Chase Hutchinson

It’s incredibly effective and culminates in one of the best closing shots of any film to show at this year’s festival. Without ever once overplaying its hand, it ensures the smallest act of resistance and compassion hits like a train.

It’s like a good theatrical production. It’s often charming and more than a little chaotic.

There is no other horror film you’ll see this year as incessantly cruel and mean-spirited as The Coffee Table. This is both a compliment and a criticism, as, while the film is plenty committed to twisting the knife into its audience, it can also be rather repetitive before rushing to the finish.

Much like the character he plays, Mikkelsen does a lot with very little, giving life to a barren world that is often defined by death and suffering. It is in his piercing stare that we are taken into the entire interior world of tumult he is trying to contain.

Hell Hole is a solidly gory, goofy little ride that cuts through any hiccups to get to the meat of a madcap indie monster movie.

There is much about it that remains imperfect, especially in terms of some of the broad character beats that it begins with, but it proves to be proper fun once it gets going.

Even when it can risk falling into being a little repetitive and dulling its impact, it will swerve in just the right way to keep you on your toes.

It’s far from perfect and is at its brutal best in the final stretch, though it manages to get there in mostly one piece — even when its characters do not.

It is a wholly uncompromising experience that dances with mirth and melancholy. Proving to be evocative in one moment and unrelentingly exhausting in the next, it’s as gorgeous to behold visually as it is hard to completely embrace thematically. And yet, if you abandon yourself to it by the end as one character says, you can catch glimpses of something spectacularly sublime in the vast journey that it takes on.

What makes The Damned so effective is how grounded it all is in the characters and their perception of the world.

Carter may remain quite lousy, but with Krumholtz at the helm, this film is anything but.

It writes what can feel like the equivalent of a hate letter to the movies (or at least the potential for abuse that can come from how they’re made) before eventually coming to his own halting emotional upswing about the enduring power they still hold.

Saccharine is not a film that goes down easy, but you may just find yourself hungering to return for a second course to get a better sense of what James is serving up.

Along with his co-writer Bossi Baker, Erkman has made a distinctly eerie and sinister debut that succeeds at sneaking into the depths of your subconscious.

Robot Dreams is a beautifully animated look at life, friendship, and what it means to grow apart.

The Boogeyman is at its best when it strips away all the excess to draw us deeper into darkness.

Playing out almost like a spoof of various genres with both macabre horror and mumblecore misdirects, it's an odd film that's often as lost as the charming characters themselves before settling into a strange groove that starts to cast a spell of its own.

When all the dust settles, The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die is a flawed yet fitting finale that serves as a send-off to Uhtred of Bebbanburg and the bloody life he did everything to find a way clear of.

For all the ways the film holds us at a bit at a distance, the performances do wonders in closing this gap.

Is it a bit baggy and less amusingly chaotic than past entries? Absolutely. However, Bell's return as this character is still grimly fun when he's given room to let loose. Even as time isn't always on his side, he makes the most of nearly every moment.

Even as Fuze is not a great film, let alone one that will be remembered as a classic new take on the genre, it’s an endlessly watchable one.

When it embraces an eerie and enigmatic tone that subsequently gets turned on its head, Significant Other still boldly proves to be a film worth getting lost in.

While it is important for the film to immerse itself in the emotional struggles of the scenes, it also is hindered by some occasionally abrupt edits and anarchic writing that dulls the sharpness of its story.

It is by no means a perfectly constructed work, but there is something more immense in its thematic aspiration that provides plenty for Pugh to play around with. All that makes it unwieldy also makes The Wonder mesmerizing so that, even when the spell is broken, you can’t shake it from your mind.

For all its many structural flaws that could doom a lesser work, it manages to break free when it counts. Though Hunt won’t become a paragon of action cinema, the moments where it lets loose still pack plenty of potent hits.

There are layers of complexity in both Wright’s performance and that of the late Williams which elevate the experience, making for a sturdy enough riff on the Western that still could have been so much more.

It won’t be remembered as the best Paddington film by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s okay, as that’s a high bar to clear. It still proves to be a trip worth writing home about, and when the traveling companions are as charming as these, it is one you’d happily take again.

While Magellan is still a haunting vision, the ghosts of a more impactful film you remember most are also the ones that can feel pushed to the margins of the frame.

That it holds together is a testament to the cast who it feels like are battling against clumsy escalations that go bigger and louder when the quieter moments carry with them a far more tactful deployment of emotion.

Even as not all the jokes land, the rare experience of getting to take in a spoof comedy like this makes it worthwhile all the same.

While it takes a while to get there after dancing around its premise, when Run Sweetheart Run hits its stride it is more than worth running along with it.

It has a lot on its mind that it wants to tackle, but that leaves much of the explorations it is undertaking feeling half-baked. This doesn’t drag things down too much, as it is mostly able to keep light on its feet, but it does make things a bit wobbly.

Though the ending is somewhat disappointing and less dynamic than everything that preceded it, this can’t take away all that the film still has going for it.

While it is not going to be among the very best of 2023 when it comes to its story, the craft that went into its presentation is unlike anything you’ll see this year or any other. It manages to burst through the surface of its frequently stormy narrative waters and grab hold of your heart just as it does your eyes.

The characters are consistently charming, the humor sufficiently silly, and the animation often beautiful, though the standard path it takes holds it back from fully exploring the potential lurking just beneath the surface. When it all bursts free towards the end is when the film is at its best.

Even with its many narrative flaws, The Silent Twins gives us an insight into not just the lives of the two sisters but the way they made sense of it through stories of their own.

Though it doesn’t have the audacity to close when it should with its characters at their very lowest, The Estate is still proper fun in seeing a deeply improper family tear each other apart.

It is an experience built around surprise revelations and plunging into the unknown. What is found there is not nearly as impactful as the actual journey itself, making for a mixed bag of horror and humor that rises above its lesser parts enough to hold together.

There are many promising pieces here and some great performances, though little in the way of actual meaningful insights.

Even a lesser Kore-eda is still at least interesting, even frequently insightful, about the ways that we move through a world of pain and loss. It’s just a shame that, for a film that’s ultimately about the power of imagination and our ability to tell stories as a way of enduring, this one was unable to dream bigger.

Thankfully, even when sudden exposition about past trauma lands clunkily, the rest of the film remains light on its feet and properly fun as we observe the couple being tormented by whatever is drawing their corporeal forms together.

Serving as the anchor to a drama that otherwise frequently holds you at a distance, Melliti gives an understated yet riveting performance as a young woman finding her way in the world. The film lives and dies on her shoulders, making it all the more exciting to see her carry it with such nuance.

As Finley manages a last unassuming gut punch, it strikes painfully true. It provides one final drop of mundane dread that reveals how the most comprehensively exploitative of systems can become terrifyingly normal. Good thing that’s only science fiction.

Benjamin provides just the right balance of sincerity and snark to hold this dark action-comedy together. When combined with bloody good action choreography, the film mostly knocks any flaws aside.

Returning directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett show they have an eye for immersing us in well-constructed set pieces that earn their terror and are all distinct from each other.

It makes for an entertaining watch in which the attention to detail in every technical element helps smooth over the scattered and superficial story’s many residual shortcomings.

For all the fun that the cast seems to be having with Dicks, it’s never as creative in execution as it needs to be. There are chuckles to be had, but the overall experience is defined by narrowness rather than naughtiness.

[Bartholomew] gives us insights into her character more naturally than some of the occasionally forced dialogue, showing us glimpses of her increasingly fractured mind through an embodied performance. Even when the film doesn’t fully capture the spirit, the spell she casts gets awfully close.

The film does pull out all the stops for the finale but, for nearly every moment it stands tall in this conclusion, it also stumbles and falls in the getting there.

It may not always come alive in the way Heller, or us, would entirely hope for, but one can still be glad “Nightbitch” exists, especially with Adams there to lead the way. In every facet of her performance, she paints a full portrait of a character herself figuring out who she now is.

It’s the exact type of film that you could see a new generation of kids finding and causing them to fall in love with movies.

It is her performance that ensures every tonal shift lands as it goes from playfully comedic to delightfully dark and back again. Despite how overstuffed and unwieldy it gets, seeing Kidman work her magic at every turn will never not be a joy to see.

There is just enough magic that it discovers by the end to give it a closing spark, but there is a mighty long road to get there, ensuring it all just remains merely okay as opposed to comprehensively good.

Where a lesser film could fall into feeling like it is just hitting issues without exploring them, Young Mothers always grounds the bigger issues in real characters. It finds genuine emotion in capturing how this is not something abstract, but a reality with which they’ll have to contend.

That there is a genuinely clever current running through it about the cinematic history of sharks and the fear they hold in our imagination is just a little added bonus that offers a bit more to chew on.

The performances are all giving the necessary punch even when the writing is not. It may frequently get lost in its own narrative woods, but Bana manages once again to bring it all back to humanity.

Out of Darkness is an often jaw-dropping horror debut that arrives at a more substantive conclusion that makes everything more interesting in retrospect.

After pushing up against the confines of a conventional musical biopic, it does end up mostly operating within them, hitting all the notes you’d expect it to hit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring mostly true when it counts.

Indy is a delight who can do no wrong. Though the film around him is not always as assured, he is a star who has earned all the pets and treats a dog could dream of. After all the nightmares he had to endure this film, he more than deserves it.

Even with Fiennes and Chastain giving it their all in a manner that makes the story far more engaging than you would expect, they can’t carry it all on their own. The most ambitious and audacious performances in the world can’t overcome storytelling that is otherwise safe to the point of being timid.

It is a thriller that frequently flirts with becoming an out-and-out horror film only to never quite arrive there. The result is a middling work that is occasionally interesting, as we see how it attempts to strike a balance between these two distinct ideas. Regrettably, it ultimately can’t hold itself together when it counts.

For all the ways Botet and company put their hearts into giving it some life, the film is persistently defined by death of not just its characters, but of creativity itself.

It seems like Over Your Dead Body is caught between deconstructing itself and just going through the motions.

It is a film you won’t fall head over heels for, but one you can’t help loving many parts of. You’ll just have to do your best to fondly recall the good parts, namely Quan and Lynch, while hopefully forgetting all the rest.

For all the anticipation about this being a star turn for Styles, the lack of depth in his performance and of the film itself ensures it won’t leave nearly the impression it set out to.

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley doesn’t do much of anything new with the documentary form, though still excavates plenty of interesting details within a familiar package.

Whatever joy you get in individual moments is lost in the shuffle of a film that far overstays its welcome.

Even without the questions about the veracity of the story, its rah-rah style makes it feel superficial rather than sweeping. In the end, Flamin’ Hot comes across as a selling of a story and a brand rather than a genuine retelling of one.

Foe, the beautifully shot yet scattered lo-fi sci-fi mystery thriller starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, is not a good movie. However, it is an interesting one.