Mike Mazzanti

Splitting skulls and still managing to hit the brain, Becky is a blood-splattered crowd-pleaser that would destroy at a drive-in.

Once Z digs its nails into trauma in the film’s final act, the proceedings get complex, bizarre, and wildly messy.

The Invisible Man is full of tension and surprise, a brooding midnight movie traumatizer packed with the constant threat of unhinged energy that roars with a crowd.

It’s part torture chamber, part hangout picture, part Bring Me The Head of Those Three Crooked Murderers.

If you enjoy hooting at corrosive and inept cinema that is neither worthwhile or giddily reprehensible then you might have found a new subject for fanaticism.

One of Crawl’s greatest joys, however, is how it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Instead, it merely delivers the goods and then cuts to black. No cheeky bullshit, no wink-wink, nudge-nudge, ain’t life so damn cruel all the time? This sincerity is refreshing, like dunking your head in the pool at the height of a blazing summer day. Just check the water first.

It’s a film full of interesting ideas, all wrapped up in messy, even shoddy methods, and an undeniably sincere and rather astonishing performance from Sam Elliott, who doesn’t seem to give a hoot whether he’s hunting Bugs Bunny or the Oscar gold–he’s just going to go for it, dammit.

Buffalo Boys is a messy, interesting, fun romp in cross-cultural interplay.

Overlord is a pure hell fest, unabashed in its fashioning of tattered grindhouse attire and yet never cheeky in its delivery.

An off-kilter, at times hilarious film that nevertheless loses some of its impact as it stumbles through its own delirium.

Before its close, The Night Comes For Us stages a brutalizing and exhausting final fight for the ages.

Evans lets his freak flag billow gloriously in the cinematic wind; leaning into the perverse nature of his work, he fixates on tension and dread to craft a compelling journey enveloped in lunacy.

A balance is struck between fun and fear, make-believe terror and actual trauma. It borders on an examination of real pain, still lets you whoop at the madness, then has that cheer catch in your throat.

For where Don’t Leave Home perhaps intrigues most is in its more abstract elements.

For die-hard genre fans looking for a disturbed and relatively brief affair, there may be enough here to enjoy. However, if you want a consistently engaging thrill ride packed with enough ideas to contend with the bloodshed, perhaps look elsewhere.

The result is at times quite thrilling, and clocking in at 90 minutes, refreshingly concise.

Littlest Reich is almost passionately gory. It’s essentially a series of murders, strung together by the most simplistic method imaginable: a cut.

At its height, Summer of ’84 sings like a sandy page-turner you end up finishing in the fall, with the wind swirling and mischief night just around the corner.

A gripping highway heist sequence and two affecting lead performances are surrounded by a film that mistakes the knowledge of sadness for its authentication.

It’s a haphazardly constructed half-film, perhaps better issued as a YouTube clip than a feature a little over an hour.

While some of its dramatic gestures fall short or feel stilted, it is through sheer pervasive commitment to its characters and message that Mohawk’s grimy power is able to shine.

Without trying to spoil anything, it is important to note that the way in which catharsis is ultimately depicted in Strange Weather that makes it a compelling, deeply moving, and earnest study of loss and moving on.

If one wishes to get a glimpse into Elsa Dorfman’s life and work, this is not a poor place to do it. But as a documentary standing on its own two feet, it stumbles.

A film that is heartwarming in its human-to-animal gaze, and yet crushing in its understanding of a human’s flaws.

Bean’s naturalism and ease helps a lot (he is really quite good), but it is not enough to carry a film that feels this narratively exploitative and haphazard.

Sure, it doesn’t always work — mainly due to some bad writing, shoddy visual effects, and tonal oddities — but when King Arthur: Legend of the Sword finds its stride, it’s a neat little tincture of Snatchian attitude and fantasy lore that is a good bit of early summer fun.

A jumbled, hodgepodge of ideas and images that spoil the initially intriguing premise.

Because of this lack of dramatic momentum, the elements of Bokeh that do work best — the occasionally enrapturing cinematography, the dreamlike score, and the interesting-but-overused experiential editing — all wear thin halfway through.