Alex Harrison

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.

The only real saving grace is the cast, who end up guinea pigs in a test of how difficult it is to overcome underbaked material.

Roberts' film succeeds where much contemporary coverage failed because of how invested it is in the difference between laughing with him, as the audience is taught to do, and laughing at him.