Monica Castillo

Knowing Julio Torres’ previous work is the key to understanding his feature debut “Problemista,” which combines his love of design, the inner lives of toys, surrealism, and whimsy into a race against the clock, the immigration system, and the art scene in New York City.

The real gem of this documentary are the incredible first person accounts from those who were there.

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.

Alex Schaad’s feature debut “Skin Deep” is a stripped-down sci-fi drama that takes its time to explore the social and romantic ramifications of its simple premise.

It’s as if the film doesn’t trust Frida’s images to speak for themselves.

Pham Thien An’s contemplative drama “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” blurs the line between surrealism and realism, faith and loss in a subdued search for purpose in the wake of a tragedy.

Verow, who wrote the script with his writing partner James Derek Dwyer, incorporates many familiar queer narratives and supernatural elements for a story with many twists and turns, some of which work better than others.

Ozon has a ball poking fun at a corrupt justice system that shuffles one criminal to the next crime-out-of-convenience and imagines how public opinion would fashion Madeleine into a feminist symbol.

Overall, Concrete Utopia is more ambitious than its execution, but nonetheless sustains its suspense with an emotional journey into the depths of what scarcity can do to humanity.

In his feature debut, writer and director Paris Zarcilla proves he is a master storyteller. He carefully builds his suspenseful tale with a horror twist layer-by-layer: showing us Joy’s hardships, establishing Grace’s rebellious phase, immersing us in their problems until what looks like divine intervention arrives that’s almost too good to be true (and it is).

The Disappearance of Shere Hite feels like an epitaph and a reclamation of her legacy.

Consider Dashing Through the Snow more of a disappointing stocking stuffer than an exciting present under the tree.

Like his previous film, “Midnight Family,” Lorentzen is curious about what drives certain people to care more about others than themselves, making caregiving their line of career. His camera shows the intensity of the work behind roles most of society may take for granted.

Written and directed by Jackson, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a poetic memoir of Mack’s life. Memories will appear one after another from her youngest days to her gray-haired years, non-sequentially, creating a winding road that bobs and weaves through mundane and life-defining moments alike.

Though the story that Lee reconstructs in Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club is fascinating, it's given a limited visual presentation here, often using talking head-style interviews of the various members of the group.

Dear David is branded content—uninspired and hollow to a fault—and perhaps that’s even more disturbing than a five-year-old internet ghost story.

Foe stumbles rather spectacularly by leaning more on melodrama than logic and choosing cliche over originality. Aside from rehashing tropes and offering some laughably bad moments, the film accomplishes little.

This family isn’t picture perfect, but the way De Filippis tells their story is pretty flawless.

While Cassandro is not a winner, Williams and his cast put up enough of a show to make things interesting.

For a movie so driven by music, it’s unfortunate that its final number is somewhat of a mess, its lyrics weaker than the performances that led up to it. Tense situations quickly resolve themselves, and everyone in the makeshift group conveniently has a part to play. I only wish it felt more like music to my ears.

It’s not always clear what the movie is trying to say, but even its misfires are more interesting than most because of what Reeder and her stars bring to their characters.

Co-written by Seligman and Sennott, Bottoms is fun and silly in all its chaos. The two have created a ridiculous world where the overdramatic high school drama is not always supposed to make sense, but that’s part of the appeal.

It’s a film with a lot on its mind, a frenetic energy to make it to the end of the day, and a character we root for from start to finish.

Filmed in Central Appalachia—including the director's home state of West Virginia—King Coal moves beyond shallow impressions of the region with a real love for her neighbors and prodding questions about what it means to identify with an industry that has harmed and exploited generations of families.

Although it resembles the far sleekier “Ready or Not,” Timothy Woodward Jr.'s actioner Til Death Do Us Part never gets near that level of competence. Instead, screenwriters Chad Law and Shane Dax Taylor keep their audience in the dark, any semblance of world-building or storytelling be damned.

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.

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.

The film is a history lesson, a poetic cry for justice, a testament to the Lakota Nation’s resilience and acknowledgment of the community’s loss—an incalculable loss that can never be fixed with underwhelming financial reparations—from the U.S. government’s 150-year betrayal of their people.