Chase Hutchinson

It is a character study that creeps up on you, deploying well-timed darker comedic moments that set up the cutting dramatic ones all the better. There is no pretentiousness or ego to either of the stunning performances, ensuring we are hit with the maximum impact of a maniacal masterclass of acting from Abbott and Qualley.

It’s a film where every detail of the craft is worth taking in even when the story starts to lose steam a bit towards the end.

Though it works better in its individual moments, there is still something stunning about how it will frequently submerge us in a more subtle and sinister sense of looming dread that soon becomes emotionally shattering.

A descent into darkness that will swallow you whole, In My Mother’s Skin is a beautiful and brutal work of historical horror with visuals that will echo through your mind.

Polite Society proves to be a triumphant action comedy with wonderful characters you only wish you could get to know even more.

Some well-timed edits maximize the impact of the jokes and help leave necessary horror elements up to the imagination. Even when we don’t see everything, our minds fill in the gaps to make the gore and gags that befall Wes land.

Godzilla Minus One more than carves out its place among the best entries of this long-running series.

It is the vibrancy to the presentation that remains the standout though the performances are also good fun.

Even as there are some moments where it can fall into feeling like a greatest hits recap of the group that dances along the surface of the story, the more complicated reflections it offers on their lives and music cuts quite a bit deeper when it counts.

The grim absurdity of it goes hand in hand with the horror, making the escalations and chaos properly fun.

There are many aspects to her legacy as a writer, but what makes Judy Blume Forever such a valuable documentary is that it reveals the person underneath her work that made it all come alive.

If a film like this were to have anything less than perfection from its leads, it would likely fall to pieces. Thankfully, the story comes to life in the hands of two veteran performers at their very best.

As the focused film delicately yet decisively establishes, a job is still just a job and can take more from you than you may realize going into it, leaving you to one day look around to discover there is no ground beneath your feet.

A stunning embrace of abject horror that peels back the layers of skin just as it does those of the mind, The Outwaters stumbles upon a brutal brilliance in the desolation of the desert.

The final scene all the way up to the last line hits like a truck. It leaves wreckage in its wake as the psychological and emotional scars linger for us as an audience just as they do for its central character caught in the grasp of a cruel world.

Though Bruiser doesn’t provide any easy resolutions, it's a beautifully shot work that grapples with fatherhood, masculinity, and growing up that emerges as a fittingly flawed cinematic gem.

Chiarella’s film is small in scope but shattering in emotional range, slowly burrowing under your skin. Once it makes its home there, there is no shaking free of its haunting, heartbreaking and surprisingly harmonious vision.

You get wrapped up in the whimsy of it all just before it all hits you like a truck, finding plenty of resonant emotional flashbacks that contextualize and deepen the experience just in time for the conclusion.

It’s a film whose magnificence sneaks up on you, delighting in plenty of clever silliness before hitting you with a succession of somber scenes that lay you flat.

As Salles shows us, such a seismic loss spans many generations just as it does entire histories that are still being written. We must then always remember the people, their individual stories, and what it was that they endured so that others may never have to do so again.

Riley, proving himself to be a romantic just as he is a believer in revolution, clearly not only loves these boosters with hearts of gold, but anyone that is trying to make it all work for themselves and those around them.

OBEX is a lo-fi stunner of a video game movie, merging a deeper understanding of the way games work with playful and creative sequences that also pack a deeply emotional punch.

It’s a movie about the forces that consume anything and everything to make them into something that is a part of a collective. The more it expands on this, the better it gets, sweeping you up in stunning visuals that swallow you whole.

Oddity is another horror gem from writer-director Damian McCarthy with an enthralling performance by Carolyn Bracken.

This is no romanticized look back at a past film, but a deeply honest one. In every frame, both within the production of the film and outside of it, it feels like we're witnessing something profoundly personal that may soon slip through our fingers. It's worth cherishing every moment of.

If Howard and Sweeney can make movies together like this all the time, may neither of them ever stop.

Much as he’s done in the past, this film dissects the casual cruelty of love and relationships through a combination of the filmmaker’s distinct sense of dark humor that occasionally flirts with something closer to a more strange sociological horror.

This is a full character that Dillane and Dickinson have built from the ground up, where the little details of how he reacts to things can tear right through when you least expect it.