Brian Tallerico

The problem is that writer J.P. Davis and director Tarik Saleh seem afraid to do anything interesting or unexpected once they have their pieces in place.

More than an explainer of motives behind a single person mass shooting, Nitram is a character study wrapped in a tone poem, an unpacking of a man who feels like he has run out of all potential paths to happiness and believes that acts of violence spark action.

It’s really a vicious piece of work, a movie made by a filmmaker who is unafraid to see the primal, darker parts that beautiful people hide behind their gorgeous facades. It may not be the comeback that fans of Lyne’s were really hoping for, but it’s a reminder that this kind of movie can still get made today.

Plemons brings such a fascinating energy to his character that he really holds the film together.

No Exit is imperfect and struggles to get going, but it's a grisly piece of work that earns your suspension of disbelief.

Like “The Deeper You Dig,” Hellbender gets better as it gets more surreal, but this one has a nice balance to the out-there imagery in Zelda’s grounded, coming-of-age performance. I love the movies she’s making with her family, but I’d also really like to see what she could do with another director too. She’s got the range and potential.

It’s a startling misfire, a movie that fundamentally fails at almost everything it’s trying to do. Leatherface deserves better.

How is a movie based on a video game more soulless than the game itself? The knock against the world of gaming has long been that they lack a human element, but Ruben Fleischer’s Uncharted feels emptier than the award-winning franchise on which it’s based.

Leading man Johnny Depp is up to the challenge, and he gives a finely tuned performance here that kind of feels like his first "old man" turn, and he’s matched by a charming piece of work from Minami, but Minamata is weighed down by self-important direction that loses the human beings in this story by prioritizing the headlines.

Ruthless and precise, Steven Soderbergh’s “KIMI” is a timely commentary on isolation and intrusion.

Pretend it’s not a “true story” and it’s still a shallow representation of sports, parenthood, and comedy, with almost no laughs.

So many visions of the future seem distant, but “After Yang” hits home in how it centers connection and experience to which we can all relate. It’s a powerful, moving drama about what it means to be alive.

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.

Luckily, it smartly balances references to the original movies in a way that (mostly) avoids the self-aware smugness that has killed many a “re-quel,” delivering a product that feels consistent with the first four movies but distinct enough to have its own voice.

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.

Memoria is a sensory experience, but it takes a performer like Swinton to amplify Joe’s technique.

It’s a film that is too often trying to be a serious study of politics, warfare, and pacifism until it slaps you in the face with a reminder that this is all set-up to one of the broader, goofier action franchises of the modern era.

The Velvet Queen is at its strongest when it allows for silence on this gorgeous landscape, using only its mesmerizing score to elevate the imagery into something poetic about the beauty of mother nature.

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.

There’s so much beauty in this West Side Story. It merges things that have truly shaped pop culture from the graceful precision of Spielberg—who has always had a musical director’s eye in terms of how he choreographs his scenes—to the masterful songwriting of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein to the brilliant writing of Tony Kushner to the immigrant experience in this country. It grabs you from the very beginning and takes you there. Somehow, someday, somewhere.

The problem here is a recurring one with recent family entertainment and it's how little there is below the repetitive surface. Jokes are recycled with alarming regularity, and most of the supporting characters outside of Maddie fall flat.

There are times when Verhoeven is throwing so many ideas into his purposefully overcrowded screenplay that it starts to feel unfocused, like a dramatic version of the legendary "Aristocrats" joke. And yet there are also times when it feels like a culmination of his career, a film he was inevitably going to make in how it distills sexuality, corruption, broken systems, and provocation into one fascinating story.

In the end, I was left feeling like The Scary of Sixty-First was all set-up and no follow-through. Sure, it gets bloody and crazy in ways that will probably turn off some viewers, but it doesn't feel feel like it has something to say about our conspiracy theory culture.

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.

It's depressingly easy to chart where this film is going to go and who's going to make it to the inevitable sequel. There’s one thing a great horror game can never be (and something one couldn’t really accuse the Anderson movies of being either): predictable.

It’s an easy watch in a B-movie marathon but you’ll have forgotten it by the time you’re done with the Thanksgiving leftovers.

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

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.