Brian Tallerico

At times, Sicario is a deeply satisfying, intense examination of a war with no rules of engagement, driven by a spectacular performance by Benicio Del Toro and typically mesmerizing cinematography from Roger Deakins. At other times, especially in its middle act, Sicario can be frustratingly self-indulgent.

It’s smartly crafted, well-written, and strongly performed. I’m not sure it works as social media commentary, but it undeniably clicks as an entertaining thriller about someone who thinks the Insta-world is shallow enough to hide her sociopathic behavior.

There’s more than enough to like here, including a great ensemble, the best performance from a living legend in years, and, again, a message that feels depressingly timely.

Ultimately, For Madmen Only is essential for comedy fans and historians. It’s something that anyone interested in theater as a career or even anyone who does improv comedy on the weekends should check out on VOD.

So clever and well-done that it makes the sins of the finale easy to forgive.

It’s a stunning showcase for the great character actor Frankie Faison, who conveys Chamberlain’s confusion and terror with palpable empathy and honesty.

It’s a powerful piece of work that details how communities on the edge of lawlessness and poverty were overwhelmed by drugs in the ‘80s and ‘90s, leading to cycles of addiction and violence that can become impossible to escape. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a moving one.

Get Out feels fresh and sharp in a way that studio horror movies almost never do. It is both unsettling and hysterical, often in the same moment, and it is totally unafraid to call people on their racist bullshit.

The unique approach mostly works, although it does leave a few questions unanswered regarding a case that’s kind of still unfolding. Most of all, Smith succeeds by capturing how this isn’t a case about an individual or the many parents who worked with him to cheat the system, but how the system itself is deeply broken.

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.

St. Vincent is a piece of very well-made cheese, a movie in which one can feel its manipulations and heart-string pulling, but the talented ensemble makes those critical talking points easy to dismiss.

Whereas crime docs typically seek to offer everything that is known about a crime, Casting JonBenet proves how little we will ever understand about that night.

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.

It is a cinematic crime that the abrasive garbage that is “The Angry Birds Movie” and “Ice Age: Collision Course” get national releases while most people don’t even know The Little Prince is coming to win their hearts this weekend.

Anchored by powerful performances by two deeply underrated actors, Lorelei is a heartfelt drama that succumbs to some thin dialogue and set-ups but feels like it truly loves its outsider characters, and that empathy allows us to root for them too.

It’s an infectiously goofy film, but also deceptively smart about why we love comic book heroes and the amount of stupidity we’re willing to accept within the genre.

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.

The reason that The Monster works is because of how much Kazan’s performance captures the truth of the moment in which Kathy struggles.

It’s been a long time since there’s been a rom-com with two stars as straight-up likable and easy to root for as Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron are here.

There’s too much story to tell in a feature runtime, so parts of The League feel like they’re just skimming the surface. But what a fantastic surface it is.

Stamped from the Beginning drives home Williams’ point that racism is so deeply embedded in our culture and society and that it takes this kind of fury to talk about it adequately.

It’s ultimately a film that works on its own terms, a long-delayed enriching of the story of a beloved character that will make her ultimate sacrifice in “Avengers: Endgame” feel even more powerful in hindsight. Every blockbuster this Summer is being touted as the sign that the world is back to normal—“Black Widow” is more a reminder of what fans loved before it shifted off its axis.

It spends too much time in some of its beats—there’s a stronger, tighter version that’s more disquieting by not wearing out its welcome at 100 minutes—and a couple of loud jump scares are misplaced in a film that generally avoids that crutch, but this is a major debut from a filmmaker who is willing to tell horror stories in a way that's both different for the genre and yet also like something we’ve all experienced before.

The most purely entertaining zombie film in some time.

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.

This is a film that captures how art isn’t just how we heal; it’s how we live. And how we can each write our own symphony, especially if we have someone who inspires us to do so.

Cohn never turns Night School into a sob story or a manipulative tale of redemption.

It's easy to make a documentary about hateful people. It's harder to focus on the impact of hateful people on those around them.

It’s not surprising that Truth takes the perspective that it does — you don’t cast Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford as Mapes and Rather and not expect the film to side with them.

Korine’s visual gifts are on full display, capturing both the opulence of Florida and its scuzzy side in a way that finds beauty in both.

It will likely fall through the cracks a bit between “After the Storm” and “Shoplifters,” but it’s worth the time for fans of Kore-eda, a group that seems to be growing every day.

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

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.

This film takes no prisoners, offers no explanations, and forces you to go on its twisted journey that blends found footage structure with something that H.P. Lovecraft might have dreamed up. It’s a ride.

Yes, of course, “No Way Home” is incredibly calculated, a way to make more headlines after killing off so many of its event characters in Phase 3, but it’s also a film that’s often bursting with creative joy.

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.

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.

Only the man who wrote Tromeo and Juliet could deliver something this gleefully grotesque, vicious, and unapologetic, and the DC Universe is all the better for it.

There are times when Beirut really works like the films that clearly inspired it.

The Conjuring 2 doesn’t live up to the films that inspired it (or the original) not because of the filmmaking laziness we so often see in horror (especially sequels), but almost because Wan and company are having too much fun to streamline their film.

A truly effective genre flick. It’s not perfect, but it’s damn closer than anyone would have predicted.

The craft elements of The Stranger are enabled by the character work of Edgerton and Harris, who very purposefully share a mumbling beard aesthetic.

There are times when Anderson’s Buddhist leanings can be a bit overwhelming, and the piece ends a bit too abruptly for my tastes, although that almost seems thematically appropriate.

If it falls victim to a bit too many college film student clichés, it’s easy to forgive Meyerhoff due to the great performance she draws from her talented young star and what this film means for her bright future.

While Kim’s filmmaking is typically engaging, it’s really Song Kang-ho who carries the viewer’s interest.

As a character, Yasuko feels a bit underdeveloped, resulting in a late-film character turn that I didn’t quite buy, but every narrative issue in Creepy is overwhelmed by the quality of the filmmaking.

Even if In This Corner of the World ends on a note that imagination and hope can continue, it would serve our world leaders, two in particular right now, to watch this before allowing the horror of war to repeat itself.

The best thing about Victoria isn’t actually its technical prowess—it’s the lead performance from the mesmerizing Laia Costa as the title character.

The best thing about Flanagan’s film by some stretch is the work by Rebecca Ferguson. The director of “Gerald’s Game” and “Hush” proves again to be a very capable filmmaker when it comes to directing actresses, getting Ferguson’s career-best work to date.

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.

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.

Even as the vast landscape around them seems to recall the insignificance of one person against the beauty of Mother Nature, Land suggests that isolation isn’t the answer and connection is what matters. It’s a smart, moving piece of work, hampered a bit by a rushed final act that feels somewhat manipulative but confidently acted throughout.

It’s a great compliment to say that Infinity Pool works completely divorced from the legacy of the man who made it. Brandon has become his own captivating filmmaker. He’s no clone.

This is the kind of clever jolt to the system we want from horror thrillers — an unexpected commentary on today’s society burrowing its way through an intense story.

It’s an impressionistic film, concerned more with the atmosphere around genius than explaining it away.

It is filled with the luscious, beautiful 2D animation that we’ve come to expect from Ghibli, and if the storytelling sometimes gets a bit lethargic for its own good, we’re more forgiving just to have one final dance in the moonlight.

There’s a claustrophobic cause-and-effect in The Rental that keeps it humming, and feels fresh. The minute that two characters make a crucial decision, you know it’s all downhill from there.

I’m Your Man may not break the mold, but it operates within it with confidence and grace.

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.

That it doesn’t quite come together in the second half after a riveting first hour is disappointing, but there’s still too much to like here to discard it as much as A24 seems to be doing.

Shane Black’s The Predator is a fun, brutal, fighting machine that wastes no time getting down to business — not unlike its title character.

As “Las Hurdes” blurred documentary and fiction, this film blurs what we traditionally expect from animation. As for why to tell this story, it’s all really there in an opening discussion about the impact of art and what is gained from dissecting it vs. just experiencing it.

It’s really like nothing that Hollywood has produced before, existing not just to acknowledge or exploit the fans of this series, but to reward their love, patience, and undying adoration.

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.

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

Like the subgenre that inspired it, Ghost Stories is just twisted enough to be humorous, but doesn’t shy at all on the creepy factor.

The sounds that go bump in the night, the wet footprints on a dock when no one else should be there, the writing in the fog on a shower mirror—these beats are brilliantly handled by Bruckner and Hall, who understand that uncertainty is the scariest state of being. Especially at night.

There are key elements of Suzume that directly speak to the history of Japan and the fears of its people, but Shinkai’s gift is his ability to make the issues of trauma and anxiety feel like everyone’s. “Suzume” isn’t quite the masterpiece that is “Your Name” but I wouldn’t blame anyone for falling in love with it.

Ultimately, Museum Town is a loving tribute that misses some opportunities but also fully represents the unpredictability of life.

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.