Katie Walsh

The sensually crafted Stop-Zemlia is a fine conduit to bring forth those visceral sense memories of teenage life

Italian Studies is a unique curio of a film, a free sketch of time and place melting into a singular subjective experience that asks “does memory matter?”

The overall concept, and its execution in the writing, is classic “Scream.” If there are quibbles to be had, it’s that the new film’s attention feels divided between the old and the new, with not enough time or space to fully develop everyone’s personal motivations.

The result is a swift, self-reflective, often funny and always original reimagining of the material, which sees Wachowski reassessing the existing characters and lore of “The Matrix” while embroidering the text with new ideas and details. It’s less of a reboot than a remix, and this time, it’s a bop.

Hadaway’s previous career as a sound editor is all over this piece, as is her personal experience as a collegiate rower. She has crafted this film as catharsis, and like her protagonist’s journey, it’s both harrowing and triumphant.

House of Gucci is Gaga’s movie, and she won’t let you forget it. She delivers a bravura performance as Patrizia, an alchemical blend of sheer charisma, power of personality, undeniable magnetism, and most importantly, commitment to the bit.

It’s a simple but resonant tale, but Encanto is a charmed and charming film that just might offer a bit of healing too.

When JR turns his gaze toward a person and pastes their image on a wall, he’s inviting others not just to participate in this project but also to look their way, to pay attention to someone or something by seeing it differently in the world. It takes a village, but all they need is paper and glue.

Like any good sunset, the beauty to be found in “Cusp” is in between the darkness and the light, in the almost imperceptible shades of gray. Most important, it’s found in the bonds the girls have with each other.

Clifford the Big Red Dog has a decidedly innocent throwback appeal.

Utilizing such overt stylization of a high-concept approach, Violet is a bit of a one-trick pony. But Bateman, as well as Munn, manage to pull it off in a feature-length format, and Violet’s eventual hard-earned redemption is deeply satisfying.

This visual and aural feast does have a stumble or two on the dance floor, though in the 11th hour, Wright manages to right the ship, with an assist from the ever-reliable Taylor-Joy.

This dark and dreary monster movie is indeed horrific, but it’s also undoubtedly a downer, for more reasons than likely intended.

If he is trying to say something (and it’s unclear what that might be), all of the fuss and muss obfuscates any message, and even worse, any emotional connection to the film. This latest dispatch is indeed a profound disappointment.

In trying to do too much, Halloween Kills ends up doing nothing at all, other than tarnishing this franchise’s good name.

For an adoptee, the notion of “family” is so much more complicated and layered than it might be for someone else, but what Found powerfully argues is that within these many layers, there is an abundance of a unique kind of love, and understanding, to be found. You just have to look for it.

It’s a different register for Rapace, who remains controlled, with a few explosions of emotion. But she is present and instinctual, imbuing Maria with a steely but soft power: decisive, persuasive and feminine.

The Addams Family 2 feels as if it’s lost the spark of the first one. The jokes that felt fresh in the first film are stale here, with the story’s twists glaringly predictable.

Seth’s cinematography is stunning, meeting the mood of each contrasting moment but set within a cohesive look that gives the film a dreamy, unreal quality.

The ending is ambiguous enough to be refreshingly un-clichéd. While “I’m Your Man” is very romantic in its own way, the movie is elevated by pondering not just love but life and our impending relationship to advanced artificial intelligence, a question that is surely already upon us.

The effort put into making this film work is palpable, but the result is something deeply surreal and strange. Perhaps this story simply can’t work as a film, or perhaps it wasn’t a very good musical to begin with. It’s a question that may be debated for years to come.

Layered storytelling that tests the limits of the screen and the fourth wall allows for Clark and Brownstein to play at playing themselves, making for a sharp, comedic commentary on the way fame complicates identity.

As Chon calibrates a wide variety of emotions, allowing space for all the agonies, ecstasies, repressions and excesses, he crafts a tale of intergenerational traumas and personal redemptions that is an emotionally complicated yet ultimately cathartic viewing experience.

Queenpins does nothing other than waste your time with bad wigs and poop jokes, and that is the biggest crime of all.

It’s underwritten yet over-stuffed with songs, and the production itself feels chintzy and airless.

No Man of God is impeccably and carefully directed by Sealey, and the craft on display is remarkable.

DaCosta, who made her directorial debut with the remarkable abortion drama “Little Woods,” firmly announces herself as an artist at work with Candyman, a genuinely terrifying and artful horror film that speaks with a bell-clear voice to the current moment, the product of centuries of racist power structures.

The modern noir style and genre innovation are such a neat cinematic twist that it’s a bit of a letdown that the world doesn’t always feel fully fleshed out.

Larraín crafts a mesmerizing cinematic rhythm that alternates between montage and slow camera movements; the film’s push-pull tempo mimics that of Ema’s own intimate machinations.

Reynolds is a bit too glib and smug to buy as the romantic lead. It’s actually a relief that the movie salvages the romance by relegating it to the game world. But the whole film remains a bit too glib and smug anyway.

Written by Scott Wascha, the script is simultaneously crude, rude and whip-smart. Wexler‘s direction is a rapid-fire attack of highly stylized skirmishes and aestheticized action.

Taylor plays Dawn’s slide into this mental health crisis beautifully, and with conviction, and Owen is stunning as the high-achieving, yet fragile Melanie, who seeks oblivion and solace in a risky boyfriend (Ian Nelson).

Joe Bell is a tale of emotional redemption for a man who relearns what it means to “be a man,” and his moments of triumph are the quietest ones.

It wants to comment on the algorithms that rule our lives, spewing constantly recycled content at us seemingly at random, but it is exactly the thing that it points to: an upcycled Frankenstein’s monster of intellectual property spraying a stew of Easter eggs and Halloween costumes at the viewer, praying that something sticks.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is a pastiche of its predecessors, using this mosaic of tropes and formula familiarity as a shorthand to keep the film pared down to the basics of what exactly makes it tick: increasingly sadistic puzzles and a great cast of characters.

Pribar’s humane and heartbreaking drama is beautifully photographed and performed; a loving, warm, and even sexy film about death and dying that is teeming with life.

Zola’s authorship and Bravo’s respect for her storytelling make Zola a wholly original experience. It’s a brutally honest account of sex work, often dangerous and infrequently sexy, punctuated with Zola’s one-liners, observations and recounting of laugh-out-loud moments.

DeMonaco and Gout cook up such delicious comeuppance that you can’t help but indulge in the pleasure of revenge, even if the terrors and pleasures are incredibly fraught.

Lee (who directed episodes of “Broad City”) and Glazer swerve from comedy to horror, using the genre as a vehicle for social commentary about modern motherhood, misogyny and manipulation. False Positive is Glazer’s “Get Out,” which is a phrase you want to scream at her character, Lucy, over and over again.

In F9, bonkers on top of bonkers results in a truly delightful and vividly sensorial time at the movies.

Some may enjoy the cacophonous, raunchy, lowest-common-denominator dreck that The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard has to offer. To those I say, godspeed. But it’s undeniable that the actors, the audiences and the filmmakers all deserve better.

Censor is a bold artistic statement, inspired by the history of its own genre, though it’s not an uncritical assertion, posing complicated questions about media effects without offering easy answers.

[Barden] becomes the vessel to express Riegel’s quiet cri de coeur, which is not just yearning to escape one’s own circumstances but the absolute necessity of it.

Johnson-McGoldrick’s facility with both the tropes of the "Conjuring" films, and the Warren’s relationship, keeps the film swift and emotionally resonant, while Chaves pushes the cinematic aesthetic to the max.

Spirit Untamed is a sweet film with a moving message about embracing family, heritage and most importantly, yourself, just the way you are, even if that means bravery and recklessness often go hand in hand.

What’s so maddening about A Quiet Place Part II is the unused potential. Krasinski opens up the world and timeline of the film, but doesn’t utilize it in any meaningful way, introducing new ideas but then jettisoning the opportunity. Again and again he falls back on more of the same old tricks from “A Quiet Place,” which was a bore to begin with.

At times, it can feel a bit like “Clue” with so many plausible characters and motives swirling around and around, but Bana keeps it grounded, as a professional trying to do his job the best he can, while caught up in memory and trauma.

Lindon’s youth is remarkable, because her point of view on the experience of the teenage girl is so immediate. But such a confident and self-assured debut would be remarkable for a filmmaker of any age, as “Spring Blossom” is a finely wrought, sensitively felt and artistically bold work.

There’s enough good humor and just a dash of vinegar to temper the tone from becoming too treacly or sentimental, though the triumphant moments are incredibly effective and moving.

Wrath of Man feels like a homecoming for director and star, and an evolution, too. With Statham in the lead, playing one of his classically taciturn and tactically lethal action heroes, Ritchie is as restrained and controlled as he’s been in years.

It’s hard to pick apart a film that is as well-intentioned as Here Today, which earnestly wants to celebrate life, and every beautiful, tragic, poignant and surprising moment. But for a film that seeks to be so humanist, there’s only one truly human character in it. As likable as he is, that oversight is impossible to ignore.

The film is a vital historical corrective, inscribing the names of these women into history as the innovators, independent thinkers and trailblazers they were.

Writer-director Chen, along with the two leads, delicately navigates this story, and the result is something deeply humanist and nuanced rather than sensational, though the rainy milieu adds drama to the proceedings.

Four Good Days is a portrait of addiction that wants to dive into the ugliest parts: the detox, the physical deterioration, the flop houses, the things Molly did for drugs. But, despite Kunis’ haggard appearance, Four Good Days only flirts with ugly, pulling away from the most vile details at the last moments.

This honest examination of a passionate, disastrous, adult relationship, might feel like a warning itself. Papadimitropoulos doesn’t offer easy answers, but what Monday brings is something tangibly real and profoundly human.

While We Broke Up is focused, lean and heartfelt, it does feel at times a bit insubstantial.

Wheatley’s film works on a purely elemental level; like nature itself, the film is a sensory event, the narrative often subsumed by the aural and visual experience.

Favier carefully dissects the complex power dynamics at play, as well as the emotional devastation that results from the abuse. It’s an honest, and surprisingly, even hopeful portrait.

Burger presupposes all the right questions (and anxieties) about the realities of climate change-induced space migration; it’s just that as a film, Voyagers feels like a role-playing game rather than a character-driven story.

If it’s vibes (and destruction) you seek, Godzilla vs. Kong delivers.

Every character is merely a stereotype or symbol, not a fully-fleshed out person. Indeed, one has to wonder what every actor, including Monaghan, is doing in this flimsily written psychological thriller, but perhaps, that question isn’t even worth the speculation.

Lean, mean and brutish, Nobody is best enjoyed as the juicy piece of pulp that it is. But Odenkirk, stepping into an action hero role for the first time, brings a sense of dolefulness and rue to this performance.

Shoplifters of the World, in fact, belongs to Cleo, not just because Howard is such a dizzyingly charismatic actress but because her story, which unfolds parallel to Dean’s, is a heartfelt coming-of-age drama that perfectly embodies the youthful angst, ennui and romantic longing expressed so well in the music of the Smiths.

The brawny Enforcement doesn’t shy away from brutal action, but the film is more in line with recent police thrillers like Deon Taylor’s “Black and Blue,” and Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” which fuse overt sociopolitical commentary with genre thrills.

It zigs when it might zag (unless you’re already familiar with Wynne’s life story), and “The Courier” becomes something much more dark, complex and moving.

While the sentiments feel authentic, the ludicrous plot, filled with holes, doesn’t do the emotional aspects of the story any service.

A cinematic delicacy as rare as the truffle itself.

What happens in Night of the Kings is a piece of traditional oration and impermanent art, significantly marked by both its temporal and improvisational qualities. It’s both a power struggle and a ritual practiced by the collective within a microcosm of society housed under the oppression of the state, and a powerful demonstration of the transporting, and liberating, power of narrative.

Horror films often offer catharsis, but rarely are they also as deeply sorrowful as Keith Thomas’s The Vigil, a horror film based in Jewish faith and culture.

Any trenchant observations to be found in this Blithe Spirit only pop and fizz into thin air like Champagne bubbles. Though effervescent, it’s a bit too ethereal for its own good.

A film littered with tired tropes.

This friendship comedy in which best friends Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig), do, indeed, go to Vista Del Mar, is so outrageously infectious the only choice is to submit to its kooky charms.

Sophisticated management of tone makes Two of Us rich and nuanced, complex and utterly heartbreaking. Within the folds of the film, simultaneously a love story, thriller and tragedy, nearly anyone can find an anchor, or a wound. It illustrates with devastating clarity what a mess secrets can make, and how one errant, unpredictable thread can unravel any carefully calibrated lie.

Hartigan has a knack for sensitive, human dramas, and while Little Fish takes place in a near-future heightened reality, the story is relatable not only because we’re all living through a pandemic ourselves, dealing with grief and loss on a scale that ranges from the deeply personal to the impossibly large, but because this kind of loss is also very real.

The frankness with which Palmer addresses the very adult challenges that kids sometimes face is refreshing, not to mention the ways that kids can influence adults about living life authentically, before the undue influence of strict social norms takes hold.

In only an hour and 24 minutes, Glass has crafted a film rich in history, reference, psychology, spirituality, style and even some gore, but it never overstays its welcome, recognizing that less is more.

No Man’s Land is an interesting twist on the border drama, daring to depict Mexico as complex and nuanced country: welcoming, fascinating and menacing in equal parts. But the story still centers a white male experience and hero’s journey.

This wildly entertaining eco-feminist crime caper, anchored by a winning lead performance from Agnieszka Mandat, isn’t just worth the wait, it’s an imperative watch.

The film wants to speak to some kind of old school, lone-ranger American hero type (as portrayed by a man from Northern Ireland), but it’s too vague, shying away from any controversy, to say much at all.

There’s not a thrill to be found in this ostensible thriller, a rote kidnapping exercise taped together with digital blood spatter and an overly dramatic score, vaguely gesturing at global crises from five years ago.

The film positions Black women at the center of their own stories, and this authentic portrayal of the platonic relationships that hold them together feels rich and true, a celebration of a feminine community that becomes family.

If we strip away the comets raining fire on the earth, this film is about how the ways in which how we treat each other can be a matter of life or death. Even in that darkness, it dares to have a little hope.

It places a modern lens on complicated questions of art, love and perspective in storytelling, in an entertaining and intelligent thriller of intimate proportions.

While Another Round inspects the varying effects of alcohol on daily life, it’s far from clinical. Waves of ebullience, love, humor and sorrow crash on top of each other, as anyone who’s ever been overserved can attest to. It isn’t prescriptive about drinking, and doesn’t seek to impart any message other than that life is hard, and sometimes dark, and sometimes ecstatically beautiful.

Hart and Horowitz map this hero’s journey onto her growth as a mother, her empowerment proving to be a source not just of strength, but love — a rare commodity in a crime flick.

Because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performances are excellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal.

In Zappa, this legendary artist’s uncompromising nature is bracing, bold and utterly refreshing.

Gripping, incisive and shockingly powerful, Collective is easily the documentary of the year.

The film capably, if expectedly, proceeds down this standard procedural path, progressing from investigation to trial, with flourishes of genius every now and again from Pearce, having some campy fun as van Meegeren. But even with a few courtroom theatrics and some profound ethical issues to chew on, The Last Vermeer is ultimately a dreadfully milquetoast outing.

Polak’s film is an unflinching exploration of beauty, identity, sex and self in the wake of a life-changing event.

The revelation here is Vaughn, who in his 6-foot-5-inch frame, physically channels the body language and gestures of an otherwise petite, cowering teen.

This dire and dreamy road movie is impressive work from director and co-writer Winkler (he co-wrote with Theodore Bressman and David Branson Smith).

In many ways, it feels like the midcentury pulp thrillers it emulates: well-plotted and grisly, but almost ephemeral. It is Lane’s performance that lingers, one that dares to be uniquely hopeful about the future, and letting the old ways die.

The story is deceptively simple. However, built around a universal quandary of our tech-obsessed modern world, underpinned with a folkloric tale that appeals to our most primal child selves — yearning for acceptance and connection — it has a heavy metaphorical resonance.

Everything hums along until it abruptly crashes and burns, and one can’t help but wonder if the film was picked apart to fit a PG-13 rating (the original is R) and a sub-100-minute runtime.

What makes Synchronic sing is the two together, zinging each other with sardonic one-liners, their conversations meandering to the cosmic and the macabre after a few whiskeys.

While Bad Hair is more humorously incisive than truly terrifying, Lorraine, in the leading role, sells it, while Simien creates space to discuss the ways in which women enforce unfair standards of beauty on each other in a white patriarchal society, using the horror genre as a blunt but effective tool to clear the path.

Erika Cohn’s documentary Belly of the Beast, which depicts the fight to ban non-consensual sterilizations performed on female prisoners in California, is at once a thrilling legal drama and heartbreaking depiction of devastating human rights violations that you can’t imagine happening in the 21st century.