Asher Luberto

If you go into Little Dixie expecting nothing more than to watch Grillo take out some bad guys, you’ll be more than satisfied with the ride “Dixie” has to offer. Just don’t go in expecting anything more.

The plot moves as briskly as a ship sailing across the sea, which should please young viewers. While The Sea Beast has some timely messages, it’s mainly just a chance to escape from our living rooms.

A rich, old-fashioned story spun out of modern themes and postmodern storytelling, this film’s decade-long, country-wide examination of art, life, love, and, yes, illusion, has the kind of tone that brings to mind “The Sweet Smell of Success.” It’s a film of smirks and surprises, not least of which is that director Giannoli has taken this material and given it a tragic spin.

While the creators do their darndest to make an animated version of “Adaptation,” they’ve instead made an animated version of “Space Jam: Legacy”–a series of callbacks to IP that serves no other purpose than to remind you that they exist.

It’s a sweetly funny, damning, and poignant depiction of this very specific time in life–at once angsty and lovely–when anything is possible. And it has a killer soundtrack to boot.

This gripping, taciturn thriller set in a frozen landscape isn’t necessarily any different from the other titles, but the well-crafted drama is a good reminder of how tangible atmosphere can transcend predictable narrative. At least at first.

Andrew Gaynord’s All My Friends Hate Me is an incredibly funny look at social anxiety and a send-up to those risks, mixed with a shot of cringe and a dose of horror.

As good as she is, and as timely as the film can be, it is frustrating that the villain seems to have waltzed in from a 1930s noir.

The pleasures of Hotel Transylvania: Transformania are both visual and script-based, as they revolve around the writers’ ability to come up with more fish-out-of-water material.

It’s a twisty tale of secrets, cliches, and Lifetime characters that could only come out this month–it’s impossible to imagine this coming out in December, that’s for sure.

A Castle for Christmas delights in a stuffed-stocking of tropes and still offers a few surprises.

While Try Harder! is an important tribute to these kids and their work, it’s also a rebuke of college apps in general.

There’s a wealth of talent involved in this film, not the least of which is Snider himself. Unfortunately, Hard Luck Love Song doesn’t capture the essence of the musical source material, though one could argue there isn’t much emotional heft in the song to begin with.

Surge takes pointlessness to a whole ‘nother level: cruel, empty, airless; a glass storefront with nothing to see inside.

Some of the drama is a bit wooden, but it’s an animated movie that brings real issues into a surreal world. Plus, it’s mainly an adventure.

There’s an enigma here. If we believe anyone in The Lost Leonardo, we believe someone who is only here to cover their tracks. Koefoed knows this and plays up the mystery with compelling results.

To call it undercooked is an understatement.

It’s clear that Thorwarth was trying to say something about how we judge people by their color, not their character. But the message is garbled, doused in blood, and lost in viscera, which makes its weak, half-hearted attempts at something to say even harder to stomach.

The film gives the audience the feeling of being trapped in a tight and confined space. And that feeling is as thrillingly unpleasant as it is a sweaty-palmed nightmare.

If you’re in the mood for an action flick without imagination, then The Misfits is the film for you. Recycling genre tropes, characters, and camerawork, The Misfits feels like you’re watching a montage of better movies.

It’s light, sweetly frisky, and warmly inspiring, with a lead performance from Toni Colette keeping things on track.

The film plays with form the way Enola plays with words: dazzlingly, whimsically and sarcastically. It's a breezy escape from a world that seems to be getting darker by the day.

Cliff Walkers quickly drops us into this winter wonderland, all whites, grays, and blacks, and delivers some of the most mesmerizing landscapes you’ll see all year. But for a film about undercover operatives, it lacks thrills, and it doesn’t give us any characters we can latch onto.

Because this is a packed ensemble and a joke-driven movie, the characterizations are fairly thin. We don’t know much about Lori, just that she isn’t ready for marriage. Though the casting of Cash opposite Harper makes sense, and the performances make us believe in the pair, we aren’t given any reason to believe they were once a happy couple.

It’s an absorbing (if sometimes preachy) look at the horrors of becoming a housewife, and a splash of holy water on the demons of assigned gender roles.

Stowaway is surprisingly decent despite the drag near the finale.

Despite the best efforts of McCarthy, and a winsome Spencer as her sidekick, Thunder Force is more like Shazam! Lite. It wants us to laugh at genre tropes, but this crude and unoriginal dreck is just comedy Kryptonite.

It’s not just the premise that makes this work, but also the execution of light comedy and heavy horror. The humor is humorous, the horror horrific. Happily draws from genre conventions but feels completely fresh. It’s a trip, and if you’re willing to follow that trip to the end of the road, it’s a trip worth taking.

The Courier is not about espionage—it’s about the sacrifices we make to help our country—in this patriotic, put-you-there true story.

The whole thing is a wildly uneven, extremely repetitive mess that could have used a few rewrites, as well as another look at the genial, genre-bending source material.

Come True” is a surreal, mysterious, and efficient mix of science fiction references with an original ending.

Although the actors are a joy to watch (as always), honestly, Edith and Basil’s real-life story just isn’t that cinematic, and the film never makes their discovery feel like our own.

Acasa, My Home explores how bureaucracy sucks the life out of families, one by one, by turning them into 40-hour-a-week workhorses. It ruminates powerfully on the meaning of freedom, positing that our only chance at control may be a place far, far away from civilization, a place where the reeds sway gently and the fish are plenty.

It’s a bold and terrifying story, but it’s told with all the usual bells and whistles, basements and attics, creaks and bangs.

While fans of either Freaky Friday or Friday the 13th might not get enough of what they came for in Freaky, fans of Vaughn will get more than enough to keep them satisfied. He makes Freaky absolutely worth it.

It’s the same primitive family-friendly fare that made the original a box-office sensation.

While talking-heady and occasionally self-aggrandizing, Leap Of Faith, still inspires deep respect for Friedkin as the bright and brilliant artist he is. Flaws and all, the filmmaker is a person who commands your attention whether he is sitting in front of, or behind, the camera.

Bright spots are found in the supporting cast, though the less said about Faizon Love‘s portrayal of a black belt grocery clerk, the better. Walken is legitimately great as an old guy trying to be hip, a sort of exaggerated version of what Thurman is doing as the cool but protective mom. They just aren’t enough to pull The War With Grandpa and De Niro out of the gutter.

It isn’t pretty — it’s by turns confusing, exhilarating, depressing and deflating. But then again, so is high school.

As the film becomes more of a conventional horror flick, it also leaves unexplored the darker realities of these contemporary fears for easier, gorier thrills.

Rather than focusing on the specific aspects that make the film unique, Centigrade turns into a mishmash of genres.

It’s rare to see a comedy so devoted to pacing and so concerned with driving to a satisfying conclusion.

Not surprisingly, Cut Throat City is a product of RZA’s voice, highlighting his social awareness and raw, deep, in-your-face delivery. What is surprising is how scattered the film is. Like a rapper without flow, Cut Throat City lacks the oomph to keep audiences engaged.

The Tax Collector flings blood, guts, testosterone and Latinx characters to the wall to see what sticks. And in many ways, it pulls that off, especially when all those things are literally splattered on walls.

D’Arcy wastes a very personal story on a standard-issue romance. It’s heartbreaking for all the wrong reasons.

Father, Soldier, Son doesn’t show bias toward the highs or the lows. Rather, it depicts Brian’s life as a mixture of love and loss, pain and recovery, birth, death, and rebirth. What emerges is an unforgettable portrait of a life in flux.

Actor turned director Dave Franco delivers the goods in his unsettling directorial debut, in this regard— a seemingly morally ambiguous thriller that doesn’t tell you whether you should be rooting for the innocents or the bad guys and seems to have things on its mind to say about trust, privilege, infidelity, privacy, surveillance and more.

Rebuilding Paradise reminds us that even after a razing, life will return and grow from under the ashes of destruction.

A sledgehammer to religious hypocrisy, Retaliation uses symbolism to recreate, visually, the trauma a child endures when molested by a priest.

Part of Hamilton’s brilliance is this reclamation of U.S. history.

Relic is the latest possession movie to peel back its characters slowly, layer by fragile layer, getting at the secrets that lie just below the surface.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga is bursting with wit, warmth and laughs, and is well worth a watch on Netflix.

Though the visuals are a huge draw, having a variety of actors with palpable chemistry brings Sometimes Always Never to life.

Adalsteins demonstrates a mastery of restraint, a rare ability to hold back emotions so that when they come, they pour forth like a broken dam.

Fourteen generates important insights on time, mental illness, and relationships, proving, through a tableau of exquisitely staged moments, that friendships deepen over time no matter the circumstance.

By seesawing between tired performances and hellish visuals, Vitthal never delivers on the rage his premise initially promises.

This blistering film about addiction doesn’t judge the abusers, instead offering an intimate view into a world of hurting people lost in a maze of peer pressure, letting us see how a nice guy like Henry can turn to hard drugs.

Arkansas is, for long stretches, laid back. Despite its cartoonish performances, the tone is defiantly low key, with little of the vigor you expect from something inspired by Tarantino.

Genre buffs are probably more interested in witch’s kidnapping children than Ben’s family divorce. But the Pierce’s deliver on both fronts, so much so that you may never walk into a basement again.

This Netflix film works overtime trying to be flashy without bothering to create characters worth rooting for, and its long run time won’t do bored parents any favors.

In a world where the clouds are puffy, the script is fluffy and the funk is funky, it’s easy to stomach all the glitter a second time around. If you do decide to rent this via VOD, now that DreamWorks Animation has broken the theatrical window, you will likely be in harmony with kaleidoscopic visuals, not to mention a bunch of greatest hits the whole family can enjoy.

Emphasizing Selah’s discovery that cliques are kinda dumb and that her actions have consequences, Selah and the Spades loses momentum, despite a witty framing device that places characters as tiny figures in the school’s vast, empty rooms.

Chalk this Team WahlBerg’s latest collaboration as a massive swing and miss, which ranks among the city’s worst cinematic disasters.

A movie about deep regrets, taking them head-on, forgiving oneself and more, The Way Back, on paper, has so much potential for clichés about demons in a bottle. Instead, and triumphantly earned, this affecting path to redemption is a piercing portrait of man and actor who, when the clock’s winding down, can drain the shot that matters most.

The horror genre also comes with a short list of demands that must be followed: Build a tense mood, a terrifying atmosphere, and tumultuous characters. “The Boy 2” rejects all of these. Instead, director William Brent Bell settles for a basement full of cliches.

Sonic the Hedgehog might nail the outrageous energy and outlandish hyperactivity of the video game, but it’s the effective and poignant force of friendship that truly powers this video game adaptation to level’d up triumph.

Ultimately, no amount of champagne, pretty faces, and New York real estate porn can turn dull lovers and a dramatic lack of focus into a pretty picture, and this is the reality The Photograph captures in the end.

While The Sonata has no shortage of gripping moments, it’s still missing the weirdness and stylishness that made the similarly themed “Rosemary’s Baby” or “The Frantic” classics.

It’s a dull, plodding retread with new souped-up VFX that’s deeply uninvolving.

Despite a script that’s as obvious as a treasure map, Low Tide works because of its leads. The four actors have never been better.

Auggie is at its best when Felix is vulnerable. The same goes for the actor playing Felix. Kind hasn’t been this good since A Serious Man.

Bell is as hilarious as ever. But she also emotes great empathy. Those smiles and tears are genuine. Fittingly, she’s given all of us going through the same thing what we have been looking for: a step in the right direction.

There are enough subplots to fill every room in the estate, but none of these stories are fleshed out.