Katie Rife

Overly simplistic piece of Southern poverty porn, which asks questions it’s not really prepared to answer and proceeds from a set of dubious assumptions that undermine whatever nuance it does possess.

The Night Clerk will be remembered, if at all, as a movie de Armas was way too good for — an unfortunate mile marker on her road to movie stardom.

The film flounders a bit in its second half, as it struggles to maintain the tension of its inciting incident. But Harduin’s performance as Gloria goes off her meds and descends into her own private world would be impressive for an actress of any age, let alone a 13-year-old.

While the film is kinetic, colorful, and frantically paced, it’s also not quite as outrageous as Miike’s gonzo ‘90s yakuza movies.

The film is propelled by a confident lead performance from Alexandra Daddario.

Its clever comedic writing couldn’t quite overcome its sometimes subpar camerawork.

On a moment-by-moment level, the action in Birds Of Prey is compelling, drawing more from the Hong Kong style of unbroken takes designed to show off the choreography than the chaotic quick cuts of most American blockbusters.

If one of the boundaries being tested in this film is viewers’ patience, the reward for—to use a refrain repeated throughout the film—“trusting the darkness” is well worth the commitment.

Even thought it’s a bleak and uncompromising film, it’d be unfair to call Beanpole “misery porn.” The questions it’s asking are much more complicated, and more cutting, than that.

Dolittle is full of anachronistic pop culture references and poop and fart humor, jokes delivered in suspiciously low-impact style by the film’s animated animals.

The Murder Of Nicole Brown Simpson is directed like a Lifetime thriller, relying heavily on stark lighting and ominous music to create suspense. (Neither is effective.)

If you’re looking for something truly groundbreaking—or hilarious—Like A Boss isn’t it.

Overall, though, the director and co-writer’s merciless style is muffled by The Grudge’s over-reliance on clichéd jump scares; more damningly, only some of these are effective, even in terms of cheap thrills. This becomes especially true in the film’s second half, when the ghosts become at once more human and less creepy.

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.

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.

Puts a forward-thinking feminist bent on the Riverdale school of neon Twin Peaks fetishism

It’s impressive to see such sophisticated camera work from a newcomer. But to combine that with experimental narrative and sound techniques, and place it in a detailed mid-century modern environment, and to have all these ambitious gambits (mostly) work, all on an independent film budget...well, it’s quite the feat.

Bliss approaches its aesthetic with a straight-faced intensity, pummeling the viewer with woozy handheld closeups and violent bursts of montage until you feel like maybe you might have been dosed somehow on your way into the theater. The only irony here is that Begos says it’s his most personal movie to date.

A slick and thrilling take on the intersection of mental illness and creative inspiration that also doubles as a commentary on toxic masculinity.

The thing that haunted me the most about the film afterwards—aside from Riley Keough’s choking screams in one particularly intense, symbolically loaded sequence—was the ludicrousness of its plot.

Sure, the cast is full of exciting names, but all of Jarmusch’s absurdist thematic flourishes—the Romero tributes, the meta commentary, the political humor—are half-baked and inconsistently applied.

Horror remakes don’t have to be inferior rehashes, as films like Jim Mickle’s "We Are What We Are" (2013) and Luca Guadagnino’s "Suspiria" (2018) have demonstrated. But this Rabid nibbles where it should clamp down hard.

The film is a snappy, glib tour of recent history in the Adam McKay mold, hydroplaning through the stormy real-life events that led to Ailes’ departure from Fox News with windshield wipers on high and blinders strapped to each side of its head.

Little Women is the best kind of Hollywood film: thoughtful yet escapist, sophisticated yet accessible, expertly crafted and deeply felt. The performances are all top notch—Ronan and Pugh, especially, breathe new life into their characters. Gerwig’s direction is also first rate.

As a result, it isn’t as cohesive or inspired as her penultimate film, the Oscar-nominated Faces Places. But as a parting gift from one of the most singular creative minds of the 20th century, it’s as life-affirming as they come.

The overall look of the film has the shiny, empty appearance of a newly rehabbed condo, and the quips about women’s love of cheese and gigantic closets have a similarly hollow sassy-greeting-card feel. But the outfits in those closets, it must be said, are fabulous.

There’s really not much to recommend about this film: the animation lacks texture, the score is overwrought, the plotting is scattershot, and the character design is uninspired.

This accessibility actually hurts the film, exposing the flimsy balsa-wood architecture under all those frills.

Unfortunately, the decade that passed between the two films was long enough for the approach to grow tiresome.

Anyone who’s still engaged by the end of the movie is probably too young to remember the original.

The movie is a mixed bag, well shot and well acted enough to mostly keep the viewer’s attention, but meandering enough to frustrate at the same time. It’s bookended by flat, brightly lit, purely functional scenes that don’t quite erase the memory of the surrealist horrors that unfold at its peak, but do come close.

Always in control of its deeply bizarre, suburban surrealist tone, even when its story is more like a series of comedy sketches than a feature film.

What the film lacks in depth and focus, it makes up for in personality. Murphy’s obviously the star here, but Moore’s loyal entourage comes to the movie with plenty of charisma of its own.

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a disappointing misfire all around, but no matter—like so many other Netflix original films, it’ll be reabsorbed into the streaming void soon enough.

Whatever pleasure there is to be found in watching a film like The Golden Glove is in the intellectualizing, and the film does prompt a series of provocative questions about the implicit contract between artist and audience.

Breaux is able to wring great pathos out of the character of Adam with very few words, which only makes Henry and Polidori’s arguments about ethics, which increase in frequency as the film goes on, seem all the more tedious.

It’s campy, it’s gory, it’s a little bit titillating, and it features one of those novelty performances from famous actors that tend to bring a lot of press to otherwise under-the-radar productions.

The film isn’t an abject failure by any means; it has some funny jokes, a couple of really good performances, impressive creature and set design, and pleasing cinematography. But when it comes down to it, It Chapter Two just isn’t all that scary.

A meta-commentary on filmmaking in general and cinematic conceptions of beauty in specific, the film is clearly enamored with its own cleverness—which isn’t to say that it’s not clever, just that a more clear-headed film could have distilled its ideas better, and been more satisfying as a result.

Mostly, the action, while bloodier than one might expect, is as goofy and dim-witted as the dialogue.

The Angry Birds Movie 2 is the very definition of empty-calorie cinema—bright and shiny and satisfying enough for a few fleeting moments until it’s balled up and thrown in the trash. It’s also fast-paced, interesting to look at, and notably less irritating than the original, which is all you can really ask of a film like this one.

While the film boasts a refreshing premise — mob wives taking over their husbands’ territory when the men land themselves in jail — what lingers afterwards is the stale taste of its lukewarm execution.

Perhaps that’s why, despite some skillful scene-setting and committed supporting performances, Them That Follow is lifeless enough that small inconsistencies in accents, costuming, and set dressing appear more significant than they would in a more, well, thrilling thriller.

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 is Tarantino’s Eden, the unspoiled garden when the things he loves don’t have to be sought out or championed because they permeate every aspect of life. The sense of blissful immersion extends to the film’s costuming and production design, both of which are as meticulous as one might expect.

In a cinematic landscape where retro throwbacks are predictably bundled around the same small set of nostalgia-friendly filmmakers (we all love Carpenter, but come on), it’s positively invigorating to see a loving tribute to a director’s influences that’s also aggressively avant-garde.

As it is, it’s another jarring mismatch in a film full of them. The core issue seems to be indecision over whether this is all supposed to be camp or not.

For the most part, it works. True, the haunted objects are silly at times, but unlike The Nun, Annabelle Comes Home is only funny when it’s supposed to be. And it’s enjoyable because of its clockwork efficiency, not in spite of it.

As a show-business fairytale, Wild Rose is pretty standard. But as a character study, it’s something special. That’s due largely to Buckley’s star-making performance as Rose-Lynn.

Now, Garris’ unflagging enthusiasm for uplifting his fellow creators has found a new manifestation: Nightmare Cinema, a sort of sideways revival of the Masters Of Horror franchise.

Director F. Gary Gray, while experienced in both action and comedy, also struggles to keep the film’s picaresque plot on track.

Spencer provides her character the kind of human dimension only a performer of her caliber could muster.

You can’t just have two hours of kaiju slapping each other around like a gargantuan WWE highlights reel.

The Perfection takes deep, fetishistic satisfaction in pushing the envelope, then pushing it some more, building in seductive fits and shocking starts to an orgiastic frenzy of cinematic excess. Is it a progressive movie? Not especially, but that’s okay as long as you know what you’re getting into.

What good high school movies do is take the basics of the teenage condition and refocus them for a specific generation’s point of view. That’s where Booksmart excels.

Director Gail Mancuso, a TV comedy veteran, gets the desired effect — as manipulative as it may be — out of both the funny scenes and the sad ones, leading up to a finale that can only be described as weapons-grade tearjerker material.

While the chemistry between the core cast is easy and convincing, generated by skillful banter and impromptu singalongs, the scripted elements of Wine Country are more mixed.

For as much as Charlie Says tries to reframe everything we know about the Manson Family, its characterization of the women remains shallow.

The scales ultimately tip slightly in favor of style, but when that style is this gorgeous, remembering a movie for the way it looks rather than its plot isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The film is so full of jump scare fake-outs and shout-at-the-screen moments, it neglects to build sustained suspense — a far worse sin than its lack of logic, which can actually be kind of fun.

While Benjamin’s choice to give Wendy little to no backstory makes sense given the film’s overall efficiency, Body At Brighton Rock would be more memorable if she was fleshed out a little further. It’s more fun to cheer for a character that you really feel like you know — even if you just met them.

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.

In some ways, Rafiki recalls Nijla Mu’min’s 2018 film "Jinn," which also superimposes a unique, beautifully realized point of view onto a conventional coming-of-age story.

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.

Less a thrilling adventure tale than a trip to a teenager’s messy, sock-strewn bedroom.

The worst part of The Haunting Of Sharon Tate is how seriously it takes its ham-fisted themes of fate and the nature of reality; the movie opens with an Edgar Allen Poe quote, for f*ck’s sake.

It’s a candy necklace of a movie: sweet but chalky.

Farrell’s Kentucky accent here is as merely passable as his Chicago accent in Widows was, and Parker’s precocious interest in physics and chemistry seems similarly phoned-in. Both characters are just there to keep the story moving, to provide awestruck reaction shots as we move from oddly muted spectacle to agreeable callback to the heartwarming happy ending.

If you can tolerate a little saccharine piano music and ethereal backlighting with your food porn, Ramen Shop is an appetizing little bite of multicultural foodie edutainment.

The slimness of the plot—and its familiarity, if you’ve seen Lelio’s original film — also allows the viewer to focus on Gloria Bell’s true raison d’être: the one and only Julianne Moore.

This is a slight film, unlikely to be remembered in the long-term by anyone but completists who discover it during deep dives into its leads’ respective filmographies. But, oh, what a giddy ride awaits them.

It’s a feature-length in-joke for fans who will always pause if My Best Friend’s Wedding pops up during a lazy Saturday afternoon channel-surfing session, but who ultimately consider rom-coms a slightly shameful guilty pleasure.

One thing that does translate is Morland’s extremely dry, extremely dark sense of humor, which manifests at the bleakest moments of the story like whoopee cushions lining the pews at a funeral.

It reinvents the zombie movie.

Unlike "Gotti," King Of Thieves doesn’t have one iconic actor burning through decades’ worth of goodwill. It has six.

Rather than defanging the story, sanding down The Standoff At Sparrow Creek’s political implications foregrounds its exceptional dialogue and strong performances, revealing the lean, punchy, beautifully shot ’70s-style thriller underneath the controversial premise.

This year’s entry into the winter animal-movie canon, A Dog’s Way Home, comes this close to just being a simple, cute animal movie, until the humans complicate things.

Screenwriter Julie Lipson’s well-written, naturalistic dialogue helps pass the time, as does Michelle Lawler’s lovely scenic cinematography. But although what we get instead stands on its own merits, this survival thriller could have used a few more thrills.

The escape-room scenes themselves (a.k.a. the good stuff) are imaginatively conceived and deftly executed enough to justify a late-night cable viewing.

Buffalo Boys isn’t terribly concerned with sweeping vistas or slow-burn character development. Its primary function is simply to entertain, which in practical action-movie terms means lots of brawling and lots of blood.

In the end, Bird Box’s most significant shortcoming is that it’s just too inert and unfocused to work as sci-fi horror.

This is a headache-inducing spectacle that raises more questions than it answers, and does little to inspire viewers to go find the answers themselves. But hey, at least it’s too loud to fall asleep to.

It’s a more cynical, and arguably more realistic, depiction of the unique malignancies of fame than this year’s other Oscar-baiting pop musical, "A Star Is Born." But ultimately, it’s no more insightful.

Wu weaves together the stories of two live-streaming stars, a manager, and a devoted fan to form a portrait not only of the extreme acceleration that defines contemporary Chinese pop culture, but also the bizarre fantasy economy and parasitic interdependencies of late capitalism as a whole.

So it’s bit disconcerting, the unfamiliar sensation provoked by his new movie, The Favourite: Is this the first Yorgos Lanthimos film that can be called genuinely fun?

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.

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.

In many ways, the film is reminiscent of last year’s arthouse horror hit Raw, using monstrous transformation as a metaphor for puberty and sexual awakening. It’s not as extreme as Raw in its content, though, nor as skillful in its technique.

While Alvarez acquits himself with thrilling action sequences and breakneck pacing, the overall impression left by this “New Dragon Tattoo Story” is one of a razor-sharp blade dulled by the demands of franchise filmmaking.

Every aspect of of the movie feels as if it’s been determined by algorithm, workshopped and test-marketed into a state of pleasant, fleeting dullness.

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."

Maintaining an audience’s sympathy for a character through their most fumbling, frustrating lows requires compassion and clarity of purpose, both of which McCarthy amply demonstrates here. It’s a career-best performance, the kind of nuanced turn we all suspected she could deliver, if only someone would give her a chance to do it.

Revelations completes Hellraiser’s transformation from an original and refreshingly adult concept into teens indiscriminately screwing and dying, hollowing out the soul of the franchise while functioning as a loose remake of the original.

Sheila’s humanity is a necessary counterbalance to Strickland’s intentionally stiff, formal style, which manifests in the film’s efficient pacing and crisp sound editing as well as its stylized performances and lavish production design.

Burning actually justifies its running time by slowly building paranoid atmosphere before an explosive, hauntingly ambiguous finale.

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.

It uses a thin plot touching on the classic Hong Kong action themes of brotherhood and loyalty as an excuse to string together a series of gonzo action set-pieces so ingeniously bloody that one could conceivably classify the film as horror.

The film introduces interesting themes as though they’ll build to something, only to let them spill out like so much viscera from an especially nasty wound.