Marc Savlov

Director and writer Charles Dorfman’s debut feature is a corker of a good time to watch and rife with some juicy subtext regarding class, British colonialism, and toxic (read: douchebag) masculinity.

An arresting feature debut from director Mariama Diallo, Master gingerly walks the tightrope between outright supernatural horror and a criticism of the enduring power of monied white privilege.

It’s the sublime and understated performance by Krisha Fairchild (Krisha, Waves) as the aging pot farmer Devi Adler that elevates Freeland past its potential as a tone poem cliche into a far more arresting portrait of the old versus the new and beyond.

Small Engine Repair is a real American horror story, skillfully shot, perfectly cast and acted, and carrying a sorrowful message that resonates with brutal truth.

The cramped environs and the paranoiac thrum that runs throughout the film like a main circuit cable straight to hell are almost outmatched by a third-act explosion of horrifyingly excellent practical gore effects.

Certainly lead adult actor Arnezeder has panache to spare, as does Bousinna, but the muddled storyline defeats them time and time again, no matter how perfectly angry/hopeful their lines are.

The East is an unrelenting condemnation of the Netherlands’ misguided attempt to return its colonial outreach to a time long gone while hitting most (if not all) of the “doomed war” niche genre movie tropes without ever actually teetering into cliche. That’s an ever-tricky move that Taihuttu aces.

For all its hot button, au courant moral messaging, Joe Bell is preaching to the converted and unlikely to draw in the type of audience that actually needs to hear its pleas for kindness in a mean and wild world.

It's overstuffed with all the actors wasting both the viewers’ and the movie’s running time by actually speaking dialogue when we all know that what audiences really want to see is outrageous vehicular slamslaughter.

Ultimately, Truman & Tennessee is a fascinating but melancholy mash note to the enduring friendship of two genius misfits who, despite constant self doubt barely masked by a raconteur’s seeming insouciance, rocked the literary (and cinematic, despite their mutual distaste for filmic adaptations) world at, in hindsight, just the right time.

Everything about Gaia works in tandem to create a steadily escalating mood of Blastomycotic body-horror distress (including Pierre-Henri Wicomb’s anxiety-inducing score). Fans of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy and its Annihilation adaptation, and lovers of the defiantly feminine and vengeful natural world will find plenty to chew on in Gaia.

Character-driven movies this brutally honest about life below the poverty line are few and far between, but the ensemble cast and Riegel’s skills not only behind the camera but also – judging from her lean and mean script – behind the keyboard help Holler rise above expectations and overcome cliche.

It clings to your psyche, a parasitic creepy-crawl of anxiety that will test the viewer’s own ability to get a good night’s sleep long after the closing credits fade to black.

Los Hermanos's fly-on-the-wall focus on the brothers twisty, unpredictable predicament feels scattershot at times.

Duty Free is for the most part free of gooey sentiment and clingy regrets. Regis (who eventually funded the on-and-off-again production of the film via Kickstarter) captures a remarkable portrait of a woman on the verge of … anything other than a nervous breakdown, mater triumphantes.

It’s a slight film, really a seriocomic tone poem about the absurdities and obstacles we can create for ourselves even when our intentions are for the best, but it brims with ordinary everyday good cheer and feels like just the right movie at just the right time.

The plot mechanics, action set pieces, and characters arcs – or lack thereof – are all dreadfully overfamiliar, resulting in a cream puff of a thriller. It’s a shiny, pretty thing and probably a decent filler flick while the world waits for Mr. Wick’s return.

McKim’s documentary is as jangly and urgent as its subject and his art, and it packs a melancholy wallop, using the artist’s own running commentary via cassette tape (there were two hundred hours of it) and layering it over snatches of Wojnarowicz’s Super 8 films, countless photographs, and recollections from those who were both there at the start of Wojnarowicz’s career and at the end of his life.

This is a more hardscrabble, beaten down version of Neeson’s iconic revengers than most of his action roles, with Hanson coming across as sympathetically appealing despite the cliched storyline.

Through it all Philps keeps her camera low the better to represent the children’s as-yet-unformed POV, both literally and emotionally

It ends up being a smashingly good and goofball history of the non-world of Canadian history and flim-flammery, deeply committed to its own colonial crazy.

Less a Nic Cage movie than a movie with an extended cameo by Nic Cage in a “finely crafted” paper hat (!), this Greek/Cypriot co-production mixes mediocre martial artistry with a sci-fi spin and ends up a puzzlement to both genres.

Mortal plods along for most of its running time with the occasional helicopter chase scene and plenty of CGI fulminology: But ultimately Ovredal’s not-so-deep-dive into Norwegian mythos is a too-obvious let down.

Possessor is queasy-smart near-masterpiece of psychotronic slippage. Like its protagonist’s risky psychogenic recollections, it’ll stick with you whether you’d like it to or not.

At least this excursion into mediocrity is relatively brief, although, as mentioned, a vastly shorter cut would be much preferred.

Collins, who also wrote this woeful, dolefully humorous take on mankind’s endless struggle to overcome the banal but no-less soul-sucking minor mishaps of modern life, ends things on a surprisingly encouraging, optimistic note.

The portrait he (Hossain) paints, while visually arresting thanks to cinematographer Sabine Lancelin’s eye for Dhaka’s colorfully saturated and gritty milieu, is a grim one.

Fiennes assumes the character and recites shocking revelations that Amirami’s obsessive research has disclosed. It sounds like a cheap trick, but the actor pulls it off flawlessly.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is as real as it gets, a snapshot stolen from the very year everything turned to sh-t. It’s a masterpiece.

Ultimately Hill of Freedom is surprisingly satisfying in its sheer — albeit abjectly disjointed – fish-out-of-water ordinariness.

Onward is neither terrible nor great; it simply is.

It doesn’t work, however, and the end result is one long yawn of mediocrity, devoid of any genuine suspense, hobbled by incoherent plotting, and ending on a note of goofy what-the-fuckery.

Meghie’s film is a paean to the push and pull between enchanting possibilities and chimerical probabilities. You don’t need to bring a handkerchief into the theater for fear of ocular leakage, but The Photograph’s modestly hopeful denouement is, truly, picture perfect.

Given the minimal – albeit excellent – cast and the film’s maximal rollercoaster of shifty mood swings and its increasingly paranoiac atmosphere of disorienting dread, it’s no wonder Come to Daddy lingers in the mind long after the final, emotionally revelatory denouement.

Television is reality, and reality is less than television. And that is, by the end of the 72-minute-long VHYes’ gleefully immersive, intermittently profound “found footage,” a lesson Ralph osmotically absorbs through the VHS viewfinder of his life.

Bad Boys for Life – while not as combustibly fun as the second installment – is fine, cheesy, Saturday afternoon mayhem, smoothly served with a heaping helping of “We’re all getting older.”

There’s nothing to fault animation-wise – Blue Sky’s penchant for migraine and/or dopamine-inducing color palettes and headlong pacing are consistently above par – but, for adults at least, the film’s mushy mediocrity can be a real drag.

Diehl’s performance is a model of restraint; he more often imparts information by a look, a glance, the slump of his shoulders, than he does with a spoken word.

Morrone is superb in the part, exuding a sort of saintly solitude while caught up in the midst of turmoil from within and without. Even at its most dire, Mickey and the Bear is tinged with an almost holy hope for all involved, a rare and remarkable feat to pull off so well for a first-time director indeed.

As if the dazzling performances and audaciously intertwined storylines weren’t enough, Waves is a visual stunner, too, thanks to director of photography Drew Daniels, whose restless, reckless camerawork paints a family tragedy in dizzying, near-psychedelic hues, mirroring the increasingly frenetic storyline.

The Good Liar is a pleasantly playful thriller hiding a seriously shady history close to its benighted heart.

The ensemble cast is uniformly first-rate, but Sachs' moribund movie is a slog – all those scenes of Frankie’s friends and family wandering through the woods made my feet hurt.

Midway does a decent job of cramming in not only the eponymous three-day naval battle between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy but also treats the audience to a wealth of other, related Greatest Generation’s greatest hits.

Absurdist humor abounds throughout a story whose underlying themes echo Elvis Costello’s eternal question, “What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?” even as corpses dangle from a foregrounded gallows.

A wicked return to form for Murphy, who absolutely nails Moore’s straight outta West Hollywood brio and never-say-die single-mindedness. It's an often uproarious glimpse into microbudget filmmaking and the fearless badassery of the man they called Dolemite.

A pure cinematic experience like Monos is a rare and precious gem. Colombian director Landes has created a surreal, sumptuous assault on the senses that’s as lushly beautiful as it is unforgettable.

It’s both too much and not enough, an unsatisfying blood-and-guts B-movie with all the goonish, grindhouse fun eviscerated out of it.

Employing contemporary interviews with those who were there and a wealth of raw footage from the original events, Desolation Center illuminates a short-lived but absolutely momentous time when the Mojave beckoned, free of charge and front-loaded with anarchic artistic overload.

Riot Girls doesn’t disappoint in the mayhem department, and as a meta-story about female empowerment in an increasingly threatening “men's world,” this wild and woolly take on teen-angsters past would make Furiosa herself cheer.

You’ve got to hand it to director Andy Muschietti. Adapting any Stephen King novel – or, for that matter, shorter material – is always a hit-or-miss gig, but It Chapter Two manages to pull out all the stops and in several areas actually tops the first film.

There are plenty of great things to say about director Janice Engel’s portrait of the late, legendary Ivins, but maybe the best is that after watching Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins, you'll immediately want to go back and re-read all her books.

As in his previous documentaries, Brügger’s actions and tone are shot through with pitch-black gallows humor and dizzying moments of absurdist farce, equal parts Hunter Thompson, Michael Moore, and the great, self-effacing British journalist Jon Ronson.

Ultimately undone by some less than remarkable character development and an unnecessary, if currently contemporaneous, pseudo-political undertones. Which isn’t to say it’s not a blast to see Gammell’s eerie, Francis Bacon-esque illustrations come to herky-jerky and horrifying life, because it is, absolutely.

Once Upon a Time is an elegiac mash note to Hollywood 1969, at times sublimely, almost surrealistically moving while simultaneously managing to be the director’s funniest and least violent film to date.

This riveting documentary about powerhouse never-say-die Aussie yacht skipper Tracy Edwards is every bit as thrilling and emotionally grueling as "Mad Max: Fury Road." And it’s all true.

It’s the sort of movie that defines the term “summer doldrums” in a way few others have.

The decidedly defiant grande dame of African American literature is shown here as an intellectual and creative dynamo who, at the age of 88, shows zero signs of deceleration; if anything, she appears to be just getting warmed up. Haters beware.

Neither the worst nor the best of the Conjuring franchise, Annabelle Comes Home is only as creepy as it needs to be and no more. Keep your expectations low and you might just enjoy it.

The Dead Don’t Die feels like something of a minor comic note in the director’s curriculum vitae, but it’s not without its pleasures. And like Romero’s genre classic, social commentary, satirical and otherwise, abounds.

Much of the film’s fun is overrun by a combination of overlong exposition, ham-fisted dialogue, and some genuinely confusing editing. You’re never quite sure at any given point where, exactly, the human characters are, what exactly they’re doing, or what the f**k that sudden, off-putting plot twist that just happened means.

A fatalistic fantasy that positively bleeds, bruises, and blows holes in its stoic antihero even as the odds consistently favor his imminent demise.

Carmine Street Guitars is an affectionate, somewhat elegiac glimpse into a master and a craft that, like so much of the surrounding neighborhood, is steadily being corporately gentrified.

By the end of this epic and thoughtful expedition, you’re left with the unmistakable feeling that some things – in this case, the natural splendor of the Rio Grande ecosystem – should and indeed must remain unsullied by cheap Washington grandstanding and election year promises.

Family succeeds, for the most part, because of and not despite the sheer familiarity of its hoary storyline.

Like the culturally complex and often overwhelming island nation itself, Black Mother is a haunting and singular experience unlike any other.

Leads Henson (barely recognizable under a mountain of Tyler Perry-esque practical makeup) and Rockwell turn in top-notch, emotion-laden performances, buoyed by a supporting cast of equally fine character actors.

This astonishing animated feature from first-time Slovenian director Krstić is required viewing for art history majors and anyone else with even a glancing interest in the works of everyone from Warhol to Gauguin, Diego Velázquez to Joan Miró.

The Mustang, Clermont-Tonnerre’s impressive debut feature, is a slow-burning, tightly coiled character study of felony offender Roman Coleman (Bullhead’s Schoenaerts).

By turns wry, quirky, joyful, and above all human, this easygoing but never less than fascinating documentary focuses on the surprisingly tolerant township of Eureka, Ark.

Cold Pursuit very nearly brings Neeson full circle, imbued as it is with a lower-rent version of the patented Raimi gallows humor.

The end result goes far beyond the simple colorization of moldering battlefield documentation. It restores the humanity of the combatants, both the British and, surprisingly, the German. Ultimately, it’s a you-are-there time capsule of enormous emotional and historical importance.

Cobbled together on what appears to be a very low budget, Glass shatters under the weight of too many comic book allegories-cum-history lessons, weirdly abrupt plot machinations, epically puny bouts of brawny fisticuffs, and a third-act bit of outright what-the-f**k-ery that gives even the lamest deus ex machinas a bad name.

Granted, it's breezy enough in a retro-chic kind of way, but the meh factor is too high to overcome for all but the hardiest of J-Lo die-hards.

Combined with some awfully lazy riffs on Holmes’s fondness for his seven-per-cent solution, Holmes & Watson is not so much a case of whodunit as it is a question why bother.

Knight, coming from a born animator’s background, retrofits the intergalactic Sturm und Drang for a more humanistic tone that manages to be both more entertaining overall and moderately Spielbergian (he continues to executive produce the franchise) in this tale of a girl and her big, lovable, lemon-colored E.T. It’s a kinder, gentler Transformers movie for the holidays. Go figure.

Viewers unfamiliar with Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s extraordinary output over the years may find Never-Ending Man an exercise in tedium – the creation of an animated film, even a short one, is a famously slow and exceedingly precise process – but for those who, like me, adore his life’s work, it’s a precious and fascinating glimpse into the inner life of the world’s greatest living animator.

An anime version of "Mr. Mom" this is not. Director Hosoda’s clear-eyed story allows for comic moments of fatherly ineptitude but focuses just as often on the marital and familial stress this sudden role reversal causes.

Robin Hood isn’t as awful as all that, really. For one thing, it’s too singularly bizarre to be anything less than head scratchingly entertaining, and the action set-pieces are pulled off with much quivery panache.

Yes, Boy Erased is a horror movie, but it bears pointing out that the emotion is by definition intertwined with both empathy and a certain sense of compassion. Terror elicits a shriek. Horror hits you in the heart, and the next thing you know you’re sobbing. Bring some tissues.

Iranian-American director Keshavarz utilizes the always reliable Sarandon to fine effect, but the final takeaway is less than riveting.

So yes, Bodied is a comedy of ill manners, fraught as it is with a veritable encyclopedia of contemporaneous qualms confronted and contested with some seriously dope hustle and flow. Tag this one #badassseriousfun.

The result is a cheerfully unfunny low-brow affair which simply can’t compare with the many genuinely entertaining James Bond spoofs that seem to crop up every decade or so, such as "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery or the more sublime pleasures of Jean Dujardin in the "French OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies."

For a first-time director like Barinholtz, The Oath is more than impressive. Tonally, it goes all over the place, but that only serves to keep the audience as off-balance as the characters onscreen. No matter what your political affiliation may be, this Orwellian farce is a candidate for President Trump’s least favorite film of the year.

Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween knows what its target demographic wants but also resonates with adult audiences, thanks to the zippy plot and across-the-board excellent performances from the totally game cast.

Screenwriter Audrey Wells adapts Thomas’ YA novel with a sure hand and the supporting cast – especially Hornsby’s deeply protective and loving father, and Sabrina Carter as one of Starr’s white besties who just doesn’t get it – are pitch perfect.

Crafted within the broadest, not-quite-funny brushstrokes possible, director Lee’s movie about a class of troublemakers, hustlers, adult J.D.s, and Rob Riggle’s patented goofy man-child schtick struggling to earn their GEDs at the eponymous classroom fails, epically.

It all feels like a poorly constructed and overwrought Lifetime drama from a decade ago, albeit one featuring a shaggy dog dubbed “Fuckface.”

Mandy, though, is flat-out orders of magnitude a more emotionally adept and shockingly powerful film in virtually every department, from the dazzlingly insane cinematography and lysergically–inclined production design to what I can only believe is Nicolas Cage’s single best performance to date.

If you’re looking for "Inglourious Basterds" redux, then this bloodless historical drama isn’t for you. Despite a pair of steely performances from Kingsley (as Eichmann) and Isaac (playing a roguish Shin Bet agent who eventually turns out to be the key to unlocking Eichmann’s stubborn ego), Operation Finale has the too-slow-burn of "Argo"-lite.

Surprisingly effective for what could easily be labeled a “gimmick film,” Chaganty’s debut feature suspenser unfolds entirely onscreen on screens.

Skate Kitchen’s mild melodrama meanders all over the place, not unlike the many skateboarders who shred the skate parks and streets, carving hypnotic, slo-mo figure-eights or outrageous triple ollies on every available surface and obstacle.

The Meg is simply mediocre, PG-13 monster-moviemaking at its mind-numbing kinda/sorta best-ish. Meh.

Amazingly, it all works up to a point, although at approaching two hours in length, it could’ve easily shaved its bifurcated mohawk down by a good 15 minutes.

This knuckle-whitening depiction of a man of God toppling into his own spiritual abyss is one of Schrader’s finest and most excoriating films to date.

It’s so amiably predictable that you end up wanting to throw some Motörhead at it, just to see what happens.

Ferociously subversive and trippily beautiful debut feature from director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat.

Feels feverishly dreamlike while keeping its subject firmly rooted in the present. If you desire a female empowering musical manifesto with both claws and kisses, here it is.

Super Troopers 2 is a movie out of time and out of sync with comedy in 2018. It might have managed the success of its precursor, if only it had been released in 2002.