Marya E. Gates

The story beats are predictable, but Decker forges her own unruly and unforgettable path through them, crafting a teen film with avant-garde flourishes that attempt to find a balance between style and substance.

Diallo has crafted an incisive, intelligent, and stridently political horror film that is distinctly all her own. The terror at the heart of this film reverberates far beyond the myths of this academic institution. Master excavates the very roots of our country’s foundation and dares us to face the haunted ground on which it is built.

Although AM I OK? follows a well-worn formula, it finds transcendence in Johnson and Mizuno’s authentic, intertwined performances and Pomerantz’s deeply personal, heartwarming screenplay.

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.

Dickey and Studi are magnetic on-screen, oscillating between the easy chemistry of old friends, and the awkwardness of strangers.

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.

By keeping the film’s emotional core at a distance for most of the film, the only catharsis the audience feels during its denouement is from the relief that this bleak, miserable slog is finally over.

Bloated at nearly 140 minutes with Cooper clearly miscast in the lead, it struggles to maintain urgency. Dreary and overly saturated with a CGI patina, this new take on Nightmare Alley adds more gore and f-bombs to the source material but ultimately remains emotionally inert and unclear exactly what it wants to say about these characters and the world they inhabit.

Philip Noyce is a natural choice for this kind of film. He’s great with actresses in peril and at keeping tension ramped up to eleven. But using the collective trauma of a generation of parents and children as the backdrop for a real-time thriller, whose lives have proven time and again to matter less than the right to own an AK-47, remains unconscionably distasteful.

Laurent’s portrait of women pushed to the edge of society, exploited, and tortured for the sake of progress is uncompromising and fearless.

It’s nice to see McCarthy and O’Dowd in roles that showcase their emotional range; one just wishes it were in a project worthy of their talents.

Frankly, the musical, with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and book by Steven Levenson, itself is where the fault lies. There were few redeemable qualities to begin with, and Chbosky’s dreary, washed-out direction adds nothing to its already bleak, vapid existence.

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

Sheldon is a coal miner’s daughter, and her brother is a fourth-generation miner. Coal is intrinsic to her family. This is the story of her people, a celebration of their traditions, a condemnation of an economic system that failed them, and an elegy for a waning way of life.

Her thrilling mastery of slow-burn tension, insightful examination of power dynamics in business and personal relationships, and creation of exceptional performances prove Domont to be a director with a singular voice.