Monica Castillo

Ramen Shop believes that the healing power of food can satisfy our hunger for comfort in difficult times, and that should be filling enough for now.

Run Rabbit Run is a solid, spooky tale without anything too flashy like a Babadook to haunt our dreams and memes but chilling enough to make us sit up in our chairs and scan the screen for the next sign of danger.

Conners’ first narrative feature is a rocky start but not without some promising notes.

Although the film’s premise is based on a true story, Luis Ortega’s El Angel is not a faithful biopic. Somehow, the facts are darker than their fictional counterparts.

As far as Scream sequels go, we’ve seen worse, but the wear and tear of the years are showing on Ghostface’s mask. The script is serviceable but surface-level, bringing up interesting ideas but never following though on them.

Difret is painful but profound, skirting the pitfalls of the inspirational biopic for something more grounded and remarkable. Its authenticity extends beyond its central characters, conveying a very real sense of what is at stake.

True to its word, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark delivers an entrancing thriller that explores the power of narratives with a few screams to boot.

Despite its shortcomings, “Saturday Night” works as a crowd pleaser for those who watched Chevy Chase take command of the Weekend Update desk, John Belushi tear up a stage with his intensity, or Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner crack up the audience with their absurd characters.

The movie is front-loaded with exposition, but once the action gets going and the narrative pieces fall into place, “Bad Hair” is a creepy movie with thoughtful political twists and thrilling supernatural turns.

The documentary connects his present day work ethic to his past, and contrasts yesteryear’s heartbreaks to the large, family-filled parties he still enjoys. Jones did so much more than just unleash some of pop’s most successful records of all time.

“The Kill Team” is both a tense moral thriller and a disheartening account of our country’s actions abroad.

Rourke, who comes to the film industry from the theater, has an eye for pageantry and staging that make even dull conversations about power struggles feel lively.

Good Boys is a snappy comedy that pokes fun at those painful pubescent years and, by the credits, grows up into a somewhat mature comedy about friendship.

There are gentle surprises in the trip’s unexpected turns and setbacks, and thankfully, Simon-Kennedy knows where she’s going.

Daniel H. Birman’s Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story is what happens when a crime documentary loses sight of its focus.

The Columnist hits more like a one-note horror movie, less intellectually deep than its original introduction.

Although it’s stuffed with many cliches, The Aeronauts can feel like a rather enjoyable bit of historical fantasy.

Though it's a well-done family drama, White Boy Rick is a half-told story that only lightly incorporates the deeper issues of systemic injustice. The black characters feel shortchanged in comparison to their white co-stars; even Rick’s closest friend, Boo (RJ Cyler), feels unremarkable. Despite these flaws, the performances in the movie are strong.

The Banker remains only serviceable.

As a Latina critic who has been writing about my community’s stories for as long as I’ve had a career, I want better for us and our storytellers. While I enjoy some aspects of this movie, I’m not sure the means justified the lackluster result.

David Freyne’s charming afterlife comedy “Eternity” takes a simple premise of a person forced to choose between two prospective suitors and elaborates the concept with clever world-building and emotional relationship dynamics.

Alison closely resembles Jennifer Lawrence’s character in “Winter’s Bone,” another self-sufficient young woman whose family and community turn against her. This movie is not as tense, but it gets close thanks to Ms. Agron’s resolute performance and the movie’s hostile small town setting.

This movie promises dancing, and it delivers.

The film gets teasingly close to bringing up some hefty conversations about women in the music business, but in the end, those notes stay flat, playing more like a melody that doesn’t stick around for long.

Its terrifying story about death still leaves audiences with much to think about long after the credits roll, and the twists that lead to a new ending are fun to follow. Thirty years after the original movie frightened audiences, its source material has given new life to one of the best Stephen King adaptations in the past decade.

India Sweets and Spices works so well in part because Ali gives her character the authenticity of someone trying to do the right thing while still figuring out how to handle her privilege and tradition.

A movie steeped in the traditions of film noir, and its narrative will become complicated very quickly. Winterbottom, who also wrote and co-produced the movie, creates a story about gorgeous people committing crimes and double-crossing each other, where no one is innocent.

Although charming, the slight “I Don’t Understand You” struggles to sustain its spark. It’s a series of silly events that get progressively ridiculous and bloodier.

It’s no surprise that the cinematographer’s directorial feature debut is an alluring ghost story full of visual intrigue and surrealist imagery, giving him the space to showcase his strengths while working out some of the storytelling mechanics.

A movie with good intentions but is uneven in tone, leaving me with mixed feelings. It felt like the speech was preempting any criticism with sentimentality. The uneasiness continued in the film’s wild swings between tragedy and goofy comedy.

What really sets The Burnt Orange Heresy ablaze is the chemistry between Bang, Debicki and Sutherland. Each of their characters functions as a sort of walking puzzle, their motives slowly revealing themselves only as the story develops.

Gayle's good-natured fight to reconcile with a person who sees nothing wrong with her own behavior proves both a fascinating character study and an intimate portrayal of a mother's love turned hostile.

Jordan Weiss's feature debut, "Sweethearts," has its charming moments but feels uneven overall.

Some of the tougher interviews suggest that Mr. Milewski would like Dream Boat to be more substantial, but that impulse is mostly kept at bay in favor of lighter scenes.

While there isn't enough to love about the film itself, there's enough from Antebi and Caribel’s stunning performance to keep God’s Time lively, making it a memorable feature debut for both director and star.

The Garden Left Behind works best as a message movie, not for the community it’s set in but for everyone else.

The movie can shift unevenly from effusive love letter to travel lust to sentimental moment, but that doesn’t break the fantasy.

Zombieland: Double Tap continues the original’s cheeky tone and irreverent humor, while it also acknowledges that it’s a series a little out of place and time with the current political age. But if all you’re looking for is “Shaun of the Dead,” but American, then this is the movie for you.

It’s a movie that’s confrontational and awkward from the start, distancing its viewer with an acerbic perspective and characters that trade more thorny verbal jabs and slaps than anything resembling warm affection.

Written by Franklin, “Salvable” struggles to find its footing as both a family and crime drama, but it does one better than the other.

Although Kristen Stewart pulls off Seberg’s short haircut, she hardly embodies any of the presence or persona of the French New Wave “It” girl. Stewart’s monotonous delivery makes her character sound uninterested and bored.

The Cuban pulls together music, romance, loss, and memory into an emotional tale that spans cultures and generations. One thing connects them all: Cuban music.

In a strange way, War Machine kicks off when it proverbially jumps the shark, introducing something so ridiculous as a big killer robot to jolt the movie awake from its ho-hum military recruiting motions. It’s not a movie built to withstand big questions, but for a high-octane action thriller, it’s a lot more fun when it goes off the rails.

Not all the pieces of Boogie fit neatly together, but it’s a film about a family that doesn’t fit inside the box of a standard inspirational immigrant story.

Good on Paper sometimes gets silly, sometimes serious, but it never waivers from its mission of being funny through it all.

Michael Pearce’s grim thriller “Echo Valley” is a melodramatic mess redeemed by the performances of the film’s exceptional cast.

Anenome is Ronan Day-Lewis stretching his canvas beyond his background in painting, and while there are some interesting crossovers between the broody visual style and eye-catching surrealism, he still has much space to fill.

The visual bonanza cooked up by Rodriguez, cinematographer Bill Pope and editors Stephen E. Rivkin and Ian Silverstein is enough to power through any narrative bumps with quickly paced action and bleak, yet colorful, imagery.

Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself packs in enough narrative twists and turns to leave viewers with a sense of emotional whiplash. One tragedy bleeds into another so often that the events begin to blur.

Despite its rough edges, Fisher Stevens’ Palmer is a gentle drama. It doesn’t go as deep into Palmer’s emotions or mindset, but instead keeps them closely guarded in Timberlake’s gruff performance.

Although the relationship at the heart of We Broke Up may be messy and complicated, Rosenberg ties all of the story’s elements together into a neat, bittersweet package.

The Moment is something different, a big swing into the mockumentary genre satirizing the pressures of pop stardom and the struggle for creative control. It doesn’t always work, but Charli xcx, as ever, throws a wild party.

“Don’t Look Up” told a story while jackhammering its message, but “2073” plunges its audience right into police violence and terror with little thought in the sci-fi aspect of the narrative. It’s merely the aluminum foil to deliver the filmmaker’s thesis.

While much of this Black Beauty strays from the original, the spirit of empathy and combatting animal cruelty remain intact.

While “Eleanor the Great” never quite recovers from the moral issue at its center, Squibb’s lively performance makes it memorable.

First Date feels like a throwback caper to something you'd find on cable, funny yet full of action with a generous helping of a timeless romance for good measure. It’s the kind of movie you come across and have to see how it ends.

Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”) takes some considerable risks in her direction to make The Sun Is Also a Star look different from the typical romantic drama. But not all of these creative decisions pay off.

This is not your typical “bank robbery gone wrong” kind of movie, nor does it follow the familiar beats of a Bonnie and Clyde-style “lovers on the lam” story. “Marmalade” is a strange mix of its own, launching the rom com criminal premise to thrilling heights.

Ultimately, “Azrael” lacks the energy or chills to terrify viewers.

Tim Fehlbaum’s The Colony has many ideas about the future, and while not all of them quite stick together, there’s a few interesting aesthetic and narrative choices to make it something of a curiosity. There’s enough going on to capture your notice for brief stints before trailing off into dense plot details or well-worn sci-fi tropes.

Doin’ It is more of a fling than one for the books, but it’s a fun one, nonetheless.

If Susie Searches wanted to critique the true-crime podcast trend, it could have done so more directly. For now, we have a movie at odds with itself and its main character.

It’s a privileged perspective with nothing to share for the rest of us.

It’s a letdown for a movie that has its heart in the right place to resort to so many clichés.

Its lack of visual cohesion and bizarre finale get in the way of enjoying the whirlwind of fists, bullets, fantastical fights, and a sword with katana-like powers of cutting bodies in half. No one can accuse this film of becoming boring, but its over-stuffed narrative never quite delivers on its promising start.

No matter, after much sound and fury the movie is more of a molehill than a mountain. Betty Gilpin deserves better and so do we.

The result is sometimes dizzying, enchanting or confounding, but it is certainly never boring.

Then there’s a third act that’s so wildly out of left field, it shifts the tone completely. It’s an almost comical departure, but it’s certainly a disappointing one.

It’s unfortunate that the finished tribute doesn’t quite come together, and the tension between needing a compelling narrative and paying respects to bands whose music changes our lives never gets resolved.

While the strange and unusual world of Samuel Bodin’s Cobweb has ample enough unsettling energy thanks to Philip Lozano’s ominous cinematography, it fails to reach its scary ambitions. Jump scares feel less jumpy, and the twists are predictable.

By the end, “Find Me Falling” lands on uneven ground. It’s as if this lighthearted romantic comedy has its frothy bubbles burst by the sudden encroachment of dramatic interruptions and uninspired pop music and lyrics.

Dreamland is a half-remembered nightmare. It’s full of incomprehensible flashes of striking imagery, most of which won’t make sense in the morning. But in the moment you’re watching Dreamland, you’ll feel the restlessness of its messy story, the fitful starts-and-stops of its erratic editing and the leaden quality of its action sequences, which has all the grace of someone who took a Benadryl pill too early.

Paradise Hills wants so badly to be a sci-fi movie with a message for right now — perhaps to tap into the feminist anger out there now or to cash in on the interest in women filmmakers — but it feels like a rushed draft. There are a few good ideas, a few good twists at the end but not enough to make up for the rookie mistakes that undercut its potential.

Whittaker’s performance finds a balance between the tragic and comic scenarios her character experiences.

Reminders of Him is so preoccupied with tragedy that the romance becomes secondary. Now, after our third Hoover adaptation, it feels like we’re getting love with diminishing returns. There’s less to enjoy, even if the movie is almost two hours long.

Lady and the Tramp scratches an itch for dog lovers and may satisfy the young viewer’s curiosity when digging through the family’s new Disney+ subscription. However, so much of the movie is just fine when not feeling rushed or stilted, but doesn’t offer new surprises to stand on its own.

It may not come together as smoothly as the best feel-good movies of its kind, but there's an unwieldy charm to Joyride that makes the trip memorable.