Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

Queen & Slim is a traditional road movie with decidedly untraditional inclinations, a romance framed against stark realities. But it’s equally a political act, a film whose very existence demands questions about the ways stories like it are typically told, from whose perspective, and perhaps most valuably of all, for what audience.

While the film’s intentions are noble, and its story worth retelling, it struggles throughout to lend a lasting weight to its straightforward plotting.

The Dead Don’t Die is a zombie movie of an odd stripe, and for all its blatant synthesizing of influences, it never shakes off the impression that it’s working out exactly what it wants to be as it goes along.

Fails is unsurprisingly exceptional given his relationship to the material, shaping the film’s overall tone as he goes along, portraying a kind of existential tour guide for a place that at once still stands, is being torn down every day, and never quite existed at all.

While the charm of Always Be My Maybe can and should be attributed to its performers, there’s a real sweetness in its reframing of the romantic comedy as the struggle of two people who already have fulfilling lives, attempting to add to them by rediscovering lost pieces of themselves in each other.

It’s a nasty piece of work, and one that at the very least stands as an active interruption of the escapist, family-friendly superhero fare currently dominating the industry.

The Souvenir‘s power is deceptive, in a way; it’s only at the film’s end, at the moment of its bracing final image, that its ideas and genre subversions come fully into focus.

As a family movie, Detective Pikachu is enjoyable enough. But if the Pokémon games drew players into the world through immersion, it’s then strange that the first major live-action adaptation frequently races through those moments of immersion in order to get to the next sequence of middling buddy-cop banter.

Endgame manages to effectively deliver reunions alongside farewells, fan service alongside the kind of storytelling which needs to occur in order for the whole billion-dollar machine to keep a’grinding, and a handful of sincere, honest-to-God surprises that make the grandeur of the whole thing feel justified.

Grass Is Greener may ultimately be preaching to the chorus, but its simple messaging could draw in people who enjoy getting high, but aren’t fully aware of the broader political implications. As uses for streaming services go, there are far worse ways to burn down an afternoon.

As with so many Laika films, you’ll come for the breathtaking animation, and you’ll leave both enchanted and surprised by the big, beating heart beneath it.

Sunset is difficult filmmaking, the kind which almost seems impenetrable at times. But if you’re willing to meet Nemes on his level, the film’s rich textures will eventually prove themselves beguiling.

Apollo 11 is a great documentary, and its greatness can largely be attributed to the stunning archival scenes compiled within it. It’s impossible for anybody who wasn’t there to truly understand what it felt like to see Apollo 11 complete its travels, but for at least 93 endlessly arresting minutes, Apollo 11 does its very best to put you right there.

Between its continuous insistence on broad humor and its lack of broader context about the industry period in which Paige came up (she was among the first womens’ wrestlers in WWE to break out when the division gained traction after years of public degradation), Fighting With My Family ultimately reveals itself as a shallow take on a genuinely fascinating story.

Like its unstoppable heroine, Alita: Battle Angel is something strange and unique and special, built from the finest repurposed parts.

While it’s a reasonably paced thriller, The Prodigy is almost wholly devoid of real scares.

Throughout Piercing, it’s never clear who’s getting played, at least except for the audience. Those with the stomach for what Pesce and his stars have to offer will likely give over to the rush of it, as the film plays fast and loose with expectations at every turn.

The little beats throughout Cold Pursuit are distinctive enough to cover for this gory caper’s periodic misfires.

Although its leads find the odd moment of charm together, even Kidman in what’s somehow the worst-shaded part of all three, The Upside fumbles far too often when it attempts to enlighten or edify its audience.

It’s also not all that good, even if it’s hardly the kind of “bad” that most would get riled about. Escape Room is cut from one of Hollywood’s most familiar cloths: the “mall horror” movie.

When people talk about Hollywood movies feeling more and more like product, this is what they’re driving at.

There’s not an ounce of wasted motion to be found throughout Cold War. Pawlikowski moves at a fleet pace, trusting in his audience to fill in the gaps that the film’s understated storytelling leaves along the way.

As with any number of popular YA novels-turned-feature films, Mortal Engines has a wealth of possibilities and curious ideas at its disposal. Instead, it tears past them in pursuit of some of the subgenre’s most exhausted narrative tropes, chewing up everything engaging as it grinds along.

There’s a breathless sense of discovery and play that makes the film seem new, even as it’s tap-dancing through the imprints of so many sci-fi stories throughout the years. Simply put, superhero movies don’t often carry this sense of possibility anymore.

There’s nothing particularly memorable about Robin Hood even when you’re laughing at it, and that may be one of the saddest fates a movie can meet.

The Front Runner is a naively misguided product of panicked, desperate modern times. But perhaps even worse, at least for the type of film it wants to be, it lands somewhere between irrelevant and a woeful misreading of the room.

There’s a thoughtful, kid-friendly parable about the hazards of internet fame somewhere in Ralph Breaks the Internet, but its aim is so scattershot that it only emerges in fits and starts.

Boy Erased finds its best stuff when it matches the unabashed earnestness of Jared, and of Hedges’ performance. The film isn’t so much preaching to the converted as begging the ones who aren’t yet to finally come over and stand on the right side of history.

This is despairing filmmaking, but also the kind that arrests the eye from its first moments. Lee has made something rare here: a portrait of poverty that treats its subjects not as victims or as aggressors, but simply as pawns of a far grander social scheme than any of them can possibly comprehend.

It’s about how reality invades our dreams, and how the people we trust teach us to be less trusting as we get older. Tan plays these themes out with a rare emotional honesty, never allowing the fact that it’s a deeply personal work to prevent her from indicting herself alongside any of the other key players involved.

What They Had is an indie drama of a familiar cut, delivered so well that you’ll forgive its smaller inconsistencies.

This is punishing filmmaking, both in its sense of overwhelming despair and in its all-too-physical violence, but what sets Apostle apart from being an especially well-shot exploitation feature is its interest in the ideals behind the violence we perform on one another.

As a fish-out-of-water comedy, it’s effectively funny more often than it isn’t, and as an ode to the unlikely communities that arise around black metal, it’s entirely sincere in its intentions.

A Star is Born isn’t a new love story, or even an especially unique one. But it’s a traditional love story told supremely well, and sometimes that’s exactly what audiences go to the movies to see.

There’s a strangeness to certain passages of Sisters that bolsters it through its seedy saloons and cacophonous firefights, and it constitutes the best the film has to offer.

Mandy is destined to live forever as a cult favorite, but what’s going to set it apart from so many others is the way in which Cosmatos sustains the emotional stakes of Red’s quest through the entire film.

White Boy Rick is a collection of interesting enough scenes in desperate need of a more cohesive framework.

Lizzie isn’t exactly an exciting film, but it’s absolutely a compelling one. Much of that, again, emerges from Sevigny’s work, who finds the notes of delicacy that the film around her occasionally lacks.

If Peppermint has one thing going for it, and it’s by and large the only one, it’s Garner.

The Little Stranger slowly mutates into a harrowing treatise on the ways in which absolute privilege can corrupt absolutely.

Support the Girls is the kind of film that sneaks up on you as it’s going along.

The romantic comedy beats are familiar enough, but the ways in which the film attacks them gives it a subversive shade that nicely compliments an otherwise straightforward fish-out-of-water story.

The first major problem with Slender Man is that it’s not anywhere near as scary as many of the fan-made mockups that can be found online right now, but the second and arguably bigger one is that it’s barely a Slender Man story.

It’s not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but The Meg is a perfect outing for a balmy late-summer evening at the movies. It’s a little preposterous, a little moving, and a lot entertaining.

By the time Whitney reaches the point it inevitably must, Macdonald’s film stands as an archive of how preventable Houston’s passing truly was.

Skyscraper‘s knowing sense of transparency about its own corniness turns it into exactly the right kind of summer outing, a tight 93 minutes of consistently well-executed overstimulation that takes itself seriously enough to avoid total self parody while also going out of its way to avoid insulting its audience’s intelligence.

The film may deliver the spectacle of dinosaurs body-slamming other dinosaurs with their mouths, but that’s about all that connects Fallen Kingdom to the wonder and fright of the original film. As a horror movie, it’s diverting enough when it’s not continuously shooting itself in the foot with ideas it can’t explain and doesn’t care to.

When the film isn’t simply boring, it becomes unintentionally hilarious in its occasionally inept production.

The movie is reasonably successful in its own modest way; its interests go no further than offering a handful of pratfall-driven laughs, and a few lessons about kicking back and cutting loose before you miss out on the simpler pleasures of life.

Filmworker makes a compelling argument that the Kubrick who lives in cinematic legend may not have become the man he’s remembered for being without Vitali around.

Deadpool 2 likes to situate itself as the subversive alternative to so many bloated X-Men films, with all their grave self-importance and bombastic action, but even more of this go-around resembles those movies than its predecessor, and if it reads to you as more than a bit hypocritical, just know you’re hardly alone.

It’s intelligent, frequently resonant, and even wryly funny at points in its own weary way. This is sci-fi which trusts its audience to fill in the blanks and do just a little bit of the heavy lifting, and it’s better off for it.

It’s a provocation, and for the most part, it’s an effective one. Yet for a film all about verbal and physical blows, Bodied seems to grow skittish when it comes to landing the nastiest ones, the ones that would call its own ideals into question. It’s just insightful enough to leave audiences wishing that it were more so.

It’s exhausting, but it’s also frequently effective. It’s surface-level with its emotional beats, but a number of them still land, largely thanks to the continuously all-in performances of the series’ endlessly patient stars. It’s an event that advertises itself as an event in every way, while somehow still managing to justify the immense hype around it.

It’s the worst kind of ridiculous: not enough so to be memorably fun, but far too much so to be taken with any degree of gravitas.

You Were Never Really Here is a masterpiece of form and performance, but somehow, its accomplishments in sound and aural texture manage to dwarf even those other accolades.

That the film never fully gets to the heart of its savage commentaries is probably its greatest disappointment.

While Finley’s film may be slim on any truly insightful commentary about what makes Amanda and Lily tick, that’s almost beside the point. Instead, this is a film about the fine lines separating civility from chaos, and how it only takes a tiny push to send you across when you’re close enough to it.

Mute has gobs of style to burn, but it’s virtually the textbook definition of sound and fury signifying nothing.

There’s talent in every corner of the film, and it elevates Black Panther beyond so many of its superhero contemporaries even as it exhibits some formulaic tendencies. It’s a sterling example of formula done exceedingly well, however, particularly in the ways it uses the familiarity of that formula to tell a new kind of story.

Director Wes Ball frames the film as one long siege on the central city with few exceptions, and while that lends it a certain sense of momentum, after a while the sensation of watching it turns into one of checking off boxes

Henson, ever the magnetic performer, elevates so much of Najafi’s boilerplate direction with sheer presence alone; while the film consistently suffers from the tendency to bathe nearly every scene in maudlin strings and over-exposition, the actress manages to convey multitudes about Mary’s interiority with little more than a sustained gaze.

It’s a sparse film, to be sure, but one authentic to the time in which it takes place, even if that authenticity reads in a significantly different light in our own time.

It’s the kind of film that sets up a compelling sandbox in which to play, and then smashes gracelessly through it, cackling all the while.

It’s at once subtle and outlandish, sensual and thoughtful, outrageously unconventional and yet one of its director’s most confidently assembled features.

Voyeur leaves its viewers with more questions about what happened in the Manor House and what it meant than they’ll have coming in. If that’s hardly the note of finality that many will want or expect, it’s the aspect of the film that perhaps feels the most authentic and honest.

Roman J. Israel, Esq. is sometimes a compelling movie and often a difficult one to keep with, but it’s a flawed challenge that you’ll be grateful you gave a chance all the same.

Three Billboards may be a film chiefly concerned with rage, and pain, but it’s also one of the best dark comedies of recent vintage, and one of the better dramas as well. While some of McDonagh’s narrative threads do time out in unexpected and even unresolved ways, the film’s highs are exemplary.

The film maintains a hum of stoic, nerve-trembling anxiety that carries through to its finale.

This is a story with a message, and perhaps an overlong one, but the triumphant staging of the film’s action sequences often tends to erase any lingering doubts of its purpose before long.

By now, you likely already know whether or not Jigsaw is for you. The series is nothing if not consistent, but the diminishing returns that led to its near-decade hiatus only continue here.

Geostorm finds itself in the curious position of simultaneously taking itself too seriously and not enough so. It’s a disaster movie far too ridiculous to generate any real gravitas, but it’s also just glum enough to suck any fun out of watching the beaches of Rio de Janeiro freeze over in an instant.

As many note throughout the doc, the best moments that film as a medium has to offer are found in the smallest details. And when you find something truly great, as with this scene, you can just keep looking and looking until you spiral into the same void on which the grisly sequence ends.

It’s a striking debut, and the kind of outing that will invariably leave audiences wanting to see more from Lynch behind the camera in the future. But Lucky is a showcase for Stanton above all things.

The film exudes pure humanity in every frame, in all of its messiness and splendor and tragedy, and much of that raw emotion is owed to the performances.

There’s agony in the margins of every frame, but it remains muted beneath so many layers of color and so many hands drifting across surfaces.

American Made speaks in shorthand, in its visual and narrative language alike, and it’s less the ribald ripped-from-the-headlines commentary it aspires to be than a cynically breezy take on an ugly, unduly buried chapter of American history.

It’s a dizzying, sadistic feature, and may well be Aronofsky’s most biting work since Requiem for a Dream, but it’s also concerned with some deeply painful and humane material. Where that film aimed for repulsion of a literal bent, however, Mother! is far more concerned with horrors of the allegorical variety.

Goon: Last of the Enforcers often feels far more like a stock sports film than its predecessor, and that’s what ultimately turns it into a highly underwhelming follow-up.

In adapting Death Note for a presumably American audience, Wingard loses the whole of its identity, and never finds a different one with which to replace it.

If it never fully realizes the horrors of its prescient setup, it’s nevertheless effective in fits and starts.

It’s the kind of wholly fun, satisfying late-summer fare that audiences will crave as the season winds down on its face, but like much of the director’s more recent output, it’s operating on several more thoughtful levels at the same time.

Good Time is a film of trembling anxiety, and while the score and the Safdies’ terrific direction both aid this, it’s Pattinson’s outstanding performance that pins even the most outlandish occurrences to a deep sense of emotion.

Whose Streets? humanizes Ferguson, but not for the benefit of skeptics. It’s a rallying cry for those who understand their pain and those driven by that same pain to affect real and lasting change.

Wind River is also a potent example of how form isn’t always enough when the story is as frequently unnerving for unintentional reasons as it is for the horrors it aims to present.

Kogonada matches the inquisitive eye of his two leads, finding the splendor in the everyday, the unusual in the unlikeliest places, and the need for connection that runs beneath all things.

Menashe offers an affectingly intimate glance into a world largely unknown to those outside of it, one where faith is omnipresent over every facet of daily life and the troubled society outside is no concern of the neighborhood’s residents.

As the film’s scope reduces, it builds in horrific momentum.

Malcolm D. Lee’s stab at a Bridesmaids-esque journey of debauchery is funny, sometimes uproariously so, but its greatest strength isn’t in the filthiest stuff. It’s in the rapport between four women who’ve worked hard to remain friends, even as the natural progression of time continuously pulls them further and further away from one another.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a formidable conclusion (if indeed it is) to one of the more well-considered modern series to date. This is a film of difficult, lingering questions and painful revelations.

City of Ghosts is far less about the region’s troubled history than about the now, the daily abuses that continue to grow in severity as politics are talked elsewhere.

It’s not the savage darkness of Okja that lingers most after it ends, or even the political allusions. It’s the story of Mija and Okja, trying to make sense of a frightening world where good people and animals alike die each day, and the only thing that can usually prevent this from happening is more money.

Kuso is a hallucinatory, scatological, grotesque, and occasionally hysterical work of utter mania, the kind of wild cinema that cuts through the noise of all safer, more marketable filmmaking.

The Little Hours is reasonably entertaining, but it hints just enough at something deeper that it may well leave you wanting.

While the flagrant product placement is dialed back (at least on Bay’s curve) and there’s mercifully 100% less discussion of sexual consent laws this time around, the latest outing suffers from arguably the most fatal flaw a movie about giant fighting robots can: it’s brutally and relentlessly boring from start to finish.

All Eyez on Me is the opposite of an ideal biopic.

It aims for the kind of sprawl that could contain a film with so many big ideas about death and grief and cruelty and salvation, but it’s somehow at once too modest for how bizarre it eventually gets and too excessive to meaningfully deliver on those emotions.

While the connections Knappenberger draws between private and government corruption are sometimes belabored, they’re also accurate, and a stark reminder of the increasing popularity of “bought” news.