Chase Hutchinson

Josh is flying solo this time, but Marty Supreme shows he’s capable of achieving a greatness that’s all his own. While brief plot elements weigh the film down, Safide defies gravity even as Marty cannot.

Even as all the comedy to be found within this setup had already run dry a full movie ago, The Family Plan 2 keeps going back to the well in the desperate hope that there are still a few drops left.

Lopez, while certainly dancing all the right steps, is only ever a composite of a movie star who feels trapped in a surprisingly stiff production. She deserves better than what the film gives her, but there’s never a moment when she gets it.

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.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — the most entertaining, exhilarating movie you’ll see all year — is an incision into a raw nerve. A thrilling, tense portrait of modern life, it’s Anderson’s most urgently relevant work yet.

It’s this generation’s answer to “Cry-Baby” and also distinctly Early.

Credit where credit is due, Sacrifice ultimately made me seriously consider the prospect of death while watching it. However, this mostly came from a desire for it all to end so we no longer had to keep enduring the inescapably vapid and shallow film unraveling before us.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop.

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.

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.

The more we are taken on this journey through Grace’s early foray into adulthood, the more it earns its classic coming-of-age beats while also cutting into something deeper it can call its own.

An engaging enough dramatization of the true story of a man who became known for spending months hiding out in a Toys “R” Us to escape capture after robbing businesses by coming in through their roofs, Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” is also a regrettably safe film defined by missed opportunities that ultimately steals any deeper resonances it could find right out from under you.

Even as Dillon is the one with more to do and dialogue to speak, it’s an outstanding De Bankolé who holds the camera with such intensity that you don’t dare look away for even a second.

Though this film does gesture towards urgent issues, like misogyny being endemic to the modern tech industry, and is genuine in how it seeks to talk about them in a more crowd-pleasing package, it never amounts to being more than one note.

As long as Odenkirk’s grumpy sheriff has his coffee and mustache intact, he is the key to finding the perfect balance. No matter how many blows the film and he take, the joy in seeing him swing freely makes it all good, family fun.

Etzler wields the film’s urgent satire like a scalpel, precisely cutting away at all the lies we so easily find ourselves telling that mask the darker truths about who we are.

The characters may cut into the cinematic canvas with a knife, smother it with glue, and just generally wreck it, but they can’t destroy what Soderbergh has achieved.

The writing is frequently darkly playful, the direction measured and the performances all completely committed, ensuring the portrait of a family in crisis holds together just as they may all split apart.

Although “Wake Up Dead Man” is the “Knives Out” movie that’s most preoccupied with existential questions surrounding death, writer/director Rian Johnson’s third film in the series is also the one that’s most full of life.

Each empty bump in the night lands with a dull thud. Even a terrifying dog that becomes crucial to the film has a bark that’s worse than its bite.

It succeeds about half the time, making for a split decision where Sweeney and Christy both emerge as champions while the film itself can’t quite go the distance.

Even as Reinhart does solid work with the shaky material, her character remains adrift in a meandering psychological thriller that offers only a superficial look into her psyche.

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.

Glander’s debut has vibes to spare, but he never coasts on them even as Billy coasts around the Florida landscapes. In the end, he delivers a full meal of a film that, like the giant hot dog we see in one shot in the middle, is a mesmerizing work of art worth taking a big bite out of. It will never be to all tastes, but to those who find themselves on its wavelength, it couldn’t be sweeter.

For every interview there is with a journalist offering more of this, there is one that just meanders with a notorious influencer that should have probably been cut.

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.

Better Go Mad in the Wild is transcendent not because of big speeches or underlined ideas, but because of how it lets us sit back and watch two people, both flawed, funny and deeply human, struggle through another day.

It’s a film that almost entirely takes place in a handful of locations, but it feels vast in scope as the first-time filmmaker taps into deep existential questions about how you carry on after experiencing cruelty that nobody seems to care about.