Alex McLevy

Never consistently funny enough to work as straight comedy and too broad to succeed in its somber aspirations, the results are still engaging in their attempts to defy easy categorization. Like St. Vincent herself, The Nowhere Inn keeps morphing into something else.

If only the documentary following the start of her European tour were half as adventurous as the artist herself. Especially in light of the rollicking aerial pyrotechnics and vocal gymnastics provided by its subject, P!nk: All I Know So Far comes across as downright staid by comparison.

The film works better as a casual glimpse behind the curtain of big-name acts, exuding a voyeuristic appeal in the footage and anecdotes of beloved musicians opening up about their pasts. It’s breezy fun, if a little forgettable, spending 90 minutes with charismatic performers who have a knack for a good yarn.

A peek behind the curtain of her private life during this tumultuous rise to international fame is the draw of the film, and The World’s A Little Blurry manages to deliver a compelling and intimate portrait of Billie Eilish without ever coming across as carefully PR-approved or evading knottier aspects of her life.

It may not be as bizarrely entertaining as the film it obsesses over, but You Don’t Nomi is a captivating document of how a piece of art—especially one this deeply, powerfully weird—can take on a life wholly beyond its original intentions.

But even with the absurdist spectacle making for occasionally fun viewing, what has room to rise and fall in a 400-plus page book gets condensed into trite moralizing in 108 minutes.

Fyre is the stronger, more worthwhile documentary, but its counterpart is a helpful reminder that, like so many stories, one account can’t contain the whole truth.

A Quiet Place is an entertaining and crowd-pleasing monster movie, one that leaves you wanting more—and once you get over wondering what a subtler and more accomplished director might have done with this material, it’s not hard to let yourself be won over by its charms.

Beyond the performances, They Remain is uneven. The film uses a series of innovative, old-school visual tricks to create a surreal and hallucinatory vibe, and when something works, it’s powerful and discomfiting.

It’s only thanks to Powell’s own rhetorical waffling that the movie succeeds to the degree it does.

Director Tom Holland keeps things moving along, turning the entire film into a pretty ruthlessly efficient scare delivery system.

I discovered that not only is Girls Just Want To Have Fun a delightful party of a movie, it’s an absolutely bonkers party, like someone dosed the punch with ecstasy and mushrooms.

The movie manages to luck into that ideal combination of over-the-top bloodshed, gratuitous nudity (of both male and female types, though the latter is, as expected, the mainstage show), and unintentional absurdity for which enthusiasts of the genre are perpetually on the hunt.

From its inception, The Mack had more on its mind than delivering a blaxploitation film, a label director Michael Campus always resisted. He shouldn’t have. His film is one of the finest examples of the genre, a smartly executed and deeply ambitious story of crime, corruption, and prostitution, shot on location in Oakland, California.

In every way, it hangs together less effectively than its predecessor, but Mancini’s script is smartly self-aware (a recurring theme in these films), and new director John Lafia creates some enjoyably gonzo moments.

Despite some weaknesses, the film remains a bold and challenging work, one that flies in the face of the conventional spy thrillers of its day.

Compared to Deadfall, films The Wicker Man, Face/Off, and even Vampire’s Kiss look like Merchant-Ivory productions. It may be a crowded field at the top of Cage’s most entertaining performances, but this one deserves to stand above the fold, if for no other reason than that its general lack of public awareness means a retroactive popular appreciation is long overdue.

Cult Of Chucky is the most purely entertaining Child’s Play film since the original.