Brian Tallerico

The only crime here is cinematic. It’s not often one sees a film as vile, ugly, and deeply incompetent as Olivier Megaton’s The Last Days of American Crime.

The ultra-violent take on “Home Alone” with a precocious teen girl who dispatches bad guys like a killer in a slasher movie? That’s where Becky falls apart.

Hammer is a tense little thriller, a tight movie about someone who made a very bad decision and is now trying to fight his way out of it.

Kenny Sailors may have invented the jump shot, but the film about him pays him a great honor by being about so much more.

The concept of being seen through someone else’s eyes drives the best parts of The Painter and the Thief, a documentary that illuminates a great deal about the human condition even if it does kind of fizzle out in the third act.

A B-movie that turns its violent rage on corrupt Los Angeles cops should be better than Body Cam. Unlike so many cheap horror films that show their flaws most explicitly during the scare scenes that are overly reliant on loud music, quick cuts, and attempts to make you jump, it’s really everything but the big moments in Body Cam that falls apart.

It’s almost a shame that the film overall isn’t better and that David Spade doesn’t give half the effort of his co-star because Lapkus is just good enough to allow one to see how this movie could have worked.

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.

There are times when the familiarity of the urban melodrama hurts Blue Story, particularly in the lack of depth to his characters. (Odubola is a find, but the rest of the cast has some actors who feel a bit amateur.)

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.

This is more than mere fan service slide show. It is a joyous, infectious story of the human capacity to change, and the importance of creative freedom to guide that change.

It sometimes feels like Palmason is being a bit self-indulgent with his slow pace, but Ingvar Sigurdsson keeps the film grounded, and ends it with such a devastating, powerful final shot that it alone erases most criticisms. It may take a bit longer than it needed to get there, but the destination packs a wallop.

A solid adult drama, a movie that’s too soft at times but more often tender with its characters. It’s not a film designed to break any new ground, but Wight has skill with character, finding nuance in those moments that many other writer/directors would have turned into pure cliché.

It’s a movie for the kids to watch after overdosing on Easter candy, and there’s something to be said for watching a movie this unapologetically bright in a world that feels pretty dark right now.

Expertly editing together moving interviews with its subjects with archival material, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution becomes a commentary on how to change the world. It’s not just common human decency that should lead to equality for disabled people, but the truth that empowerment for everyone is the only path to true progress for anyone.

As we see how society functions (or fails to do so) in the face of one of history’s most devastating crises, take some time out and watch The Platform, a funhouse mirror reflection of our world.

There are elements here, most of them embedded in another great physical performance from Garret Hedlund, that keep Burden from completely sinking into the Carolina mud.

It’s not hard to think that there could be an interesting remake of “Going Places” or an interesting spin-off “The Big Lebowski” to be made — it’s just that this film doesn't work as either.

Inert to such a degree that one wonders if the film has been slowed down, The Night Clerk doesn’t really go anywhere, truly disappointing for how much it wastes the talents of its young stars on a movie that doesn’t deserve them.

It’s a film with alternating shots of Katie Holmes looking scared and the doll looking creepy. Rinse and repeat. And it becomes so tediously boring that your mind will wander.

It’s just funny, sweet, and smart — three things that this father of three doesn’t get to say often enough about entertainment while watching movies with his kids.

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.

One of those quick-witted films in which if one character or plot thread doesn’t work for you, all you have to do is wait a minute for another.

I’m not sure the ending lands, and some of the tonal jumps could have been refined, but there’s so much movie here to unpack and discuss.

Wendy is a repetitive, shallow film, a children’s fable that means way more to the child who dreamed it up than it will to you.

With stunning performances from two completely genuine young leads, this is a movie people will talk about all year.

At least, director Gille Klabin tries to amp up The Wave with aggressive visual style, but it’s still a movie that’s rotten at its core because it suffers from the same problem of all those “American Beauty” clones in that it never satisfactorily answers the question “Who cares?”

Underwater absolutely bullies you into liking it. There's no time not to.

Whatever one thinks of “The Last Jedi,” if that film was trying to build a new house on familiar land, this one tears it down and goes back to an old blueprint. Some of the action is well-executed, there are strong performances throughout, and one almost has to admire the brazenness of the weaponized nostalgia for the original trilogy, but feelings like joy and wonder are smothered by a movie that so desperately wants to please a fractured fanbase that it doesn’t bother with an identity of its own.

6 Underground is definitely some awfully loud shit.

Like the songs sung by its young cast, Knives and Skin feels like cinematic karaoke, lacking in authorship or deeper meaning. The cast, two actresses in particular, give it their all, but it is an aggressively hollow experience.

It takes great effort to find what interested director Wash Westmoreland and company in the source material in the first place, but it feels like a project that reaffirms something I’ve long argued: just because something works in one medium doesn’t mean it will in another.

It’s certainly like nothing else you’ll see this year.

Intercutting interviews with Marcos and her son with archival footage and other experts on the Marcos regime, Greenfield has put together her best film yet.

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.

It’s easy to see why even Blum wanted to forget The Gallows: Act II. It may be his company’s worst film.

A lovely companion piece to the latest album from the legendary musician, a gorgeous, introspective journey into the very concept of the American conscience.

Sure, I was never bored, but this movie makes zero sense, and contains some shockingly bad filmmaking, acting, writing ... pretty much everything. It is remarkably grisly and violent, containing a body count that tops the double digits, and almost all of the victims of its quality kills see their insides before they die.

The end of Eli subverts the majority of Eli, making it kind of like a cheap game. It’s not as damaging as the ridiculous final scene of “Fractured,” but I was left with a similar bad taste in my mouth.

Armie Hammer’s Will is definitely hollow at the core. Like a lot of protagonists of horror films, it is his overall weakness as a human being that makes him so vulnerable to the nightmare that unfolds in his life.

A world in which the stunning nature docs of shows like “Planet Earth” and “Our Planet” exists is going to make projects like The Elephant Queen harder to stand out in comparison, but I highly recommend at least watching the final half-hour in theaters or on Apple TV. It’s some of the most powerful nature footage in years.

This movie is atrocious, never making a lick of sense, wearing its “message” on its sleeve like a bad term paper, and then ending in a way that should make you angry more than eager to see if it makes any sense.

The result is a project that feels true to its source, a well-crafted epilogue for a beloved character who vividly understands the concept of consequences.

This should be a haunting, claustrophobic nightmare, but Natali over-complicates the source material — just like his characters, our reasons for investing in what happens next get lost in the fields.

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."

Most true crime fans know that the real stories that have enraptured them in film and television are much crueler and grosser than their fictionalized counterpart. If Akin’s goal is merely to pull away that curtain, it ultimately feels like a hollow unveiling.

An odd film like this needs a charismatic anchor in its lead role to keep it from losing its human connection and Boyd Holbrook just can’t muster the energy to do that. It’s a strangely flat, unengaging performance that doesn't match the ambition of the overall piece.

An incoherent blob.

A strong sense of style and a promising premise are undone in a film that never quite figures out how to write itself out of its corner.

This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.

A wonderful ensemble, a brilliant director, and a genius screenwriter all get together for The Laundromat, a film they clearly took very seriously, but that they never figured out how to make entertaining to an audience.

If Tartt’s book is about grief and the sudden trauma that can derail a life’s trajectory, Crowley’s film feels like it doesn’t understand either of those things at all, merely using them as exploitative decoration on a beautiful but shockingly hollow experience.

With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, Baumbach portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.

It’s far from the disaster it could have been given the tonal tightrope it walks, but it’s also closer to a misfire than we all hoped it would be. Believe it or not, the “Hitler Comedy” plays it too safe.

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out is one of the most purely entertaining films in years. It is the work of a cinematic magician, one who keeps you so focused on what the left hand is doing that you miss the right. And, in this case, it’s not just a wildly fun mystery to unravel but a scathing bit of social commentary about where America is in 2019.

It sometimes feels Scrooge-like to come down on a sweet and simple film like this one, but kids can get bored too. And they will here.

Waves is unexpectedly ambitious and confident, the work of a filmmaker in complete control of his talents and using them to challenge himself. This is a deeper and more profound film than your average character drama, a masterpiece that’s hard to walk away from without checking your own grievances and grief. The ripple effect continues.

It’s a deeply personal and very moving film, anchored by the best work of Antonio Banderas’ career.

Parasite is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Just trust me on this one.

While it’s ultimately a bit too self-conscious to provoke the existential dread and true terror of the best films like it, it’s still an impressive accomplishment thanks to Eggers’ fearlessness and a pair of completely committed performances.

Fred Durst’s The Fanatic hates fans. It hates actors. It hates tourists, shop owners, and servants. It really, really hates autistic people. And it hates you. It’s a movie that thinks you’re an idiot, someone who won’t see through its shallow provocations, illogical behavior, and vile misanthropy.

Some of the choices strain credulity and the biggest name in the piece, Josh Hutcherson, feels miscast, but this is a film that kept me uncertain of what would happen next and affirms Gan as an interesting young filmmaker to watch.

Vita & Virginia wastes the talents of four people — its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too.

Only the commitment from the always-solid Michael Ealy saves it from being one of the worst movies of the year, although just barely.

At its best, López’s movie has that del Toro signature style, and she also proves herself a deft director of children, another element she shares in common with the Oscar winner.

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.

Great hero stories leave the viewer feeling inspired by the potential within the human condition. This one will just leave you depressed.

It’s only in the final third when the fight choreography gets a little too incoherent that you realize you don’t give a damn about anything that’s happening, and you start to wish Hobbs and Shaw were given a story with a little more meat on its bones. But by then you probably won’t care.

I do know this for sure — I can’t wait to see this film again. It’s so layered and ambitious, the product of a confident filmmaker working with collaborators completely in tune with his vision. Every piece fits. Every choice is carefully considered.

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.

The first half of Point Blank moves and hums. And then it stops moving. A movie that needs to fly from first frame to last slows down, loses its momentum, and never recovers, limping across the finish line with a climax that doesn’t work.

I thought of one of Roger Ebert’s most famous quotes while watching Cold Blood: “No good film is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” I think he’d understand what I mean when I say that Cold Blood feels like the longest movie of the year.

Nightmare Cinema starts with a bang, as Brugués drops us into a fun, clever, gory little ride. I was excited for the four installments to follow. I got less and less excited.

With competent but unspectacular direction from Kyle Newacheck (“Game Over, Man!”) and an entertaining supporting cast, Murder Mystery does just enough to keep audiences engaged until its goofy mystery is solved.

16 Shots feels like an impassioned, intelligent document of a major moment in the history of Chicago.

It is a joyless, lifeless, boring affair that repeats ideas from better X-films and feels more like an obligatory reunion cash grab than a deeply considered goodbye to iconic characters.

It’s an ambitious, striking debut that takes unexpected creative risks and heralds the arrival of an exciting new filmmaker, one who was clearly inspired by the recent Oscar winner but also has his own voice.