Brian Tallerico

It is a relentlessly brutal movie, one that too quickly becomes monotonous in its cruelty, numbing instead of thrilling viewers.

If all of the dots don’t connect, that feels almost intentional, a way to create a personal connection with the viewer that may be different than anyone else’s. Some will struggle with the lack of cohesion; for others, it will be the best thing about “Mother Mary.” Both are right. And so is Mother Mary when she says these metaphors are exhausting. More movies should be exhausting.

Admittedly, “Noah Kahan: Out of Body” will play better to fans of the subject’s music, but it works as well as it does because it refuses to just be fan service, choosing instead to really capture the complexity of how fame doesn’t alleviate things like anxiety, sometimes even feeding that internal beast.

What “Scream 7” should have or at least could have been, “Faces of Death” effectively digs deeper into the themes that the Ghostface franchise has only been flirting with recently, particularly the impact of becoming not just numb to online violence but weaponized by it.

It’s a film that struggles to maintain its nightmare grip on the viewer as the repetition becomes more numbing than entrancing.

Its worst sin isn’t its stupid characters doing stupid things; it’s that the whole thing feels remarkably lazy, failing to find any tension or even B-movie thrills. You can insult my intelligence within the world of a film, but not in the actual filmmaking, if that makes sense. This movie sure doesn’t.

Chime is yet another reminder that Kurosawa is one of the world’s masters when it comes to unpacking the remarkably fragile line between good and evil.

There are times when what should be escapism approaches “Hostel” levels of viciousness, just one of the many issues with a film that seems incapable of settling on a tone.

Hokum rises above so many films like it because it takes its character’s plight seriously, never winking at the audience, even as the impossible happens.

It’s a sporadically fun movie with obvious influences, but it also lacks in stakes and personality, getting repetitive long before it ends.

Everyone here understands how to thread that needle of being broadly goofy while also keeping the film from turning into a parody. It’s a comedy that’s consistently displays its eccentric personality but rarely feels like it’s desperately pushing a punchline for a laugh.

The Lonely Island brand of humor might at first seem like an awkward fit for horror, but there’s an art to the timing of a well-done splatter flick that shares filmmaking DNA with comedy.

It helps a great deal to have a wickedly fun ensemble ready to play this murderous game, led once again by a physical, engaged, immediate performance from Samara Weaving.

Riley understands that satire can embed messaging in the whimsy. You’ll walk out of this one feeling boosted.

Genuinely inept in every way, “Scream 7” is far and away the worst of the franchise, a shallow rendering of things that worked better in other films.

Sadly, “Dreams” never figures out what it wants to say, and what it does convey is done with so little affect or pulse that it almost feels like an intentional choice to tell a “hot” story in as “cool” a way as possible.

It’s wrapped in an original, funny piece of entertainment, but this is also undeniably a warning.

It’s a narratively simple film that has been interpreted differently by dozens of critics since its Cannes premiere last May, but it’s one that is impossible for this critic to shake, a reminder of what movies can do when they loosen the restraints of traditional narrative and remember that images are meant to evoke as much as they are to explain.

The third chapter is better than the middle one by virtue of having at least a few new ideas and one less CGI wild boar, but it’s still a shapeless mess, a movie that might have worked as the final act of one film.

Some will argue that all of the themes of “undertone” don’t connect, but that’s a feature, not a bug. This is a film that doesn’t feel the need to explain itself. Nightmares rarely do.

While it looks beautiful, and Thomas Newman’s score does a lot of heavy lifting given the lack of dialogue, there needed to be more actual storytelling beyond a few key beats of new life and tragic death.

These moments have a tactile intimacy that’s incredibly powerful, placing these ordinary people in an almost timeless continuum of seemingly ordinary behavior that becomes extraordinary in memory, or through the eyes of a camera.

Joe Carnahan, the director of gritty cop flicks like “Narc” and “Copshop,” is back in his wheelhouse with the effectively entertaining The Rip, the rare Netflix original action film that actually plays like something you’d want to see in theaters.

There’s something so rewarding about going to a movie and giving yourself over to a master like Park Chan-wook, someone whom you trust through all the twists and turns of a film as tonally complex as No Other Choice. It’s so easy to see all of the places where this unique gem could have gone wrong, and so satisfying to see it only make good choices from beginning to end.

Great sequels don’t just repeat, they build. This one treads beautifully-rendered water.

So much of “Influencers” works as well as it does because of Harder’s cleverly unpredictable and often remarkably funny script.

It’s not just another ghost story; it’s a story of malevolence that happens to be told through home recordings, YouTube clips, and CCTV footage. Hall and Gandersman play a little fast and loose with their genre—as so many of these movies do—but it’s forgivable given the pace they maintain in their blissfully short film (under 90 minutes with credits).

Safdie’s daring choices merge with the best performance of Timothee Chalamet’s career for a story of a man who thinks he’s the best in the world at something, and that thinking is as important as actually being it.

These movies are not WHOdunits as much as WHYdunits, and it’s everything that’s under the murder and its resolution that makes this sermon so entertaining and so powerful.

It’s such a non-movie that it actually becomes difficult to review because there’s so little to hold onto that it dissipates from memory while you’re watching it. There are no laughs. The plot is inane. The action choreography is insulting. It is such a lifeless piece of product creation (not filmmaking) that even writing about it feels like a waste of time, much less watching it.

It feels both remarkably simple and complex at the same time, a vision on which we can place our own interpretations of what it all means instead of being force-fed superficial messages.

Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding” is a gentle, empathetic ode to resilience—a story of a man at a crossroads he never planned to reach.

For a story of a guy who’s willing to get messy for the first time in years, it’s an overly clean piece of screenwriting, one that too often lets its A-list star play ideas instead of a character. But there’s enough to like here to forgive a film whose ambition exceeds its reach, both in some of those ideas and a flawless supporting cast, especially another fantastic turn from Adam Sandler.

Luke Greenfield’s atrocious Playdate is a remarkably stupid movie that thinks you’re remarkably stupid too.

There is a sense at times that Johnston has over-compensated for Dahl’s cynicism with his wondrous children and their magical friends, and a bit too much of “The Twits” feels like it desperately wants us to love Beesha and Bubsy, even if they’re kind of shallowly conceived and designed.

It’s a messy movie that produces frustration instead of fear, and its nods to commentary on gender roles and the need to become and stay beautiful feel shallow and insincere.

Inspired by tales of people on the fringe by Mike Leigh, Sean Baker, and the Safdie Brothers, “Urchin” stays committed to presenting Mike’s story without frills, recognizing that it’s just a tragically common one of a man spiraling down the drain of society.

This movie knows what to do and how to do it. It’s as no-nonsense as the soldiers and the underwater killing machine it pits against each other. Shark movie fans, take note. There’s a new must-see in the movie ocean.

It’s as if Bertino the director knows that Bertino the writer hasn’t done quite enough to engender audience interest in Polly’s plight so he seeks to pummel the audience into terror instead of drawing them in.

It’s an absolute blast of an action movie, another showcase for Jalmari Helander’s increasing skill with action choreography and inventive set pieces.

Take an ordinary family in the Hollywood Hills and throw both a wildfire and a menacing pack of killing machines at them and you have “Coyotes,” a movie that frustrates more than it thrills, never quite finding the right tone for the most harrowing night in the lives of its characters.

Shelby Oaks is a film that plays like a checklist of clichés, a movie that so aggressively employs techniques we’ve seen work better elsewhere that it becomes almost numbing. Horror fans don’t mind familiarity, but not if it feels like the echo is all there is to listen to.

V/H/S/HALLOWEEN is one of the best entries in this now-annual anthology series because it feels the most tonally consistent (and has maybe the best batting average). Not only are most of the stories tied together with themes of Halloween, like urban legends, bowls of candy, and haunted houses, but they mostly have the same tone: a tongue-in-bloody-cheek sense of humor and willingness to go beyond perceived decorum.

It turns out the creators of this cash grab are aggressively unwilling to go much of anywhere at all.

It’s a tick too long and has a section that’s far too expository for a film that’s at its best when it leans into surreal nightmare logic, but this weird movie works its fear factor in unexpected, creative ways.

This film is still catnip for horror fans and may even give those who don’t love “TCM” yet further appreciation of one of the most influential films ever made, of any genre.

It’s also, crucially, a deeply humanist movie. Anderson cares about these characters deeply. Bob’s frustration becomes our own, as does his concern for Willa. So many “films of our moment” have felt angry or cynical, but Anderson’s movie transcends that by being human and even offering optimism. It’s not one loss after another. It’s one battle. Keep fighting.

A birth-to-death character study, “Train Dreams” is a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we are connected to both the earth and those who walked it before us.

It’s one of those movies that reminds us that great drama and comedy can come from the most unexpected, ordinary places. We all have a place like Green Lake.

Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” is one of the most over-directed films I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been playing this specific game for a long time.

Taking a performer who has lived at the heights of ring-based fame for more than half his life and connecting him to a guy who most wouldn’t recognize at the grocery store is an ambitious, admirable effort, even if I’m not sure one could truly call it entertaining.

Yeon Sang-ho’s The Ugly is a dour, depressing drama, a movie that gets so lost in its lethargic structure that it feels like a chore.

It’s a reminder of how good the director of “United 93” and “Captain Philips” can be at transporting us to unimaginable circumstances, and it plays like a truly phenomenal disaster movie that happens to be true, one of those flicks you almost always watch the last hour of if you catch it on cable.

It’s a movie that sneaks up on you like great fiction, blending theme and character in a way that allows it to live in your mind after you see it, rolling around what it means to both the people in it and your own life.

Ansari struggles as a writer when he tries to make the movie into a commentary on the widening economic rift of the 2020s, and he truly rushes the ending in a way that feels a bit unearned, but there’s so much to like about the four stars of this movie that it’s a really tough flick to hate.

The script fails to find depth in some of its most crucial characters, and sometimes feels performatively intense, but the Oscar winner for “Oppenheimer” shines throughout, adding subtlety and grace in places other actors would have ignored.

Watching these two performers grapple with a text as rich as Mosley’s only leads one back to wishing the film around them trusted them enough to take more risks and to really go somewhere other than the first floor.

Working from a script by Robert Kaplow, Linklater has crafted one of his finest dramedies, a consistently fascinating exploration of the frailty of the artist, buoyed by one of Ethan Hawke’s most remarkable performances.

The problem is that Uta Briesewitz’s “American Sweatshop” doesn’t quite have the courage to really follow through on its ambitious and timely concept.

The problem with “Vice is Broke” is it never quite gets around to answering what went wrong with Vice, content to mimic its “quirky” form of filmmaking as interview subjects recall the toxic workplace atmosphere that undeniably produced some formative journalism.

For all five hours, Loktev’s camera is positioned close to her subjects, much like a friend in the same room, lending the project an intimacy and empathy that it would have otherwise lacked. And the length allows us to really get to know these people, feeling their frustration and their tension. It becomes our own. We don’t just see it. We feel it in our bones.

Billed as “an unromantic comedy,” Covino’s is a film that recalls comedies of the ‘70s in its willingness to allow its quartet of lead characters to be horny, problematic, and generally idiotic.

Ultimately, “Eenie Meanie” is a collection of clichés in search of an actual movie. Too often, Shawn Simmons mistakes profanity for toughness and violent outbursts for plot, trapping us with what is mostly a bunch of loathsome idiots for 94 minutes without the craft of a Tarantino or the visual acumen of a Wright to make it worth the captivity.

Ultimately, it feels like Cognetti has lost sight of what people loved about the first movie.

The biggest problem with “Nobody 2” is that the surprise factor is gone, and nothing has taken its place. The wow of seeing a generally comedic actor like Bob Odenkirk go John Wick in the fun 2021 sleeper hit isn’t there anymore.

Desperation destroys comic timing, and this thing is drenched in the flop sweat of a stand-up comedian who knows he’s losing his audience.

Give me a silly movie that knows it’s dumb on a hot summer day every year. This isn’t that. It’s so much dumber than it thinks it is.

It’s a deeply personal film, a life story told by the people who knew and loved Jeff. It hums with the emotion and vibrancy of Buckley’s music.

The Occupant is a strangely frustrating movie. It stays engaging through the sheer force of a committed performance that anchors every single scene of the film, but it’s also so hard to get your arms around narratively (or even thematically) that it pushes you away.

In the end, [Cregger] wants to take you on a ride, and so he’s got to provide both hills and valleys, producing a horror film that’s equally hilarious and chilling.

Overall, there’s a timeless quality to the best jokes in “The Naked Gun” that makes them feel of a piece with the lines in the original without being direct copies. They don’t all work, but there are so many of them packed into this film’s blissfully short runtime (under 85 minutes) that every one that lands with a thud is followed by one that connects.

The problem is that the sociopolitical underpinnings of “Ick” feel relatively shallow and borderline sadistic, leaving viewers with a hollow “Blob” riff with too little to hold onto regarding character, setting, or even horror.

Despite some solid low-budget make-up work and decent central performances, “Monster Island” doesn’t have enough meat on its bones, somehow feeling narratively inert even at just 83 minutes.

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

There’s just so much missing, including logic.

Daniela Forever, Nacho Vigalondo’s first film since his excellent “Colossal,” eight years ago, is a baffling disappointment, a sci-fi mindbender with echoes of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Inception,” but no idea what to do with its many ideas or what it’s ultimately trying to say.

We’re left with a mid-level take on Superman that, at times, will remind you of the 1978 version, but doesn’t quite match it for pure pop entertainment value.

It works not because of its focus on what the wildly famous British band Blur was in the ‘90s (that’s been done in other docs), but on what they are now in the 2020s. It’s about aging as much as it’s about “Song 2,” and about trying to find something that hasn’t faded away inside of an artist.

It’s not an especially deep script in terms of character, but there’s something inspiring about seeing a comedy production in which everyone is on the same page, harmoniously working off each other’s personalities like a choir.

It’s a film that’s constantly painting in the lines. If you’re going to remake a film, especially one as recently beloved as this one, it requires something new in the tracing.

Ballerina is a halfway decent action movie that will suffer because it lives in the massive shadow of John Wick, one of the best modern franchises.

It’s an efficient, clever genre mash-up that works because of how well Byrne blocks its action, employs an old-fashioned score, and directs his actors to visceral performances.

It’s not just about the divisiveness of 2020; it’s designed to be divisive itself in 2025. To that end, even if you hate it, it’s kind of done its job.

Buoyed by a traditionally spectacular ensemble, The Phoenician Scheme feels unlikely to be anyone’s favorite Wes Anderson flick, but it’s so easy to like that it’s equally difficult to hate it.

By taking itself so seriously, “Final Reckoning” loses the cheeky ingredient in the recipe. It’s less fun, and that’s truly disappointing for a series that has given us some of the most exhilarating setpieces in action history.

Thunderbolts is an odd duck of a superhero flick, one that almost leans into the skid of the MCU, and, by doing so, might actually straighten it out. It can’t quite shake loose of the consistent problems in the MCU’s recent output (turn a light on!). Still, it challenges blockbuster fans in unexpected ways, presenting them with richer acting than we’ve seen in these films in some time and, perhaps most shockingly, a final act that’s emotionally grounded instead of just “CGI things go boom.”

Told in a style that could be called old-fashioned due to its lack of cynicism in an era when heartfelt melodrama is often mocked more than celebrated, it’s fair to call this engaging drama a throwback, a movie that wants to sweep you away on the back of its passion and heartbreak.

It feels like all the good ideas during the pre-production of “Until Dawn” were sanded down until the film lost almost all of its edge, wit, and actual horror. All that’s left is a depressingly repetitive exercise in hyperactive editing, overheated sound design, and forgettable characters.

Coming in under 90 minutes and with little narrative fat, “Zero” is a worthy successor to “Saloum,” a reminder of a rising talent on the international action scene who blends his knowledge of his homeland with a deep appreciation of the history of action filmmaking.

The Amateur skims the surface of what has worked in spy thrillers of the past, never finding its own rhythm, identity, or personality.

Cognetti’s skill with found footage does him no favors here, as this flick is laden with awful dialogue, worse performances, dumb plotting, and a truly inane ending. Set your horror GPS to a different location.

It could be funnier. It could be a lot smarter. It could look better. But it also could have been significantly worse, working as much as it does because it knows that you don’t need to be great if you’re this Goofy.

A video game movie that encourages creation instead of just uplifting capitalism? That’s a small victory in 2025.

Locked starts promisingly, and then almost refuses to really go anywhere, trapped by its own concept and unwillingness to do anything thematically richer than “wealthy people be crazy.”

It’s an undeniably haunting piece of work, a story that’s out of place and time in a world that’s like our own but not quite. Rod Serling would have dug it.

A sort of “It” meets “Scream” energy courses through Eli Craig’s film, one that’s clever and thrilling enough in bloody spurts, even if it never quite reaches its true potential.

It can be so refreshing to see an efficient thrill ride of a movie, a flick that knows what it wants to do and doesn’t waste time doing it. Christopher Landon’s Drop is one of those films, a thriller that unfolds in two locations with few characters, all in pursuit of providing as much entertainment as possible to ticket buyers.