Andrew Crump

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.