Katie Rife

The onslaught of death is more relentless (and numbing) here, yes. But we don’t know these young men as well when they do meet their deaths, which makes the loss hurt just a little less.

On a purely technical level, the film is fine, if overly reliant on indie-movie clichés. It features some good performances from proven actors, and touches on some interesting philosophical questions.

Like most Netflix movies, no matter what The Mother would be a perfectly serviceable thing to have on in the background while you tidied the living room or answered emails on your phone. The spy-movie setup is generic enough to follow while doing something else, and the villains’ motivations are only as specific as the plot needs them to be, which is to say not very specific at all.

Lane’s lighthearted approach will probably convert more than a few viewers to the TST cause — it’s a short walk from pissed-off atheist to smirking satanist. Given how entrenched the culture wars have become in America, maybe all Satan needs at this point is a good publicist.

Mocked by her peers, mistreated by her husband, and burdened by mental illness, Jackson lived with the psychic evils that lurk in her writing. But for Decker, what’s important about Shirley’s misery is how she used it to fuel her work.

This is one of those movies that shows rather than tells—always preferable, even in the moments when the big picture is still coming into focus.

Despite some compelling performances, this R-rated but genial dramedy is a lot like its protagonist: unconventional, yet playing it safe.

The specificity and authenticity of its setting are the biggest thing Holler has going for it, given that indie drama is rife with variations on this type of social realist coming-of-age tale. The gloomy mood also tamps down thriller elements that appear late in the story, which leaves little but despair for the audience to chew on.

The Tigers’ rooftop hideout is like something out of Hook, and the film moves along at a brisk, Spielbergian clip; however, the combination of dark themes mixed with whimsical fantasy strikes a tone more similar to Guillermo del Toro’s early work.

This film has a fire in its belly. But more importantly, it also has a heart full of love: love of life, love of freedom, love of Black people and culture, and love for its ferocious, complicated, brave women.

McCarthy loses focus after this symphony of tightly controlled terror midway through the second act, adding a little too much backstory and a few too many scenes to the film’s denouement. Still, when Hokum works, it really works.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes Border. A thematically rich and deeply strange blend of romantic drama, magical-realist fantasy, and crime thriller, Sweden’s official entry to this year’s Academy Awards splits the difference between the highbrow cringe comedy of "Toni Erdmann" and the lowbrow cop fantasy "Bright."

As a crime thriller, Emily the Criminal is well-written and absorbingly paced, but it’s Plaza’s fearless work that makes it memorable.

Turns out, what really turns series creator E.L. James on is well-heeled domesticity.

Equally importantly, it shows how much an artist like Mu’min can bring to otherwise well-trod material, and how valuable underrepresented points of view like hers really are.

Belgian movie star Virginie Efira plays the title character with complete conviction, whether she’s kneeling in awe before the Virgin Mary or being pleasured with a dildo carved out of a statue of the Blessed Mother.

The third film from writer/director Travis Stevens (“Jakob’s Wife,” “Girl on the Third Floor”) is forged in fire and blood, taking his eye for striking visuals and elevating it to psychedelic new heights.

Thyberg keeps her cards close throughout Pleasure, using the film’s verité framing to obscure the extent of her involvement as a director. The film feels even-handed, in the sense that its fly-on-the-wall style lets situations speak for themselves.

It’s a return to form for its director after the misstep of “Men,” a film that’s grim and harrowing by design. The question is, is the emptiness that sets in once the shock has worn off intentional as well?

If you know someone who doesn’t quite grasp the emotional terrorism behind concepts like gaslighting and victim-blaming, sit them down with Lucky.

There are a lot of wild twists and turns in this movie, but underneath there’s a constant: the agony of being trapped inside of a human body, and the itchy, restless desire to transcend it.

Beyond the characterization of its complex anti-heroine, though, I Kill Giants doesn’t stray too far from an established collection of story beats, stretched thin over a slightly too-long 106-minute run time.

A specifically French-Canadian and Native coming-of-age story that’s heavy handed in some ways and delicate in others.

There’s a lot to appreciate about Strawberry Mansion as an aesthetic object, a flight of imagination, and a sci-fi vision.

Kusama expertly manipulates the tone throughout, ratcheting up tension and releasing it in quick bursts of nervous laughter, only to build it up again.

A slight, sweetly cynical indie dramedy about family and belonging and the ways we cope with life’s disappointments.

Pin Cushion is as quirky and as prickly as its title, an unclassifiable dramedy about bullying and mother-daughter relationships that proposes that mean-girl behavior doesn’t go away after high school.

Kendrick’s image as an actor isn’t necessarily tied to dark, edgy material, but as a director she shows a talent for staging scenes of Hitchcockian suspense alongside her signature wit.

While it isn’t the worst film the franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

Nicolas Cage plays a mediocre stand-in for all 'canceled' men in this provocative cringe comedy, driven by a sharp screenplay and subtly surreal filmmaking.

There’s something about the savagery of “Conann” that’s freed the director to really go there, birthing a ferocious, fabulous Athena out of his splitting forehead.

Little Woods revolves around a remarkable lead performance: Thompson shows her range as an actress in this film in ways that, as fun as they can be, she just doesn’t get to in any of her blockbuster roles.

While Jude succeeds at lampooning the chaos of contemporary political discourse, Bad Luck Banging takes on a few too many issues to make a coherent statement on any of them.

These events unfold with a sense of sickening inevitability, and when the scenes we all know are coming finally come, they’re as icky and hard to watch as they should be. But beyond simple documentation, the movie’s intentions are fuzzy.

At its heart, Miss Juneteenth is about the relationship between a mother and her daughter, which Peoples brings to the screen with a subtlety that’s very true to life.

As Vázquez keeps adding elements in its last half hour, Unicorn Wars starts to feel like the beginning of a trilogy, or maybe a TV series that got canceled unexpectedly and had to wrap up its storyline in a handful of episodes.

The shining star of this little community is Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas), who’s put together an intimate gathering of friends to celebrate her recent promotion to Shadow Minister for Health.

If there’s a lesson to be taken from Hellbender, it’s this: Underestimate the small and unassuming at your own peril—whether that be the character of Izzy, the film’s real-life creators, or the movie itself.

Concrete Utopia is a polished disaster drama with a bleak and brutal view of human nature.

In some ways, the more novel element is the film’s depiction of chess, which in Katwe is a popular sport on the level of football. And while that might seem unlikely, it’s accurate, at least in the wake of Mutesi’s success.

Pop Aye is a standard, if well-made, indie road trip dramedy. But, you know, with an elephant.

The film is so self-aware, in fact, that it raises questions about which of its flaws are intentional and which are, well, flaws. The filmmaking here is as polished as one might expect from a Hollywood crowd-pleaser, well lit and only occasionally showy in terms of its camerawork. And the combat and car-crash stunts are great — they better be, given the subject matter.

Hounds Of Love is a remarkable achievement in that it does exactly what it sets out to do, and what it sets out to do is traumatize the hell out of you. You just might not want to watch it twice.

Their attraction seems more intellectual than physical, which keeps the film’s romantic energy at a lukewarm simmer throughout.

At first, Zauhar’s project for the film isn’t obvious, but once it clicks into place, the movie becomes a richer experience.

Mija weaves a more nuanced emotional tapestry than is typically seen in immigration stories like this one. Yes, sadness and fear are present. But gratitude, resentment, guilt, stress, hope, and excitement are also essential to Doris’ story, her family’s story, and the Mexican-American community at large.

When Sheep Without A Shepherd goes big, it goes really big, both in terms of melodrama and directorial flair. Chen is delightfully wicked as the morally compromised chief of a corrupt and abusive police department, however, and the plot is engrossing enough to forgive the movie’s excesses.

Although the film still sparkles, a trimmed-down version focused solely on the Wangs might have had the explosive power of a hand grenade. But the story isn’t the main attraction here. The real star of the movie is Yan, whose carnivalesque sensibilities emerge fully formed in this, her first feature.

This is a relentlessly grim film with an unsettling view of human nature; its audience will be small and self-selecting, but those who like having their guts ripped out by a movie will leave the theater satisfied.

For all the film’s sweeping, romantic ideas, the actual experience of watching The Dig is a lot like sitting at a bus stop.

The carnage, it should be re-stated, does not disappoint.

A sense of play and joyful collaboration permeates Leonor Will Never Die, even as it engages with serious issues of life, death, and legacy. It reminds us that love, like creativity, is a living thing, and that both are meant to be shared.

Ammonite is too pallid to really get your blood flowing.

In fact, all the weed smoking and street-smart sidewalk banter aside, Skate Kitchen’s perspective is, in many ways, downright innocent; as such, it may be a better fit for adolescent viewers than adult ones.

Byrne adds a twist by appealing to a growing and under-represented segment of the extreme art forms’ shared fan base: parents.

Tim Robinson’s first movie-star role is like an extended I Think You Should Leave sketch with fancier camera work and a guest appearance by Paul Rudd.

Union County doesn’t completely bypass addiction-drama clichés. But its detailed, humanistic approach successfully creates a realistic world that supports its muted storytelling

Promising Young Woman fancies itself edgy, and relishes complicating the catharsis of something like the scene where Cassandra smashes some douchebag’s windshield with a tire iron after he yells at her on the road. But while the craft of the film is top-notch, and the writing razor-sharp, its nihilistic point of view isn’t as unprecedented as Fennell seems to think it is.

The plot does have a few weak points and dangling threads, and the PG-13 rating ensures that the violence is tamped down before it can reach its full bloody potential...But the tongue-in-cheek tone is so consistent that M3gan is a hoot anyway.

S. Craig Zahler’s horror-Western hybrid Bone Tomahawk is a strange movie, one that might take more than one watch to fully understand. Not that it’s deliberately obscure, or has a plot too complicated to follow the first time around. It’s actually a pretty straightforward film, albeit one filled with eccentric choices.

While the film’s attempts at slapstick can be painful — in a cringing way, not in a brutal way — Heavy Trip does succeed in creating perhaps the most charming ensemble of morbid dorks since "What We Do In The Shadows."

The most remarkable thing about First They Killed My Father is how quiet it is.

This film is charming and educational enough, but it’s not especially profound; it flirts with big ideas about the origins of life and the twin cycles of creation and destruction but doesn’t really let them sink in.

This is a work of feminist melodrama, one that uses real events as a backdrop for a romantic, woman-centric tale of rebellious spirits and dreams deferred. As such, it might not be the most nuanced portrayal of this particular chapter in history. But it is passionate, fathers and doctors be damned.

The years have not mellowed Miike’s flair for over-the-top bloodshed, but they have refined his style. His decades of action-movie experience are evident in this kinetic, punchy live-action cartoon, which remains lively and charming enough to keep the audience engaged throughout most of its epic 140-minute running time.

Cummings and McCabe zero in on an angle they do understand—the death scream of the untouchably powerful man—and can make fun of with precision.

Although its bleak worldview may be a turnoff for viewers who like their media a bit more life-affirming, if you’ve ever said to a friend, “it’s so fucked up, you’ve got to see it,” The Dark And The Wicked is one horror movie that lives up to its title.

Now that superhero movies have gone from disreputable entertainment for children to global events ushered in with awed reverence, it was time for someone to come along and pop the balloon. Pulpy and outrageous, irreverent and ultraviolent, The Suicide Squad does so with a smile.

To be fair, it’s difficult not to be outshone by Jessica Williams, whose star has been continually on the rise since her debut on The Daily Show in 2012. It’s interesting, then, that this irrepressible personality would have her first starring film role project be as low-key as The Incredible Jessica James, especially since it seems to have been written just for her.

Soaked in neon and coated with a thick layer of 16mm film grain, it’s a visceral throwback to the gritty action fare that lined video store shelves in the early ’80s as grindhouses gave way to the VHS boom—coincidentally, also the era that made VFW’s core cast famous.

As bold (and potentially alienating) as Guadagnino’s take on Suspiria might be, it’s also extremely precise, and he places each sweeping caftan and gurgling sound effect with the focus and intention of an haute cuisine chef fussing over garnishes. Prepare your palate accordingly.

Shang-Chi’s hero is on a journey to become himself, but the movie is lost inside of the machine.

Although Wladyka foregrounds the movie’s razor-sharp edge—there’s a torture scene midway through that’s especially shocking—there’s a political undercurrent to the story, as well as an emotional one, that give Catch The Fair One uncommon resonance.

A wryly misanthropic slasher comedy about a woman whose fetus commands her to kill.

Under the weight of Larraín’s visual style, the emptiness at the center of Ema’s character nearly collapses the film, before a gobsmacking ending reveals her true motivations.

While the points where Wildcat goes beyond simply being a feel-good nature documentary and delves into Harry’s mental health struggles are honest, they raise more questions than they answer.

Pete Ohs’ best film yet.

Pickles in a bag, runaway sheep, dusty roads, the same movie over and over until the tape wears out—these are the sense memories that remind the filmmaker who he is and where he comes from. To share it with the world in this way is an act of profound generosity and love.

It’s true that Lib smashing against the brick wall of blind faith is an essential part of the story, but at some point, The Wonder crosses a line between eerie ambiguity and aimless floundering.

The biggest selling point of Ingrid Goes West is its screenplay, which is full of deadpan comic flourishes.

Hugh Grant’s face is perpetually locked in a concerned grimace as Bayfield, whose mind always seems to be elsewhere when he’s not doting on his wife.

Mazzei’s script and Goldhaber’s direction complement each other beautifully, with true-to-life details like the tacky dollar-store carpet that decorates Alice’s camming room and the pink taser she keeps in her car playing off of—and enhancing—the naturalistic dialogue.

These character arcs play out in subtle, naturalistic ways, with restrained performances that underline the tension between the film’s polite surface and unsettling subtext.

The film is arguably too long, with a mushy middle section that slows the momentum of its savage first third. But Pike’s performance remains sharp as her character’s blonde bob throughout, and the pleasures of watching her and Dinklage face off are significant.

It’s all either whimsically charming or annoyingly cute, depending on your temperament. The thing that keeps the film from spinning out into the atmosphere (literally or figuratively, your choice) is the chemistry between Mamet and Athari.

Whether or not it’s to anyone’s particular taste, the fact remains that this is an audacious film that asks viewers to take its hand and come along to some particularly dark, surreal, and grotesque places. Throughout that descent, it holds on with a grip that’s tight enough to keep it from spinning out into ridiculousness. If a film this bizarre can produce gasps instead of giggles, that itself is a remarkable achievement.

What stands out the most about Poe’s second feature is the director’s exquisite taste. Every single design element, from the bisexual lighting to the camera a delivery person uses to take a photo of Celestina, is carefully selected as part of a harmonious overall aesthetic.

Monster movies aren’t generally known for their subtlety, but leave it to Nacho Vigalondo to make one that keeps surprising its audience until the very end.

The cuts are quick and the sound effects are bone-crunching, and were it not for an extended lull in the middle of the movie, it would be an exhilarating ride.

French creature feature Infested delivers the creepy-crawly kicks promised by its title, although its human elements don’t really go anywhere.

Grabinski’s writing style is goofy and (obviously) reference-heavy, and the jokes spray indiscriminately like so many bullets from an automatic weapon. The constant wisecracks get tiresome after a while, but not before introducing some clever gags and quotable quips.

Film noir is a cynical genre, and the script makes gestures toward establishing that these characters live in a cold world where nothing matters but the almighty dollar. But del Toro is a romantic at heart, and can’t help swooning where the subtext wants to spit. His sensibility isn’t a bad thing. It just works better when the monsters aren’t human.

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person isn’t a wholly new take on the subgenre. But it is a charming one — a rom-com for teenagers (and teenagers at heart) who swoon when cute boys talk about death.

The result is occult horror as potent as the snake venom in one of Selveig’s dreadful “cures.”

The gauzy cinematography also helps, as does the mise-en-scène, which poses Anne’s chosen family of proud perverts in studied tableaus reminiscent of the Renaissance masters. Only, you know, in a porno.

The Ugly Stepsister’s torture-porn take on a classic fairy tale is told from a teenager’s point of view, but the grotesque elements are appropriate for gorehounds of all ages.

This is a strange film all around, distractible and full of Olympic-level tonal gambits. Viewers’ mileage will vary. Wildly.

Stanley does a remarkable job keeping the film grounded in emotional reality all things considered, but it’s admittedly an idiosyncratic movie about unconventional people made by an offbeat director.