Marya E. Gates

Cora Bora, written by Rhianon Jones and directed by Hannah Pearl Utt, is designed to showcase Stalter's signature brand of absurd irony.

Despite claiming otherwise in its marketing, this doc still wants to uphold her as the rock n’ roll goddess of the headlines rather than as a person on her own terms.

Dreamin’ Wild is a rich and evocative portrait of the weight of broken dreams and the strength one can find in a family as unwaveringly supportive as the Emersons.

Aside from its breathtaking underwater cinematography, Kim’s documentary is very plain in execution. At home and on the land, she uses simple camerawork to follow their everyday lives and a basic straight-to-camera interview style to capture their stories.

It’s clear that the irrepressibly charming Sedgwick and Bacon love to share the screen, and it is an absolute joy to watch their effortless chemistry. I just wish it were in a better picture.

Inspired in part by Saada’s own grandmother, the filmmaker infuses “Rose” with an infectious sense of joie de vivre. It’s a film about appreciating the small pleasures in life, like dancing alone in your kitchen while baking sweet treats for a lover.

Destined to make audiences weep, The Swimmers is no doubt a crowd-pleaser with an important message about the growing refugee crisis worldwide, and Yusra’s story is one worth telling. It’s a pity the filmmakers couldn’t take the time to see her life as more than just a vessel for this message.

Run Rabbit Run does nothing to transcend its influences, finds nothing insightful to say about the various familial relationships its fails to explore, traps its talented cast in unmemorable characters, and — worst of all for a horror film — contains no scenes that are truly chilling and or any imagery that will stick in the viewer’s mind once the film is over.

Although it attempts to tackle the heavy theme of generational trauma, it too often forgoes the more insightful aspects of its family drama in favor of an overly trite twilight romance.

Regardless of its technical faults, there is bravery here as Lopez opens up her old wounds for all to see, sharing her biggest mistakes, her deepest scars, and the work she put in to heal herself first, before she could be ready for the love story that she grew up so desperately wishing for.

There’s no denying the weight of The Persian Version’s final sequence. Yet, it’s an ending that feels rushed, both because of the sequence’s continual tonal shifts between heartfelt drama and slapstick comedy but also because Leila’s final bout of emotional maturity feels unearned.

Its many playful edits, careful world-building, stellar performances, and insightful screenplay suggest Eisenberg is a filmmaker with a deep understanding of form and an empathetic grasp of the flaws that make us human.

No One Will Save You is at its best when it marries the tension of a home invasion thriller with the thrills of an alien abduction film, and Kaitlyn Dever proves she has the chops to carry a whole movie on strength of her facial expressions alone. However, the film ultimately fumbles when it becomes both a convoluted action film and an on-the-nose parable about overcoming grief and guilt.

Even with its rough edges, it’s refreshing to see something this big, this zany, and this open-hearted still has a place on the silver screen.

Thankfully, we also get a sharp picture of the inimitably cool Doda as more than just a symbol of both exploitation and cultural change, but also as an ambitious entertainer, a caustic wit, and a melancholic enigma who hid just as much of her internal self as she shared her body with the public.

On top of being a return to form in terms of gnarly kills – so many neck stabs! – Scream uses its meta wit to craft both a rewarding experience for fans of the franchise, while also critiquing the very nature of fandom. And while it doesn’t quite live up to the impact of the first, it’s a strong film in its own right.

Wearing its influences on its sleeve, the rom-com aims to show where arranged marriage traditions and modern dating habits can fit in a multicultural modern Britain. Unfortunately, it can’t shake the screenwriter’s white gaze.

The flaccid script, co-written by Stupnitsky and John Phillips (“Dirty Grandpa”), addresses timely subjects like income inequality, helicopter parents, Gen-Z’s addiction to screens, and the compulsion to record everything, but never actually seems to have a point of view on any of these subjects. Instead, this shallow film uses these topical issues to propel its characters from one preposterous comedy set piece to the next.

While Yu doesn’t always balance the zany physical comedy and earnest family drama she aims for, and D’Angelo’s script is packed with far too many threads, the film works largely thanks to the irrepressible charm of star Sandra Oh.

Ride is a film overstuffed with themes, ideas, and characters, but it works because it's made with the kind of urgency that comes from a filmmaker who has to tell this story and get it out on celluloid right now, or they'll bust.

Ultimately Spin Me Round is like a bad vacation where even the gorgeous Italian seaside isn’t enough to make the time spent feel worth it.

In order to do this subject—and these women—justice, there is a need for a clear-eyed reckoning. Unfortunately, “Brainwashed” does not deliver that, instead favoring disingenuous rhetoric and often patently false information to serve its predetermined narrative.

Ultimately, the film is a vinegary cautionary tale, an angry screed against being mean for meanness sake, and a love letter to teens who are comfortable just being themselves. This time around it seems Fey and co. actually made fetch happen.

In his bleak film, Guðmundsson combines the kitchen sink drama of growing up in a cycle of violence and/or poverty and the magical realism of teenage fever dreams, with mixed results.

Ultimately The Last Letter From Your Lover is exactly like the beach read from which it was adapted: lavish, breezy, and inconsequential.

What the script thinks is unique about itself is all surface level, resulting in a film that feels like a copy of a copy of something that maybe once had been original but now feels as fake as a wax figurine.

Mr. K succeeds as both an homage to Kafka’s fascination with the absurdity of life, and especially with the socio-bureaucratic systems we humans have wrought upon ourselves, and as a sumptuous and surreal feast for the eyes. It poses many questions, leaving them for the audience to ponder for themselves after the screen fades to black.

The whole thing is mostly made up of tasteless decisions.