Brian Tallerico

An enjoyable cast, including movie-stealing work from Jodie Comer, holds it all together, but one can still see just enough glitches in this matrix to wish it was better.

Walker’s film might have worked better as a docuseries—one feels its two-hour length—and she has a habit of over-writing some of the narration, but it’s still a detailed piece of work, a surprising angle on a terrifying new reality about living in certain parts of the world, and an inquiry as to whether or not we’re going to do anything about it.

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.

Sonia Kennebeck’s Enemies of the State spirals and swirls in a way that’s meant to enhance the “isn’t this crazy” aspect of its true story, but its filmmaking tricks have become cliched in the era of True Crime obsession.

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.

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.

It is scary, sexy, and strange in ways that American films are rarely allowed to be, culminating in a sequence that cast the whole film in a new light for this viewer. We're all just sitting in that banquet hall, listening to the story requested by King Arthur, told by a master storyteller.

From the “how do you mess that up” school of filmmaking, Blood Red Sky takes a phenomenal concept that mixes genre hits like From Dusk Till Dawn, Snakes on a Plane, and Train to Busan and just blows it on poorly choreographed action, momentum-draining flashbacks, and an interminable runtime.

With a strong cast and an intriguing premise that basically transports a Western plot into outer space, Settlers should work, but it simply sags in the middle, only barely sparking to life again in a more suspenseful final act.

Sadly, the film crashes when it decides to offer some sane explanations and connect dots that didn’t really need to be connected. There’s a much stronger version of “Old” that ends more ambiguously, allowing viewers to leave the theatre playing around with themes instead of unpacking exactly what was going on.

It’s a fascinating, moving documentary that transcends mere profile piece to reclaim a legacy, and it’s as inspirational as its subject.

No Sudden Move is like watching a musician return to the themes and ideas explored throughout a career but with the renewed insight that comes after decades of success.

Producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller bring that non-stop energy of their other projects like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines even if the writing sometimes feels bizarrely dated.

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.

The characters are bland, the dialogue is atrocious, the action is mediocre, and even the heist is a boring bust.

Petzold keeps his mystery afloat (sorry) thanks to his impeccable craft even if this is a tale that sometimes feels like it needed a more magical and less direct approach.

It’s a film filled with half-hearted ideas and thin characters, all in the service of a story that wallows in its trauma in a manner that gives it little purpose.

The Amusement Park is a concise film (only 52 minutes), but Romero packs it so full of detail and ambition that it contains more to appreciate than most films that run three times as long.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is more frustrating than the average mediocre horror sequel because you can easily decipher the wasted opportunity up there on the screen.

With robust direction in an incredibly confined space and Laurent’s phenomenal work, Oxygen should feel like a breath of fresh air for people looking for something to watch on Netflix. (Sorry.)

So what does work about Army of the Dead? It’s fun and unpretentious, driven more by its action set pieces than anything else. It’s clearly as inspired by modern “fast zombie” films like “World War Z” or “28 Days Later” as it is the works of the master, and there are moments when its grand insanity just clicks thanks to the set-piece ambition of its filmmaker and the willingness of its cast to go anywhere he leads them.

There’s more than enough meat on the bones of this true story for a film like Above Suspicion, but director Phillip Noyce can’t figure out how to tell it in a way that's more interesting than a Wikipedia entry.

It’s a traditional thriller with a twist, subverting genre roles and presenting a very specific kind of sociopath, one whose brain was broken by trauma. It’s not perfect but it offers a quick-paced escapism that makes me wonder what Gandhi might do with more time and money.

William Brent Bell’s Separation is an atrocious piece of work, a movie that fails as both a domestic drama and as a horror flick, and really feels like the kind of thing that everyone involved is going to have to discuss in therapy someday to get to the bottom of why it was even made in the first place.

It’s a shame that the producers of Mortal Kombat movies are convinced that there needs to be long training/prep sections in the middle of their stories. No one wants to play a tutorial an hour after they’ve started the game.

It sometimes succumbs to that animated problem of choosing hyperactivity over all other storytelling options, but it’s also a whip-smart action film, a movie with nearly “Fury Road”-esque momentum in its asking of the question, “What if the only family that could save the world was as dysfunctional as yours?”

Justin G. Dyck’s very smart movie lures viewers in with its clever concept and instantly strong characters only to present them with the kind of nightmare fuel that would impress Clive Barker.

Despite a few strong production values and performances, Smith’s film simply crosses the lane into incoherency and not the surreal David Lynch-esque kind of incoherency that sets a tone, but the this-needed-a-better-edit-or-rewrite kind of incoherency that gets people wondering what else is on Shudder.

After a year with too few action movies because of the shelving of the blockbuster, Nobody gives viewers an adrenalin rush that almost feels new again.

It’s a dull, overly familiar affair that really only reminds one that Depp should have segued nicely into old man roles if his personal life and on-set behavior hadn’t derailed his trajectory.

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.

Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? is a razor-sharp incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind.

The documentary's best material, other than the archival stuff, comes in how it flirts with an analysis of Wallace’s musical inspirations like his Jamaican background and what he took from a jazz musician who lived down the street. Sadly, there’s too little of that, and too many rhymes that we’ve heard before.

It's an ambitious family film that will work for all ages, and one that never talks down to its audience while presenting them with an entertaining, thought-provoking story. It also contains some of the most striking imagery Disney has ever produced, dropping its characters in a world that feels both classic and new at the same time.

A few sequences of classic T&J comedy aren’t nearly enough to make up for the dull plotting and flat characters in this soulless product, one that will fail equally for adults who grew up on Tom and Jerry, and their kids who have never heard of these characters.

Willy’s Wonderland feels like a movie conceived during a drinking game. A few people had a few too many after a few rough days and dared each other to come up with the most ridiculous concept they could get produced.

The Mauritanian fails to humanize the story it’s telling, never coming off as something more challenging or interesting than a superficial, manipulative accounting of true events.

The first 25 minutes of Malcolm & Marie are a strong, standalone short film. They’re mostly sharply written and Zendaya and Washington add what feels like history between the lines. I was totally with it. But I'm not convinced we learn anything more in the following 80 minutes that we didn't in the first 25.

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 movie that finds most of its power through silence—the proud and yet pained look Tucci gives to Firth during that speech will stick with me for a long time.

It’s a movie that's constantly on the verge of developing into something as intense and haunting as writer/director John Lee Hancock wants it to be, but it never achieves its goals, especially in its final half-hour. Some of the major stuff here works, including a performance from Washington that’s better than the movie around it (yet again), some striking L.A. cinematography, and an effective score, but one could say that it’s the little things that hold it back. A few big things too.

Yes, it’s relatively predictable and arguably a little thin in terms of ambition, but it’s also refined and nuanced in ways that these films often aren’t. Everyone here is at the top of their craft from the character actors who populate the ensemble to the two leads at its center to everyone behind the camera, and you can feel that from first frame to last.

There’s a better version of Hunted that either leans more into its surreal flights of fancy or settles into gritty, tense realism. Hunted gets caught in the middle.

The Empty Man draws comparisons to junky studio fare like “The Bye Bye Man” and “Slender Man” but this is a far more ambitious and accomplished piece of work than its reputation.

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

You can’t make a movie called Monster Hunter that’s boring to look at it, and this is one of Anderson's flattest films in every way.

The truth is that even if one sets aside all potential moral arguments about the very existence of "Songbird," it's still just really bad. If you're going to make a movie this exploitative and gross, you really have to make it better to disguise the smell of it all.

Even as the final act starts to get a bit manipulative by stretching some previously established realism, Mikkelsen holds it together, and then he comes out literally swinging in one of the best final scenes of the year. It’s such a jubilant moment that you may walk out of the theater feeling a little buzzed.

The Godfather Coda does seem different, thanks largely to how he opens and closes the film. Overall, this version feels even more elegiac—a true coda instead of just another part of the same story.

It’s a wonderful film to experience as an acting and filmmaking exercise. Just take the trip.

He’s a welcome presence in his first on-screen performance since 2016, but Clooney’s direction is as cold as the landscape his character travels, never once finding anything that feels organic or character-driven. It looks good. It sounds great. It’s as hollow as can be.

By turning this narrative into a search for an identification that seems increasingly unlikely to ever happen, Dower loses focus, and we become just as lost as the hundreds of people convinced they know what happened to D.B. Cooper.

A decent first half and solid voice work throughout succumbs to total chaos for the second half and the realization that there’s almost no actual artistic intent here. No story, no character, no world-building, no design. It’s all bright colors and loud noises. You’d think we’d evolved beyond that by now.

It’s a movie that doesn’t just allow for silence but thrives in it, with Ahmed’s eyes and body language charting the arc of his character. He doesn't miss a beat.

The result is a film that can be a bit dry when Oppenheimer leads the scientific discussion but that comes springing back to life when Herzog the filmmaker allows his awe to come through the camera.

At its best, it’s self-aware in a way that’s reminiscent of the ‘90s slasher renaissance in films like “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

With the exception of a few strong sequences in the scare department, it’s an inconsistent, flat film that is too often reliant on jump scares instead of atmosphere.

This is a film that so blatantly cribs from other popular works that it never develops a personality of its own.

Some of the writing gets a bit clunky, the ending is pretty horrible, and there’s a performance at the center that kind of sucks in everything around it like a black hole, but most of that won’t matter to viewers of The Witches: They’ll be too scared to care.

It has a reasonably strong lead performance for micro-budget horror, but writer/director Jeffrey Reddick can’t come through with the thrills, resorting to cheap jump scares to hide shoddy editing, low-grade cinematography, and the kind of clunky storytelling that’s more reminiscent of a Creepypasta tale than a feature film.

More than just your standard horror/comedy, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a tonal balancing act, a movie that doesn’t go for laughs or horror as much as weave various tones and styles through its excellent script. I thought Cummings was a talent to watch after “Thunder Road,” and now I’m sure of it.

Its abundance of plot contrivances in the final act and overly scripted dialogue hold it back from greatness, but two excellent performers overcome all of this familiarity. I can't want to see them again.

While it may seem unfair to compare an adaptation to its excellent source, the creators here lay down that gauntlet right from the beginning, and then fail to meet their own standard.

Hubie Halloween is just generally entertaining enough to be harmless, while also being the kind of movie that people will have trouble remembering exists by the time he makes “Tommy Thanksgiving”.

That’s all you’ll get in Death of Me, a movie that takes a fresh idea and decides that the best way to present it is through tropes and clichés from better films.

The optimistic, twisting core of what 2067 is about will keep genre fans engaged even as the increasingly bad performances and frustrating writing pushes them away at the same time.

The result is a film that feels deeply personal, and not always in a good way. It’s a film that can’t help but feel a little like an invasion of privacy.

Nothing about this inert, dull project feels like a movie. It’s a half-idea, half-heartedly filmed. Yes, it’s a kids’ movie, but kids are smarter in 2020 about their action entertainment and putting this alongside all the Marvel movies on Disney Plus feels almost mean.

It looks and sounds great, but should it?

The various praiseworthy elements of The Devil All the Time ultimately override the feeling that they aren’t quite cohering into a great movie overall.

Textured in ways that family entertainment is rarely allowed to be and even more visually ambitious that the other Cartoon Saloon films, this is a special movie.

From the beginning of Ammonite, writer/director Francis Lee trusts his lead performer to convey an incredible amount without dialogue. And that trust pays off in one of the best performances of Kate Winslet’s career.

A movie that finds poetry in the story of a seemingly average woman. It is a gorgeous film that’s alternately dreamlike in the way it captures the beauty of this country and grounded in its story about the kind of person we don’t usually see in movies. I love everything about it.

No one expects The Babysitter: Killer Queen to be anything other than your basic escapist entertainment, but it fails even at this modest goal. It's a defiantly stupid movie, with references so bizarrely dated that it verges on fascinating.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is a joyous expression of art, empathy, and compassion.

The trip to a remote farmhouse is just the narrative skeleton on which Kaufman hangs arguably his most challenging film to date, a piece that verges on Lynchian in its surreal register, moving back and forth between reality and a dreamlike commentary on connection, although there may be even less of the former than it first appears.

Worst of all, the pacing here is just off, leading to a film that drags even at 90 minutes. If the cold doesn’t kill you, the boredom will.

It is a remarkably likable comedy about two good guys still trying to find their place in the world that’s anchored by genuinely sweet beliefs about the importance of friendship, honesty, and, most of all, music. Be excellent to each other, dudes. It still matters.

If Tenet can be a hard movie to engage with emotionally or even comprehend narratively, that doesn't take away from its craftsmanship on a technical level. It’s an impressive film simply to experience, bombarding the viewer with bombastic sound design and gorgeous widescreen cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema.

While it’s undeniably a sophomore slump in this franchise, Yeon’s skill with action keeps it from dipping too far that we should give up hope he can find the track again in another installment.

A depressing, cynical slice of nihilism, a movie that thinks it’s saying something about gratuitous violence and exploitation of real tragedy but is even more hypocritically hollow than the films it purports to criticize.

In terms of both actual storytelling and subtext, there’s so much that the creators of Project Power could have done, but they chose the path of least resistance, turning a story of reclaimed control and buried human strength into a dull action movie that only gets by on the charisma of its stars and speediness of its filmmaking. It’s almost like they were afraid to unleash the power within their own project.

Diaz displays a remarkable skill with editing hours of footage about a complex issue into a tight piece of non-fiction filmmaking that makes its point often merely by bearing witness to history being made in the Philippines.

Black Water: Abyss is one of those movies that isn’t particularly good but may not have to be if you’re in the right mood.

Once you get past the horrifically casual racist stereotypes, non-existent character depth, incoherent plotting, clichéd dialogue, and baffling editing, what’s perhaps most insulting is how numbingly boring the whole affair ended up. If you’re going to make a movie this lazily, at least try to make it fun!

If anything, there’s something more to the “peace” that these men repeatedly say they found on the water. Peace may be harder to find this summer than we could have ever imagined, but it’s still a primal human need.

Every time it feels like Komasa and Pacewicz edge too close to sympathy for their modern monster, Tomasz does something that reveals those feelings to be unearned and undesired by the filmmakers. And it’s that give and take that makes The Hater interesting.

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.

Greyhound starts to become numbing in its tactics, a film that’s simplicity feels more shallow than lean. And, yes, there is a difference.

After a slightly rocky first act that succumbs to thin generational differences, Brown allows his slow burn to catch fire and doesn’t look back. You may be regretting not being able to visit the beach this summer. Maybe it’s for the best.

Fans of Herzog — and that really should be all of you — should seek it out.

While dozens of movies have sought to recreate the unimaginable horror of literally fighting your life, The Outpost connects more than most, thanks in large part to Lurie’s technical skill and a young cast that elevates what could have been overly familiar material. In particular, Scott Eastwood and Caleb Landry Jones do the best work of their respective careers.

Sweetly goofy and joyous.

One can see the craftsmanship and skill with actors that Assayas has honed for the last three decades in the film’s best moments, even if it adds up to something of a disappointment when compared to the majority of his filmography.

In the end, it feels more like a cheap trick than a study in filmmaking restrictions or an actor's showcase. Worst of all, it’s always reminding the viewer of its construction, relying on shaky camerawork to produce tension but failing to do so, and almost defiant in its lack of actual characters.

Everything here feels timid and toothless, lacking in true atmosphere or genuine scares.

The problem with this frustrating, formless movie is that Davidson’s leading man simply isn’t that interesting, and the film that should chart his trajectory ends up stolen by the people around him. Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Pamela Adlon, Bel Powley, Steve Buscemi — I wanted to follow each of them to their own movies and leave this disappointing one behind.