Jenny Nulf

Torres mixes in everything that makes his specific brand of comedy unique into Problemista: Alejandro's toy pitches are obscurely sassy, his imaginative use of CGI and costuming is fantastical, and his dry delivery is the perfect juxtaposition to the film's outlandish absurdity.

For a film that’s rooted in genre tropes, there’s no genre atmosphere to visually anchor down the film’s themes. With the spectacle fizzled out, visually Williams’ film isn’t enough to take it over the edge and make it memorable. Still, first-time direction hurdles aside, it’s a serviceable, fun goth romp.

A shot-for-shot remake would have had more school spirit than this.

The last hoorah of Synder’s messy DC Extended Universe – one that could have been a thrilling goodbye and a reminder that not all of it was bland – will likely sink to the bottom of the ocean, a forgotten relic of an era. Momoa’s Aquaman deserved a lot more.

Wish doesn’t evoke swelling feelings of nostalgia, but rather a longing for the pristine storytelling of the studio’s past.

In the end, Saltburn doesn’t have a lot to add to the conversation Fennell keeps wanting to have about the power of white men in this world. It’s a surface-level critique of the upper class and a style-over-substance poke at the out-of-touch aristocrats and the bitter have-nots.

The heart is in the right place for Your Lucky Day, but the execution is a little loose. Brown puts a lot of tenderness in his film, particularly with the film’s central couple, but there’s not enough friction and surprise to create a tight holiday-set thriller.

It all seems as if it was a riot to film, but the finished product is just a few bombastic jokes stitched together to create a mid riff.

It Lives Inside at least isn’t just another mainstream horror weepy about grief – there’s a lot more that it’s playing around with, which is so refreshing in a time where horror is either extremely insane for the purposes of camp or about extremely damaged people who should just go to therapy. It’s nice to see a spooky movie that is having fun with a new box of tools.

The Nun II might be a slight step up from the slog that was The Nun, but that’s a low bar to creep up from.

Gran Turismo is perhaps a more basic film for Blomkamp, but a welcome reminder that his breakthrough first feature District 9 wasn’t a fluke. He manages to give a film that is more or less an ad for a video game a little bit of heart.

Golda isn’t a failure of skill, but one of vision. Nattiv and writer Nicholas Martin deliver a biopic that feels like a complete misfire. Stale and without any sense of self, Golda unfortunately does nothing for Israel’s only female prime minister.

The Unknown Country is a naturalistic exploration of America that’s hopeful of human connection in the midst of a country that sometimes feels hostile. It’s simplistic, but honest and true to Maltz and Gladstone’s optimism in the face of a place that sometimes bleeds hopelessness.

Similar to Wan’s The Conjuring universe, Insidious has long overstayed its welcome, reaching the point where its spark has quelled and there’s nothing interesting buried within these characters anymore. We have reached the end of the Further.

As an introductory lesson to what it means to be intersex, Every Body serves its purpose well enough, but there’s no bite to the storytelling, no immediate call to action.

The Blackening feels like a cash grab, a film so blatantly made because “horror is so hot right now.” There’s no love for the genre, and if you don’t admire something to some degree, it’s hard to properly satirize it.

Parmet’s ability to repackage a story that oftentimes can feel exploitative and gritty through a more mature and compassionate lens is quite sincere – a challenging film that’s worth the effort.

Szifron and his co-writer Jonathan Wakeham play it too safe, creating an aggressively stale procedural that doesn’t pack the gut punch it wants to deliver.

The film itself is fictional, filmed in a 1.33:1 ratio to mimic the framing of the inspirational photographs. It’s absolutely breathtaking work – the camera helmed by Maria von Hausswolff captures the unassuming beauty of Iceland, but also does not hide its frigid nature, both terrifying and beautiful.

Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s feminist views have consistently been at the center of his work, but his latest film, No Bears, is an ambitious, powerful piece that puts himself in the center of two narratives, parallel to each other, in which two generations of women are forced into difficult situations because traditions and laws have made it almost impossible for them to be with who they love.

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s latest film Close is a devastatingly heavy watch, a delicately filmed tragedy that takes hold of your emotions and never lets go for the duration of its run time.

Kore-eda’s nonjudgmental approach to all his films is what makes him such an enticing auteur, and with Broker he brings what he excels at to a new destination with an all-star South Korean cast that really understands his material and delicate subtleties.

All Quiet on the Western Front is more grisly, disturbing, and sadistic than any horror movie in 2022.

The film retroactively makes Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis look like a masterpiece for actually trying to be bedazzling and insane, because Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is so stale it might as well have been shoved directly onto a streaming platform to wither away forgotten – unlike Houston’s discography, which will be remembered for decades to come.

Fraser often brings a warmth to Charlie that the film desperately needs, but his positivity is only an ember in a fire dying in the pouring rain.

There’s a sharpness to Poitras’ filmmaking that’s remarkably powerful, a film that’s sure to leave one breathless as the credits roll, an utterly effective snapshot of a woman who has dedicated her life to those who deserve a louder voice. It’s a film that’s simply stunning.

Emotional investment is what makes any film work, and Good Night Oppy’s main issue is that it’s too focused on accurately portraying the history of the project over bringing together the people who poured their lives into making it a success.

Causeway is at its most successful when the film is patient, giving the space to have its characters ruminate over how their past experiences don’t have to define their futures. It’s the kind of film that only succeeds with incredible performances to back it up, and Neugebauer achieves that with Lawrence and Henry guiding her film in such a touching, beautiful way.

For years it feels like the upcoming tequila shortage has been whispered about. But with so many celebrities announcing their own tequila brands, sometimes it’s hard to grasp the dire situation many tequila plants are facing. Juan Pablo González’s film Dos Estaciones centers around this very real crisis, a subtle reflection on the political and environmental pressures Mexican-owned tequila factories are facing.

When de Armas’ performance is given the space to be quiet and chilling, Blonde suddenly hits, and what once felt hollow feels painfully visceral.

Often too slick and too posh for its own good, there’s nothing really enjoyable about The Invitation. It’s technically fine, but fine is not want you want from your lusty vampire genre. There’s no glitz or glamour to set it apart from the pack, and that’s ultimately its demise.

Where Mad Max: Fury Road was lean, Three Thousand Years of Longing feels like a rough draft that should have stayed in a dusty bin somewhere in the middle of a tourist shop.

What begins as a punchy, feminine-biting satire becomes fuzzy after the first act. It’s an admirable effort, but an overstuffed, demanding one as well.

A fun, inverted single-location thrill ride, director Halina Reijn creates one rainbow swirl of a good time.

Resurrection nearly nails it – it’s masterful in its body horror elements and its creeping anxiety is crafted effortlessly – but the film’s final moments pull the rug, failing to twist the knife in the gut, sticking the kill.

My Donkey, My Lover & I isn’t going to break the mold, but it’s an easy stride of a film that’s bubbling with joy.

Edgar-Jones’ easygoing allure isn’t enough to bind Where the Crawdads Sing together, though, leaving the film a generic, dull outing.

Minions: The Rise of Gru might not be sophisticated storytelling, but not all animated films have to be. Sometimes they can just be about joy.

Where the film loses steam is in its configuration; the slow-paced journey from setting to setting builds the tension a bit unevenly in service of the film’s themes. These bumps in the road leave Emergency imperfect, but it’s still a chaotic and thoughtful ride worth hitching onto.

Hit the Road is stuffed with thoughts, ideas, and metaphors, which can leave the film feeling weighty and thick, but for those willing to dig and see past its simplistic charms, it’s quite an ambitiously layered debut.

Petite Maman is a fine balance of heartache and whimsy.

Hatching does its best at cracking the surface, but never quite sinks its claws as deep as it wants to.

Goran Stolevski’s dreamy debut You Won’t Be Alone is a poetic glimpse at generational trauma.

The expectations for West’s return to film were high, and luckily X brings this master of horror back with a bang.

There are so many interesting components of Umma that never click, wasting a completely original idea on banality.

The Foo Fighters are a rare band that has maintained a roughly decent amount of relevancy decades after rock ruled the music industry. Their self-aware horror-comedy is a sweet ode to their ride, but where Medicine at Midnight brought them a nice wave of good praise, Studio 666 feels like a dud – a horror movie with no good hooks and a rock & roll film that lacks the bombastic energy that’s ever present at the band’s live shows.

Despite Paxton’s high ambitions to serve up be the next great elevated horror movie, there’s not enough meat on its bones to ultimately feel satisfying when the final holy image is served.

Introduction feels like a mediation on how time chips away at first impressions: What started as something beautiful and simple can become complicated, unattainable, and hard to hold on to.

The documentary’s sugar rush display of healthy fandom is a rarity, giving the film legs outside its pandemic novelty.

Farhadi takes a seemingly simple idea and threads holes and complications into it, creating a pressure cooker of intensity based on a handful of white lies and distrust. It’s a tragedy of simple misunderstandings, and misgivings.

The fifth Scream is an ultimate reflection of the beloved first film, and perhaps its only misstep is that the directing duo didn’t relish in their finale, soaking in some of the beautiful homages they visually set up. Even so, Scream is a blast, a solid setup for more to come.

Labyrinth of Cinema is a chaotic entanglement of ideas and endearing characters, a sweet departure for the luminous artist Ôbayashi was.

Hamaguchi’s films, from Happy Hour to Asako I & II, are all explorations of love, the complex, overwhelming emotion that has the power to break your heart. Drive My Car dissects that heartbreak, what it means to love someone and how to come to terms with that love once they are no longer around to fix what was broken.

It’s a personal, aching, and romantic film that’s swimming in the complicated trials of youth.

There is a raw sexiness to Benedetta that’s deeply engaging and thrilling.

Writing With Fire is at its best when emphasizing the barriers these women have to overcome daily to fulfill their desires to be journalists, and showcasing the importance of Khabar Lahariya’s work where corruption runs amok.

Julia is a thorough documentary, concise in a way that’s ideal for the casual couch surfer. Like Child, the film’s a delight, but slightly unlike her, Julia doesn’t bring any new techniques to the table of biographical documentaries.

There’s a hollowness to its beauty, as much as there is with its messaging.

Hamaguchi has a beautiful outlook on mistakes and the complex emotions that make up humanity, and his tenderness toward each character he brings to life makes him one of the best storytellers working today.

Based on the folky country song “Just Like Old Times” by Todd Snider, the film feels like a throwback to the heyday of Austin: eclectic acoustic guitars, dingy pool halls, dive bars with fountains of whiskey, neon signs, and lots and lot of late-night tacos.

Titane is a dance. Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to her engrossing debut Raw is a flashy, traumatic body horror explosion that is just as gnarly as her first film.

While St. Vincent’s The Nowhere Inn is not the standard performative music documentary, it opens a window to her soul that many are never able to give away so freely in front of the camera.

Showalter’s film never finds the right tone, leaving its audience with pleasantness in favor of sharp wit.

Chon’s ambitions are astonishing, but his bloated script needed an edit or two. It’s a film written with big moments for big performances in mind, which is too painfully obvious as the film treads on.

The camp in Malignant is fun, but if only the camp was all the film needed to be as monumental as Wan’s previous horror entries.

Wild Indian is a horrifying and thought-provoking thrill ride that packs quite a punch when it hits right.

Ema is a vibrantly loud movie, propelled by dance and lust, and a celebration of sexuality like no other film before it. It is a fountain of energy, both bewitching and terrifying all at once.

Don’t Breathe 2 is a horrific and delusional sequel to its predecessor, a tight thriller that had grounded, down on their luck characters, and a film that knew when to pull out the big guns so the audience would root for its unlikeable lead.

Stephens’ film is a sweet gesture, a personal ode to a hometown hero of his, and while the filmmaking itself is rusty, there’s enough love from Stephens and Kier alike to keep this little film afloat.

The casting is the only part of the movie that feels genuine, with Hudson channeling the Dreamgirls emotive performance that earned her an early career Oscar.

Enemies of the State fumbles along like a bad thriller, with shocking turns that land with a dull thud.

Undine’s hauntingly aching romance is enchanting, as thick as the feeling of inhaling water into your lungs. There’s a drowning sensation to Petzold’s myth-building in Undine that’s totally engrossing, once again proving he is one of the world’s most exquisite love story composers.

Summertime’s boisterous enthusiasm sometimes finds an endearing spark, but it never erupts like the fireworks that scatter across the L.A. skyline at the film’s end. It’s a mess and it’s exhausting, with its heart always on the brink of exploding from its exhilarating optimistic nature.

With Roadrunner, Neville is able to give the icon a send-off that’s tear-inducing and loving, a gift to those who will always be inspired by him.

Admirable efforts aside, I Carry You With Me is still an enchanting mix of drama and romance, but also a timely, poetic love letter to Iván’s home country, Mexico.

Maijidi’s latest was Iran’s submission for the most recent Oscars, a film that’s gentle, packed with all the familiar beats you find in these City of God-like child POV gritty fairy tales.

There is no denying that being parentless during the Great Depression called for a lot of resilience, but 12 Mighty Orphans’ underdog story unfortunately plays out to farce levels of entertainment.

It’s disappointing to stop rooting for a blockbuster behemoth horror series, but The Conjuring movies’ quality and talon-tight hold has rapidly deflated over time.

Cruella is not as perfect as the seams Estella stitches, but there’s something ever so charming about its strut.

Inspiring true story? Perhaps not, but certainly a story that’s genuine enough to earn a few smiles.

It’s as if Finding You was written by a computer program that studied 2000s rom-coms, taking the worst tropes and clunkily blending them together.

Spiral embodies the franchise James Wan and Leigh Whannell built, while being totally refurbished for a new generation.

The Resort is an unfortunate mess of a first film that at one point in time would have maybe found a second life on a video store shelf next to the likes of Turistas and The Ruins, but is destined to be swallowed up by the endless abyss of VOD.

Downstream to Kinshasa is a simple narrative, with a group of resilient survivors getting from point A to B, but its simplicity is impactful. It is clear and concise about its purpose, and by the end his subjects’ desires are explicit.

This Is Not a Burial, it’s a Resurrection is arthouse cinema at its best, a lyrical eulogy from a confident auteur whose poetic touch is meticulous and grand.

Tunisia’s first Oscar-nominated film, The Man Who Sold His Skin, is an emulsion of ideas, each as ambitiously thought-provoking as the next.

It’s a film you can easily fall into and out of, a breezy walk through the park. French Exit is simply an enchanting day at the movies.

The Inheritance is a metrical, stunning piece of cinema. There’s so much to unpack within its layers, and its vision and dissection of what Blackness means for Julian and his community is absorbing, perceptive, and stirring. Asili is truly a talent worth keeping an eye on.

Come True aims to explore the layers of the dreamworld, and the terrifying monsters that lurk in the depths of our minds. Yet the unconscious world writer/director Anthony Scott Burns dissects appears to evade him as well, with layers that lead to empty answers and a leading woman who is paper thin.

Long Weekend had all the tools to make a wistful, escapist romance that explores and overcomes some of the stigmas of mental health, but it flatlines.

There are echoes of Greta Gerwig and Dunham, and Barr’s voice never fully comes through in her homage. Instead, Sophie Jones feels like bites from these auteurs Barr so clearly admires, with brief blips that feel genuinely her own.

Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry is like an epic emo video diary entry. It’s sentimental, reflective, and is layered with great music (and great music shirts – shout out to Eilish’s father’s incredible Phoebe Bridgers tee collection.)

Completely miscast with uninspired production, this remodeling of Blithe Spirit is a faint shadow of its Coward roots, a resurrected retired poltergeist without its same purpose or vigor.

Sachs’ downward spiral into her father’s personal life has been in the works for roughly 26 years, with footage collected from 1984 to 2019. By using a mixture of 8mm film to pristine digital, her experimental documentary feels worn, an eclectic mixture of home videos that blends in with the film’s familial nature.

The longer it goes, the more True Mothers gets weighed down by its melodrama. Kawase is just hopeful and soft enough to keep her film glowing, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing, and is a bit frustrating with its blatant red herrings.

Atlantis isn’t an easy film to watch, and it’s not meant to be. It’s an anti-war film without solutions, but what it clear is that Vasyanovych believes in humanity rebuilding from tragedy.

A film that is equal parts a celebration of a young woman’s life and a horrible document on her death, Finding Yingying brings humanity to the often stale true-crime subgenre while also giving us a unique perspective from someone on the outside of the American justice system.

Thorough and competent, The Dissident works as an essential political documentary. It covers Khashoggi’s assassination in detail, and very clearly makes it known that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the one behind it. However, it’s certainly a step down for Fogel, and while its production is glossy and polished, the lack of inertia keeps The Dissident from reaching its full potential.