Andrew Crump

Golja and Gossett’s joint appeal—his rascally charm, her coltish earnestness—gives The Cuban soul, shining light through the gloom of brain decline and the horrors of an ambivalent healthcare system. Who needs validation when you have heart?

Don’t confuse Becky for a smart movie. It won’t teach audiences anything valuable, or even new, about the disease of white supremacist ideology. It won’t leave folks holding hands in solidarity against racism and prejudice at a time when solidarity is like oxygen. It will, however, provide a brief burst of catharsis through the brutal slaughter of white supremacist ideologues, for whatever that catharsis is worth.

Together, McCoy and Williams make The Owners stand out. Newness is a big ask for movies visiting territory this familiar. Two outstanding central performances, however, make a much more reasonable expectation.

The movie doesn’t drag, but it’s a major drag all the same.

Gray and his leads ably demonstrate how quotidian encounters and minute actions speak volumes. What’s missing is space for those little details to fully speak.

Anybody could direct this kind of story, and many already have. But There’s Something Wrong with the Children is right in Benjamin’s wheelhouse, and her skill with this familiar set-up is a major boon.

Slowly, agonizingly, over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the house collapses in a stream of Star Wars free association. At best, The Rise of Skywalker solidifies Ridley and Driver as movie stars. At worst, it ends this narrative not with a bang but with a recycled image from a better movie. If that isn’t proof that Disney considers this property more product than art, nothing is.

This isn’t a movie in search of a greater meaning. It just needs to be entertaining. But it does both, and better still, it bothers to be creative.

The Mauritanian plays by the numbers, hitting courtroom conspiracy drama beats dutifully but without any urgency. From the start, everyone on every side of the court is running out of time, and hitting their heads on brick walls of government silence, which, though drawn from real life, remains a well-worn genre cliché played too heavily by Macdonald’s direction.

Consider The Forever Purge as the “well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” meme as a horror film.

Comprising hardcore and doom metal, à la Isis, Electric Wizard, and Doomriders, Bliss is more metal than most of the metal records released in the last five years. The substance beneath the slaughter is a happy bonus, and a reminder that even the ugliest horror movies can have more going on under the hood than one might think.

As mired as it is in identity confusion, cheeseball sentimentality and jaundiced camera filters, The Tender Bar could’ve been something if it had a purpose.

To the Erwins’ credit, they make an effort at taking their movie somewhere interesting and, at least for a Jesus-y football picture, new.

What makes Body at Brighton Rock such good fun is understanding where Wendy is coming from, and connecting to the very specific engine that’s fueling her fear. The movie’s truth doesn’t disappoint, because the truth is that nature plays tricks on the mind.

It’s less a story and more a fragile white male provocation, and it’s repulsive.

In place of new, at least, we get to see Butler in his element as a man of compassion first and blazing guns second.

Think of the film as an extended cousin of Too Many Cooks, where parody gives way to weirdness, which gives way to surrealism, which gives way to genuine horror by the end. Bonkers as the combination sounds, and it is unimpeachably bonkers, the effect of their marriage is hypnotic.

Charlie’s Angels talks a good talk, but struggles to back up the talk with the drama necessary to make it worthwhile. At least Stewart, Scott, and Balinska are having a good time, but they’re so switched on, and Charlie’s Angels is so switched off, that it sometimes feels like they’re in a totally different movie than the one Banks is making. You may end up wishing that you were in that movie with them.

As Greed’s concentration vacillates, it dilutes both Coogan’s portrait of McCreadie and the impact of its own contempt.

If nothing else, think of it as a hilariously repugnant curio, the kind of transgressive art you’ll be unable to unpack because you’ll be too busy chugging ginger ale to bother.

Residue is about colonization, and through the creative choices he makes, Gerima suggests that colonization stories don’t actually have to be about the colonizers themselves. Instead, he maintains a personal touch over the picture and the narrative, about a homecoming that goes slowly awry over the course of a 90 minute duration.

Baghead is moody and atmospheric enough (if low on scares) for about the first hour.

Kids vs. Aliens is a harmless trifle. A filmmaker with this many years under their belt should have more to show for themselves than that.

It’s possible to fuse pulp with prestige while still saying smart things about the seismic political shifts required for creeps like the Proud Boys to skitter from the rocks they live under and infest society’s better elements. The Wrath of Becky makes no such effort. It’s built to thrill and made for chuckles, offset by Seann William Scott’s looming menace.

Either Ritchie didn’t bring his typical slickness for the ride, or he’s chopped up Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre intentionally to take the piss out of the genre. The effect at least feels more like comfort than boredom.

The writer/director demonstrates a rare storytelling economy in his feature debut, leaving no trace of fat on Homebound’s bones and letting only the most essential elements shine.

Wolf Man grasps the sobriety of how easily men are acculturated to violence by other men, but loosens its hold around the start of its final act: the insularity of its world becomes a crutch rather than an asset, and the plot reassigns the task of solving male abandon to its female characters.

Everyone has off days, or in his case off years. But Summering extends those off years into Ponsoldt’s most puzzling effort so far, a genre jumble roping together a kid-detective novel, a ghost story, a hokey “do you know where your children are” PSA and a coming-of-age dramedy.

Rich filmmaking, from assured camerawork to tactile set decoration, is the film’s basis. But richer exploration of theme and spiritual belief is its design. Things Heard & Seen isn’t elevated. It’s just mature, wonderfully made, and, whether dead or alive, human.

Army of the Dead is a film full of pleasant surprises, but Matthias Schweighöfer, playing a German safecracker with a hair-trigger for impassioned speeches about locks and bolts, is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of them all.

What Buffalo Boys lacks in originality it makes up for in spirit. There’s a verve in Wiluan’s direction, a sense of joy shaping his approach to the tried and true familial vengeance hook.

The ultimate effect of the film’s hackneyed material is as debilitating as it is frustrating.

A movie that delights with spectacle as much as it repels with revisionism. Part of you will enjoy it. Another part of you will hate the part of you that enjoys it.

We all have our own regrets and sins to reconcile with. The Banishing reminds us that sometimes we’re forced to answer for the sins of others, too.

The film’s observations, as filtered through the duo, feel utterly simplistic, and gain gravity only by the enthusiasm in Goode and Hopkins’ performances.

Hunted doesn’t exactly rewrite the original tale, but it doesn’t have to. It just has to have teeth, and Paronnaud’s kept those canines sharp and savage.

The film’s admirable attempts at preserving its enigmas, while finding the greatest unsettling effect in commonplace human fanaticism, offer an experience unique from Bier’s work with Bullock. But Bird Box Barcelona’s lack of grit and prevailing aversion to the gruesome realities of its own premise are a drag on the details that click.

Films like these can hew toward positivity without scrubbing the script of risk, but Glitter & Doom risks next to nothing, except perhaps the Indigo Girls’ dignity.

Headey’s in her element. Gillan is capable. But Papushado’s excesses hold them back from performing at their best.

Anonymously directed by Mark Pellington, puzzlingly scripted by Alex Ross Perry and handsomely acted by its ensemble—though none of its participants are ever given enough space to fully feel out their characters—Nostalgia is a poor man’s version of other great movies built upon complexly interwoven narratives.

No one should ask Sweet Girl to be something it isn’t, namely an affecting drama about pharmaceutical evils. For one, it’s self-serious enough as is. But there’s a vast difference between self-seriousness and taking the subject matter seriously.

The film only gets as far as the beach, and James’ breathy line readings, and Scott Thomas’ icy supporting performance. It never bothers undressing.

Frankly, Earwig and the Witch looks ghastly enough that storytelling merit doesn’t even matter. It’s a movie almost too ugly to consider beyond the surface.

It’s a ponderous work in every meaning of the term.

It’s a lean, efficient, no-frills film, and that’s as it should be. Begos rejects pretense. He’s making his version of a psycho Santa flick, no more, no less. But the logline’s comic absurdity and the execution of his premise is so straightforward that Christmas Bloody Christmas feels fresh among the season’s horror canon. It’s a Christmas miracle.

The Boys, Samaritan is not. But even a failed attempt at making a superhero movie out of whole cloth rather than pre-existing IP is welcome, particularly one that challenges the genre’s mores.

Noyer needs to go back to the drawing board. Even Alexis’ disability comes in a distant second to buckets of guts. His talent for making a mess is obvious. The rest leaves a few too many notes to be desired.

Maybe if the film gave us the relief of a satisfying ending, the grimness, the ickiness, wouldn’t be so pronounced. But it doesn’t.

Ultimately it’s very little about football. It’s about class. This is a theme worthy of a spotlight, too — but 12 Mighty Orphans isn’t the place for it, or it shouldn’t be.

Ultimately the film resembles cosplay with an expansive budget. It took 20 years and change for a new Mortal Kombat movie to get a green light. Maybe they should’ve waited a few years longer.

Backstory is fine. Seeing King introduce scores of anonymous leering henchmen to their varying deaths is better.

Slattery and Bernbaum’s adherence to genre standards may hold Maggie Moore(s) back from doing anything new in its space, but not from doing anything worthwhile. There’s nothing wrong with a messy low-level crime movie done right.

When Donowho brings The Old Way back to the well-trod ground of old Westerns, it’s just plain old.

Maybe this isn’t the sophomore picture we’d hoped for, but it’s sharp and insightful regardless.

The Roads Not Taken works when Bardem and Fanning are on screen together, where Potter’s experiences caring for her sibling rise to the writing’s surface and give the narrative a punch of honesty.

Instead of exercising artistic liberties over the written word, Louhimies goes all-in on putting those words on screen, a task too great even for nearly two hours of runtime; maybe Attack on Finland would work better if fashioned into a miniseries. Even then, though, it wouldn’t work as the entertainment it aspires toward.

Arizona bathes its absurdist satire in the bleakest humor and takes a sober glance at the consequences of America’s worst modern economic calamity.

In fairness Superintelligence could skirt by on surface-level examination of its themes if it was funny. Comedy, more than any genre, lives or dies on the delivery of its central promise: If a comedy makes viewers laugh, then it’s a successful comedy. This is not a successful comedy.

Isabelle Huppert walks on screen in Luc Bondy’s False Confessions intent, it seems, on reminding audiences that she can do anything, including turn a modern adaptation of outdated theater tropes into near-vital product.

Under the Eiffel Tower is a functionally enjoyable film bookended by an opening and a conclusion both dogged by distrust in the audience’s reading comprehension.

While the director clearly has a few tricks up his sleeve for hitting his viewers with the heebie jeebies, what he doesn’t have, at least for The Sonata, is a sense of how to weave those tricks into a unified, cohesive narrative.

Juvenile is as juvenile does, but the Broken Lizard fellows supplement their puerile nonsense with abiding endearment. They’re idiots, but sincere, disarming idiots. Like the characters they play in both movies, they mean well, but meaning well comes in second to antics when spending your career making concerted efforts to avoid responsibility.

Three films into his career, Pesce is batting below average: Last year, he dropped his inventive sophomore stunner, Piercing, and demonstrated range and precision not as evident in his hollow, unrepentantly nasty debut The Eyes of My Mother. With The Grudge, the worst proclivities of that movie override the sensibilities of Piercing and combine with studio horror’s “just play the hits” ethos, resulting in one of the year’s most unpleasant releases to date.

It’s possible for cinema to weave this many themes and concerns together into one cohesive film. The Unforgivable simply doesn’t.

As it stands, Gibson and Goggins carry the show and the Nelms stick to their stern tone without wavering. Whatever other marks the film misses, at least it has conviction.

Everything about Pitch Perfect 3’s foundation is openly half-baked. If it winked at its own indifference anymore than it already does, you might mistake its indifference for outright contempt.

Farrelly’s too busy making a Big Important Movie instead of making a movie that matters.

After storing up goodwill with its construction, melodrama and lead performance, The Visitor pulls back the curtain on its narrative, and its revelation, put vaguely, is a bummer.

Avnet likely means well, just as Rokeach meant well. Three Christs needs more than a deep focus on the Christs themselves, and on the system that so utterly failed them. It needs to focus on Stone, and on the collision between ego and benevolence that led to The Three Christs of Ypsilanti’s birth. That should be the story.

Behind You stumbles on inconsistency at best and hesitation at worst.

Trimming the film’s manipulations and inessential qualities would only improve it, but judicious editing would leave very little meat on its bones.

Chaos Walking feels like a condensement of Ness’ trilogy of books instead of a straightforward translation of the first, and consequently there’s too much that needs to happen in too slim a running time, which leaves little space for making the movie’s conflicts matter.

Life Upside Down is a clunky, graceless movie, but it’s utterly engrossing as a stage for letting Odenkirk, Mitchell, Huston and the rest vent their own stir craziness. If you think of the film as more of an outlet than a functioning narrative, it gains value. But that reflective detail isn’t enough to hold our attention, no matter how likable and gifted its authors.

Mute is in desperate need of a firmer hand. Once upon a time, that hand might have been Jones’. Now he’s invisible in his own pastiche.

But there’s so much done wrong as the film tries to be funny that when it is funny, the funniness goes down like a bitter pill: Why can’t it be good all the time?

No one can top Hooper or “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” or even match them. Garcia is smart enough not to put on airs. He just lets Leathersaw rip.

It’s genre salad, and every ingredient is wilted at a moment in America where Kings’ historical makeup remains fresh.

Granted, the film might not have turned out much better had Smit stuck with one perspective or the other, but at least it would have had constancy. Instead, it reads strictly as a video game, sans the requisite interactive gratification.

The Book of Henry means well, but it doesn’t do well. It does incoherent pastiche and self-congratulatory pap instead.

Kids deserve better entertainment than Dolittle. They deserve not to have their intellect insulted with half-assed celebrity vocal cameos and a plot that concludes not with a bang, but with a fart joke. Neither Gaghan, nor his ensemble, nor Universal have an excuse. Downey doesn’t either.

Imagine spending an hour and a half or so watching a film that, the minute the credits roll, dissolves from the mind like cotton candy in hot water. That’s Vanquish. Nothing that happens throughout its narrative happens for any good reason, other than the plot dictates it must for the sake of limping to the next scene.

From top to bottom, The Last Days of American Crime is a lumbering referential malfunction. Nothing about it works; everything about it is offensive.

The Emoji Movie’s most insidious trait is its surface-level innocuousness.

For a production founded on a tried and true indie formula – start with your characters, add in existential malaise, substitute plot with antics and awkward conversation – Pet Names is made with remarkable urgency

Without spoiling either Max Cloud’s action or its comedy, Owen makes the running gag about Max’s macho bluster into some of the sharpest gaming criticism released this year.

The drama rests on their efforts to claim self-agency that the circumstances of their success have accidentally denied them. The effect of the message and the medium is trim and unsparing; the sendoff is surprisingly uplifting. Altogether, the package is remarkable.

The Last Matinee embraces the cat-and-mouse game between the killer and those to be killed as horror’s naughty pleasure. It’s central to the genre’s function in cinema.

Just like the black ichor seeping into Laura, Matriarch saturates viewers’ senses until it pays off its many adumbrations with unexpected revelations.

Unfortunately, The Tank’s take on the “creature” component of “creature feature” is so muscular in execution and performance that Walker’s slow-burn approach does his team’s efforts an unintended disservice.

Army of the Doomstar prioritizes well-earned sentimentality over grisly comedy, and balances the film’s heart with the best animation of the series to date.

The payoff is grand, as a macabre exercise and a moving gut punch.