Jared Mobarak

Despite my enjoyment in this turning of the tables to focus on our being duped rather than his being found out, The Program has its failures.

A fresh spin on a classic theme.

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.

While humor is present (to varying effect) thanks to its teenage protagonists and its roller coaster ride of random encounters does prove more unhinged than The Conjuring‘s streamlined confrontational drama, it still revolves around intimately personal battles independently fought within Judy and Daniela.

With Native American activists (Zahn McClarnon), anti-Mexican cartel women vigilantes, and the eye-opening power of white guilt when indebted to someone for your life, The Forever Purge is erasing the line separating its high-concept fiction from the nation outside our window. This franchise has never looked quite so familiar.

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.

There’s a charm to this that makes Monster Hunt worth seeing if only for curiosity’s sake.

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

Poésy, Kerekes, and Röhrig steal many scenes with their emotional investment to their respective roles. Schweighöfer is easy to hate . . . and Eisenberg is effective yet again as a “genius” whose pragmatism borderlines on Asperger’s if not full-on misanthropy. If the story itself doesn’t grab your attention, their performances within should.

The filmmakers do well to avoid creating a dense puzzle that will only alienate youngsters when leaning on the Pokémon for comic and narrative relief can keep things moving.

What makes The Quarry compelling is the fact that we know from the start that Whigham isn’t a monster. His performance is too full of heartbreak and remorse for that to be true. This man is caught within a loop he knows he can stop if he only finds the courage to do so. It’s not easy.

There’s a lot that I like about what Rønde has done here to create a mood piece that chills your bones as it crescendos into abstraction.

Things get heavy pretty quick once the drugs take hold and not everyone will get out alive. While Klein lets that genre conceit cut some chaff for him, however, he doesn’t lose the overarching perspective that those who do narrowly get back home aren’t out of the woods.

A big part in combating the otherwise obvious plotting and overt coincidences beyond their family-friendly messaging is that Dreyfus commits to this performance.

Credit Rosenberg for keeping things ambiguous because it does make the film more interesting. Without this lingering sense of potential artifice, Approaching the Unknown becomes a slow-moving descent into acceptance — not quite a riveting plot with the suspenseful intrigue a descent into madness brings.

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.

The only way this play at “bringing a sense of joy and optimism during a time of great fear and loss” (as she states in her brief, platitude-heavy, 68-word director’s statement) could be more tone-deaf is if she waited to reveal it was set during the first few weeks of the pandemic in 2020 for a third-act rug pull.

If Walker has some interesting ideas and an eye for panache, the whole leaves much to be desired.

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

Griffin has made a comedy, but she pulls no punches.

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.

While billed as an action film, The Contractor proves more suspense thriller in the end.

Despite the on-the-nose delivery of its messaging being intentional, Coetzee’s script will surely alienate some viewers. The slow pacing won’t do it any favors either, considering it promises weightier drama than that heightened, moralizing tone could ever provide.

Thankfully Johnson got someone like Powley to take on the central role because it’s through her honesty that we allow the rest to be somewhat two-dimensional.

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.

There are no sides when it comes to appreciating soldiers like William Pitsenbarger—only awe. Rather than epitomize a great military man, he exemplifies what it is to be a great human being. That’s why his story can change the priorities of a man like Huffman and why those he barely knew can dedicate their lives to his honor.

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.

As for the politics, even though the characters are stereotypes playing on the public’s liberal assumptions of human rights, Desierto is less interested in holding one side above the other as much as showing the true-to-life tragedy real life brings.