Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

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.