Brian Tallerico

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.