April Wolfe

Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept: Put a bunch of characters with opposing motivations in a room and see what happens.

Tense and at times downright frightening.

Where "Ida" takes a drearier, more realistic approach to the story, The Innocents, despite its dark focus on a group of women living in fear of getting repeatedly raped by their allies, actually has a mightier finish, something of a crescendo to cut through the quiet grief.

These people accept the consequences of living like there's no tomorrow. They stand awaiting their fate in a rain of fire. And now we can feel a little bit of that, too.

Simple and well acted, Unsane has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I've been watching horror films since I was three years old. They've never given me nightmares. Until now.

Walter is riding a tricky line, but it’s his mixing of fantasy and reality, making the edges between the two porous, that ultimately sells the film.

Russo-Young gives this teen parable the thriller treatment to ward off any cheese, and watching Deutch learn her lesson with that expressive face of hers is a singular, moving experience.

The Talley of before the election presents himself as a man who believes anything is possible if you swallow your anger, work hard enough, and sacrifice all — especially your chance at love — and the Talley of after seems to worry that much of that progress has proved an illusion.

A soul-crushingly dark examination of human nature amid an invisible and unnatural threat.

In Chad Hartigan's lighthearted drama Morris From America, there are a whopping two African-American characters. The difference between this film and most others, however, is that these two are fully yet subtly drawn. They interact in ways that feel genuine, the actors portraying a heartfelt father-son relationship and the director fighting the urge to get either too preachy or mushy.

It is the depth Close lends to Joan that kept me riveted — and angry.

Juliet, Naked has its charms, and they are named Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke.

This isn’t torture-porn dystopia; it’s a singular, honest, heartfelt portrait of sisterly devotion at the end of the world

The most exceptional element of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women might actually be its comforting, radical normalcy.

The art of physical comedy is alive and well with Saunders and Lumley, who precisely calculate each well-timed tumble.

It's both funny and enlightening, a nuanced yet strikingly bold look at how teens see themselves, not how adults would like to see them. Parents: Take note. Teens: Relax, you'll figure it out.

Despite the film’s needlessly fractured structure and a relentlessly grim story, Kidman and Kusama seem to be speaking the same language, in quieter moments illuminating not just the faults of the protagonist but also the faults of every tragic hard-boiled detective in cinematic history.

Simultaneously entertaining, overwhelming, compelling, and grating, Bodied raises its hand and talks until words mean nothing and everything.

I like this couple. And their songs aren’t bad! Not so the gender-binary Mars-Venus mumbo jumbo that dominates the resolution. Still, these are quibbles with an otherwise charming and honest marriage story.

McCary and Mooney ground this story in sincere emotion and mostly avoid straying into easy-laugh SNL shorts territory.

Filmed in black and white in the wintry countryside of Görlitz, Germany, Schwentke’s vision of a man who would be posthumously named the Executioner of Emsland is chilling and yet, at times, almost farcical.

Chastain seems at times to be both the lead and her own supporting actor in this story, as she oscillates between traditionally feminine and masculine modes of behavior, sometimes inhabiting both at once.

Swicord turns what could be a dark or one-note premise into a sometimes charming, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on a man’s loss of self after having set out to conquer the job, wife, house, and kids he thought would make him happy.

Maggie's Plan is a fun light comedy with memorable characters, from a writer-director who lives up to her lineage (Arthur Miller's her dad), but it relies heavily on Gerwig's predictable charm and sometimes seems more Woody Allen than Rebecca Miller.

Though To the Bone isn’t quite enjoyable to watch, it’s acted well and is, in its depiction of this all-too-pervasive disorder, essential.

Without the serious acting talent of its leads, this color-saturated gross-out horror could have devolved into a mess, but The Autopsy of Jane Doe proves imperfect fun even when it starts to play like CSI: Salem.

The sense of authenticity that marks The Light Between Oceans at its best has everything to do with the acting — and if all Cianfrance ever gives us is that, it's worth the price of his lagging third act.