Manuel Betancourt

Quippy, zippy, and punchy, this teen-focused take on everyone’s favorite pizza-loving vigilantes is a refreshing reappraisal of a property that could very well have felt stale in 2023.

More than a biographical documentary, Eno emerges as a brilliant and endlessly inspiring creative manifesto.

Slow reveals itself to be quite a tender portrait of love and companionship, of what our bodies yearn and want in others, and how we could do well to upend the stories we tell each other about living and loving another.

Memory House is, above all, a fable about identities lost and cultural artifacts in need of recovery that doubles as a thrilling and foreboding ride designed to rattle audiences at home and abroad with equal verve.

With its tricky tone and its wildly ambitious themes, it’s not surprising to find Silva’s outrageous, salacious film stumbling as it brings its many threads into focus. Like Sebastián’s art and his journal in the film, Rotting in the Sun remains a patchwork of quotes and ideas and provocations hastily if hilariously stitched together.

Rather than let its timely concerns be embalmed in didacticism, Alegría has crafted a film about healing generational trauma through new modes of living and experiencing desire — of reshaping the world in a way that feels inclusive and expansive, and which does away with relics of a past that should be left to rot at the bottom of a river.

Equal parts wistful and sensual, vivid and gentle, Stolevski has gifted us with a swoon-worthy romantic drama that looks at that first blushing crush not as an ephemera in need of being remembered but as a living memory that can pulsate and ache precisely because it’s never left you.

The film comes alive in its second half, which deepens and complicates the story we thought we were watching, about a disgraced cop trying to run away from the violence that’s set to cost him his job and his reputation. For some, the tender empathy that runs through the film’s latter half may not be enough to offset its choice of sympathetic leading man.

Even as the twists and turns get ever more preposterous . . . Dale’s direction and Fox’s commitment go a long way toward making Till Death a glossy, entertaining lark. Just maybe not one with anything of substance to say about marriage as its cheeky title suggests.

The only way to enjoy Queens of Drama is to surrender to its excesses. Which explains why it works so perfectly as a bold lesbian melodrama best told in pop and punk numbers.

Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.

Striking a fine balance between lurid voyeurism and grounded naturalism, Mäkelä’s film is a gripping wonder, perhaps a tad too literate, with its nods not only to Ellis but to authors like Jean Genet and Cyril Collard.

Ultimately, though, Before We Forget feels much too tidy (didactic, even) in how it unfolds for it to land the emotional gutpunch it so wants to deliver.

If, at the end of the day, Nyad feels like a well-oiled crowd-pleasing sports drama with a heartwarming (if slightly insidious) message about never giving up, that doesn’t blunt its impact.

In the end, this is a tender tale befitting its summer trappings. It is wistful and witty, sultry and soothing.

There’s candor and insight here. But, much like Girlie and Clark, Daddio remains stuck despite the appearance of movement.

When the film lets its guard down—namely, whenever Aldridge gets to deploy his charm as Kit or manages to let Field echo a weathered kind of Steel Magnolias screen presence—the film sings. Yet its attempts to distance itself from the very genre of a film it so clearly is (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time I left my screening) end up shortchanging its impact.

Its world building is so vast and so intricate (the city has a Wetro and you can watch films like Tide And Prejudice!) that it overshadows the textured plot about the burdens placed on second-generation kids.

This is as broad as comedies get these days. But its shock-and-awe sensibility is somewhat exhausting.

Even as it thrusts itself into an electrifying, bloodied thriller of a final act, the film doesn’t land any of its social commentary: Its satire remains much too obtuse, its parable much too diffused.

The film’s rom-com template feels more like a structure to play with, a solid foundation on which to question the very tenets of romance and comedy.

While others may find in this visually arresting outer space drama a probing meditation on grief and marriage (not to mention human alienation writ-large), I never did warm up to this Colby Day-penned character study, finding it much too caught up in its own ambitions to make its emotional beats pay off.

You cheer on these boys but you’re not left with much once the credits roll and their story becomes but a wistful tale of a time gone by.

The Beekeeper feels stale and rather one-note.

Your Place Or Mine isn’t that invested in crafting a world that looks anything like ours; it’s arguably more interested in giving its supporting cast’s ace one-liners (which, I’ll admit, is where the film sporadically got me chuckling).

It may well be plenty for a fun enough ride at the theaters, but ultimately this is an exhausting trip into this increasingly unwieldy franchise.

Overall, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire makes for a serviceable entry in this now four-decade-running franchise. No matter that, in tone and in structure, it all but replicates what’s worked in the past.

Despite its thrilling central performances and its sleek production design, The Immaculate Room has more ideas than it can hold together, and emerges, quite ironically it must be said, as quite a muddled mess.