Mark Hanson

Lee Daniels does such a good job investing us in the human drama of The Deliverance that it almost feels unnecessary when the supernatural elements inevitably take over in the final act.

Despite the film’s narrow scope, it’s hard to not be impressed by the political and civic engagement of its teen subjects.

While mostly pulling off this tricky balancing act of humor and real-life horror, the film doesn’t quite go far enough in its critiques.

Perhaps the script is deliberately harking back to a storytelling mode that was characteristic of Hollywood cinema for dramatic effect, but the musical aspect, while a neat gimmick, isn’t memorable or cohesive enough to make the homage, well, sing.

The Holdovers is ultimately a story about the absence of family, and as it watches three individuals come together and apart, it’s subtly attuned to the way that class constricts people’s lives.

Riley Stearns’s film consistently tickles the funny bone, even when it comes at the expense of psychological nuance.

It’s hard to deny that Michael Mohan’s preposterous fable doesn’t exert the dark pull of voyeurism itself.

The film allows the scion of one of Hollywood’s most notable families to interrogate her relationship with celebrity in self-aware fashion.

While the canvas of Robert Eggers latest is considerably broader than that of The Witch and the Lighthouse, it feels as if its psychological chaos hasn’t expanded accordingly.

Until its contrived conclusion, the film plays as a queasy satire of conditioned interpersonal behavior.

Kenneth Branagh's film understands the malleability of memory, and it embodies cinema’s ability to offer a kind of escapism, but up until its climax it plays like a retreat from reality.

The film reveals itself as a prototypical yet surprisingly tender love story between two damaged people re-learning how to move through a world that’s unable to adequately support them.

At its best, the film suggests some kind of hellish Nike commercial, where “just do it” becomes less an inspirational motto than a grueling portent of doom.

The film embodies the alienating angst of millennial life in all its nakedly neurotic glory.

Despite this clever setup, Tom Gormican’s film isn’t the self-reflexive skewering of Hollywood that one might expect.

While the film intermittently stuns in revealing Everest’s topographical mystique, its expedition into what makes climbers tick struggles to get off the ground.

Scott Mann’s film succeeds by simply committing to and steadily ratcheting up the ludicrous awesomeness of its premise.

The film is almost refreshing in its flightiness, even as it remains defiantly ignorant of the world in which it exists.

Whatever satire of white elite society is intended by The Forgiven has been blunted by monotony.

For a while, the work on the part of the performers is nuanced enough to distract us from the film’s implausibilities.

In the end, Edgar Wright isn’t particularly interested in taking aim at all that is dark in the zealotry that shapes a culture.

The real Jeffrey Manchester may in fact have been polite, but Derek Cianfrance’s film doesn’t convince you that it needed to be as well.

By the time the film comes to the end of its brisk runtime, it feels like nothing much has actually happened, despite all the narrative convolutions.

Dashcam is nothing if not consistent, as it’s every bit the empty provocation as the troll at its center.

Quentin Dupieux’s latest endlessly draws out every stilted interaction for maximum deadpan effect.

It’s disappointing to see a film with such a weird premise as Nightbitch ease into an orthodox storytelling mode.

Henry Selick’s flair for phantasmagorical sights is on full display, though Wendell & Wild’s excessively CGI-enhanced look is a far cry from the grounded tactility of much of his prior work.

Censor unfortunately pulls back from its social interrogation just when it’s working up a head of steam.