Brian Tallerico

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.

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.