Brian Tallerico

Yes, great musicals have been built on “the power of love” before. But pulling that off requires something this movie never has: a heartbeat.

Writer/director Alex Scharfman’s script is clever, but this truly feels like the kind of project that collapses with the wrong people in it. Every member of this film’s ensemble understood the assignment, elevating this unique creature feature from just another disposable “Jurassic Park” riff into something memorable through their comic timing and group chemistry.

The truth is that pacing often trumps realism, and The Accountant 2 just doesn’t build enough momentum.

Lively is once again fantastic, imbuing this character with a degree of captivating uncertainty that throws off the balance of the film when she’s not on-screen, and the costumes are gorgeous, rising to the level of the stunning scenery. And, once again, the plotting and pacing have a habit of sagging when the film needs to build.

It’s a throwback to goofy action movies that don’t get made at this budget level that often anymore, a time when major studios would release an original flick about massive sandworms in the desert or J. Lo and Ice Cube fighting a giant snake. To that end, despite a clunky set-up, “The Gorge” delivers on its potential.

The always-engaging Renate Reinsve delivers yet again (as does talented co-star Ellen Dorrit Petersen). However, “Armand” is a frustrating, over-long movie that starts with an intriguing premise and then starts fighting it almost immediately.

There’s no cheating in The Monkey. It’s coming for you. And it’s gonna be messy.

Ostensibly a commentary on celebrity culture and the fawning journalists around it, “Opus” is one of those movies that throws talking points at the wall without having an actual point of view on any of them.

Parts of it aren’t perfect, but that’s also kind of its charm in that it feels like a family film made by flesh-and-blood people in an era when computers are doing so much of the work. Even when “The Legend of Ochi” stumbles, it does so in a way that’s almost sweet.

It has so little to inspire conversation that I joked at the end that it was a cautionary tale about the mental and physical toll of being an unemployed writer. There’s something primal in all of us. Just not in this movie.

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is more about planning a job than it is the job itself. It is downright obsessive in its detail about camera cycles, false identities, and elaborate planning.

Built on a foundation of comedy that comes from the silent era, “Vengeance Most Fowl” is just beautifully structured, a perfect rhythm of plotting and humor that works for all ages.

The Brutalist is a work that incorporates well-known world history into two of the definitive forms of expression of the 20th century in architecture and filmmaking, becoming a commentary on both capitalism and art.

It’s a bit too long and a lot too silly, but most people won’t care. And in a year with almost no even-modestly-good holiday offerings (sorry to the two “Red One” fans), this might be the best Christmas movie of the year.

Like its subject has done so many times in his six-decade career, this one exceeds expectations.

Based on the true story of a Danish serial killer named Dagmar Overbye, "The Girl with the Needle" becomes almost numbing in its brutality. Still, it's a well-made drama with a resonance that echoes a hundred years after the crimes it documents.

It looks gorgeous, which may be enough for some viewers, but it's a remarkably thin piece of storytelling, an adventure tale with very little actual adventure, and a musical with very few memorable songs.

By and large, "Dear Santa" feels as if someone took a Diary of a Wimpy Kid book and added some truly weird Satanic mythology.

Can a film be too much and not enough at the same time? This is the conundrum of Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II," a movie bursting with just enough spectacle to keep it from being boring but, when you try to get anything out of it thematically, slips through your fingers like the sand in a warrior's hands.

Some of the voice work elevates what could have been a total disaster, and the legendary Alan Menken drops a couple of entertaining compositions, but it's a largely forgettable venture that families will watch during Thanksgiving break before the Netflix algorithm buries it forever.

Arnold's films elevate the potential of youth, and for this one, it takes a little magic to fulfill it.

It's a deceptively complex piece of filmmaking, something that feels artfully executed and organic at the same time. It has so many layers, all of them covered in the emotions that erupt when we reconnect with our families.

It’s a powerful feeling to witness art that reminds us that all aspects of our existence are valuable, especially our pain.

There’s so little “fun” here, feeling as if everyone is merely fulfilling an obligation. I was excited for another time jump movie with a twist. After this one, I just wanted my time back.

La Cocina is a phenomenal showcase for Briones, who gives one of the most mesmerizingly multi-faceted performances of the year.

To be fair, “Smile 2” does lose some of its many thematic threads about how fans feel like they own pop stars and how so many of them are asked to bury their trauma and just smile, but enough remain in the foundation of the piece to get it across the finish line.

It’s about empowerment, empathy, and the impact we can have on one another, even those we never meet. You’ll cry. It’s worth the tears.

Leone continues to grow as a filmmaker—and there’s something interesting about watching that unfold throughout the franchise. But his screenwriting continues to let him down, jumbling his concepts with shallow mythology, atrocious dialogue, and ridiculous padding, leading to another film in this series that pushes over two hours. I’m still rooting for Leone to figure it out, but it’s not in this one.

This doesn’t just go sideways. It goes in several directions at once, often in ways that are nearly impossible to follow, but it really comes down to how much you enjoy the challenge.

It’s anchored by a typically strong Sarah Paulson performance, to be sure. But “Hold Your Breath” is nonetheless a frustrating work, a sequence of powerful scenes that aren’t tied together with enough tension to make us care. It’s a film filled with moments but no momentum.

It’s no exaggeration to say there are scene transitions in “Salem’s Lot” in which it honestly feels like maybe you accidentally fast-forwarded a few minutes and missed the connective tissue.

Vigilante justice has taken a new form in an era of internet mobs, but Ryoo hasn’t made a simple cautionary tale about online justice—he’s crafted a film that’s wildly entertaining but also has a great deal on its mind about how far we should be willing to go to balance the scales. Is there such a thing as good murder?

Is this a satire of the American Dream? A horror movie about how it became a nightmare? Or a comedy about a buffoon who basically stumbled into the men’s room on the right day? It seems unwilling to really answer these questions, content to substitute easy shots for difficult conversations about capitalism, politics, family, and marriage.

Most effectively, Barfoot and his team turn this cold, remote estate into a character—returning to it provides none of the standard warmth of a happy home. We can feel the chill in the air.

Horror fans always look for new ways to tell some of the most timeless stories, and I think they’ll flip for it.

Jason Blum is a powerful, underrated force in the industry, but I wish he would empower his chefs to cook more interesting horror movie meals.

It’s a gorgeous film, but it’s also an emotionally intelligent movie, one that shifts and flows between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that life can only be lived forwards.

While this is one of the better “V/H/S” anthologies of late, I can’t but wonder if they shouldn’t take two years to make the next one.

Apartment 7A seems afraid to stray too far from Mommy, justifying its existence through the sheer power of the great Julia Garner’s skill level, but leaving little else to recommend it.

Just as you wrap your arms around what “Never Let Go” is saying or thematically symbolizes, it slips through your fingers. A hodgepodge of mental illness, trauma, overprotection, the existence of evil, and what feels like COVID allegories, “Never Let Go” fails by virtue of its competing ideas. It leaves too little to hold on to.

It’s still undeniably clever, buoyed by a great cast who know what to do with this sharp satire of world politics, but it feels a bit like a lark, a movie that is content with a chuckle instead of really biting its teeth into some of its complex subject matter.

Megalopolis is a film drenched in its science fiction and classical influences, captured with insane filmmaking choices that often place shallow performances against a backdrop of deep cinematic flourish.

It’s designed to quicken your pulse and your mind at the same time, which is too rare in genre filmmaking. It’s also gorgeously made, and wonderfully performed.

One could watch The Wild Robot with the sound off entirely and still have a rewarding experience—turn it on and you have one of the best animated films of the decade.

We Live in Time is a film that looks you in the eyes as it tugs on your heartstrings, a movie that would almost certainly fall apart with lesser performers to make this kind of shallow script feel organic. Luckily, this one has Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

Anchored by three of the best performances in a very long time and a graceful script from Jacobs himself, this is one of the finest films of the year, a movie that moves me so much that I can get emotional just thinking about it. Because it’s not just a showcase for powerhouse acting at its finest. Because it feels true in ways that movies about death are rarely allowed to be.

Most of all, Rebel Ridge is just a reminder of how thrilling it can be to see a genre piece with this level of artistry.

Consistently boring in a manner that almost feels defiant, “Slingshot” plays as a shallow COVID lockdown allegory for most of its runtime, before insultingly spiraling off the rails. It feels like a movie that hates its characters. And hates you too.

While spending time in one of the most captivating cities in the world is enticing, the main reason to check this out is one of the best performances in the career of Liev Schreiber.

Working with a bigger production company on a film that feels more like anyone could have made it than their previous works drains “Hell Hole” lacks some of the DIY charm of the other flicks by Adams and Poser. Comparatively, it’s kind of a disappointment, despite having some undeniable positives that should make it an easy watch for horror heads.

The 2024 version of The Killer is obviously competently made–the Hong Kong director still knows how to stage an action sequence, well into his seventies—but the truth is that this version of the film does absolutely nothing better than the original. It’s a movie that’s generally watchable but almost instantly forgettable, which the best of Woo never is.

Mothers’ Instinct gets by on its pulpy potential more than anything else. There’s something intrinsically appealing about watching two phenomenal actresses go head-to-head in an old-fashioned melodrama.

It’s fun, tense, and slimy. It’s also nowhere near as ambitious as some of the films in this series deemed failures. We can’t have everything.

Merely being violent and unpredictable does not make a film like Jackpot funny. Therein lies the biggest problem here: the laughs don’t come nearly to the degree required to make the complete lack of morality or interesting characters palatable.

It doesn’t help that the plotting and tone of “Duchess” are so exaggeratedly stupid that the whole thing plays almost like a parody of Ritchie instead of an homage, one that goes on for what feels like forever – it’s overlong at nearly two hours, and I swear to you it feels twice as long.

Nothing that works about the games has been adapted intact in this ugly, boring, truly inept piece of filmmaking, a movie that was mostly shot years ago and should have been shelved even longer. Like, maybe forever.

Trap too often lacks the craftsmanship it needs to crackle with energy and tension. Despite these missteps, Josh Hartnett almost makes “Trap” worth seeing, imbuing his character with a playfulness that can be captivating. It’s just a shame his great work sometimes feels trapped in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with it.

Anyone who has dealt with the deterioration of a parent will find something resonant in Chika-ura’s film, one that can sometimes feel self-indulgent in its pacing and length but never loses its nuance, thanks both to its refined direction and a truly stellar performance from the legendary Tatsuya Fuji.

It’s a film that feels like an overture to an international crisis, a warning as much as a documentary.

Even at 74 minutes, “Family Portrait” sometimes feels like it would have made a stronger 20-minute short film. It’s stuck in that space where a filmmaker has too many ideas for a short but not quite enough meat on the bones for a feature. And yet, a mastery of tone here makes that criticism fade in memory—kind of like how we pick and choose what we remember from family gatherings.

There are bad movies, there are really bad movies, and then there’s “Lumina,” a film so breathtaking in its overall incompetence that one starts to wonder if it’s not intentionally so in the hope of being the next “The Room” or “Birdemic.”

Absolutely no one is phoning in “Longlegs,” and that commitment to craft and mood has an impact. It may be disappointing that it doesn’t land with the same force promised by the viral marketing, but nightmares are unpredictable like that.

While the world becomes a more divisive, tumultuous, anxiety-producing place by the day in Summer 2024, there’s something almost comforting about a movie that, like the no-nonsense cop of its title, gets the job done.

There are enough interesting ideas and at least two confident performances holding A Quiet Place: Day One together, even if it sometimes feels like a first draft of a richer, more complex final film.

While the text of “Kinds of Kindness” is rich enough to unpack in thinkpieces and coffee house conversations, there is a sense that there hasn’t been as much careful consideration of how it all ties together as in some of his best films.

Duchovny the director never bothers to ground his melodrama in something that feels real, missing the target on the period in which it’s set and an honest understanding of the people who live and die on the success and failure of their favorite teams.

I’ll gladly take a documentary about a pop culture moment with too much to talk about when so many of them feel like they have nothing to say beyond what we already know and love.

The script by Hiroyoshi Koiwai doesn’t exactly hold together narratively or thematically, but there are Miike touches throughout “Lumberjack” that keep it entertaining, even if he's probably made a better movie while you’re reading this.

Under Paris has some ecological messaging and commentary on the political games that cost lives, but it’s mostly about sharks and swimmers. And that works in any language.

It admittedly comes to life in spurts primarily through its hyperkinetic photography and editing. Still, it lacks enough spontaneity or ingenuity, completely content to go through the motions by taking as few risks as possible. It turns out that there was a third option: Ride, Die, or Tread Water.

Pablo Berger’s “Robot Dreams” is a lovely fable about partnership and imagination, a movie that uses the form of animated cinema to tell a story in a way that couldn’t be possible in any other medium.

A documentary should produce more than what would result from just listening to a band's collected discography. But you’d get nearly as much from a marathon of Beach Boys recordings as you would from watching this two-hour film.

It’s a deceptively well-made flick that appears to be Linklater in little more than his “let’s have fun” mode. But it can’t keep one of the smartest filmmakers of his generation from elevating everything that this movie is trying to do with remarkable depth.

Once we're able to see Harlin's new trilogy as a whole, “Chapter 1” might feel more essential to the 4.5-hour experience. Right now, it just feels overly familiar.

There is absolutely zero tension in “You Can’t Run Forever.” It all feels like a lark, a project that would completely dissolve if not for the Oscar winner at its center.

The scariest thing about “Humane” is how genuinely believable its nightmare vision ends up being. However, the film’s micro approach to a macro crisis never connects because we’re never given a reason to care about these specific people.

The reason the film works as well as it does is because of how completely Henaine and his team immerse us in Santiago’s journey.

Like the title that goes on a bit longer than it needs to, the filmmakers here have a habit of underlining and emphasizing elements of their story that would have been more powerful without a more subtle approach. But this is still a remarkably moving piece of work, a documentary that understands that a diner can’t save your life, but that doesn’t make it any less essential to it.

Kim’s Video reaches so hard for quirky profundity that it falls on its face. It’s a real shame because there’s an interesting story buried in this frustrating film.

While it meanders more often than it should with some pretty slack pacing, strong character work by Neeson and an excellent supporting cast hold it together.

Even if you don’t want to discuss the proliferation of bullshit that can be at least partly attributed to people like Jones, the specifics of this case are horrifying and enraging. Most importantly, they’re brought to life in Dan Reed’s The Truth vs. Alex Jones in a way that’s sharply edited, sensitively constructed, and expertly crafted.

This is one of the better indie comedies in a long time, enjoyable from minute one until the final frame, and deceptively insightful about the structure of the modern world, one that encourages us to do more with our free time but doesn’t offer much guidance to what exactly we should be doing.

Everyone in almost every scene either looks lost or annoyed, never genuine. Except for Crowe, who grumbles his way through another film with deceptive ease, finding occasions to ground even a miserable film like this one.

Bad River gains a cumulative power in the way it consistently counters these tragedies with moving interviews with the proud, vibrant people who have refused to leave, illustrating the courage of resistance that takes place across generations. If it's sometimes like a movie that’s trying to tell a few too many stories at once, it’s hard to blame it. There are so many stories that need to be heard.

Immaculate feels like both a throwback to another era of Italian horror and a timely commentary on woman’s bodily autonomy, but it can’t match the flair of the former and lacks the thematic thrust to convey anything resonant about the latter.

This is a ridiculously fun movie, anchored by a movie star in a part that fits him perfectly and a director who really has been working toward this film for his entire career.

Monkey Man may be an origin story for a future action franchise character, but it feels more to me like an origin story for a future action star and director.

It truly feels like “The Walking Dead” and now maybe “The Last of Us” have spawned a wave of films about how humans respond when civilization collapses—“Arcadian” is one of the better entries in this growing genre about how screwed we all are.

I would like to hope that even Stormy’s critics and enemies could be moved by the film about her because, at its core, it’s a successful attempt to strip away the political issues and present its subject as a flesh-and-blood human being, someone with feelings, anxieties, and a great deal of courage.

More damaging than underwritten character dynamics is the overall tone of “Road House,” which needed to be far more tactile to be effective.

The strength of Hama-Brown’s film is how deftly it captures that feeling that emotion can’t always be expressed through language.

Ponderous and dull, “History of Evil” is the kind of script that plays with hot-button ideas instead of having a single thing to say about them.

Dune: Part Two is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.

Some of our heroine’s choices as the film raises the stakes feel a bit unbelievable, but that can be forgiven given the single-setting, single-performer restrictions of the piece. In the end, the goal was clearly to trap us in the increasingly fractured mind of a single person who increasingly believes what is beyond believable. Mission accomplished.

There’s a slack nature to the film that almost feels like it has to be an intentional experiment from a filmmaker who has been so precise and intricate with his work in the past. It’s as if Kim is testing himself to see if he could make a self-indulgent, unsubstantial lark of a comedy. He can. Sorta. Now let’s get back to the good stuff.

With sharp character design, entertaining dialogue, and positive messaging, “Orion and the Dark” is an early-year Netflix original surprise.

A few of the daringly ambitious punches don’t completely land, especially in a frenetic final act, but it’s a minor complaint for a film that confirms that Glass is a major talent with an uncompromising vision.

The good news is that it largely breaks the trend of mediocre rock docs through specificity, being at its best when it’s granular in the process of the recording, including some lyrical near-misses, some personality conflicts in the room, and even one participant who liked a bit too much wine.