Matt Donato

Some films thrive on twists, while others compel based on meaty performances. Volpe’s picture is squarely the latter: an introspective analysis of the human condition.

A unique cherry blossom of a period piece finds its roots intertwined with an erotically-charged crime, set to shock and entrance viewers unaware of the free-spirited madness to follow. A cultural appropriation of submission, the male gaze and gender dominance, stretched until storytelling fabrics just begin to tear.

Belktibia's feature debut comes with compelling sequences as a mother fights against what seems like the entire world, but murky motivations hold one back from getting fully emotionally invested.

The horrors of childbirth become entangled in a demonic subplot as Huesera fits neatly into the list of chilling pregnancy horror tales, but doesn’t add much new to it.

Keeping Up With The Jonses plays everything so disappointingly safe.

It’s broody and disciplined, soaked in the pungent style of foreign auteurs who molded Scorsese’s own love of film – yet overburdened by a downward spiral lacking fire and unforgiving features.

Fifty Shades Darker is a befuddling, messy erotic "thriller" that shifts tones faster than audiences can keep up with.

The Covenant isn’t Guy Ritchie’s best, but standout performances from Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim as bonded heroes save an otherwise bloated military thriller.

Evolution is undeniably beautiful, but it's a small-scale story which ignores a larger world that needs far more exploration.

Detroit is, for lack of a better term, a pornographic echo chamber of resentment. Trying to put out a fire with ten more tankers full of gasoline.

Your toleration of mother! will be determined by movie-going patience. Aronofsky is painting with some blistering broad strokes, but they’re just that – broad and undefined.

Beauty And The Beast lacks some of the astonishing visual prowess of previous Disney live-action remakes, but still sings and dances with enjoyable style.

Where Josh Ruben’s Scare Me soars thanks to tension delivered through imaginative monologues, LaBute’s latest is mostly benign chatter that rambles its way to an unimpressively expected conclusion.

Kurt Wimmer’s newfangled Children of the Corn is a rotten husk of a Stephen King adaptation.

The problem is that 40 Acres simply sprinkles its few unique ideas atop a shambling post-apocalyptic template.

Mileage will vary, dictated by your appreciation for methodical avalanches of sorrow driven by puritanical pressures. Everything is minimalistic, punctuated by the devastating context found in the research that helped shape Franz and Fiala’s screenplay. Some viewers will recognize dedication, others will have their patience tested.

The Outwaters is found-footage fearlessness that needs to be seen to be believed, but will be met by only the most divisive of reactions.

Bugonia is a film that tries to balance barbed sci-fi themes and conspiracy looniness funneled through Lanthimos’ trademark quirks, but it slips off the pommel horse on the dismount.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is gateway horror that puts storytelling above terror. It’s steady on its 1980s teenage-girl friendship drama, but other elements around the messaging stumble.

The film’s themes may be fundamental in their commentaries on parental gender disparity or qualities about motherhood so many refuse to publicly acknowledge, but they still land like a haymaker. You’ve gotta hand it to Ramsay; she’s a fearless visionary when rocking on all cylinders—which, frustratingly, Die My Love only dishes out in smaller servings.

Doctor Strange is the psychedelic kung-fu spectacle that Marvel hoped director Scott Derrickson would deliver, but it’s got a strange problem – the doctor himself.

Lion may be a little too Oscar-bait-y, but it's not without loud emotional roars.

The Little Hours is saved by Fred Armisen and Kate Miccuci, the only performers who don't suffer from the film's one-note delivery at some point.

Performances are the spectacle, and both actors do a tremendous job translating the worst feeling any parent can experience. It all depends on your patience for slow-burn horrors, and if there's enough nightmare fuel to stay along for the ride.

The Birth Of A Nation is not without inherent power, but Parker struggles to evoke anything besides surface tellings of textbook atrocities.

The First Purge doubles-down on bloody opposition against true-to-life societal fears, but abandons the subtlety needed to prevent Gerard McMurray’s prequel from becoming anything more than hateful retribution.

A few images sear with the burning sensation of undead terror, but that only accounts for a few short minutes of an otherwise more-daunting-than-it-should-be cinematic exploration of death.

The Blackcoat's Daughter aims for lofty satanic thrills, but gets lost in visuals that oversell a barbed but tangled nightmare.