Brian Tallerico

Stamped from the Beginning drives home Williams’ point that racism is so deeply embedded in our culture and society and that it takes this kind of fury to talk about it adequately.

The cast gives their all, but the film ultimately has nothing to offer.

Eklund wastes little time getting to “the good stuff” as the film’s slasher works his way through the employees at the camp and the people who have come there to learn about the power of positive thinking.

The most impressive thing about Pierre Morel’s film is how it takes two actors as generally likable as John Cena and Alison Brie and makes them such bland avatars for actual people that they fade into the dull background of action-comedy noise this “movie” tries to achieve.

The Killer may be based on a graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent, but it feels like Fincher's most personal film to date.

In the end, Killers of the Flower Moon is like a puzzle—each creative piece does its part to form the complete picture.

This is a deceptively brilliant piece of work, a reminder of the refined, undeniable abilities of its creator.

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.

Saw X returns John Kramer to the root of his mission, showing people the error of their ways and asking them what it truly means to be alive. A few severed limbs along the way are just a bonus.

The best parts of Morgan Neville & Jeff Malmberg’s The Saint of Second Chances are like hearing stories from a good friend over beers after a game.

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

It’s almost more like a companion to some of the most popular books of all time—not an explainer or even piece of historical trivia about their execution. Instead, this documentary reveals how even the most complex spy fiction can have a foundation in the relationship between a son and his father.

The Holdovers is a consistently smart, funny movie about people who are easy to root for and like the ones we know. Its greatest accomplishment is not how easy it is to see yourself in Paul, Angus, or Mary. It’s that you will in all three.

It’s a daring, long film that sometimes feels too chilly and self-indulgent, but it builds to a series of scenes that hit like a punch.

It’s a relatively concise, no-nonsense, short (100 minutes) comedy that reminds us that even when we think we’re playing the game, the opponent has a different rulebook.

Del Toro always brings it, and this is actually one of his more intriguing performances in a long time, but one consistently wishes that it was in a movie that knew what to do with it.

A twisted genre experiment that plays with sexuality, classic genre tropes, and general lunacy, it’s half a movie, but it’s so committed to its rebellious tone that it makes for a hell of a half.

The Dive feels routine, a soggy journey from point A to point B that doesn’t do anything interesting enough to make it stand out in the dog days of summer.

Aggressively mediocre, Netflix’s “The Monkey King” takes no risks and offers too little humor, heart, or action to entertain all but the youngest in the family.

Aurora Mardiganian’s story is a moving tale of heroism that Hollywood once thought harrowing enough to make into a truly disturbing feature film. Now it’s been resurrected, over a hundred years later, to be told again. It's a reminder that film doesn't just record history, it can transport us through it.

Much as in his atrocious remake of “Rebecca” in 2020, Wheatley mostly phones it in here, and he does so with a rotary landline. At least until the final half-hour, when he’s finally free to unleash some monstrous chaos, this is one of the dullest films of the year, a plodding, poorly made giant shark movie that inexplicably lets the giant shark take a backseat to an evil underwater drilling operation. This thing just has no teeth.

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.

They Cloned Tyrone may bend under the weight of ideas, but it never breaks, largely because of its great ensemble but also because Juel Taylor clearly has an eye and an ambition that screams promise.

A frustratingly inert film in every way, The Beanie Bubble has no POV and nothing to say.

There’s too much story to tell in a feature runtime, so parts of The League feel like they’re just skimming the surface. But what a fantastic surface it is.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is just incredibly fun. It feels half its length and contains enough memorable action sequences for some entire franchises.

It’s an alternating series of frustrating choices, promising beats, and general goodwill for a legendary actor donning one of the most famous hats in movie history yet again. It should be better. It could have been worse. Both can be true.

It’s a film with select moments, largely because of the screen chemistry of its leads, but it never coheres into anything consistent. And then the film, which was shot in late 2021, rushes to an ending that feels like the product of messy post-production.