Chase Hutchinson

Much like the scene from which it gets its name, where a photo from an old album is flipped to reveal those four words, turning things over and holding them up to the light is the necessary starting point to finding the truth.

It is very much an ensemble film, yet it also serves as one of the final demonstrations of how Cloud could command a scene like no one else. That alone makes Your Lucky Day a bittersweet gift, but the sharp film also has quite a lot else going on as well.

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

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.

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

There is real passion in DeBose’s vocal performance as she tries to elevate the rote music. I just wish she were in a better movie.

It is a triumph in every sense of the word just as it is a humble portrait of life's small moments. The way Kaurismäki strikes this balance is breathtaking in its patience, proving how the most moving works of cinema can come from the simplest of places.

The pieces still come together to reveal a thorny portrait of how little a push it takes to create a villain.

While there is certainly still much that you feel like you want to know about Stallone at the end when it all neatly wraps up, Sly manages to be a documentary befitting of its subject with unexpected poignancy and just enough revelations to land some key punches before dancing away with a one-of-a-kind smile.

While Ridley gives her all to a more thoughtful and nuanced performance, The Marsh King's Daughter remains a film on a directionless journey to nowhere. Even with the commitment of its lead, it just gets lost in the woods before falling flat on its face.

There are moments where it feels like it could have become a more gleefully mean-spirited horror ride by really sinking its teeth into the story and actually biting down, but it remains hamstrung by the rating as well as a lack of creativity.

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.

It is one worth putting on your radar even as it magnificently goes all over the map into the cosmos the longer you get lost in it.

When creative directors are given the chance to take big swings and actually do so, the result can bring about nightmarish experiences unlike anything out there. The glimpses of this in V/H/S/85 serve as a reminder of the value of the series and the visions it can ultimately provide a home for.

All the emotional beats from start to finish are just completely unearned — it's as if every foundational aspect of a good horror story has been washed away, too.

For all the promising threads it pulls on surrounding a variety of faith traditions, The Exorcist: Believer doesn't earn your belief or your fear. Where Friedkin's classic will endure forever, this superficial sequel remains stuck in the past. It may try to speak all the same verses, but it doesn't add new life to any of them.

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.

There are moments of terror near the beginning, but it gets far too tangled up in a generic narrative that drowns out any sense of vision. Even with some striking visual moments and excellent sound design, it is all in service of regrettably very little.

The occasional moment of machine gun motorcycle jousting aside, it is a largely dull and dreary experience that never feels like it is ever anything more than a hollow mimicry of far better action works of the past.

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.

Even when you then think it may have all settled down, the film twists the knife even further.

Across each twist in time and place that can rush together without warning, the grounding force to it all is Seydoux.

Rather than come away feeling like you’ve watched something truly daring or inventive, it all feels derivative. It is a film that is too mundane to even get mad at.

There is a wonderfully withering sense of humor in how American Fiction explores this as all of the conversations Monk begins to have around the book he wrote as a joke sees it spiraling out of his control.