Fran Hoepfner

It’s difficult to accept Barbie as a satire when the filmmakers’ earnest enjoyment of the cars, the houses, the outfits, and even the toy food feels much more indulged than any philosophical reckonings. We’ve never expected Barbie to be a real thinker––why start now?

At times, It’s Me, Margaret the film, just like It’s Me, Margaret the book, feels a little too raw and embarrassing: like going to buy a bra at a department store with your mother, there is something unspeakably intimate and horrifying about existing in its world for too long.

It’s a promising feature with an original focus, handled with romantic dexterity and thoughtful wisdom.

80 For Brady is undeniably a shiny piece of NFL propaganda, a film so in love with its own money-making apparatus that it’s hard not to find it at least somewhat evil. But the performances land and are often endearing, with all four women in particularly strong form.

At times Wildcat is a difficult watch, raw and unflinching.

At its core, this is a moving and thoughtful character study, and horror films of late have a dearth of this kind of development, otherwise caterwauling towards the blanket term of “trauma.” Here, we bear witness to all aspects of Aisha’s life, the good and the ugly, as she finds her center.

At its best, Bad Axe is a family portrait, dynamic and curious and funny. It’s to Siev’s benefit that he belongs to one of the most charismatic families of all time, whose unending curiosity in each other and their respective wellbeing keeps the engine chugging along.

Things get a little overly explanatory, in general, as though the film assumes its audience is not familiar with these allegations or the bombshell nature of this story. But perhaps that is the issue that the film is addressing: that there are still huge swaths of indifference towards sexual harrassment and abuse thorughout the country.

If The Good Nurse is about anything, it’s about dedication and stoic compassion, rather than a headstrong sense of morality, and the film, like its protagonist, is all the better for that.

Harry Wootliff’s True Things is a raw and passionate look at the type of love that can be both all-encompassing and destructive, passionate and dangerous.

Girl Picture is a thoughtful, funny, and empathetic look at lives in flux.

Mack & Rita is silly, but it’s a strong, necessary kind of silly, a warm and embracing kind of silly. Keaton has rarely been so bubbling and bright, reminding us that regardless of age, being true to yourself is all that really counts in a person. The love will come no matter what.

There’s an inherent push and pull to Bodies Bodies Bodies, a movie that wants to be a send-up for a certain type of young person but also doesn’t want to be “about” much of anything. The horror genre has fallen victim to Big Important Theme–ism of late, and it’s a relief that “Bodies Bodies Bodies” doesn’t descend into a lecture (in fact, it descends into many funny, insincere ones instead). But it all doesn’t amount to very much at all.

Luckily, and perhaps where it counts the most, the action in The Killer is, well, pretty killer. Jang is a confident, competent leading man, slick and entertaining to watch, as gruff as he may come off to his peers and adversaries.

Earl and Hayward developed these characters first as a live stand-up show and then in a short film, and natural chemistry and cheeky rapport make “Brian and Charles” a laugh-out-loud comedy.