Brian Tallerico

St. Vincent is a piece of very well-made cheese, a movie in which one can feel its manipulations and heart-string pulling, but the talented ensemble makes those critical talking points easy to dismiss.

Whereas crime docs typically seek to offer everything that is known about a crime, Casting JonBenet proves how little we will ever understand about that night.

The good news is that it largely breaks the trend of mediocre rock docs through specificity, being at its best when it’s granular in the process of the recording, including some lyrical near-misses, some personality conflicts in the room, and even one participant who liked a bit too much wine.

It is a cinematic crime that the abrasive garbage that is “The Angry Birds Movie” and “Ice Age: Collision Course” get national releases while most people don’t even know The Little Prince is coming to win their hearts this weekend.

Anchored by powerful performances by two deeply underrated actors, Lorelei is a heartfelt drama that succumbs to some thin dialogue and set-ups but feels like it truly loves its outsider characters, and that empathy allows us to root for them too.

It’s an infectiously goofy film, but also deceptively smart about why we love comic book heroes and the amount of stupidity we’re willing to accept within the genre.

Some of our heroine’s choices as the film raises the stakes feel a bit unbelievable, but that can be forgiven given the single-setting, single-performer restrictions of the piece. In the end, the goal was clearly to trap us in the increasingly fractured mind of a single person who increasingly believes what is beyond believable. Mission accomplished.

The reason that The Monster works is because of how much Kazan’s performance captures the truth of the moment in which Kathy struggles.

It’s been a long time since there’s been a rom-com with two stars as straight-up likable and easy to root for as Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron are here.

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.

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.

It’s ultimately a film that works on its own terms, a long-delayed enriching of the story of a beloved character that will make her ultimate sacrifice in “Avengers: Endgame” feel even more powerful in hindsight. Every blockbuster this Summer is being touted as the sign that the world is back to normal—“Black Widow” is more a reminder of what fans loved before it shifted off its axis.

It spends too much time in some of its beats—there’s a stronger, tighter version that’s more disquieting by not wearing out its welcome at 100 minutes—and a couple of loud jump scares are misplaced in a film that generally avoids that crutch, but this is a major debut from a filmmaker who is willing to tell horror stories in a way that's both different for the genre and yet also like something we’ve all experienced before.

The most purely entertaining zombie film in some time.

Joe Carnahan, the director of gritty cop flicks like “Narc” and “Copshop,” is back in his wheelhouse with the effectively entertaining The Rip, the rare Netflix original action film that actually plays like something you’d want to see in theaters.

This is a film that captures how art isn’t just how we heal; it’s how we live. And how we can each write our own symphony, especially if we have someone who inspires us to do so.

Cohn never turns Night School into a sob story or a manipulative tale of redemption.

It's easy to make a documentary about hateful people. It's harder to focus on the impact of hateful people on those around them.

It’s not surprising that Truth takes the perspective that it does — you don’t cast Cate Blanchett and Robert Redford as Mapes and Rather and not expect the film to side with them.

Korine’s visual gifts are on full display, capturing both the opulence of Florida and its scuzzy side in a way that finds beauty in both.

It will likely fall through the cracks a bit between “After the Storm” and “Shoplifters,” but it’s worth the time for fans of Kore-eda, a group that seems to be growing every day.

It’s a film that feels like an overture to an international crisis, a warning as much as a documentary.

Anyone who has dealt with the deterioration of a parent will find something resonant in Chika-ura’s film, one that can sometimes feel self-indulgent in its pacing and length but never loses its nuance, thanks both to its refined direction and a truly stellar performance from the legendary Tatsuya Fuji.

This film takes no prisoners, offers no explanations, and forces you to go on its twisted journey that blends found footage structure with something that H.P. Lovecraft might have dreamed up. It’s a ride.

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.

I would like to hope that even Stormy’s critics and enemies could be moved by the film about her because, at its core, it’s a successful attempt to strip away the political issues and present its subject as a flesh-and-blood human being, someone with feelings, anxieties, and a great deal of courage.

It truly feels like “The Walking Dead” and now maybe “The Last of Us” have spawned a wave of films about how humans respond when civilization collapses—“Arcadian” is one of the better entries in this growing genre about how screwed we all are.

Only the man who wrote Tromeo and Juliet could deliver something this gleefully grotesque, vicious, and unapologetic, and the DC Universe is all the better for it.