Alex Saveliev

It’s an easy target that’s been cinematically dissected many times, with the recent Nocturnal Animals and Velvet Buzzsaw coming to mind... Yet Grant manages to explore the subject from some enticing angles. The resulting painting may be a bit too busy to qualify as genius but contains brushstrokes so vivid it’s certainly worth scrutinizing.

Say what you will about Cactus Jack, but the fact that it’s extraordinarily unsettling cannot be denied. If you find yourself relating to any second of its purposefully hateful narrative, you may want to immediately call your local psychiatrist.

Breaking Surface boasts a verisimilitude lacking in its glossier Hollywood counterparts. Hedén doesn’t resort to gimmicks like sharks (ahem, except for that dog), rightfully trusting that Nature’s elements present a formidable enough foe to his two strong female leads.

A hope for pleasure is almost as enjoyable as the pleasure itself,” a character quotes Shakespeare at one point. I didn’t derive any pleasure in hoping for pleasure while watching Esau – and man, did I hope.

A soulful soliloquy about the fragility of memory and starting over, Brian Cavallaro’s 32 Weeks sails along smoothly until a storm of an ending sends it sinking into melodramatic—and oddly gruesome— depths.

Survival Skills has so much going for it, one may feel tempted to go along for the ride, bumps and all.

Yang seems to have embarked on his own writer’s odyssey, going for broke, with a substantial studio budget to help visualize his dreams. There’s no doubting the creativity he displays in A Writer’s Odyssey; he could, however, work on coherence and restraint.

If you enjoy being sober around your trippin’ buddies, then Tyger Tyger may be for you, but you’re much more likely to feel left out.

The Parish does not even attempt to avoid sentimentality or predictability. Tony Tibbet’s awkward editing reveals a man doing his best to mask budgetary, directorial, and auditory blunders.

Klein’s decision to pull a Kramer vs. Kramer and provide his heroine with next-to-no discernible rationale for bailing on her family both pays off and becomes a minor hindrance.

Consisting of three segments, this hit-and-miss cinematic jumble imagines our world being taken over by the titular otherworldly gateways. Their origins and purpose remain ambiguous throughout, which some may find tantalizing, while others will deem infuriating.

While admirable in its ambition, the end result just doesn’t quite gel. Cool poster, though.

When the film isn’t deafening you with the sounds of bullets and screams, it revels in silence, in birdsong, in the buzzing of flies, in the tranquil sounds of nature. These sequences are captured beautifully by cinematographer Andrew Commis, Arnhem Land’s emerald ponds and breathtaking vistas forming a stark contrast to the bloodshed and fire and chaos.

For a sci-fi feature, it’s certainly not visually-stimulating; perhaps it would’ve worked better as an audio-book.

The result is tonally-uneven and predictable, down to its lame stabs at exploring xenophobia.

Don’t come looking for scares either: possessed narcissistic actors choking themselves over and over isn’t all that frightening. The script, by Luke Baines and Nick Simon, just can’t find any new, intriguing ground to cover. As a comedy, however, the feature is infinitely more effective.

Boasting a formidable cast and a keen eye for detail, Killing Eleanor makes it easy to forgive its flaws. Marks deserves major props for making an old story seem fresh again. Here's hoping her next tale won't be so old.

The director speaks to the beauty and longevity of cinema and the power and resilience of our past. But it's that interplay between sound and sight that proves the most penetrating. No talking head, or eloquent analysis, could be as powerful as that uncanny synthesis.

Mailer’s glossy film contains all the expected melodrama that hardcore fans of sports movies have come to expect. Others may wince at the predictability of the plot but are bound to find at least some respite in Shannon’s magnetic performance.

Its ambition cannot be faulted, but I’ll Find You gets lost in its own nostalgia, ultimately drowning in mush.

Luckily, the story of Waterman is so riveting and the hero so charming that it’s hard not to grow nostalgic along with the filmmaker.

Viewed as an epic fantasy, Imakake’s basked-in-golden-hues fever dream of a film is inspired and highly artistic, if overly complex and at times kind of ridiculous. Viewed as an endorsement of a cult, The Laws of the Universe: The Age of Elohim is more than a little creepy and didactic. Any way you view it, it’s pretty damn fascinating.

The Hensman brothers’ The Prey: Legend of Karnoctus is really not that different from Crawl, whose CGI crocs were just a smidge more realistic than the concealed-in-shadows puppet here. Now I’d love to put my “critic hat” back on and review a movie by the same filmmakers that doesn’t contain an oversized rat.

American Carnage has its eye on the right target; it just misses the bull’s eye.

Everything is immersed in murky browns and washed-out grays; the film is so devoid of color that it’s almost black-and-white. The by-the-numbers script by Matthew Rogers careens along, every so-called twist and turn predictable. No flair or creativity seems to have been applied to any of it.

So suspend your disbelief, get a little intoxicated if you’re of age (if that’s your thing), and you’ll most certainly enjoy this wildly entertaining piece of trash.

It Snows All the Time resembles a prolonged PSA with all the production values and depth of an infomercial.

Prepare for a threadbare, hole-ridden plot with cardboard characters, whose ludicrous dialogue is matched by the stupidest twists in recent memory. After a feature like this, the only thing that’s on the line is Gibson’s career.

Brad Bischoff’s subdued drama Grasshoppers leaves a lasting impression, certain images glowing like embers somewhere in the depths of the viewer’s mind long after the credits roll.

Part of the reason Condor’s Nest works as well as it does is that none of it feels forced or showy. Blattenberger truly set out to make a kick-ass WWII flick, albeit with his tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Underdog may seem like a story with niche appeal, but the result will surely resonate with all the underdogs out there.

While it’s solidly produced from a technical standpoint, and the lead does her best to sell the most outrageous scenarios, the end result feels undercooked.

This ballad falls right into the singular category of “so bad, it’s good,” a low-budget, highfalutin, bold, wildly overacted, and at times oddly lyrical gem that ought not to be overlooked.

One thing remains certain: Satterlund and his crew know how to drop jaws. The plot may have been told before, but certainly never quite like this.

For a low-budget, contained flick, Day’s film does a remarkable job of keeping audiences riveted with a minimum of pyrotechnics. It doesn’t aspire to greatness, knowing perfectly well what it is: a lean, mean, bloody little machine with a few subliminal – and not-so-subliminal – messages thrown in. Dive right into this tub.

The Sylvester Stallone-produced film categorically lacks any surprises and frequently devolves into mushy melodrama. Still, as a family-friendly story of survival in the wilderness, it gets the job done… just.

While The Shade does a decent job examining grief and the complexities of a brotherly bond, it never digs too deeply, relying heavily on its central actor to reveal more depth than it contains.

Sometimes, the seemingly smallest fracture that separates the sublime from the maudlin is actually, well, a great divide.

Those seeking visceral thrills may be somewhat underwhelmed by Descendent, but the filmmaker firmly establishes himself as a descendant of the Benson/Moorhead cinematic lineage.

You’ll never look at life—through a camera lens, that is—the same way again.

The film amounts to a truthful portrait of family supporting each other in a time of crisis and a painfully real depiction of the hell that was the pandemic.

Less discerning kids may enjoy Robin and the Hoods… when they’re not deep into their PlayStations and Switches.