Brianna Zigler

The “Eephus” pitch is an apt characterization for the film that now shares its name, an odd, surprising story about a baseball game with seemingly little to no stakes, that continues on for long after it should’ve already ended.

A discarded made-for-TV sequel to Rosemary’s Baby in the ‘70s is now just what most mainstream American filmmaking is, summed by prequel Apartment 7A: something stupid, easy and familiar to watch in the comfort of one’s home, confined to the medium that had once threatened to overtake cinema and is now doing so again all these years later.

All of the psychics are sensitive, artistic, outcasted people, who are more empathetic to the feelings of others than the average person might be. It makes their readings a space not just for potential supernatural experience, but one in which someone who is vulnerable and emotionally in need is being heard by someone who’s willing to receive them.

His Three Daughters is an extremely effective tear-jerker.

Blink Twice is undeniably palate-cleansing when compared with the surplus of sexless legacy sequels, romance novel adaptations, and dull–looking, repetitive franchise installments. Even if it’s simply drawing inspiration from superior films, Blink Twice uses these touchstones to create something appealing and original. At the very least, it marks an exciting first step for a director who’s got the skill to make something better.

There are worse and more mind-numbing portrayals of domestic abuse out there, but is it helpful to offer up a pipe dream, double-acting as a trauma fantasy for eager voyeurs?

Cuckoo is a twisty, giallo-inspired, semi-body horror mystery that double acts as an impressive lead showcase proving that Schafer is more than just an “it girl.”

Trap is a sturdy and fun little thriller despite its third act stumbles; a lean, simple story that taps into what one could glean is Shyamalan’s fear of being a bad father to his own daughters.

Twisters is, at best, pretty fun—a decidedly breezy two hours. It has thrills, and chills, and Glen Powell doing his darndest to bring the concept of “movie star” back into the year 2024.

Overlong and overstimulating, the entire film is like a giant, immersive eyesore.

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Past beautifully observes how the ridiculous mundanities of being alive are some of the most difficult.

Challengers surprised me. It’s a grandiose, propulsive, erotic follow-up to the dull, Tumblr-core emo of Bones and All, and I found myself enthralled by Guadagnino’s latest, in which three of our hottest young actors convincingly, tantalizingly explore alternating dynamics of power and sexuality

Arcadian isn’t a time-waster, but its execution is too rote and unimaginative to warrant its existence as another addition to our post-apocalypse glut.

The First Omen is an exceedingly successful first feature, and an invigorating film within a genre’s increasingly limp mainstream.

Compounded with dull plotting and a truly uninspired protagonist arc, Dogman is a curiosity of a comeback film that only makes you consider the virtues of director jail.

A frequently heartstring-tugging inspirational dog movie that does little to excel beyond acceptability yet manages to not be a complete drag to watch.

It’s not a great film by any means (I’m mixed-positive on Farrelly comedies, generally), but Ricky Stanicky does succeed in fashioning a fairly consistent number of gags that got a rise out of me even if the narrative, especially as it careens into the third act, feels like a one-note joke that’s getting stretched a little too far.

A horror movie so derivative that it becomes uniquely terrible.

The tactile world Glass has crafted is just as immersive and erotic in its design as it is physically between her two lead lovers.

Land of Bad is middle-of-the-road war movie gobbledygook.

Marmalade is the kind of just okay, middle-of-the-road, nearly inventive but still mostly derivative indie that at least has the decency to be only 90 minutes.

This inane new Statham vehicle, The Beekeeper—directed by Suicide Squad auteur David Ayer and written by Expend4bles’ Kurt Wimmer—manages to be moderately stimulating, all things considered, though it suffers from the filmmakers’ inability to allow it to be as inane as it clearly should be.

The premise is also genuinely neat, a fun, breezy little 90-minute high-concept that unfortunately sounds more propulsive and invigorating than it really is.

Disaster is horror, and Bayona’s direction allows for a deeper comprehension of a tragedy that exists beyond our grasp.

Surely a short film interview would have been more interesting, and engaging, than He Went That Way. It’s the kind of story that’s undeniably fascinating, but so bare-bones as a screenplay that it needs a little something more if it’s going to work, padded out either in the director’s style or in the writer’s script.

Despite Sweeney’s uneasy performance, there is something present between Sweeney and Powell, and in the text of the film, that feels fresh—or, at the very least, like a homecoming.

By the time the credits rolled, I realized I don’t think I’d ever watched a movie this long that still felt so brief and bewilderingly abridged; where so much happened and yet nothing happened at all.

There is nothing in The Family Plan that you haven’t seen before, to the point that there’s somehow even less.