Matt Donato

It's a melting pot of experiences from comical to romantic to thrilling to richly ruminative. Everything flows together gracefully in step through a delicate and beautiful dance that speaks to the ever-changing beast that is New York City.

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.

Ultimately, The Gallerist gets by on its zippy pacing, committed performances, and a tinge of meanness that holds enough suspense.

It’s an unexpected commentary on filmmaking that layers metatextual zingers into its unbelievable rom-com intentions, somehow delivering what the title promises and more. In terms of mainstream comedies, we’re not in Kansas anymore—and that’s a win for Wain’s collective.

Anaconda is a disappointing follow-up for Gormican, who cannot crack the code on Sony's bewildering aquatic not-really-horror reboot. A cast of proven funny people are lost in a thick brush of hacky bits and ineffective storytelling, unable to machete their way through to a redeeming climax. There are brief bursts of creature-feature excitement and belly-tickling humor, but way more stretches of bafflingly unclear ambitions that feel like they're struggling to keep the "movie within a movie" gimmick afloat. It's Anaconda without the aqua-horror chills, throwback practical effects, and midnight-movie entertainment—what an odd choice.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 gives sequels, video game adaptations, and gateway horror movies a bad name.

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.

When people complain about the death of mainstream comedies, it’s bottomfeeding films like Playdate that are the genre’s executioner. No energy, no wit, just a tasteless and tacky sequence of events that barely manages to clear the bar for what’s still considered a movie.

Sisu: Road to Revenge offers a ludicrous and punishing take on the same fantastic action-forward indulgence as the original, resulting in a sublime outcome. Writer-director Jalmari Helander's brand of excitement is loud, resilient, and pushes breakneck intensity to the maximum.

At its best, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is a laugh-filled yet incredibly dark and poignant fever dream that pleads for a safer AI tomorrow. Verbinski's command over utter chaos is nothing short of marvelous, even if the pacing slows while jumping between storylines that eventually all fit together.

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.

Obsession should and will put Barker on the map as a horror filmmaker you need to watch. Thanks to fantastic turns by Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, you'll be addicted to this sour Valentine's Day counterprogramming.

V/H/S/Halloween is an enjoyable assortment of vicious holiday horror shorts that might take a step backward after last year’s fantastic V/H/S/Beyond, but it’s hardly a throwaway sequel.

Black Phone 2 is a template for how sequels can reach further and push for standalone appeal, bringing us as close to Freddy Krueger as we'll get until there's another A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Without that grandeur—that Hollywood-sheen take on storybook resilience—the film’s uneven application of sad-sack strife might extinguish McConaughey’s guiding performance. But Greengrass’ throwback disaster-movie efforts, plus a healthy fury induced by our harmful ecological footprint, keeps feeding this fire.

Varley's talents as a director are evident for the first half at least, but after that, The Astronaut becomes a head-scratcher.

What The Bad Guys 2 has to say about turning over a new leaf isn’t profound, but it’s effective nonetheless, especially when accentuated by so many goofy laughs and sticky-fingered thrills.

Bambi: The Reckoning is an audaciously bloody but distractingly humorless creature feature.

In House on Eden, TikTok stars make found-footage horror that forgets the scares.

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

It’s more than a creature feature, but never in a way that undercuts the main event: Some truly startling above-and-underwater sequences.

825 Forest Road is a stodgy paranormal thriller that doesn’t boast enough character or intensity to reach the heights of its director’s Hell House LLC movies.

Screamboat isn't a good movie, but it can be an entertaining experience if you only care about indulgently bloody kill sequences.

It Ends takes viewers for a terrifying ride in unexpected ways.

It’s a clever reinvention of commonly distraught themes, teaching an old dog new tricks with a dreadfully cosmic twist.

We Bury The Dead is a sprawling but sparse zombie remix that's too far removed from the genre it's exploiting.

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.

LifeHack is a captivating, exhilarating, and full-speed heist thriller that marks one hell of a feature debut.

I Heart Willie is an overcomplicated, underdelivered, and all-around disappointing public domain slasher that can’t even get rudimentary filmmaking techniques right.

It's a frustratingly one-note experience that boasts technique and potential, ultimately undone by a narrative blandness painted by numbers. Separately, everything works — the plan just never comes together.

Holder's wayward romantic indie chases meaning through quiet reflections that navigate hardship somewhat cleanly. While it's a delightful representation of Brooklyn's playground, scenes flow through motions like a wandering observer.

The Thing with Feathers can be a rich and somewhat bizarre experience about processing trauma, accepting death, and moving on.

Kramer plays with surreal department store catalog visuals and body-swap quirkiness, leaning heavily on interpretive dance to convey meaning. There's nothing like it, but with such extravagant boldness comes risks, and they don’t always pay off.

Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare is a bleak, mean-spirited take on a childhood classic that trades Peter’s sparkle-bright magic for overbearing seriousness and disappointingly straightforward thrills.

Gudegast's film feels almost artificially programmed in its adherence to criminal caper tropes, unable to steal our hearts with the bromantic charms of cops and robbers with boundary issues.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 lets its animated heroes shine. There’s less “live” in this impressively blended live-action movie, which is not a detriment.

Here, genre hybridization is a losing battle, sacrificing scares and intensity in favor of corny jokes about Instagram not yet being invented.

The Gutter demands that you’re on its wavelength, but once you’re there, it’s like continual machine gun fire the way jokes and sight gags fly off the screen.

It plays like a late-night serial killer special on a true crime channel. It's organic, unnerving, and proficiently grounded as a modern criminal nightmare.

Michael Jai White's million-dollar presence and fancy fighting techniques aren't powerful enough to overcome dull scripting and odd performance choices.

Mr. Crocket is a bloody good time that takes all your favorite childhood television shows and gives them a hellish makeover.

Heavier Trip is another gift to metalheads that has me hungry for a third, hopefully with a return to the more renegade nature of their original kitchen-sink odyssey.

Krazy House is "krazy" for all the wrong reasons.

It's a suspenseful family drama that drowns in the location's surroundings, unable to capitalize on its Shyamalanian influences.

V/H/S/Beyond is the most cohesive, best arranged, and most creatively complementary V/H/S yet. Here’s hoping we get a bundle of found-footage mayhem like this one every Halloween for the foreseeable future.

Gaztelu-Urrutia’s expansion feels redundant and over-explained, but also sludgy and disjointed. It’s like being served a second dinner after you’re uncomfortably full; the flavors taste the same, but the experience is far less fulfilling.

Stream meanders, spending too much time saying so little. Quirks aren’t explained, we’re plopped into a scheme without much catchup, and the entire experience is bloated beyond reason. There’s a tighter edit of Stream somewhere, but it ain’t this version, much to my disappointment.

Between picture-in-picture viewers, pop-up ads, reality posing as unreality, and a seconds-long attention span, Baby Invasion is a Reddit thread vision board with little to offer.

Get Away is a deceptive blast that properly exploits vacationer stereotypes to conceal vastly more wicked intentions.

Better Man is in a category of successful biopic dramatizations all unto itself.

Terrifier 3 is a bounty of practical effects riches that cannot be denied, but its storytelling is scattershot in ways that hold the sequel back.

It’s artistic, ravenous, and boundless in a way that honors the spirits of the New French Extremity movement. MadS is the kind of horror experience that feels like you’re new to the genre again — and oh what a glorious feeling that is.

Harris and Dormer are the best of frenemies in this sneakily stupendous character study, as relentless as it is mysterious.

It's a Frankenstein'ed monstrosity made of different horror approaches, except instead of bringing something to life, unrevivable ideas remain limp and useless.

One or two jokes might cause a titter, but the other ninety-eight percent of this unfunny deflation has nothing to offer but hormonal awkwardness without the gut-busting payoff.

It’s more than just a failure of a remake — it’s disappointing on its own standalone merits, too.

For better or worse, Kostanski's throwback creature feature wants older horror fans to feel like their childish selves again — as long as their childhoods were filled with Charles Band and Pee-Wee Herman.

Greedy People is somewhat tonally amiss, but not long enough for the experience to self-destruct. It's a fine working backward whodunit from the inside out.

The Soul Eater is by no means an offense to horror procedurals. Bustillo and Maury are clearly directing someone else’s script (derogatory), but they still smuggle their signature dread-shellacked brand in wherever possible.

The dialogue is cringy even by Universal Soldier sequel standards, performances more wooden than Pinocchio, and combat showpieces are a shambles of digital effects that spike not even a tingle of bruised and bloodied excitement.

It’s a generic blend of human drama and otherworldly horrors. Consumed never makes the most of its Wendigo punctuations, whether hampered by budgetary limits or to-the-point scripting that overstays its welcome at nearly 90 minutes.

While there's a randomizer sense to everything, frights abound, and there's a mercilessness that bites down hard. Execution may slip and slide, but Daniels doesn't waste his first crack at the ghoulishness of this Earth or deep below.

Duchess is a flat and forgettable riff on Guy Ritchie classics that doesn't have an ounce of the wit, charm, or glorious mayhem.

Borderlands is an abysmal waste of a beloved franchise that takes a kooky band of murderous misfits and drains the life out of their first adventure together. Eli Roth is no James Gunn, and this film has none of the lovable lunatics, awe-striking sci-fi visuals, and out-of-this-world storytelling of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy.

Shelby Oaks is a promising debut from Chris Stuckmann that’s equal parts eerie and soulful despite some third act shakiness.

The Last Breath is competent to a point, without ever exceeding — or even achieving — baseline aquatic horror standards.

There's an endearing, homestyle warmth to the kooky sci-fi dramedy. Think Joe Swanberg's "Mumblecore" roots by way of Charles Band's late-night horror schlockiness – and I mean that with love.

Despicable Me 4 loses focus like a golden retriever in a Petco plushie aisle, splitting characters into bottled subplots that can only be addressed in single-file order.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a standardized comeback that moderately succeeds in balancing tradition with reinvention. The film doesn’t kick your door down and challenge your Beverly Hills Cop fandom—Molloy knocks politely on your door and shows you what you want to see. It’s a humble nostalgia bomb à la Live Free or Die Hard, one afraid to upset the apple cart and detrimentally one-note. But Eddie Murphy’s still Eddie Murphy, and that’s like sneaking in a cheat code.

The film has one mode, and it's never coy about its intentions to pry tears from your ducts as often as possible. If you're in the mood for a Shakespearean J-drama about mortality, stock up on hankies and let 'er rip.

Kill is a near-perfect action thriller that's stuck in overdrive.

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.

Daddio is a repetitive and reductive experiment in dialogue-driven storytelling.

Please don’t misinterpret this scathing review as an encouraging push to check out what could be a ridiculously flawed watch with friends. Agent Recon is unwatchable and doesn’t deserve your patronage.

Reverse the Curse calls its shot with confidence but doesn’t possess the fundamentals to bomb a home run, barely getting on base with this out-of-synch heartwarmer that’s icy to the touch.

Writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma bobs and weaves in ways American exorcism stories couldn’t fathom.

I was ready for Kill Your Lover to be a better concept than execution, but that’s not true. Its flaws are apparent, from a forced feature duration to inevitable conclusions, but there’s nothing detrimental enough to ruin an otherwise impressive original horror creation.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die might explore too many plotlines or bolt between too many characters, but brains-free enjoyment reigns supreme.

Brad Peyton oversees a futuristic action thriller that frequently plays like a clone of other cautionary tales about AI – but those movies, shows, games, and books don’t have Peyton’s secret weapon: Jennifer Lopez. She’s able to command the screen, bicker with software programs, and sell a convincing heroine’s arc from behind a mech-suit’s windshield.

The Garfield Movie is silly to a fault, feels seventeen hours long, and lacks any pulse of life.

Babes succeeds as a comedy with enough primetime laughs — that’s (typically) what happens when hilarious comedians join forces — but never fully jells into a balanced experience between prenatal jokes and dead-serious subplots.

Bornedal keeps his surprises out of sight and boredom out of mind, delivering shocking payoffs that supplement the dominant plotline about Martin’s everlasting demons.

Lazareth is sluggish, low-energy, and not particularly suspenseful, but most of all, it squanders a stellar Ashley Judd performance in a period where her silver screen appearances are becoming scarcer and scarcer.

If you haven’t feasted on Indonesia’s bounty of recent horror releases, don’t start here. Dancing Village: The Curse Begins is like elevator music in comparison.

Arachnophobes beware: Infested is the best spider-centric horror movie since Arachnophobia.

Blood for Dust is a satisfactory interpretation of American hardships and making ends meet, one that’s been done plenty better and worse elsewhere.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a solid Guy Ritchie take on World War II that tells an incredible, sort-of-true story that’s plucky, punchy, and quite entertaining.

Sting is sweet, silly and savage in sectioned bursts, but fails to pull everything into an intricately woven web of creepy-crawly terrors.

Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 takes the Terrifier 2 approach for a sequel with an absurd dedication to glorious slasher violence. It's inarguably better than the original, but that’s not saying all that much.

Bell and Allen employ big ambitions in a confined area, treating stranger-danger paranoias with an elevated supernatural presentation that’s frightening—maybe a bit overlong—but undeniably effective.

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.

This is an irreplicable experience that speaks volumes about following your dreams despite the challenges that await. The reward will always be worthwhile, even if it’s just about the friends you make and NPC cops you massacre along the way.

What Lowe accomplished in only her second full-length feature in roughly eight years shows such promise as a daring filmmaker with an original voice that deserves a megaphone, and I can only hope it doesn't take eight more to see what comes next.

My Dead Friend Zoe opens wounds and douses them in peroxide — the immediate sensation stings, but eventually cleanses and soothes.

Garland may have just delivered one of the most vicious and unrelenting watches of the year, one that I’ll keep debating and untangling both in my head and with others for a good long while.

Azrael is both familiar and unique, blending genre comforts with a risky idea. Luckily, it all works, paying off a relatively massive gamble that benefits from Samara Weaving's star power.

Sweeney takes plenty of risks in a lead role that’s rigorous and emotionally demanding, but the film ultimately feels a bit surface level considering how it approaches horror.

Y2K is a deadly unserious disaster comedy featuring fantastic cyber-monster effects and humor inspired by the time period.