Michael Talbot-Haynes

Strictly for hardcore horror fans, though I can see this also becoming a huge “dare you to watch it” event for the uninitiated. We haven’t had a movie this dangerous in the theaters in a long time, and its presence is both important and historical in the history of extreme cinema. This movie will bite your face off.

There is this marvelous hard-boiled narrative style Vigas employs, with long periods without dialogue and little exposition. The way the intrigue is built as the picture progresses almost takes us into thriller territory. This is the cinematic storm the filmmaker creates here when a child’s yearning meets the brutality of an outlaw land.

Werewolves is the best werewolf movie since The Howling.

Daydreamers is the kind of high cinematic art that you fall in love with as it rips your throat out.

If you want to see the shark device used with the precision of a scalpel, watch Beast of War. It is knock-out entertainment with many rows of teeth that won’t let go.

It’s A Wonderful Knife is one of those pictures that is so surprisingly good you wish you had seen it in a theater. Plus, this is one spiffy-looking picture.

The Fabelmans will take your expectations of the Spielberg brand and tie them to a rocket. It is engaging and compelling. I am still pondering it days later. If you love movies, you owe it to yourself to catch this on that same big screen that Sammy loves so much.

Esposito’s debut is an exciting arrival from a newly minted auteur. Fresh Kills is a fresh take on a familiar subject, with enough splendid brutality to go around the whole table twice.

Chokri’s work has a pulse that beats so hard it could split veins. Yet, it remains in a reality that is vulnerable to suddenly wacky quakes.

This is everything you could ever want from a yoga horror movie. It also expands the boundaries of what the genre can achieve.

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is a grand rock and roll buffet with something for everybody.

Watching Flamin’ Hot mirrors the joy of scarfing down a bag of the crunchy red stuff yourself. It makes your eyebrows raise, is instantly addictive, and goes by very fast.

Even if you don’t care for saddles and sagebrush much, you are going to want to cowboy up for this one. It is an acid flashback wearing spurs. If you go out of your way for that old-school cool adult animation, slide right on over to Slide. It is another example of why Bill Plympton will always be one of the greatest animators of all time.

If you have been fiending all year for a quality drama that shares a different world, then Frybread Face and Me is what you have been waiting for. Luther’s deft screenplay ably gets across a lot of complicated family business in just a few strokes.

A New Love In Tokyo does for sex workers what The Sopranos does for the mafia: it shows what the people behind the jobs are like. I wished I hadn’t missed it the first time and relished this opportunity to finally see it.

Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues is that rare insider music documentary that skips the skin and gets down to the bone.

Roots of Fire has the power to make you a fan of Cajun music for life, while also (maybe) making you more of a fan of life itself.

To picture the depth of visuals in The Beautiful Summer, imagine a hundred beautiful moments in time standing out in sharp contrast like a string of Christmas lights.

The acting is flat-out wonderful.

Huesera: The Bone Woman will take your conception of the limits of the horror genre and break every bone in its body.

Mother of Flies is family-made entertainment at its finest, though it is best suited for families that have Xs carved into their shaved heads.

Take Me To The River: New Orleans is edited together in a way more organic to music than traditional documentaries, which works wonders.

Two Women showcases the rampaging wit of expert writing with the jaw-dropping technique of expert directing.

It is exciting in ways you cannot imagine and must be seen to be believed.

Sebastian grabs ahold of your attention and pulls it down to the floor.

Soderbergh does the whole movie in long takes using a wide-angle steady-cam setup. It is a situation fertile for great acting, as the long shots allow these performers to really inhabit their characters.

It is a magnificent documentary on art and how artists interact with the world.

While a rock doc on the surface, Resynator showcases all the conflicting nuances of reality with higher clarity than previous documentaries. Here we see the real life we live in, where everything is both so cool and completely sucks at the same time. We also get to explore how a person’s conception of an absent parent affects the architecture of their self-identity. It is fascinating to see how, as different mysteries are solved, it affects Tavel.