Jared Mobarak

You couldn’t ask for a better guide through the psychological landscape of her character’s desires than Slate. Her ability to be hilarious despite a quiet role like Frances lends an indelible charm that ensures we’re in her corner from the beginning.

The dread becomes so palpable that the implausibility of a wooden door with three tiny locks somehow containing the Devil actually proves itself scarier as a result.

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

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.

Capone isn’t a knockout comeback, but it’s an undeniably striking and bold endeavor that transcends genre constraints and conventional molds.

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

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.

For all its redundancies—the film enjoys telling us its definitions of sequel, remake, and reboot while also highlighting the myriad ways it knowingly embodies each—this authentic character growth is wholly new.

I went in expecting a generic plot-based thriller with Max knocking on doors for a mystery that risks his life and mostly received an emotionally introspective character drama about mortality and grief instead.

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 acting is good (Jakubenko and Bowden’s relationship feels especially real), the effects are great (moving above and below the waterline to show shark and lifeboat is a nice cinematic touch), and the suspense effectively earned my investment. This film might just surprise you too.

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.

With a sprawling cast of familiar faces, Murder at Yellowstone City reveals itself as character-driven from the start.

Roessner hasn’t written an anti-war or pro-war film. Sand Castle merely shows the honesty of war’s infinite complexities.

A faulty delivery device doesn’t diminish that truth or take away from the requisite happily ever after we know is coming. Purefoy, Hayman, Middleton, and Mays are too good to let that happen. They’ve willingly embraced the clichés to honor a story brimming with the kind of hope we need currently and it’s worth following their lead.

Pryce and Holder are perfectly suited to the roles and form an authentic chemistry that excels above workplace formalities.

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.

The delineation between good and evil maybe a bit too black-and-white throughout, but none of those aspects remove the potency of the lessons learned along the way.

As directed by Jonathan Teplitzky, the film carries with it a theatrical style heavy on dialogue with everything portrayed in close-up besides some very attractive wide shots setting each scene.

Despite there being zero surprises from start to finish as it fulfills its mass-marketed, for-profit formula, Next Goal Wins never talks down to us. It ensures its characters learn from their mistakes and that any mean-spiritedness is exposed as being about the giver rather than the receiver.

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 all over the place in tone, themes, and cringeworthy melodrama.

Everyone involved does the best with what they’re given, though, perhaps saving The Long Night from being even more forgettable than it already is. The script does none of them any favors by fearing its own mythology and hiding it in a way that makes it seem like it has none.

Sheridan lends his role the necessary nuance it deserves and de Armas imbues hers with a wealth of unspoken pain, but neither effort receives its payoff. The film conversely squanders both instead.

The biggest draw is watching Cage embrace a character with the unironic comedic flair we haven’t seen from him in quite some time, but it only works effectively if he’s able to balance the realization that Gary Faulkner isn’t a joke.

Many will place blame on Ewan McGregor simply because he may have been ill-prepared to handle such a dense work as his directorial debut. Fault should lie with him as captain, but besides an artificial, mannered feel throughout, my main issue concerns John Romano’s script being so intent on solving the central mystery of Mary’s (Dakota Fanning in adulthood) vanishing.

The filmmakers’ obvious ambitions fall prey to cinematic convention.

The After School Special vibe at the back of Marshall Burnette’s Silo isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. Because beyond creating a captivatingly suspenseful premise with which to build a plot, grain entrapment is a significant enough issue to demand a path towards awareness as much as cinematic entertainment.