Josh Larsen

A horror meditation on the biblical origins and self-perpetuating permutations of patriarchy, Men unfolds like an echoing primal scream.

What follows is a slightly unfocused twist on the sex-and-death genre; promiscuity is punished, yes, but out of hypocritical jealousy rather than any sort of moral high ground. If this doesn’t entirely work, it’s because of the movie’s depiction of the elderly couple.

This is largely an obligatory Marvel Cinematic Universe installment until it becomes possessed, quite literally, by a horrific spirit.

No matter where the film leaves us narratively, however, its evocation of estrangement—even, perhaps especially, as part of an Internet where we can talk to anyone at anytime—is both emotionally palpable and cinematically potent.

The Northman throws a few wrinkles into its vengeance story, but doesn’t offer up much food for thought. This is mostly a visual extravaganza of gritty historical detail, mythic imagination, and brutally horrific violence.

The movie’s best moments are those of cinebro-bonding between Pascal and Cage’s characters.

Apollo 10 ½ is so adept at making the mundane magical that it almost doesn’t need the conceit that gives the movie its title.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is at once a showcase for one of the world’s greatest acting talents and a manic meditation on reality, regret, and the richness of family bonds. It’s a movie that’s difficult to describe, but easy to love.

Turning Red is a wonder in the way 13-year-old girls can be: monstrous one moment, heart-melting the next.

Plemons amuses as the arrogant billionaire, dripping with disdain for his captor, but both he and Collins are saddled with speeches explaining the essences of their characters, as if they weren’t trusted to do so in their performances.

Crawl lends credence to the claim that you should never give up on a director.

Even while understanding that much of Belfast is supposed to be from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), a young boy who witnesses the beginning of Ireland’s “Troubles” in his working-class neighborhood (and serves as something of a stand-in for writer-director Kenneth Branagh), I still felt a type of artistic naivete at work—a belief that all you need is black-and-white cinematography and a cute kid to create something of deep meaning and emotion.

With a more streamlined narrative, it would have been stunning. As is, the movie certainly marks Diallo as promising.

In the end, After Yang is less interested in excitedly speculating on the inner life of its title character than it is interested in what we homo sapiens do with the lives we’ve been given.

Pattinson and Kravitz bring real heat to their scenes together—there’s a great moment where he holds her against his chest as they’re hiding from a pursuer and their breathing slowly, erotically falls into rhythm. Even at three hours, the movie could use more of her.

Koepp’s fairly straightforward screenplay doesn’t take us in many surprising directions, so the film’s pleasures lie in Kravitz’s jittery performance (she’s working in a similar vein to Claire Foy in Soderbergh’s other recent psychological thriller, Unsane) and the experimental filmmaking that’s usually going on in the corners of a Soderbergh production.

Encanto takes on a complicated, mature topic—multigenerational family dysfunction—and dramatizes it in ways that are simultaneously literal and metaphorical, which is something only the best of Pixar usually manages to pull off. Here, the result is at once limited and meandering, underexplored and overstuffed.

Train to Busan is a cleverly concentrated shot of zombie terror.

The comic setups take longer than they should, then the punchlines give you a violent bear hug when they should be lightly slapping you on the cheek before quickly moving on to the next gag.

Other than these visual delights, Moonfall isn’t much fun.

The meta irony is that even as Scream 2022 is telling certain fans to back off and calm down, it’s also wooing a new generation. Luckily the film is clever enough to earn such … well, let’s call it appreciation, rather than allegiance. It’s just a movie, after all.

Ready or Not works best as a black comedy about how far the obscenely rich will go to keep what they (undeservedly) have.

The result is a laboriously convoluted narrative (Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange plays a significant role) that only grows exponentially as the story unfolds, to diminishing returns.

Crawford is riveting in the lead, tapping into David’s impotence and barely suppressed rage while also making him sadly sympathetic—especially in the sweetly sincere moments where he tries to maintain a genuine connection with his children.

Of course, Cruz is luminous—especially as she embraces a maternal side that is at once nurturing and ferocious.

So what is a Coen brother movie like? Imagine a work of German expressionism as filtered through the stark spirituality of Ingmar Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Full of nuance and understanding, C’mon C’mon meets a family in crisis and proceeds to hold them in its gentle hands.

Bergman Island deftly interrogates the idolization of art and the lionization of artists, while also distinguishing between experiencing a place and sucking it for “inspiration.”