Brian Tallerico

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.

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.

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.

Cameron invites viewers into this fully realized world with so many striking images and phenomenally rendered action scenes that everything else fades away.

Ned Rifle, the final chapter in a strange trilogy with “Henry Fool” and “Fay Grim”, is a movie about damaged people coming to terms with their damage by turning to others. And it’s Hal Hartley’s best movie in years.

It shines through just enough to warrant a look but not quite enough to elevate this into the memorable experience it could have been.

Green and McBride are playing with some interesting themes and there’s a female empowerment story of trauma here that’s interesting (but underdeveloped), but do you know the biggest sin of the new “Halloween”? It’s just not scary. And that’s one thing you could never say about the original.

In the end, it feels like Morano didn’t trust her actors quite enough to be the conduits of emotion, falling back on too many filmmaking and screenwriting tropes that hamper the realism of their work.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“Vol. 2” avoids many of the flaws of the first movie, and does several things notably better. It’s fun, clever and a great kick-off to the summer movie season.

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.

Just when you thought the zombie genre was out of ideas, along comes Colm McCarthy’s smart and engaging The Girl with All the Gifts, a film with echoes of George A. Romero, Danny Boyle, and Robert Kirkman but one that also feels confidently its own creation, a unique take on responsibility, adulthood, and a new chapter in evolution.

It’s all the more disappointing when a techno-driven montage of dark imagery kicks in or some other choice that feels cheaper than this movie needed to be. No Man of God ultimately sinks into the shadows of so many similar and superior projects, and it feels cheap. It just doesn’t have enough to add to the conversation or a strong enough artistic POV to justify its shallowness.

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.

While this isn't another Garbus documentary, she’s made a film with all the power of great non-fiction storytelling, and found a way to make the emotional message of this story hit home in a way that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

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.)

It’s visually ambitious in ways the show was increasingly allowed to be in later seasons, evincing a true cinematic language in terms of craft. But what will really matter to fans is the show has been allowed to end on its own terms. It’s the final job Ray deserves.

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.

Borgman can sometimes frustrate but it is an accomplished piece of work, driven by a uniquely malevolent tonal balance and two fantastic central performances. It sometimes simmers when I wish it would boil over but damn if it isn’t fascinating to watch the water bubble.

It’s a smart thriller that features a few truly dumb decisions.

At its best, The Lost Arcade captures the sense of competition, community and commitment by these people, many of whom saw Chinatown Fair as not just an escape but a home.

By Sidney Lumet won’t just make you want to revisit his works but reappreciate the role of a great director in cinema.

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

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.

Baumbach's adaptation of White Noise unpacks these complex themes with a playful spirit for about 90 minutes before the writer/director arguably loses his grip on the more serious material in the final act. Still, there's more than enough to like here when it comes to the unexpected blend of an author and filmmaker who one wouldn't necessarily consider matches.

It’s a relatively concise, no-nonsense, short (100 minutes) comedy that reminds us that even when we think we’re playing the game, the opponent has a different rulebook.

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.

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.

Joan Jett deserves a great rock doc. This isn't it.

The three entirely committed, fearless performers put through the physical and emotional motions by Kim carry a film that is the definition of “not for everyone” but Moebius works on its terms. Its twisted, Oedipal, sadomasochistic, castrated terms.

It’s a remarkably straightforward origin flick, lacking in true satire of its genre, carried almost entirely by its lead. Deadpool is a fun character, but he’s still in search of a fun movie to match his larger-than-life personality.

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.

It is incredibly difficult to love an addict. Not only does their addiction continuously define the dynamic of your relationship, but they are like a drowning man, able to take you down with them as they flail their arms and fight for air. Rarely has a film captured this better than Marja-Lewis Ryan’s 6 Balloons.

Yoshiura’s film resonates with the fantastic visions that we’ve come to hope for in the best Japanese animation. When the flat character design, two-dimensional villains, and unengaging narrative counter-act that, it falls flat. Like its two lead characters, it is of two worlds.

A strong, creative addition to the crowded coming-of-age genre.

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.

There are large chunks of What We Become that feel like something we’ve seen before, a repeat of the AMC series perhaps, and just when it’s getting interesting, it ends, almost like it’s a pilot for a new series.

It’s that graceful humanity that keeps Last Flag Flying from descending into melodrama. It dips a few too many times to stand with the filmmaker’s best work, and a few asides into “wacky old person behavior” are regrettable, but this is another solid dramedy from one of our best working filmmakers.

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.

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.

Instead of ratcheting up tension, Squire seems content to sustain a minor-stakes atmosphere that, well, abandons his leading lady in a film that doesn’t do anything interesting with her predicament.

There’s enough interesting, raw material in Ivory Tower to consider but one wishes it was shaped into something more cohesive and pointed in its attack and approach.

This is the kind of piece that needs to move 100MPH from first scene to last for you to overlook its flaws. It slows down for too long to recommend the ride.

I wish the film withheld more information from its audience to raise the overall tension but it’s a solid genre pic, made so primarily by two entirely committed performances from its talented leads.

Gorehounds need not worry that a movie called Deathgasm plays it safe. This is a defiantly, well, metal movie.

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 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.

Ben Young’s atrocious Devil’s Peak is a case study of excellent performers being given so little to work with from a script.

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.

I like these actors. I just wish they were in a better movie.

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.

Overall, Okiura stays very focused on Momo’s emotional journey, which is smart. It’s not as fantastical as “Spirited Away” or many other films about children who encounter the supernatural upon being forced to deal with death, as Momo always stays front and center. The final moments of her journey out of despair are powerfully emotional.

The problem is that the Mamet brand of tough-talking puzzle movie is harder to pull off than it looks, and writers Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka just don’t have the gift of dialogue needed to elevate this thriller beyond its foundation.

Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay it is that I think George A. Romero himself would have liked it.

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.

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

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.

A bleak, brutal film; at times, its monotony can be draining.

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.

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.

It’s fun to watch a character like Fletch escape hot water, but it’s never even lukewarm here, and so every time that the movie gets back to its plotting, it just sags like a bad episode of a cable TV mystery-of-the-week show.

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.

Say what you will about Scott’s most divisive movies—they’re usually big swings with big ideas. What’s so disheartening about “Napoleon” is how small it ultimately feels.

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.

Watching his Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 is to see a director who knows how to balance corporate need with personal blockbuster filmmaking. Mostly.

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.

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.

This is an old-fashioned hybrid of a thriller and a coming-of-age narrative that explodes when a fortune gets dropped into it. Think of it as an adolescent “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” with echoes of '80s adventure classics like "The Goonies" and "Stand by Me."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

“Le Mans” may not be the film for which McQueen is best-remembered, but the documentary makes a convincing case that it was formative in his life and career, impacting the way he saw family, cinema and the thin line between life and death.

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers as one would expect, proving again that he’s one of the most consistent actors alive.

A lack of ambition, just-off comic timing, and inferior world-building keep this bird from flying, despite there being just enough bits that work to make it worth a look, especially if you forget who made it.

It’s one of those films that may be overly reliant on jump scares when you tally them all up, but I’d by lying if I didn’t admit that a few of them legitimately made me jump.

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.

This is a solid thrill ride all around, especially for those who like their Faustian parables with a bit of the bloody red stuff.

Some will be turned off by the exploitative violence and some by the shallow storytelling, but what struck me most about “Day of the Soldado” was the predictability of it all.

"Cloudy 2" is undeniably dense with ideas, images, and characters but slight on anything of thematic interest at all.

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.

The resulting V/H/S/94 falls victim to the traditional unevenness that is common to anthology horror but with more hits than misses, and a general air of unhinged joy for the genre that these films often lack.

I found myself admiring Barnaby’s editing and production skills—“Blood Quantum” looks great—but he’s not quite yet there in directing performances or writing dialogue. Everything here feels a bit too first draft or first take when the characters aren’t fighting off growling zombies.

On the surface, Unsane is a potboiler, a routine stalker thriller. But it works because of how much there is going on within that familiar structure, courtesy of Jonathan Bernstein & James Greer’s smart script, Soderbergh’s claustrophobic direction, and Claire Foy’s committed lead performance.

While this may read like only a mild recommendation for most readers, it is a hearty one for genre fans. We are lucky enough to be in a very strong era for horror, and I have a feeling Singer is going to be a major part of it.

If “Triangle of Sadness” falls short of greatness, it lives comfortably on the tier of goodness, even as it unpacks such bad, bad behavior.

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.

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.

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.

With his best film since “Wrong Turn 2,” Lynch channels that national anger into a stylish, smart, propulsive gore-fest set in a corporate America that takes no prisoners. But when did it?

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.

What is scarier than an unexplainable, unidentifiable sound in the pitch-black woods, miles from civilization? Willow Creek makes the case that the answer is nothing.