimes bring a little something extra to playful genre films, nor does it have a true standout sequence that could give it a chance at a longer cultural life. But it does have just the tone you'd hope it would, especially as it nears its climax, and that's all it really needs to deliver the goods.

Hill is willing to look critically at some of his industry's darkness, but he's also far too inclined to let his lead off the hook, and his film is weaker for it. As dark comedy, Outcome feels underbaked; as drama, it lacks sufficient introspection to have earned its emotional catharsis. Part of that is length: At under 90 minutes, the film is sometimes choppy and out of breath, and more time to flesh out its ideas might have helped it feel more tonally balanced. But no one change could fix a problem that's rooted in the vision for this material.

As it tells a thrilling story, engineered with expert precision to keep you hanging on every turn, it embarks on a truly fascinating thought experiment about the nature of identity in relationships: who we are to other people, how easily that can change, and how disruptive it can be when it does. This film is rooted (to steal one of its laugh lines) in "double empathy," exploring when and why we condemn others without itself condemning any of its characters. It may be an entertaining conversation piece, but make no mistake, The Drama is also one of the best movies you'll see this year.

It sits somewhere at the intersection of Quentin Tarantino and Sam Raimi, though without the former's control of form and the latter's splatstick comedic timing, it can't quite live up to the potential of that mashup. Still, it's plenty of fun. Zazie Beetz is the ideal badass heroine to carry this movie, and there are more than enough moments of stylish violence (and violent style) to get the whole theater cackling.

Sam somewhat shrinks into the periphery of the story to make way for Amanda Peet's Dianne, whose tonal world is welcome, but certainly different. Rather than hold things together, Shear the filmmaker seems to step back, too. The result is a film that only exists in moments: sometimes funny, sometimes interesting, always lacking the cohesion necessary to add up to anything.

The film may not always conquer its genre's tendency toward oversimplification, but what complexity makes it to the screen is enough to come away from it with something to chew on.

It doesn't quite have the courage to be the best version of itself. Still, it works. War Machine is an action movie you feel in your body, and it mixes in the right dose of sci-fi VFX without losing sight of the character that keeps you caring.

It's possible to watch this movie thinking mostly of what could have been – if the script was as deft as it sometimes pretends to be, this had the makings of a truly great thriller. But The Rip is a good time when experienced on its wavelength, and worthy material for a relaxed night in.

Ignore the publicity bluster, and you'll find at the core of Song Sung Blue the same modest dream to entertain that drives the Sardinas. Is it one of the best films of the year? Certainly not. But a good time at the movies? You betcha.

It would be unfair to assign blame to any one performance, or even to Winslet's direction, when the script is the obvious culprit. Story or character hurdles are thrown up and surmounted with the same neatness, sapping them of their impact. The movie becomes so certain of its footing that the two-hour runtime starts to feel like a chore.

The dialogue is clunky and almost universally awkwardly performed, much more so than in the first movie. The tonal mix of horror and silliness feels more jarring than complementary, and the filmmaking, which could accomplish so much just by sticking to genre fundamentals, is often egregiously sedate.

Wicked: For Good does stumble at various points. The much-touted new songs by returning songwriter Stephen Schwartz are superfluous, and there's a laughably regrettable decision near the end involving Jeff Goldblum that only avoids disaster by being very brief. But all the same magic that powered the first film is still at work in this one.

Edgar Wright and Glen Powell are consummate entertainers, and they made this dystopian Stephen King movie as fun and guilt-free as they could.

Fixed is fun while it lasts, more so than you might expect going in. Its most lasting effect on me might be a longing for more traditional, hand-drawn, 2D animation from our major studios, and anyone who might feel similarly shouldn't let this movie pass them by.

The actors inhabit these characters well, but they don't have the benefit of juxtaposition with normality to really put their work in context.

Ritchie is a prolific action director, and he leans action here, which is fine. When it's not being distractingly stylized, the action is good. But treasure hunt movies have a nerdy side that sometimes feels undervalued by this film.

Rosario stretches the material of a really good short film into an underwhelming feature.

One of Dreams' strengths is that its dramatic devices pair well with its interests.

That exquisite balance of art and entertainment is exactly what makes each Bong Joon-ho film a gift to be savored – here's hoping his next one doesn't take quite so long to reach us.

The script may be the film's rotten foundation, but no one element can take all the blame for its emptiness.

Cleaner is a pretty good reminder of how fun it can be to watch someone with movie star charisma do a Die Hard.

While The Gorge is (ironically) fairly shallow, it offers some strikingly designed genre thrills and is powered by two charismatic stars.

Companion wants to surprise you, but has no real interest in trying to outsmart you.

Garner's performance is the heart of this, and if the movie were told entirely through her eyes, I think you'd have the compelling layer of doubt that the film sometimes seems to want.

It's artful, atmospheric, and observant; a slice-of-life film told in a hushed tone. It's dedicated to recreating a specific time and place and dropping us into it. There's a gentle steadiness to the way it moves.

Egerton's got something in this vein. Cruise-esque exceptionalism, but cut with relatability like he came from the everyday world but clearly wasn't meant to stay there.

It's a strong, engaging story that showcases some striking animation, and if I am to return to the wider world of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, this seems to me an ideal way to go about it.

Flow makes us think and feel in equal measure.

What I connected to wins out over what I didn't – I have enjoyed sitting with its ideas, and there are a couple flourishes that will stick with me.

The film is unable to sustain any tension and is seemingly afraid of its own potential for violence, despite gesturing toward the creative weapon choice that is practically a bar for entry into the slasher genre.

As a story of parental reckoning, Goodrich lacks the interrogative instinct of something like Sofia Coppola's On the Rocks, and it rushes Grace's catharsis as a result. But as a story of a man's late-stage awakening, it strikes a more resonant chord.

As a vampire movie, Salem's Lot is refreshingly old-school.

Being halfway between film and TV gives it the weaknesses of both and strengths of neither; trying to straddle the real with the mythic gives us characters that mostly feel too representative to connect with as individuals, and too individual to make compelling representatives.

Joker: Folie à Deux is not always fully thought through. This is why the original was often misread in the first place. This film is full of quality craftwork, performances, and images. There's much here to appreciate, especially visually, and I enjoyed my time with it. But I'd recommend not asking much more of it than that.

It's as rewarding as it is challenging.

The Spanish director's fingerprint is there, undoubtedly. But the movie feels strangely incomplete, as if made with one hand tied behind his back.

The Brutalist is a colossal achievement, balancing intimacy and scale at every level of craft. At 3 hours, 35 minutes, it asks a lot from its viewers. Every second is well spent.

Wolfs isn't just funny, it's funny in all the different ways it needs to be.

Kurzel's film can be watched at face value, and anyone inclined to like this type of movie will enjoy it. But as it chugs along, it also shows us what hate can look like and what it can do. Like Husk's story, it is a warning, and it leaves us with the chilling sense that the events depicted haven't, or maybe can't, come to an end.

The cast deserves real credit for that, Biscayart especially. His physical expressiveness is truly extraordinary, and without his performance to transition us to the final act, Kill the Jockey doesn't succeed.

Truly, all of Babygirl is fascinating to watch. There's such clear perspective in the filmmaking, and even though I've dwelt on Reijn's more thoughtful touches, the defining trait for many might be a wicked sense of humor. Laughter came easy and often for me and the audience I saw it with – sometimes with the characters, sometimes at them, but always with the movie. It's as if we're being reminded that, however serious the themes, this is supposed to be fun. And it is. But be prepared to find yourself grappling with a whole lot more.

There's plenty to admire in Maria, and in Jolie's performance, but my connection to certain scenes shouldn't be mistaken for my being emotionally engrossed. In fact, I typically felt kept at a distance.

Beetlejuice and Delia are deployed just the right amount, each injecting the movie with their own flavor of chaos whenever things risk feeling stale.

Layne's performance is a real strength, and she does a great job of not only anchoring us in her character's emotions, but embodying how she feels about singing in any given scene.

While it has its weak spots, A Family Affair holds together well enough to entertain.

Gradually, everything becomes burdened with story. The more the triangle of Kathy, Benny, and Johnny is played up for drama, the less interesting it becomes.

The characters are animated with such clarity of expression, and the film is edited so expertly, that lines just aren't necessary.

Atlas is like an artificial sci-fi movie that walks and talks like the real thing, but just isn't.

If Infested suffers from anything, it's that Vaniček makes its characters and themes too real, and the monsters can't keep up.

The movie is so interested in archeology (the credits dedicate it "to all archeologists, custodians of every end") that it becomes an analogue for the viewing experience. Rohrwacher asks us to interpret La Chimera the way archaeologists interpret fragments of the past.

Late Night with the Devil is tremendously fun.

Damsel is a lifeless experience. The filmmakers have assembled all the constituent parts of an interesting fantasy adventure film — genre-bending premise, a starry cast, locations with character, and some creative creature design — but the connective tissue is paper-thin.

Problemista invokes the simplicity of myth without ever letting its characters become simplistic.

The bottom line: even with some inconsistencies, Drugstore June is funny. It creatively approaches a deceptively ambitious setup and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Bleeding Love remains under-written and over-directed, unable to fully justify the time it asks for. If you're wanting to see Ewan McGregor do some quality acting, there are plenty of more rewarding options.

It's almost like Cumming has made two films, one through aesthetics and atmosphere and one through story and theme, that ultimately can't coexist. Neither is a bad film, but the former makes a much greater impression, and I wish it had been seen through to the end.

Thankfully for us, though, a film is not a meal. We can watch The Taste of Things as many times as we'd like.

Tótem's camera is always studying the actors, exploratory and intrusive in the manner of a child's perceptive gaze.

Perhaps, Kaurismäki's movie suggests, disaffection is a valid response to this reality we live in. So, when these two people meet and sparks fly, it becomes all the more meaningful.

If entertainment is all you're looking for, you'll find it, and you'll even have the fun of debating the accents and VFX as you leave the theater. But there's also a lot more to find beneath its surface pleasures, making it a worthy Christmas capstone for what has been a very good year for adults at the movies.

Lord of Misrule feels like it was made with a lack of understanding of what actually works about its premise, and the result is a constant ebb-and-flow of being drawn in by the imagery and pushed back out by the storytelling.

Silent Night winks at us as often as it tries for genuine drama, and whichever tone you choose to accept will likely determine whether you have as much fun with it as I did.

Manodrome lacks depth as either social commentary or character study, in large part because of how it positions us in relation to its protagonist's perspective.

Keeping us close to the film's talented cast is a decided strength of this, and the performances add nuance to a largely straightforward viewing experience. But it's hard not to wish Fingernails had grander designs. It shows just enough of its full potential to leave us wanting to see those ideas expressed more fully.

This is not a biopic of an artist so much as a human artwork, capturing the many questions he provokes and the contradictory answers that define him.

I do not regret having seen it, and with all there is to recommend it, I feel comfortable suggesting you seek it out upon release. But do so with tempered expectations.

It's a journey as much defined by tedium as tension, but to paraphrase the assassin, if you can't handle a little boredom, this might not be the film for you.

Savor Hit Man, however you come across it - it's not every day the movies entertain us in this way at this level of execution anymore.

A lot happens, story-wise, but if the film had just followed Sylvia and Saul learning how to be around each other, it would've been enough.

While not flawless in execution, it's daringly creative — the kind of movie that will inevitably cause those who see it to start talking about other movies as a way of understanding

The heart of the problem is The Monkey King makes its central character, whose story has been told and retold for hundreds of years, uninteresting. Without that spine to hold it together, everything collapses.

It's a lighthearted, empathetic film that multiple generations of family can see together and all find something worth taking with them.

The material is not lacking in thematic depth, but how the filmmakers choose to express these themes makes for an inconsistently engaging experience. Dreamin' Wild is sometimes too caught up in its own artfulness, and all that weighted form ends up trapping its ideas rather than giving them heft.

Sympathy for the Devil is a missed opportunity with a collection of engaging moments, none sustained enough to really satisfy.

It is a richly layered work of art.

Jenkin doesn't leave the audience without any puzzle pieces; there are enough for multiple stories to be constructed, should the viewer wish to understand Enys Men on that level. At a certain point, however, it becomes so difficult to disentangle the real from the unreal that to try feels pointless, and the last act suffers for it.

The problem is one of focus, and had the movie trusted its protagonist enough to let her be the true center, it might have provided a viewing experience worth recommending.

Landon's latest will be best remembered for its multiple laugh-out-loud set pieces, and with the craftsmanship and performances on display, viewers will likely be willing to forgive its less-impactful stretches.

If One Fine Morning offers no great revelations, it is full of echoes, parallels, and sparks that leave the viewer activated beyond its runtime, perhaps engaging with the world a little more thoughtfully than they were before watching.

Viewers willing to give it the same, almost spellbound focus the protagonist gives this case will find it a compelling meditation on things as wide-ranging as racial otherness, fraught mother-daughter relationships, and the real-world slipperiness of concepts like truth and justice.

There is a modest feeling to There There, and the emotional impact of its actual content might display the limits of this extreme methodology, but its (smartly brisk) runtime is hardly too steep a price to see a small movie explore such big questions with such clarity.

Its absurdity is enough to appeal to the right group of adventurous friends, perhaps, but even those with the stomach for its grossest impulses might find themselves wondering what it was all for.

Beautiful, moving, and sporting a compelling metaphor for parenthood, Twomey's film is heartfelt in the way that Pixar and Ghibli films are, making it a worthy pick for a family movie night.

Equal parts creepy, funny, and impressive, Wendell & Wild (despite being inexplicably rated PG-13) is an ideal watch for the whole family this Halloween.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow hopes to hide a clunky, unfunny script behind the veneer of a solid filmmaking apparatus, but it manages to test one's patience even at a merciful 89 minutes of runtime.

Though it risks a slip into fully formulaic territory at times, the new movie is building to a far more interesting endgame than it appears to be, in which all the fleshing out of Cenobite lore and mechanics actually amounts to something quite profound.

Robinson's film is not without things to say, and the combination of a dialed-up Mendes and a dialed-in Hawke make receiving that message a fun, engrossing experience. It is, in other words, exactly what it set out to be, and with any luck, it'll be named alongside the titles it so admires on many a teen movie listicle to come.

Already working with a shakily thin script, Jákl weighs his movie down with an overly self-serious aesthetic, to the point that even the target audience might find the two-hour runtime a tough sit.

With nothing of substance to chew on, the only thing a (committed) viewer can do is strap in for the 90-minute runtime and wait to hear a tune they like - and hope that, once it's over, they emerge earworm-free.

Fully engaging with the film, as one might be forced to do in a theatrical setting, will prove unrewarding — both intellectually and emotionally. But it's the kind of movie that's perfect for streaming while doing chores, or to turn on after a long day of work with the intention of putting one's brain on standby.

Given some time to think on it later, viewers might have trouble pinning down what it actually had to say about all those thorny subjects it seemed to be about.

This low-budget sci-fi film is actually doing something quite clever, but by keeping it hidden until the final minutes, it leaves viewers with a character drama that just isn't compelling enough to merit revisiting, even after learning how all its pieces fit together.

Abandoned has a few things in its favor, but the disappointing conclusion obscures them while making the movie's flaws even more prominent, which ultimately makes it difficult to recommend.