Jared Mobarak

Picking one direction and sticking to it may have served the whole better, but at least these issues can be dismissed as hiccups more than deal-breakers. They hold it back without sinking it. Credit the actors for this truth because they ensure the fun never ends.

The seasoned director does a good job mixing in some kinetic action too, whether a high-speed car chase or multiple instances of one person desperately trying to shake off his/her assailants in pursuit.

The County shows that it only takes one person to beat the drum for change to occur. But it also posits just how sinister the opposition can be when its livelihood of means is threatened in the process. I think Hákonarson could have gone further with this aspect of the film because there’s some real suspense built as far as who should be blamed for the tragedy that sparks Inga’s crusade.

The ability to toe the line between those results isn’t something that should be undersold. Neither should the casting of McCarthy and Richings with their keen awareness to maintain earnestness despite the narrative’s tonal cartwheels that surround them.

It’s the story of a young woman coming of age against the backdrop of both the injustices of her family and country. The former is overtly portrayed by the events that lead Margo to run, but the latter is never far behind despite its more subtle inclusion.

Anyone who watches this genre will be able to guess what’s happening fairly early. It therefore becomes about the character. Liking him makes the journey worthwhile.

Crampton and Fessenden are great in their respective roles both when the drama asks them to grab our attention and the comedy asks them to goof around

People who like this type of film will have a blast while those who don’t are caught glancing at their watches in hopes the end is finally near.

Milburn does the right thing as far as keeping a nihilistic tone for his conclusion, but it lacks the teeth to get us holding our breath. We restlessly await our own escape instead since we already suffocated about forty minutes prior.

McCormack and Morgan aren’t interested in sanitizing the messiness that goes into a woman accepting herself outside the men’s world she was born into. It’s why finding financing took years. It’s also why Sugar Daddy is so uniquely good too, though. They’ve put an honest, coarse, and authentic human being on-screen who’s breaking through the façade she didn’t even know she was helping to cultivate.

The result is imperfect (the acting can be uneven outside of Howard’s innate talent to demand the undivided attention of everyone on-screen and off), but its messaging and execution is a lot more resonant than I expected going in—a less successful sibling to Blinded By the Light.

By documenting the struggle, Underplayed preserves the artists’ voices and shames the gatekeepers so history can’t be retroactively rewritten without receipts.

Odenkirk’s ability to juggle both sides of what it means to protect his loved ones does help alleviate a lot. Casting him at all in a role like this alleviates even more because it allows us to wrestle with preconceptions and enjoy the idea that you don’t have to be as big as Daniel Bernhardt’s “Bus Goon” to wreak havoc.

Anxiety is high at the start of Jesse Noah Klein’s Like a House on Fire.

McHale and Bishé are the ones who carry things because only they (like us) are aware of the sinister goings on beneath their over-the-top lust and the increasingly transparent surrealist nightmare entrapping them. Their dynamic is simultaneously an impossible ideal and an authentic reality to aspire towards. Mankind’s unwitting heroes.

Zbanic expertly wades through the scenario so that we aren’t taken for granted. Rather than show us what we know is happening, she includes foreshadowing, rumors, and expressions to put a chill in our spine instead. What’s more is her ability to weave in the reality that this fight concerns divisions on the lines of religion and race rather than pure geography.

The film is at its best when it lets Elbaum to dig further back into the canvas’ history and the connections born from it.

It’s almost as if Frye’s childhood was stolen to some extent by this whirlwind of sensory experiences, rebellion, and dual lives she’s only now able to unpack, interpret, and acknowledge with fresh eyes recontextualizing memory through truth.

Luckily the familial and personal stuff has the strength to stick in our heads when the battle on the court fades because the work the actors put in is effective.

A violent lark playing fast and loose with its science fiction so Grillo can have a blast.

Get ready for a tense ride because writers/directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Rose Plays Julie never relinquishes its sense of brooding until the very last frame’s welcome exhale of relief.

Unconcerned with happy or sad endings (or endings at all beyond the desire for one to be shared and enjoyed to its fullest), [Sødahl] focuses instead on the unbridled emotions that swirl within us on the difficult journeys through tragedy. Nothing is out of bounds.

Let this tale be a stepping-stone then—a beautifully rendered and energetic one at that. Let it entertain while planting the seeds of acceptance and understanding so our children can build upon that foundation and be better than the insular generations that failed before them.

It may use broad strokes at times, but it never loses its purpose to illuminate our double standards or naiveté towards them. Change really does start with something as simple as Tunde’s request to be heard.

At the end of the day this is a hollowly reductive account of what happened with a weird subtextual rich punk against blue collar cop agenda falling woefully flat.

It’s absolutely exhausting.

That DiCamillo’s original was so funny, weird, and poignant should have been reason enough to hew closer to its brilliance instead of using it as a springboard towards something wholly different underneath its appropriated skin. I’d like to say those unfamiliar with the source will fare better, but the film’s homogenized narrative renders it inert regardless.

Everything has a purpose, from the deer whistle to a clearing of bleached white skulls, as modern medicine diagnoses that which our minds can safely process while our eyes warn us about how much worse things might be outside the realm of science.

Everyone on-screen holds fear in their hearts because they think the complexity of the situation is beyond their means. The question is whether they’re willing to try anyway.

Cvetko isn’t therefore interested in mining what it means for these three to get together. That they join is inevitable. It’s what this relationship gives them that matters.

You can’t deny its visual panache via immersive cinematography and production design. That it never embraces the supernatural element it teases is disappointing, but far from a dealbreaker.

Lutz has composed a university lecture in its own right: educationally pragmatic and historically enlightening.

The stakes built from and acted upon Jack and Scarlet’s tenuous relationship are simply rendered empty once love seemingly erases their existence.

It will entertain kids and adults alike with humor and magic before it fades away later that day.

With superb performances (Fiennes, Mulligan, James, and Flynn shine), gorgeous cinematography, lyrical editing, and a complementary score, the film proves a melancholic wonder that isn’t easily forgotten.

As a journey inward into the roiling waves of memory and regret, Ahari fulfills his promise with an unapologetic air of penance and disgrace. That its success happens despite his exploitation of Neda as a character and woman doesn’t, however, negate that egregious misstep. And the latter being highly triggering unfortunately renders any blind recommendation of the former a reckless proposition.

The case here is secondary to the lengths its protagonists will go to solve it. It’s about the paranoia that builds when a lead seems good and the demons that take control of our actions once the system proves ill-equipped to dole out the justice we “know” to be deserved.

By never attempting to give anyone on-screen a path towards redemption, Kostanski keeps things entertaining.

These kids might not have a full grasp on the situation that’s unfolding, but they definitely understand how precarious things have become in order to exit their shells. They awaken their desires while the adults gradually shutdown, knowing that nothing will ever be the same again.

Rather than let No Man’s Land solely focus on white Americans’ need to open their eyes to the vitriol they spew and hate they foster, the script asks their victims to shoulder the responsibility of their own oppression.

Bahrani’s adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning debut novel may have a heightened air of fantastical satire, but it’s happily-ever-after isn’t one where hearts and minds prevail as good vanquishes evil. No, this is about one’s constitution. It’s about finding the strength to break your masters’ chains and spill their blood.

What’s really great about Archenemy is that Mortimer never shies away from that darkness. By toeing the line of mental illness, he can expose the cost of comic book heroics and the evil being fought against.

Hudlin has this thing firing on all cylinders to be the tearjerker, against all odds crowd-pleaser Oprah fans love (the McElrathbey episode plays during the credits). It’s highly effective. Just don’t ignore that it’s also highly manipulated.

These fractured pieces aren’t operating with individual wants. They merely don’t have the others to mask and/or mitigate their singular desire’s pure form. This is a crucial distinction that allows Schultz to deliver on the promise of his film’s potential despite budgetary constraints and limited locations because it leaves the true intrigue to this central performance’s distillation of a single complex identity.

Surreal comedy turns into surreal horror as hope buckles under futility’s weight.

It’s even more fun digging into the tales on-screen if you’re familiar with the pop culture appropriation.

Don’t expect to find yourself on track to the usual happy ending—or usual sad one for that matter. Many of the stops will seem familiar, but the ways in which they’re experienced are authentic and perhaps even surprising.

While the film has some heartfelt exchanges of kinship and empathy, however, it is also punctuated by moments of abject despair. This is crucial to a core message that moves beyond the healing power of art towards the entitlement those who make it possess and those who serve as their subjects don’t.

Landfall is thus a depiction of hypocrisy, passionate rebellion, and promise for the future. Aldarondo isn’t naïve to the progress made, though. She doesn’t simply put all this information on-screen and declare things solved. They’re not.

Dirty God isn’t some contrived pity project tugging on heartstrings. Polak is legitimately engaging with the aftermath of a real-life nightmare.

Is the big draw still watching Vaughn act like a teenage girl? You bet. But Freaky‘s success lies in its ability to create around that central performance and not simply rely upon its absurdity.

This is the Devil’s story. The Dark and the Wicked is Satan entertaining himself with the dread of those he could kill in an instant if he wanted. But he doesn’t. He wants them to endure an agony they never thought possible and for us to question the veracity of what we see.

Eaton and co-writer Bryan Delaney have crafted their script with skillful precision.

Wheatley’s Rebecca is still a strong film when judged on its own. It looks gorgeous, has solid performances, and excels at amplifying the predatory central dynamic between “I” and Danvers in a singular way that earns a place besides Hitchcock’s.

If McEveety really wanted to give the topic its due via investigative reporting, the runtime would need to be much, much longer. His choosing to ignore that route for pulpy entertainment shouldn’t, however, have you thinking he did the topic a disservice.

Love and Monsters proves itself a pretty well-rounded adventure for both its target audience and those older looking for a bit of escape that’s still firmly rooted in reality. Joel is an unlikely hero whose success shows humanity isn’t dead yet.

It’s a good role for Brody by simultaneously feeding on the typecast nature of him being neurotic Seth Cohen from The O.C. and rejecting it by toning down the sarcasm and replacing it with fatigue.

We read into what’s been provided in ways that resonate with us personally whether or not the resulting thoughts were consciously presented. We make films ours.

I’m sure Allen apologists will say that A Rainy Day in New York was built as a way of self-ridicule with Gatsby’s incredulity towards women always finding older men attractive and filmmakers preying upon ingénues, but nothing in the text suggests that it is.

Because the journey is so rapid and anxiety-inducing, however, it’s easy to forget that truncated timeline in order embrace the adrenaline rush of fear and uncertainty that suddenly places a cloud over everything.

Eventually you can’t help but unironically wonder if Sud intended to make a comedy because the mood swings and incredulity only become more and more unbelievable.

While Eternal Beauty is oftentimes funny, it’s almost always dramatically profound and emotionally complex.

It becomes your basic genre thriller as a result with a straightforward race against the clock to escape before the time arrives for Christine to be sacrificed. But the script is anything but basic in that goal. On the contrary, Margolis, Morley, and Tish make it so convoluted that I wasn’t sure where relevance began and deflection ended.

Maybe my criticism of American Murder is more a criticism of the genre itself and how its desire to shed light on crimes inherently exploits them regardless of intent. Popplewell’s film is an expertly researched prologue to a much-needed conversation it avoids.

Those who enjoy a good hoot and holler with a midnight crowd will surely revel in it while those who don’t will roll their eyes and wonder what’s happening since the reveal of Maude’s mission does become way too heavy-handed for its melodrama to rise above the hollow action trappings.

The entirety of Good Joe Bell is an awakening not for those who actively harm at-risk youth like Jadin, but those who don’t realize the implicit harm they’re supplying by centering allyship on themselves rather than those they’re supporting.

Just like Moore’s previous films The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, a consistently mesmerizing Celtic flavor is imbued into the animation, music, and story.

The film most likely work better for those with knowledge of the Ivory Coast and its tumultuous twenty-first century history, but that doesn’t mean those like me who are ignorant to that strife outside of what Lacôte and Roman provide can’t still enjoy the magic on display.

For about three-quarters of the runtime, this dynamic works in creating effective drama and authentic situational humor.

What begins as a modest and perhaps slight take on the refugee crisis tinged by an acquired yet welcome taste of British comedy, however, slowly reveals its underlying drama via the stark inevitability of its existence. You can only deflect from your plight so long before the stress and anxiety bubbles back to the surface.