Michael Roffman

Alone is exactly what it sells — a taut, hot-wired survival thriller. With its gaunt storytelling, meaty characters, and high-stakes action, the film delivers on all fronts.

As expected, the real flexes come from the four principal stars. Winter seamlessly slides back into his flannel as Bill, wisely dialing things down to address the years. However, Reeves dials it down too much, coming off as nearly geriatric as he shuffles around as his buddy Ted.

Spree works better as a performance piece for Keery, who never eases up on the pedal. He’s legitimately haunting as Kurt, and like the best sociopaths in film, there’s a subtle guilt that comes from wanting to see what he’ll do next. Oddly enough, that feeling speaks louder than anything actually said in the film.

Black Water: Abyss is a low-stakes rollercoaster arriving at a time when we’re being barred from theme parks. If you’re looking for some thrills — and maybe even a little adventure — it’ll do the trick. The drama is exhausting, but the situational horror offers a nice distraction, even if we’re admittedly tired of watching people make stupid decisions.

An American Pickle is cute — nothing more, nothing less. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny; it’s folksy funny. This is chicken soup for the soul, arriving at a time when Americans could use a balmy parable on family and tradition.

Host is so clever, so creepy, and so effective. At 56 minutes, this is a lean and mean slice of horror, a fitting opening salvo for the spooky season ahead.

Franco exercises so much restraint, especially during the frenetic final act, that you’re always left on edge. There’s hardly a single gratuitous shot to the entire film.

The Beach House won’t be for everyone. Those coming in expecting a doozy of infections and balls-to-the-wall, gross-out horror will likely leave nursing a sunburn. But if you can appreciate those moments within what’s essentially a pandemic survival story, then you’ll walk away with a nice tan.

The film is a friendly, warm, and inviting documentary that dances and shouts without ever shaking its body down to the ground. There aren’t any revelations, there aren’t any demons, and there’s zero drama. It’s simply another rolodex of talking heads — including David Byrne, speak of the devil — that want to talk about Michael Jackson.

At 90 minutes, Becky should be a taut, hair-raising thriller, one that keeps you at the edge of your seat. It doesn’t. Instead, the thing ebbs and flows, peaking when you expect it to, and sinking when your heart’s just beginning to race.

The Lovebirds is exactly what you want right now in quarantine. It’s a city-scrolling adventure with two catchy leads and romance to boot. It’s the perfect date movie.

Scoff, roll your eyes, and shrug all you want, but the hyperbolic nature of The Hunt is all part of the fun, and whether you take this literally, or metaphorically, rhetorically, spiritually, whatever, it all boils down to a big ol’ sensationalized portrait of a very heated country.

While the cabin seemingly offers a rural respite, the endless snow and the situational horror of it all adds agoraphobic washes to any space. Couple that with captivating uses of grey and silver — seriously, the gradient factor in those two colors here is awe-inspiring by itself — and the dread becomes suffocating.

It’s a breakneck conclusion to what’s been a breakneck restart.

This is sharp blockbuster filmmaking, coming at a time when IP is seemingly the only thing that gets any door open in Hollywood these days. Rather than churn out something cynical or pandering, though, Flanagan has instead taken that IP and instilled it with heart. Not just the chummy heart he’s hallmarked in past efforts, but the kind that comes from a creator who’s offered a chance to truly honor his influences and run with them.

Considering he’s spent nine whole seasons within his quirky New Mexico universe, there was never any doubt that Gilligan loves his characters, but goddamn does El Camino bring that idea home.

It: Chapter Two doubles down on the exhausting jump scares and CGI that plagued the 2017 original. Yet for all its faults—and there are many—it’s still an enthralling and emotionally affecting piece of blockbuster filmmaking.

While some viewers may get enough of a nostalgia kick out of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, the film doesn’t feel entirely fleshed out. There are elements that make for creepy experiences, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, but they often serve as short bundles of anxiety in a serviceable story.

There isn’t much to love, there isn’t much to hate, there’s mostly just indifference.

It’s a paint-by-numbers would-be blockbuster entirely built around the delusional notion that general audiences can’t be scared by anything more thoughtful than recycled jump shocks and derivative monsters.

Simply put, Elle Fanning is Teen Spirit. This is a performance piece, nothing more and nothing less, and those invested in seeing Fanning soar in her career have every reason to watch.

Patient, meditative, and sanguine, Adopt a Highway is a rugged slice of Americana.

Little Monsters oozes with heart and soul, making for an ultra likable, last-minute addition to a genre that should be buried 12-feet under in the near future.

Long Shot is a major win for Levine, Rogen, and Theron, who defied the odds to deliver an instantly re-watchable hit. It’s sexy, it’s funny, it’s smart, it’s topical, and, above all, it’s exactly what some people need right now.

Disappointing and confounding, Velvet Buzzsaw can ultimately be filed under What Could Have Been given the kind of talent involved.

Shyamalan comes off so smug by the end of this movie that it’s insufferable — and also kind of jarring. It’s as if he’s learned nothing from his past and still believes he’s pulling a quick one on his audience.

The problem is that, unlike The Big Short, he can’t seem to wrestle with the drama, and when Vice takes a more dramatic turn towards its manic third act, McKay’s preaching winds up feeling like Oliver Stone, Jr. All of those meta, tongue-in-cheek quirks start becoming self righteous and smug when they used to be clever and decisive. It’s a damn shame

Vox Lux wants to be everything and winds up being nothing. By the end, when the whole thing devolves into a dubious concert film, and we’re watching fake fans go crazy over fake songs, there’s this uncanny valley of universal bliss that’s just achingly hollow.

The House That Jack Built is an audacious and divisive film, sure, but only because of the context surrounding the film. The gore! The violence! The subject material! Oh my! At its core, though, von Trier has actually assembled his most accessible work to date.

Creed 2 is a commendable chapter in the franchise, thriving from a strong commitment to character, mostly thanks to Stallone’s reverence to his own legacy and the new one being created for Jordan.

If you’re going to tackle serious subject matter, maybe don’t run it through tacky fluff that amounts to a fleeting sugar high. Sure, this movie will get all the right oohs and aahs, sighs and sobs — it certainly won over the freebie test audience at my screening, good god — but it won’t linger.

The problem is that something never adds up to much of anything. Even thematically, the whole picture feels all over the place, oscillating hazily between half-baked meditations on man vs. nature and unfinished portraits of family values. Even so, Saulnier’s scope and visual endurance is admirable, to say the least, and it’s clear that he could do something this brazen eventually with a much stronger script.

It’s good to see Black and Dekker offer up something so boisterous and stupid as The Predator. Is it messy? Absolutely. But, is it fun? It’s popcorn, baby.

It’s about as effective as a Walgreens Halloween display, where any terror derives from uninspiring shock value, and given that each and every pop-up scare can be seen from over a mile away, the movie fails in that respect, too. It’s exhausting even.

Juliet, Naked could have been great. Hawke and Byrne do have a chemistry, but they’re always on a separate bill, to crib from the musical theme. Even worse is the ensemble of supporting characters, which tends to be the strongest facet of any Hornby adaptation.

Mission: Impossible knows exactly what it needs to be: a fun and chummy thrill ride that’s always self-aware. Fallout follows that agenda, while also revisiting its more severe roots. It’s a sequel in every sense of the word, reintroducing not only familiar faces, but styles, themes, and motifs of past films.

Whether we follow Han Solo through hyperspace for more adventures is up to Disney, but what we got here is enough to keep us coming back again and again...That’s the best kind of Star Wars movie.

Narratively, the Zellners are always looking to zag, and while that leads to some surprising passages, not all of them are safe. Instead, they often spill into dead ends, forcing them to backtrack and carry on elsewhere.

Revenge is one big fuck you to a genre that has treated women like meat — often literally — and she takes back the reigns with incredible muscle. But what makes the movie riveting is how Lutz’s transition from damsel to destructor is filled with all kinds of tumbles.

Everything is dandy until it’s not and that’s what makes Hot Summer Nights such a stirring and vivid presentation. The stakes are real. Those stakes are what elevate the film from being strictly a chewy exercise in nostalgia.

It’s essentially David Fincher’s The Game matched with the comic overtones of Horrible Bosses, which is why it winds up being an entertaining jaunt.

Although the film lacks his absurdism, there’s a musicality to Wain’s direction that’s addicting, and the emotional punch in the final five minutes proves there’s a future for the filmmaker that goes way beyond the yucks.

For all its strengths, The Last Jedi is a very manic film, fueled by excellent ideas that could have been parsed out in smarter ways.

It’s a treacly slog that’s regretfully forgettable.

With Creep 2, you’re never truly convinced the narrative is going the way you think it’s going, and while that may be frustrating to some (aka, those who don’t understand the concept of psychological thrillers), it’s almost enchanting for those looking for one good scare.

This is a very effective story that works as a love letter to both a life and a city in transition.

Baumbach uses this twisted reunion as a brilliant funnel for all of his world-building — and it’s quite a story, broken down into multiple sections, no less. Yes, he goes nuts with the exposition, but there’s little offense here considering, well, that’s exactly how it would go down in reality.

The whole movie is affecting, so much so that Pennywise doesn’t even matter. In a way, he’s more of a McGuffin to the real horrors at hand, from parental abuse to violent bullying to the unnerving revelation that life has only just begun.

It’s a very human film, oozing with heart and believable stakes, a brilliant marriage that mirrors the enduring ethos of the Spider-Man comic book.

May It Last isn’t just a portrait of a band, it’s a scrapbook of a family, one that’s thorough, funny, and full of larger-than-life stories that will tickle the funny bone as often as they bruise the heart.

Things move at such a breakneck pace and the film is so manic tonally that Rough Night winds up feeling more like a series of vignettes than an actual movie.

In one corner, you have Scott, fighting to tell an existential thriller about gods, creators, and evolution, and in the other, you have this obvious insistence to pay an ungodly amount of fan service to the past.

Unlike similar thrillers cut from the same antihero cloth, Katz and Blair aren’t too concerned with frivolous and expected dalliances like redemption or honor. Instead, they run Coster-Waldau through the ringer, capitalizing on an unforgiving narrative that may be too bleak and uncompromising for some.

This isn’t about the inner mechanics of the game, and it’s not even strictly a film about gambling, per se. It’s a dense character study that rests on the shoulders of Johnson, who delivers his strongest performance to date, casually handling every scene with a magnetism that recalls the likes of ’70s era De Niro or even the aforementioned Caan.

The problem is that, for all of its cinematic merits, there’s something strange about this particular vampiric parable.

When you’re not shaking your head at Theron’s glass-crunching gymnastics, you’re probably soaking up Leitch’s emerald-lensed atmospheres, Luhrmann-esque set pieces, and the sensual lighting that could give Nicolas Winding Refn a seizure or two. That’s all without saying a single thing about its fabulous soundtrack.

No Hollywood suit and no diehard fan could have had the foresight to picture something like this, namely because nobody but Wright had any idea what this was supposed to be. This is something that’s been brewing inside his head for over two decades, and that unquestionable dedication, confidence, and passion fuels each and every scene of Baby Driver.

This is a filmmaker’s film, a fully realized statement that oozes with the assurance and confidence of a hungry visionary who not only knows what he wants to do but how to do it.

While American Fable isn’t without its share of flaws, it’s the type of inventive production that hints of happier endings to come.

Although it’s by far the weakest of the three, there are some genuinely creative moments that spark the brain and fry the hairs.

What really hurts the film is its messy screenplay and boilerplate direction.

There’s just no subtlety to any of the proceedings and while there’s an argument to made in how the film’s fairly transparent about these intentions, none of it rises above being anything more than an average historical recap.

For a film that’s all about hope and rebellion, it’s kind of ironic how it’s such a conflicted mess in and of itself. The Force should have been stronger with this one.

This is pitch-perfect filmmaking, the kind that turns a hungry visionary into a popular last name. Rest assured, it’s all earned. Manchester by the Sea is a hearty, rewarding drama audiences will remember for years.

Everything’s so achingly foul and with zero finesse, which makes for an awful, joyless experience.

Despite Pazienza’s own pitfalls and perils, the film never registers as anything more than a boilerplate boxing drama, which is a shame because the material is all there, it’s just hamstrung by a flimsy screenplay that refuses to let its characters exist on their own.

Sicario works on every level. It’s also fairly prescient, coming at a time when America rages on about the ethics of border control and the mounting war on drugs.

Berg offers a visceral experience that overwhelms with startling humanity.

Blair Witch is disappointing on multiple levels, all of which have nothing to do with the franchise.

Farahani is quite liberal crosscutting between the story’s varying point of views.... This manic style offers the film all of the necessary intrigue to make its story captivating, but it’s at the expense of being incredibly manipulative to its audience.

The middle school dialect takes a backseat to the ingenuity on hand. It’s quite clear that the masterminds behind Sausage Party really thought this one out, examining this world long enough to have the most fun in it.

Wrona’s near-flawless execution serves up a terror that’s enlightening and paralyzing all the same.

Which is why Antibirth feels more like an anti-film, a piss-poor assembly of remarkable cult actors and brazen narratives that start off divorced without ever being married.

There’s just not a lot of weight to this sequel, at least not enough to dissuade anyone from seeing this as anything but a limpid cash grab.

This is a film predicated on voyeurism, and while it’s arguably another big ol’ starefest from Refn, the viewer’s patience is earned with unquestionable tension made all the more palpable by its troubled protagonist.

It’s an unnecessary, monotonous, 102-minute scrapbook of better horror films that fails to muster even a spark of originality.

What unfolds is a transparent example of why the music industry continues to spiral downward toward a fiery hell.

It’s slick and stylish to the point of distraction. This isn’t horror; this is exaggerated carnival fare.

Filmmaking this fresh, this vibrant, and this affecting for all ages is rare these days.

The Nice Guys spends nearly two hours treating Crowe and Gosling like a pair of piñatas, beating them mercilessly and unapologetically, and it’s watching them crawl out from underneath and towards some form of redemption that makes the film a genuine smash.

There’s a same ol’, same ol’ wash to X-Men: Apocalypse that wasn’t quite as apparent in the previous two entries.

Few films are ever as enjoyable and endearing as Sing Street.

Born to Be Blue serves as an honest and heartfelt ode to not only Chet Baker, but those who revel in the occasional highs and neverending lows that overwhelm the pursuit of art.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t a film. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour movie trailer. Better yet, it’s one of those videos that pop up on screens before a ride at Universal Studios, where all the actors speak to you and keep hinting at bigger things to come — you know, like a ride? Basically, it’s everything the SEO-friendly title promises — and more.

It’s not exactly the repeat masterpiece of yesteryear, but that was never going to happen. Instead, it’s a proper and agreeable reunion for fans who grew up, but still have that hungry desire to toss aside reality and enjoy a little unadulterated fun.

A lot of it’s funny — especially any scenes involving Powell’s admittedly charming Finnegan or Hoechlin’s testy McReynolds– but hanging out with these guys eventually becomes a chore.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll wince, and you’ll sigh. Such is the genius of Wiener-Dog, and of Solondz, and why he remains a reliable visionary.

The Iranian filmmaker wisely uses the genre to work through themes of oppression, rebellion, and femininity without ever politicizing the film. This is prestige horror, the kind with tricks and treats that arrive with purpose and linger for years.

Southside with You is a rewarding bite-sized drama, rich with characters who we already know, but also don’t really know.

Despite its flaws, the film still manages to win you over, even if it never actually surprises you, making it quite an assured debut.

Frank and Lola is an electric modern noir that thrives from indelible characters and a palatable style.

Something’s missing in Complete Unknown, and it’s a spiritual issue. The problem is that for this situation, the unlikely reunion, a natural approach restricts any and all sensationalism, which is why the ending neither bruises nor squeezes — it just lingers.

It’s an ode to this country’s oft-forgotten middle, where the struggle is, indeed, very real. As such, Certain Women is not always thrilling, but it’s certainly faithful.

The Greek filmmaker builds a stunning world with The Lobster, and much of its success stems from the inherent mechanics and the less-is-more storytelling that drops empty spaces for the mind to paint.

Abrams and Kasdan’s respective humor and pathos push the characters beyond some of the more rote and redundant storytelling. So while it’s not always compelling, it’s always fun.

A cold, visceral, and overwhelming piece of cinema.

It’s an aesthetically addicting experience that capitalizes on these seasonal feelings, offering an unlikely escape with the press of a button.

This is the great American nightmare, in which neither families, friends, neighbors, nor lovers can save you, and no matter what you try and no matter where you go, it won’t stop until you do. There is nothing more terrifying than that.