Matthew Monagle

Mufasa is a small triumph for Jenkins and a small tragedy for Miranda, which means it’s a fine movie in an ocean of fine movies.

Like every good musical, Emilia Pérez is a movie with big feelings, even if the feelings sometimes (often) outpace the logic.

While some filmmakers fade into obscurity during their time away from the screen, The Bikeriders is a welcome reminder that Nichols’ thoughtful explorations of economic tension and toxic masculinity are more relevant now than ever.

This is Michael Bay for the John Wick generation: bombastic filmmaking at its finest with complex, multi-level action sequences that give the stunts room to breathe.

The Idea of You is an example of the romance novel adaptation done right, an outstanding balance of chemistry and joke density that never talks down to its audience.

Civil War enflames our discomfort by bringing the conflict to our own backyard.

The Fall Guy is a wonderful movie about love and collaboration mashed up with an aggressively fine summer thriller.

If the results are more than a little preachy, it’s only because Patel cares so passionately about the issues he spotlights and the cinematic language of violence he uses to discuss them.

Perhaps time will be kind to Drive-Away Dolls; the cast of rising stars seems destined for greatness, and the setting will sharpen into focus the farther we move away from the decade. But it’s hard not to feel that Drive-Away Dolls is the sum of its production history: a decades-old concept that missed its window for relevance.

But just like no sports team can be populated entirely by superstars, there’s certainly a place for high-floor horror that understands its audience, works within the confines of its PG-13 rating, and provides just enough visual and storytelling variety to keep the audience satisfied.

Silent Night looks just a little too much like every other action movie to serve as a celebration of action auteurism.

Rustin is filled with powerful performances and compelling speechifying, but it never quite manages to balance the onscreen potential of both man and mission.

The Holdovers is a warm blanket on a sad day – an unconventional Christmas movie that finds reasons to move forward even in the hardest of times. And while students of the dramedy may anticipate its every narrative turn, there’s something magical about a film that encourages empathy, especially when it asks much of us.

While Flamin’ Hot might be of questionable truthfulness, Longoria used that history to craft an undeniably charming Mexican American success story. Nyad offers shades of that same charm, but more than a few creative choices get between the film and success.

On Fire does the best it can with what it has. It’s still not enough to move the needle.

For each of the film’s visual achievements, there are narrative and developmental issues. As much as Edwards’ world invites us in, we are constantly befuddled by the way his characters move through their environments.

We may live in a golden era of action steamers and stunt choreographers-turned-filmmakers, but Expend4bles never learns to embrace its own limitations. It strains for spectacle and only intermittently delivers on its actual strengths.

There are moments where Fremont can lean a bit too far in the direction of Miranda July-esque eccentricity – admittedly, not always its strongest gear – but Wali Zada is always there to anchor these scenes in a genuine, desperate need for interpersonal connection.

With new animated feature Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Nickelodeon proves that this franchise has not lost any flexibility with age.

Talk to Me is hardly a bad horror film, but the disconnect between what was and what could be looms large over the final act.

Anyone who wants to better understand the cultural conditions leading up to the civil rights movement would do well to check out The League. But for those baseball fans who are used to charting the history of America alongside iconic moments in sports history, this one is a real treat.

The direction and performance do the heavy lifting, but we have seen so many versions of this movie in recent years – films about mourning characters in a spiral of death and demons – that it is admittedly hard to engage honestly with a film that falls into the same traps.

In a world of blockbuster franchises and micro-budget horror – where movies above a certain budget seem to justify their own expense by adopting a detached irony – The Pope’s Exorcist is the kind of goofball sincerity so many of us hunger for. It’s not going to work for everyone, but if you are the kind of viewer who ends up on its wavelength – by god, what a ride.

We need gentle comedies like this in the world; we certainly need more movies that remind us of why we fell in love with Owen Wilson in the first place. Like the work of Carl Nargle, history will hopefully be very kind to what McAdams has created.

The original Shazam! may not have broken new ground as a superhero movie, but it did what the rest of the recent Warner Bros. superhero films seemed unwilling to do: Restore compassion to the realm of heroes. Shazam! Fury of the Gods loses the thing that made it special.

Torres peels back layers of the immigrant story in something packaged as entertainment. It may appear whimsical, but you don’t need to dig too deep beneath the surface to find universal emotions underneath.

If you are in the market for a movie called Cocaine Bear, all you want to know is that the premise does not jump the shark in the very first act. If nothing else, it seems that Elizabeth Banks has used Cocaine Bear as an excuse to work with several of her favorite television actors of the 2010s – and then kill them off in the most glorious way possible.

It is frustrating to watch Fear carelessly oscillate between creature feature, haunted house movie, and folk horror.

It is this combination of maximalism, nationalism, fatalism, and two-dimensional characterization that makes this one of the most enjoyable current franchises.

For those of a certain age, who cut their teeth on terrible creature features and bloated blockbusters at the turn of the century, The Devil Conspiracy will offer a kind of twisted nostalgia.

Lee’s film can genuinely rip when the prosthetics and wirework take center stage. And that makes Don’t Look at the Demon a not-terrible choice for audiences searching for a new release to complement their annual rewatches.

There’s still a lot to recommend in what is largely a charming little occult thriller, but Cooper still has a way to go before he can fully trust his instincts in horror.

Despite so many pieces that fail to fit together, Emancipation succeeds on entertainment alone.

When the film leans too heavily into violence, it undercuts the comedy; when the comedy takes center stage, it makes for an awkward bedfellow with the hard-R violence that defines the fight sequences. It’s a tricky line to walk for a Christmas movie – even one as unconventional as this – and Violent Night is not above the occasional stumble.

From a soundtrack of First Nations artists – including a score by the award-winning electronic group the Halluci Nation (fka A Tribe Called Red) – and stunning landscape cinematography by Guy Godfree, there are so many dynamic elements in Slash/Back that cause the film to punch way above its weight class.

Even if Medieval occasionally succumbs to its worst biopic influences, it’s still a delightfully confident work from a filmmaking team that knows its way around a sword.

Even as a guilty pleasure, Maneater is a particularly rough watch.

While James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour) authors a slightly uneven depiction of childhood, Summering still captures the gentle doom of being aware that your life is about change forever.

There is a lot to like about The Phantom of the Open – and just as much to quibble over – but ultimately, the world can easily stomach a few treacle movies if they are this grounded in failure.

Whatever magic Lightyear musters onscreen is undermined by the unfulfilled potential of the narrative.

In the end, Dominion brings back likable characters and has the good grace to move at a fast clip. It is a testament to how low the bar has gotten that those two elements feel like enough to make it a passable summer movie.

There are a handful of filmmakers – Wind River director Taylor Sheridan comes to mind – who carry the torch of the American Western forward into the present. Like Sheridan’s films, Montana Story introduces an element of finality to the American West.

Escape the Field won’t change the world, but it is a solid showing for everyone involved, and it works overtime to keep the audience entertained throughout – at least until the sequel-bait ending for a movie that will probably never happen.

The Contractor seems torn between two types of films: the direct-to-video staple of a reluctant soldier bearing arms to protect his family, and a bleaker condemnation of private contracting (and the systems of power that necessitate its survival). It is the second film that blinks first, leaving Pine and Foster to carry the remaining scenes to their generic conclusion.

With so many video game adaptations being little more than live-action fanfiction, Uncharted stands out by feeling like an actual movie, mostly eschewing fan service in favor of little organic beats between characters.

Moonfall is bad – the wrong kind of bad – because everything in this formula fails to hold up its end of the bargain. The effects are muddled; the supporting cast is terrible. The only thing Moonfall delivers on is the big ideas, but by the time the movie begins to layer in the sci-fi absurdity, the film is already three-quarters of the way home.

With a few standout performances and production design that imbues it with a good amount of period shine, it may yet find a receptive audience.

Time may ultimately be kind to Cooper’s first foray into the horror genre, but the present holds nothing but darkness.

The Last Duel is a thematic gold mine, one that sits nicely alongside some of Scott’s best work to date.

Ultimately, The Guilty is a worthwhile remake, even if it fails to perfectly calibrate performance and production.

Dear Evan Hansen is a rare musical that must be seen to be believed. Few shows are less equipped to grapple with their subject matter; watching someone Wikipedia the plot synopsis of the musical in real time remains one of the last true pleasures available to us as a society.

If you can sit through the occasional sermon about the role of police in modern society, you’ll find yourself in the lap of true action greatness.

Free Guy takes the time to create something unique and grounded and make us care about the future of these NPCs. With every reason in the world to fail, Free Guy succeeds. It’s a welcome reminder that sincerity can still play as the basis for a Hollywood blockbuster.

Compared to other Hollywood blockbusters, Snake Eyes is better than fine — but there are hundreds of Asian and Southeast Asian action movies that run circles around the final product here.

Ultimately, Tournament of Champions remains a welcome balance of YA and horror, featuring inventive puzzle sequences with enough talent on both sides of the camera to consistently entertain.

The Forever Purge does have its finger on the pulse of America at a particularly violent moment in time, but for a series defined by glorious chaos, this one paints pretty much by the numbers.

The film struggles to carve out a distinct aesthetic for its violence, alternating between crass comedy and cartoonish violence with no sense of how to combine these two into something sustainable.

The sad truth is that Us Kids feels a bit too much like the thing the students hoped to avoid: a celebration of a moment in time, not the start of a revolution.

The challenge for the audience is to simply keep up. Jallikattu is such sensory overload – containing so many crowded images and rhythmic cuts – that we almost need a little distance to fully appreciate what the filmmakers have pulled off.

Perhaps this approach makes A Quiet Place II the cinematic answer to downloadable content, a standalone adventure that offers new levels but no new narrative.

Final Account is about today as much as yesterday, and that makes it perhaps the most urgent World War II documentary of them all.

Those obsessed with first-person and screenlife films may want to explore Profile from a strictly technical standpoint, and they are welcome to do so. Everyone else can avoid it entirely.

Wrath of Man may soon occupy the same rarified air as Joe Carnahan’s The Grey, another film anchored by an aging action star that promised revenge and delivered something more.

Limbo may be a smiling teardown of any society that actively facilitates the deportation of its most vulnerable inhabitants, but there’s a wildness in the film’s eyes – a darkness Sharrock only feels comfortable approaching through artifice and sentimentality – that betrays the political message underneath.

Anyone who spent the ‘90s in the Action-Adventure section of their local video store will find a kindred spirit in SAS: Red Notice. There’s more than a little Under Siege or Executive Decision in the film’s DNA, a prolonged, wrong-place-wrong-time gunfight featuring a creature of Western foreign policy’s own making.

There are times when China’s brash marriage of national cinema and onscreen largesse can work for foreign audiences – bless you, The Wandering Earth, you madcap delight – but when the approach misses this badly, the results are excruciating. Consider The Rookies an easy miss for even the most dedicated Chinese action cinema fan.

It’s a credit to Brown, Morgan, and Sadler that the story works at all. These actors maintain the illusion that The Unholy is a competent horror movie for far longer than it deserves. But in the end, there are just too many pieces missing to make this a coherent whole.

Ultimately, City of Lies is more James Elroy than docudrama, resulting in a tired police thriller that hitched its wagon to an untenable star.

Only those who have been through this experience – who have cared for a loved one who has dementia – can speak to the accuracy of this approach. For the rest of us, The Father will serve as welcome humanization of those suffering from a most alien disease.

An early contender for one of 2021’s best horror films.

Tankian has crafted a movie with an overt political ideology and cast himself as the well-intentioned face of a cultural revolution. But none of this takes away from the issues at the center of the film – public recognition of the Armenian genocide for one, the enduring challenges of democracy in post-Soviet countries for another – and the countless people who looked to Tankian and System of a Down to help spread their stories across the world.

Had the creative team sharpened the focus just a little – and perhaps cast someone a bit more charismatic than, well, whatever it is that Dornan is doing – there’s a chance Barb and Star could’ve been a Popstar-esque revelation for these characters. As it stands, though, Wiig and Mumolo have crafted a cute little comedy that seems destined to be a cult classic for a lot of moviegoers.

Whatever points The Little Things scores for a morally ambiguous ending are washed away in the hours it takes to get there.

With elements of psychological terror, spiritual warfare, and even a dash of repressed sexual urges, Saint Maud is the kind of complicated, slippery horror that fans will talk about for years to come. This is the horror film most A24 titles wish they could be.

If Roger Ebert was right and cinema is a machine that generates empathy, then for all its uneven steps, No Man’s Land may worm its way into the hearts of Americans who see Mexico as a supporting character (or worse) in our grand narrative. For the rest of us, it’s a film whose reach exceeds its grasp.

Greenland might be a B-movie at heart, but in keeping at least one toe on the ground at all times, the filmmakers craft something that punches well above its weight class. Here’s to one of the more consistently surprising director/actor relationships of our era.