Jared Mobarak

There’s a cake and eat it too attitude wherein this new iteration of Hellboy wants to simultaneously be trashy and dramatic.

As a comedy with a good-natured soul doing bad things to earn his surrogate brother freedom, Stockholm is a success.

Sutherland’s script is working on multiple levels while Tammi’s formal aesthetics reveal an artist in complete control of her vision.

Estevez isn’t afraid to swing for the fences and elicit some tears from empathetic audience members, but he’s also willing to stop himself short of full-on exploitation via senseless violence. That’s what makes The Public a success despite the convenient characters and constant paralleling showing the merit of second chances. Estevez never forgets the humanity he’s striving to spotlight.

The final result isn’t a knock-out..., but it’s definitely entertaining. A lot of that success stems from the comedic rapport between Levi and Grazer with the former’s ability to portray Billy’s youthful innocence, frustration, and fear key to the whole’s authenticity.

Those uninterested in cinema’s experimental and formal qualities probably won’t find themselves sitting down to be disappointed or bored by its very insular nature anyway. So those seeking it out will be the ones with the desire to embrace its unorthodox narrative style and subtle progressions.

You probably won’t love Finding Steve McQueen, but that unyielding wholesomeness ensures you won’t be able to hate it either.

We’re allowed a peek behind the scenes to witness the emotional toll this lifestyle wrought and realize that what we do is sometimes secondary to what we learn.

Kågerman and Lilja bring Martinson’s poem to cinemas with a stark beauty both in its sci-fi production design and emotionally wrought performances.

Writer/director Keith Behrman knows exactly what he’s doing when introducing a variety of people along the sexuality spectrum in his latest film Giant Little Ones. He’s intentionally flooding his canvas so that we have no choice but to accept them all rather than turn our focus onto just one.

This trilogy secures our respect as a crowning achievement in animated cinema that should stand the test of time.

Lords of Chaos the film ultimately could care less about the music when the psychology of this scene’s progenitors is what intrigues. So those expecting to learn about the genre will be sorely disappointed. This is about aesthetic, notoriety, and paranoia.

There’s no subversion of machismo then — just reinforcement.

Peirone reverses the usual trend of providing answers so her audience can open its eyes, inundating us with more and more questions thanks to a full sensory overload of sight and sound instead. Time becomes malleable, danger but a brief interlude forgotten as quickly as it was born. She removes the pathways from one scene to another so we can find ourselves in the same bottomless rabbit hole as her characters.

There are some solid supporting performances in small dramatic doses (Koechner, Hochlin, and Walger) and comedic ones too (Jeong, Venskus, and Tituss Burgess do well in mostly thankless roles), but the topline trio is where Then Came You is at its best.

Pesce is meticulously constructing the perfect murder only to systematically dismantle it for devilish fun. Maybe it’s a spoiler to call Piercing a comedy, but that’s exactly what it is.

Just like Issa López did in Mexico with Tigers Are Not Afraid, Brazilians Gabriel Bitar, André Catoto, and Gustavo Steinberg have crafted Tito and the Birds as a powerful metaphor utilizing reality’s horrors to drive home a point too many have resigned themselves into ignoring.

The Standoff at Sparrow Creek isn’t about finding hope in a hopeless situation through a broken man willing to be the hero rather than villain. No, it wants to show the monstrousness of complicity and the helplessness of a conflict too far-gone to solve.

Ignorance to technology is a running theme throughout both to earn easy laughs due to the ageist nature of the joke and intrigue as far as which man — if any — is in control. That probably won’t be enough to get some audiences on board what is a pretty straightforward genre film, but it’s enough to provide its own spin. Between that and the sheer joy of seeing these actors comment on their careers through these characters, a good time should be had.

Authenticity of character is All These Small Moments‘ strongest suit because each proves honest whether or not their inclusion in the larger story does.

These characters are sufficiently complex and intertwined to remain interesting, but how they interact can be uninspiring.

The film becomes a document of Ola’s lost innocence, hardening her to the reality that faith only gets us so far.

Maybe The Mercy‘s greatest strength is that pragmatism to fuel its eleventh-hour chastisement of anyone blind to Hallworth’s complicity.

So we’re left with a problematic façade that can’t avoid tainting the thought-provoking crime mystery unfolding beneath it.

For forty minutes we become intimately aware of Oliver’s sci-fi conceit through heightened emotions, visual puzzles, and potential betrayals. It’s the perfect set-up for a thriller built on exclusion and yet it becomes much more.

At a time when Islam has become weaponized as a synonym for ISIS, we need glimpses at its positivity and humanity. That doesn’t mean Mu’min sanitizes things (a lot happens that could reinforce reductive stereotypes of social conservatism and familial oppression), only that she’s creating healthy representations at once relatable, laudable, and flawed. Nothing is black and white.

It’s a shame because McDermott effectively toes the line between dorky and menacing (before the film explains which is real), Plummer is great playing with a loaded deck of anxieties and insecurities, and Beaty performs her role perfectly until the writing abandons what made her necessary.

Mazzei expertly creates this sense of contrasting arguments through the mystery she’s crafted, letting its terror metaphorically represent the struggle sex workers combat psychologically thanks to America’s prudish nature forcing them to lead dual lives.

Letting the “monsters” dispatch each other lets our “heroes” retain their fear and expendability — they can die when you least expect it because they aren’t our only means towards victory. This universal animosity keeps things interesting so the battles can be short and sweet without any monologues extending the opportunity for table turning.

Bullitt County almost becomes two separate entities in the process, one half comedic romp and the other a bloody depiction of human nature left festering. The second part is vastly more interesting and yet it’s not given enough room to breath considering we already spent forty-five minutes languishing in false exposition.

By letting the cast improvise their reactions through the lens of their experiences, Esparza finds truth instead. By highlighting Bleechington and Williams’ performances, he exposes how injustice is the new “normal” and how the consequences of one’s misfortunate reverberate well beyond him/herself.

Loving Pablo had the opportunity of making Virginia Vallejo its star. It should have pushed Escobar to the background so Bardem could shine as a villain-in-waiting instead being gifted the spotlight.

It all combines for an enjoyable if slight adventure.

A Crooked Somebody develops into a resonant character study depicting the myriad ways we take advantage of others.

It might be hyperbolic to call Smallfoot the most dangerous film of the year, but it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.

I need to therefore believe Judy Greer selected it as her directorial debut because she thought she could somehow infuse a little satire and approach highlighting examples of masculine vulnerability — a goal that was sadly not achieved.

McCarthy and Grant’s rapport in these roles cannot be beat. Their caustic wit is mutual so each biting takedown is either appreciated or met by another in return.

So while the whole is less than the sum of its parts, there is a lot to like. The cast is unique, the visuals mesmerizing, and the music ready to get your toes tapping in the theater.

The film doesn’t supply easy answers and also has its characters making some unsurprising choices in ways that let us know how much it will haunt them. Even with this sense of complexity, however, Monsters and Men still can’t stop itself from dipping too far into hyperbolic moments made more powerful by artifice than they ultimately prove.

It’s as though Hill wrote a much longer script and decided to ultimately pare everything down without realizing just how hollow he was rendering supporting players in the process.

An off-putting drama full of red herrings meant to distract from a predictable end, despite those artificial performances being intentional, the sheer fact I wasn’t sure if I should be laughing renders the result less than successful.

Every little detail — straight down to a smiling child holding out a melting ice cream without caring that it’s pooling atop her hand — carries weight. Not a second is wasted.

What makes Ever After so intriguing is how Hellsgård and Vieweg put these familiar characters and ubiquitous premise into a mythology that’s wholly unique.

There’s too much going on. Maybe if Fogelman had a season of television to delve into these characters’ connections and inject the vigor of Will’s chaotic mind into the quieter passages that follow, Life Itself could be great.

Despite moments that risk subverting the vile treachery of Nazis in a bid to humanize this would-be soldier underneath his uniform, Asante refuses to erase the complexity of the situation at hand.

It’s wild to think that Merritt has never acted before because he commands our attention with a mix of charismatic comedy and a sobering display of optimism in the face of annihilation.

Reitman and company let actions do the talking for a good two-thirds of the runtime and it’s a true joy to experience. The actors have brilliant comic timing with one another and everyone feels as though they’ve been on the road to cultivate relationships built on respect.

Capernaum is a poignant character study of a boy being punished for the crimes of a system that never gave him a chance.

If this was Nic’s story from the start I wouldn’t know a better avenue existed. And if it remained David’s throughout I could continue seeing the teen as the tragic cautionary tale he should be rather than the selfish plot device he becomes. On a purely aesthetic level, however, Beautiful Boy succeeds.

Black has never seemed like someone who needed cheap tricks to earn an honest smile. But that’s where we are and you’ll either decide to go along for the ride regardless or check out.

Everything you want from a western thematically is present with arch stereotypes of good and evil prevalent but never detrimental to the characters.

What appears to be a run-of-the-mill drama that will surely fall into the usual clichés of perseverance and eventual victory about a woman standing up to a small town of bullies that sees her as an outsider is actually much more complex.

By fast-forwarding through the initial carnage and fallout of what civilization’s destruction wrought, Mendoza is able to create a fresh environment of extremes.

This film is about ownership of one’s actions. It’s about accepting that which you cannot run from. No matter how dark that reality appears, however, The Ranger is also very funny.

While Sól’s trajectory is the plot’s main thrust, she’s really a conduit to a vérité depiction of life’s myriad complexities.

Gutierrez does well to share just enough information so that each subsequent revelation can reframe everything before it.

The whole therefore hinges upon Fishback’s performance and she assuredly carries it upon her shoulders.

This film leans hard into its irreverence, knowingly sacrificing mystery and twists for foolproof laughs.

Tyrnauer captures this figure with empathy, humor, and as much fascination as we too possess watching. At the end of the day Bowers’ list of clientele is far less captivating than the fact each member loved and trusted him as an equal.

What should be tender and whimsical feels repetitive and off-putting.

Add a surprisingly talkie ending that tries to walk back the no-holds-barred bloodshed for the revelation of a secret I honestly didn’t care about anymore and I found myself fatigued rather than excited.

No matter how hokey or neatly cyclical things get, Johnson excels.

The Night Eats the World gazes upon what’s left of society through a lens of pragmatism. It acknowledges that humanity is barely beating back its own extinction, that survivors are the minority and therefore minutes from oblivion if they cannot adapt.

You’ll find yourselves laughing and hating yourself for doing so because Sigurðsson doesn’t play scenes for comedy despite very obviously writing for it. This is a testament to his direction and the actors’ heightened states of borderline farce played with complete sincerity.

The First Purge becomes a call to arms so to speak (sometimes to its detriment) — a reminder that we must stand up and for each other at the voting booths and in our communities now so we won’t need the civil war of Election Year.

McCabe’s goal for his film is to show the chaos objectively and thus not take sides or betray the reality of just how corrupt this fight proves. He places hubris, dignity, fear, and courage onscreen—raw and unfiltered.

This film becomes a journey of trials and tribulations with as much inspirational grace as crippling resentment.

That pace can also lead to some wonky performative moments, but everyone is earnest and charming enough to overcome brief lapses pushing for a laugh.

It’s about hypocrisy, mistrust, and the struggle felt by second-generation immigrants everywhere. And Haq pulls no punches in depicting just how devastatingly bad things can get when a child’s mind is torn between a community built on archaic ideals and another entrenched in a present where such stringent rules prove impossible to uphold.

The result is a tense thriller with noir undertones revealing a more complex web than we ever could predict. Not every discovery is tough to guess, but each carries another question to distract us from a desire to pat ourselves on the back or presume we’ve cracked the case.

Buckley and Flynn keep us on our toes, their darkened malice turning to teary-eyed contrition until we’re left hopeless as far as figuring out which is more real.

Noer isn’t interested in the pulpy, wannabe mythic journey of Papillon when there’s a meatier through-line highlighting our humanity in dire straits. Rather than make his film about how far our bodies can go, he seeks to portray the lengths are hearts will.

Book Club...excels not in its boldness to be risqué, but its boldness to portray vulnerability. It’s about love’s risk versus reward and the acknowledgement that present happiness is worth the future’s potential pain.

It still works. Maybe not as well, since the element of shock and awe can’t be put back into its bottle, but anyone who enjoyed Wilson’s transformation into a bullet-hole-riddled leotard that can’t shut up should have as much fun.

It can be a bit too pandering at times when things that read visually and emotionally are also explained verbally, but I don’t think these moments ruin the effectiveness of the over-arching narrative propulsion. The central journey works quite well in motive and deception to hold our interest as far as discovering where it will all lead. From start to finish that trajectory kept me hooked.

Topics like sexual orientation, gentrification, feminism, rape culture, and adultery are introduced so superficially that the film would be doing better service to each by leaving them on the cutting room floor. It needs to either put more focus on Bobby or work harder at creating its ensemble. Existing in the middle as it does only leaves us wanting for more.

Right when I was ready to resign myself to the thought that Revenge simply started too strong to maintain itself, Fargeat brought me back from the brink with a tense labyrinthine conclusion making use of its locale and blood as plot propulsion.

Cody has constructed an elaborate composition hidden by its countless complementary pieces that each packs a deceivingly potent punch. And even though Reitman is the one bringing her words to life, their partnership has always been solidly attuned.

At a time when everyone’s aging parents and grandparents are proving how out of touch with the twenty-first century they are in politics, biases, and entitlement, these old friends still playing platform tennis every day after decades of competition on their Dorset, Vermont home’s courts reveal the opposite.

Coldwater lives or dies by the dynamic between Boudousqué and Burns ebbing and flowing from nemeses to partners and back again as the latter begins to lose control.

The film presents itself as an objective look at everything that might go into a school shooting similar to Elephant but with a narrative propulsion that also seeks to subjectively give us reasons why. It’s a duality that can’t help but give someone pause, especially if that someone has his/her own ideas about what the “real” systemic issues behind these tragedies are.

With some acting that leaves us wanting and the excruciatingly slow reveals of gore to fool us into thinking we experienced impact and not aftermath at the start, Kitamura must use everything at his disposal to lead us into the high stakes arena of predator and prey.

Beyond what the film says and represents, it’s also well made.

Thankfully the performances try to elevate the plot since each character seems catered to the actor cast.

We witness Itzhak’s easy sense of humor, his often silent chuckle that almost makes it seem he’s ready to cry, and the impact music has on him while playing or listening. He explains with full candor how the teaching styles he hated as a child are the ones he has adopted. He’s self-deprecatingly jovial, religious and yet still pragmatic.

This story isn’t working towards a solution or revisionist history. It merely reminds us that the Devil doesn’t commit atrocities. Men and women do. Kingsley and Hilmar ensure we believe this by delivering three-dimensional performances we’re used to seeing on the heroic side.

The result is a fantasy adventure with high stakes despite death seeming impermanent throughout. Rather than be about finding eternal life like many tales of its kind are, Big Fish & Begonia is about giving it.

They can get too caught up in characterizations that render each a bit one-note (Susan’s hippie sensibilities, Joe’s type-A machismo, Anna’s selfish resentment, and Tom’s martyrdom), but we forgive this reality because the story deals in contrasts. They’re intentionally opposites as couples and individuals for a reason.

There’s no better way to show these power dynamics than via long takes. By letting the events play out, Hania refuses to let her lead off the hook emotionally. Al Ferjani is therefore thrown into the fire, her Mariam an exposed nerve reacting on impulse to everything that occurs.

While the film isn’t as subtle as A Monster Calls or Where the Wild Things Are, it captures the messiness of suffering just as well.

At the end of the day a horror film is successful if it can make your heart pound out of your chest. And for most of Verónica, Plaza and Navarro do exactly that.

Watching bad people be bad gets tiring, especially when there’s someone like Oyelowo transcending the material to lend complexity and uncertainty.

I’m not certain if the truth ever came out about that evening’s events beyond speculation, but I don’t think anyone would question the believably authentic script that Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan wrote for Chappaquiddick.

The songs are catchy, the romance sweetly intense, and the lack of meaty drama an intentional maneuver to keep things light. As a distraction from life’s inherent drama, you could do a lot worse.

A unique hybrid wherein fact is projected through a prism of fiction as both a mechanism to educate outsiders and heal from within.

Werewolf isn’t about addiction’s cruelty. McKenzie has given us a story about an addict’s salvation.

The pace might be slow, but it allows some great performances to breathe.

The Lodgers reveals itself to be a beautiful gothic horror with a captivating truth mishandled in a desire to surprise more than resonate.