Clint Worthington

Somewhere You Feel Free is a beautiful musical tribute to one of rock’s greatest figures, gone all too soon. Just don’t expect to learn too many deep dark secrets about the man in the process.

This is a three-hour documentary whose only problem is that it’s not even longer. Whether you’re a lifelong genre fiend or someone who just sampled Midsommar for the first time and needs another fix, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is an absorbing academic exercise in the pedagogy of folk horror.

It’s rough, messy, and overlong, but may well capture the well-intentioned spirit of what it’s trying to do better than the compromised version we got at release. It may even be something I revisit in the future — just maybe not all in one sitting.

There’s a fundamental disconnect between Cherry’s cynicism and Holland’s innate naivete that just makes the whole affair feel wrong somehow, not to mention crushingly long at nearly two and a half hours.

Literally every ounce of entertainment value you can get out of Willy’s Wonderland comes from thinking about the premise itself: What if Nic Cage fought demonic versions of the mascots from Chuck E. Cheese? But the budget and the talent around Cage just wasn’t there, which robs Willy’s Wonderland of even the dumb, modest thrills promised on the packaging.

For all its gorgeous visuals, comforting score, and strong non-verbal performances, there’s just not quite enough there at the script level to make Land‘s broader points, well, land.

Maybe the formulas we’re so used to will be exactly the vehicle to introduce general audiences to the lived experiences of a community criminally underserved in media.

The question is whether its lol-random approach will appeal to you, or whether its giddy need to throw everything at the wall just flattens into an obnoxious desire to please. Prisoners of the Ghostland knows exactly what it is, but that may not necessarily be a good thing.

To watch The Sparks Brothers is to listen to a superfan corner you at a party and evangelize about their favorite band with all the verve of a street preacher. He’s lucky, then, that Sparks is worth the praise, and that Wright’s breathless enthusiasm matches their cheeky, irreverent vibe.

Even as On the Count of Three tumbles toward an ending as unpredictable as it is slightly unearned, the bones of its central performances and unabashed embrace of its concept keep you glued to the screen.

A revelatory burst of Black history suffused with the joy and struggle that made it possible.

Education is a tinier, more intimate button on McQueen’s set of stories, but it’s one of its most potent: the simple act of learning is powerful actualization, so proven in the white establishment’s efforts to make it so inaccessible to Black people.

Fittingly, The Midnight Sky suffers from the same weightlessness as its astronauts — Clooney opens his big, wet soulful eyes, and Alexandre Desplat‘s overly-aggressive score lays on the emotion as thick as syrup, but none of it lands.

It’s a movie made on the fly, and for better or worse, you can tell.

You may not come away feeling like you know much about Wheatle himself, but you get to spend an hour in his shoes.

It’s hard not to think of The Christmas Chronicles series as a series of wasted opportunities. Kurt Russell as Santa Claus, with Goldie Hawn his doting wife, is such an inspired casting choice that it’s a real bummer to see them do so little with it.

Sound of Metal is a film about loss and grief, and what we do with ourselves when our lives change irrevocably.

Mank‘s definitely a film-tailor made for cinephiles; it’s a dense, complicated work with a screenplay as labyrinthine and mired in inside baseball as Kane‘s. But as a stylistic exercise and a work of craft, it’s one of Fincher’s most exciting in years. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, the costumes, the production design, or the score. And the Wellesian flourishes are an interesting stylistic move for a filmmaker usually known for his cold, crisp exactitude.

French Exit is sure to divide — it’s got great performances and a confidence in its atmosphere that the gods could envy. The struggle, then, is whether you’re prepared for the sheer amount of deliberate aimlessness Jacobs and deWitt are willing to throw at you.

Tonally, McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland’s screenplay flits capably between character study, issue film, and cop drama so seamlessly you’ll barely notice it’s changed gears, and at eighty minutes there’s not an ounce of fat on it.

Coppola sends us on a light, frothy father/daughter adventure, to be sure, but one suffused with the tiny tragedies of misogyny, and the excuses men make for their selfish behavior. Even the sweetest dishes need a little salt to bring out its complexities, and On the Rocks is no exception.

Despite Sorkin’s significant shortcomings as a director, The Trial of the Chicago 7 hums along mightily on the strength of its god-tier ensemble and whip-smart script. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, all of them capably handling Sorkin’s overlapping, erudite dialogue with aplomb, and many of the big moments land with a splash.

Mangrove elevates the oft-creaky genre of the courtroom drama with striking, evocative compositions, stunning performances, and a real sense of place.

McQueen’s focus is on the community, not the individual; his focus is on the party as a whole and the optimism and community it engenders. Films about the unabashed celebration of Black joy and success are few and far between, which makes Lovers Rock all the more remarkable.

It’s a shame to see a movie this ambitious and well-cast turn out so wobbly, but The Devil All the Time inevitably sinks under the weight of its self-importance.

Even two viewings in, I’m struck by the density of the work itself, its feelings on death and aging and the past shifting with every line of dialogue or idiosyncratic image.

Project Power is a hard-R action flick with a neat premise, inventively handled, and a winsome cast to coast us through the creakier bits of the screenplay. More crucially, it’s also got a sense of humor about itself.

At two hours, it can drag, and the mid-budget nature of the thing can leave it feeling less than ambitious. But there’s just enough inventiveness here to make it stand out in a packed field, and to cement Prince-Bythewood as a director who can handle bloodshed as adeptly as character.