Katie Rife

Although this is a story about innocence lost, the overwhelming impression left by “The Friend’s House is Here” is one of sweetness and hope.

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.

As one might expect from a movie based on a play and directed by a famous actor, dialogue and performances are the driving force.

Saint Maud distinguishes itself through an emphasis on character over metaphor, as well as the nightmarish depths of the darkness at its center. We only get to see the true ferocity of Glass’ vision for a few fleeing moments, but have faith: It’s enough to burn into your soul forever.

It’s about perseverance and the power of working together toward a common goal. Those themes are universally relatable — as is the giddy thrill of watching racist forces of imperial oppression get exactly what’s coming to them.

If The Love Witch simply raised the profile of its director, Anna Biller — a true auteur who not only wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film but also designed and hand made its sets and costumes — then it would be a success.

Sound Of Metal is nothing without its sound design. It’s a story about music and deafness—both auditory phenomena—and its success depends on being able to put you into the main character’s beat-up Converse. The film does accomplish that, thanks in part to its unique, first-person approach to sound.

The film comes directly from its writer-director’s own lived experiences with racism, which gives it a rawness and an urgency that’s hard to ignore. And given America's cognitive dissonance about the looming threat of white supremacy in this country, an unsparing take on the issue like this one is very much needed. If you feel sick watching this movie, that means it’s working.

Although the film ends up as a shallow rumination on revenge and single-minded dominance, it’s hard to beat as spectacle. In terms of making history exciting and engrossing, The Northman is about as titillating as gateway drugs get.

There are things in life that you can’t avoid, and things that you can’t take back. Vulcanizadora doesn’t know how to cope with these truths, and will alienate much, if not most, of its audience as a result. But the honesty with which it expresses these dark thoughts is commendable — and more reflective than a dozen articles on the “male loneliness epidemic.”

As a statement on American entitlement and the intersection between capitalism and colonial terror, it’s a frying pan to the back of the skull: clunky but powerful.

A rousing, spectacle-filled blockbuster, Godzilla: Minus One takes the king of the monsters back to his roots in post-WWII Japan. The story is character-driven, but the monster scenes are exciting and effective.

Whether this challenging film is more than the sum of its formally inventive parts will depend on a viewer’s patience, as well as their tolerance for ambiguity and discomfort.

The film gained an unfortunate reputation as a gross-out cannibal shocker on the festival circuit, and while that categorization is not entirely, technically incorrect — this is a piece of body horror, and an intensely visceral one — it detracts from the striking imagery and layered symbolism of Ducournau’s uncommonly assured debut feature.

The film works best if you approach it as a fantasy, with Jen as a near-supernatural angel of vengeance; otherwise, it’s easy to get hung up on the inconsistencies as the action grows increasingly over-the-top.

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.

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.

It is an emotionally vulnerable piece of work, touching on everything from the pain of experiencing a mental illness that no one around you understands to what it means to waste your life.

Mistress Dispeller” isn’t really about Wang, or her methods...It’s about the mysteries of the human heart. Its exploration of these subtle depths is sensitive, as are its conclusions.

Huesera doesn’t necessarily re-invent either of those subgenres. But it does present them in a vessel that’s so artfully crafted, and filled with details that bring the characters and their relationships to such vivid life, that it accomplishes a lofty goal for genre cinema: Taking a familiar formula and turning it into a personal statement.

King Coal goes deeper into the cultural roots of the opioid crisis, looking at a region both devastated and nurtured by “the King” and asking what a future without it might look like.

He can afford the best treatments and technologies and — by the end — even to extend his life, because he’s a well-off former NFL player. Most patients don’t have these luxuries.

Director Greg Mottola deserves some credit for trying to give the film a little bit of cinematic flair, something that’s lacking in many Hollywood comedies these days.

A pulpy, violent tale of revenge based on a comic serialized in a popular Playboy-esque men’s magazine, Lady Snowblood didn’t have to be art. But director Toshiya Fujita treated it as such, utilizing a complicated flashback structure and expressionistic cinematography to tell the story of Yuki Kashima, a highly skilled assassin trained from birth to find and kill the men (and woman) responsible for murdering her father and raping her mother before she was born.

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.

Strange Darling, J.T. Mollner’s self-consciously edgy gotcha of a serial-killer thriller, is so high on its own cleverness that it never stops to think about what it’s actually saying.

The Survivalist rewards with thoughtful cinematography — one fluid shot that effectively shifts the balance of power in a scene is especially noteworthy — and character development. But viewers looking for zombie attacks or thrilling chase scenes should go elsewhere.

Nyoni is clearly confident in her vision and the story she wants to tell, and in her capable hands, the result is spellbinding.