Katie Rife

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.

Stories like these are why 23andMe has you sign a waiver when you send in that tube of saliva, and after watching it, you’ll never think about those tests—or a trip to the gynecologist’s office—the same way again.

Bay’s latest, Ambulance, is a thick, juicy, hilariously overwrought, gloriously stupid steak upon which the vulgar auteurists of the world can feast.

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.

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?

While Pennywise is legitimately terrifying, overall, It is more intense than it is chilling.

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.

Gariépy reveals very little about her character’s state of mind in these moments, and this ambiguity is what makes “Red Rooms” so intriguing.

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.

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.

Fitting for a film backed by the groovy sounds of the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, the biggest myth Crip Camp is out to bust is that disabled people aren’t sexual beings.

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.

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.

The fantasy and horror sections of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, including a scene where our core trio must fight reanimated jack-o’-lanterns, are full of wonder. Some of them — and this is a sentence we never thought we’d write about an Eli Roth movie — downright sparkle.

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

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.

The overall effect is as if you fed a book of bawdy medieval verse to ChatGPT, which is perfectly in line with the film’s most provocative aspect.

Starts off strong but dilutes its impact with every consecutive reveal.

Flanagan has a couple of solid genre films on his résumé already; at this point in his career, it would have been surprising if Origin Of Evil wasn’t better than Ouija. It is better, though, in every conceivable way, from casting to story to atmosphere.

The Adam Project is zippy, agreeable sci-fi fun that produces a few good chuckles. But in moments where undiluted sweetness is required, the film’s glib writing stands out in a negative way.

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.

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.

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.

What keeps it all from becoming high camp is the film’s eerie atmosphere and unsettling childlike quality, which sucks the viewer into a nightmarish alternate reality with such plainspoken innocence that we have no choice but to accept it at face value.

Where the film stands out from other dramas of its type is in its poignant exploration of the little-discussed emotional consequences of single-mindedly pursuing the American dream.

Overall Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is as shallow as a puddle of Dom Pérignon spilled on the bow of a luxury yacht. That’s the joke, you see.

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.

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