Brian Tallerico

Cho finally delivers in these scenes, twisting and turning his plot, while also giving us the car chases and gunfire we’ve been waiting for. The only question is if you’ll still be awake by the time he gets there.

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.

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.

I wish it was a little more ambitious and had some more meat on its bones regarding internet culture and shared spaces, but it’s undeniably entertaining, which is more than I can say about some of the times I’ve rented homes myself.

A video game movie that encourages creation instead of just uplifting capitalism? That’s a small victory in 2025.

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.

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.

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

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.

Ultimately, it’s an entertaining dramedy with strong performances from Deutch and the quickly-rising-star Mia Isaac (also excellent in the recent “Don’t Make Me Go”), but is too often willing to poke fun at easy targets instead of really asking why people lie for popularity or how we turn survivors of extreme violence into celebrities.

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.

As easy as it is to like Hank and Asha, it’s impossible to look past the many screenwriting and filmmaking flaws of the film about them.

There is a sense at times that Johnston has over-compensated for Dahl’s cynicism with his wondrous children and their magical friends, and a bit too much of “The Twits” feels like it desperately wants us to love Beesha and Bubsy, even if they’re kind of shallowly conceived and designed.

Most of its strength emerges from a well-directed ensemble, one able to convey the high concept of a nightmarish situation without losing their relatable humanity.

And yet it's impossible to deny that what Special ID does well it does extremely well.

It’s a film that’s tempting to dismiss because of its bleak, misanthropic viewpoint on the world, but that would be discounting the quality of the filmmaking and the riveting performance at its center.

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.

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.

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

Both the source material and the man reading it are legendary. And that inherent cool factor in Extraordinary Tales carries the final product a very long way, although its shortcomings do sometimes force me to wonder if it could have been a masterpiece instead of a mere curiosity.

It’s a brutal slog of a film, admirable in its fearlessness in terms of dark subject matter, but the brutality doesn’t feel worth it in the end.

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.

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.

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.

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting documentary, a film that can sometimes feel like it’s so packed with information and detail that Stone has lost the path through this dense forest of conspiracy theories. At its best, it reminds one how tightly Stone can assemble a film like this one as he makes a convincing case that some things about the assassination of JFK don’t add up.

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.

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 doesn’t all make sense or add up to much, but there’s a consistency to its inconsistency that I admire. It’s something that works on a mood more than literally. Kind of like a great country song.

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.

There are some disappointing choices in the film's directing, but Castillo's performance should make a lot of those easy to overlook for anyone who stumbles upon this one in their streaming algorithm.

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.

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

Great sequels don’t just repeat, they build. This one treads beautifully-rendered water.

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.

The best elements of the documentary Harmontown capture the unique raw energy of Harmon.

Murder Mystery 2 has no loftier goals than disposable entertainment for 90 minutes, and it gets the job done.

Ultimately, How to Talk to Girls at Parties is like a hyperactive kid at a punk rock show—full of great energy and ambition, but not too sure what to do with it.

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.

Every time that Mine threatens to come apart under its own pretensions (which is relatively often), Hammer does something subtle and believable to ground it.

Even as We Have a Ghost sags in places, it never completely fades into the dull background of Netflix originals of late. We may not have an outright winner, but we do have a decent diversion.

The Night Before is a well-intentioned comedy with some big laughs and some big misfires, but it ultimately works because Rogen and his well-cast buddies ground it in a way that makes them likable. A killer Michael Shannon supporting performance never hurts either.

Obviously, the situations of A Picture of You feel a bit forced but they’re handled in such a likable way that it’s forgivable, especially in the superior second half of the film.

It’s an admirably vicious piece of work when it wants to be—although arguably could have gone even further and more frequently.

The moments of believability in the surprisingly entertaining Life Partners have greater resonance.

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.

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.

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.

There’s more to the Oasis story than what we see here, even if this does capture that historic moment when two brothers from Manchester fronted the biggest band in the world.

It is such an old-fashioned action film that it practically plays like a discarded Chuck Norris script, just with some modern gender politics and social issues in play (although someone like Cynthia Rothrock could have easily headlined almost exactly the same film in the ‘80s).

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

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.

At its best not in its scenes of men acting like children or the beats that feel more written than organic but in its most believable scenes of joyful, male friendship in between the broad humor and melodrama. I just wish there were more of them.

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.

Coming in under 90 minutes and with little narrative fat, “Zero” is a worthy successor to “Saloum,” a reminder of a rising talent on the international action scene who blends his knowledge of his homeland with a deep appreciation of the history of action filmmaking.

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.

Using its hyperactive nature to disguise how there’s not much going on, “Mutant Mayhem” is a pretty shallow venture thematically. Having said that, it also has undeniably strong visuals and enough creative voice work to make it tolerable on a hot August day when families need an air-conditioned theater for a few hours.

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.

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.

We’re left with a mid-level take on Superman that, at times, will remind you of the 1978 version, but doesn’t quite match it for pure pop entertainment value.

Malevolent is far from perfect — it kind of sabotages a solid first hour with a clunky, tone-changing climax more likely to leave you queasy than scared — but it’s still better than A) a lot of theatrically-released horror films and B) a lot of Netflix original films.

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.

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.

Bloodsucking Bastards doesn’t quite hit all of the marks it needed to in order to wholeheartedly recommend, but it is often surprisingly clever and funnier than most horror-comedies of the last two decades.

When Johnson is doing that movie action star thing he does so well and giant animals are going enormous-mano-a-enormous-mano, there’s undeniably goofy fun to be had. You just have to be patient during the downtime.

A sort of “It” meets “Scream” energy courses through Eli Craig’s film, one that’s clever and thrilling enough in bloody spurts, even if it never quite reaches its true potential.

It has the feel of a late-night conversation at a college party, full of good ideas but lacking focus.

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.

The problem is that Uta Briesewitz’s “American Sweatshop” doesn’t quite have the courage to really follow through on its ambitious and timely concept.

In the end, these films are perfect for a streaming service, bite-sized jolts of genre entertainment that aren’t ever long enough to be truly annoying, even when they’re not working. And while I think they could be more refined, I admire the go-for-broke DIY nature of these shorts and their quirky charms. Even when they’re this pissed off.

Sweetly goofy and joyous.

It’s not a “bad” film, but Billie Jean King’s story could have been so much deeper. It’s a movie that doesn’t hit nearly as hard as she did.