Natalia Keogan

Particularly paired with Cruz’s knockout performance of a woman whose life endures the legacy left by the trauma of her family’s unresolved past, Parallel Mothers is a deeply political example of what is lost when we have forgotten—and what is achieved when we fight to remember.

Though it remains true to the first part of the text’s unhurried pace and detailed world building, Villeneuve’s adaptation feels overlong and void of subtext.

Time melts beyond its tangible limits when watching Memoria, resulting in an audiovisual trance disorienting in its peculiar placidity.

In amplifying the diverse voices of American children through the film’s radio vérité subplot, C’mon C’mon proves that kids have some pretty insightful advice to impart, if only we’d just listen.

By way of candid humor, a magnetic performance from Rex and Baker’s careful attention for authenticity, Red Rocket is a sympathetic profile of a porn star past his prime.

As a standalone film, The Souvenir provides Hogg with the means to articulate and meditate on her past, creating a work that is bleakly beautiful and enchanting all on its own.

Joel Coen’s Macbeth lacks risk, ingenuity and, most importantly, reward. For those who seek a safely satisfying rendition of the lean Shakespearean tragedy, this latest execution will surely suffice.

Though Drive My Car reaches a significantly less smoldering conclusion than Burning, it channels a similar feeling of catharsis. Though certain things are still left unsaid or incomplete, the tension they create—or shatter—conveys just as much as simple words or actions.

The carnal Catholicism which permeates the film is at this point to be expected from the 83-year-old Dutch filmmaker—but equally so is the film’s ability to utilize eroticism as a vehicle to examine pain, paranoia and power.

No Man of God ultimately benefits from a woman helming a story about Bundy, as it provides nuance to even the ancillary female presence in the killer’s circle, particularly when he actually confessed to his deeply misogynistic crimes.

For all of its lackluster holy leanings, Demonic still achieves an air of abject horror, aided in no small part by Ola Strandh’s electro-exorcism score. The demon’s design is also consistently terrifying, whether it is enveloped in a neon-soaked backlight or morphing into unpredictable and increasingly abominable versions of itself.

The small cast, capsule setting and slow-burning yet scintillating story are efficacious in their sparse simplicity, leaving ample room for carefully crafted ambiance and performances to arrest the viewer with mounting dread and anticipation.

Though Dupieux’s films have never shied away from violence and destruction, Mandibles preserves the filmmaker’s penchant for perplexity while asserting that life is a glorious thing—even in its distasteful weirdness.

Despite achieving formidable scares and clever callbacks to the filmmakers’ debut Inside, a sinister specter of clumsy cultural engagement lingers in Kandisha.

Despite a visual slickness coupled with certain scenes of striking brutality, A Classic Horror Story circles the blood-drenched drain of horror callbacks with little payoff when it comes to making an organic observation.

Yet in spite of this promising narrative foundation, the film’s gruesome effects and the compelling performance from Blumm, Son seriously suffers from assorted perils of predictability and protractedness.

Despite clearly aiming to craft an intentional aesthetic, writer/director duo Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s film is inundated with tributes to irreverent indie crime film staples without bothering to carve out a unique voice of its own.

The gritty, glowing neon textures of the ‘80s cover practically every frame of director Cody Calahan’s Vicious Fun, a horror-comedy caper that lovingly sends up the era’s genre tropes while never breaching egregious self-indulgence.

Unfortunately, even False Positive’s shortcomings are uncharacteristically boring, generic and empty.

Despite stellar direction and cinematography, Holler’s pacing can feel gnawingly languid at times, due in no small part to Riegel’s inclination for brooding sequences with sparse dialogue over all else.

A propensity for conventional cinematic formulas aside, Dream Horse thrives as a pleasing drama that keeps the story compelling and showcases talented actors in refreshingly wholesome roles.

With a tight 87-minute runtime, Caveat would have made for a perfectly lean chiller had it opted to maximize the claustrophobia inherent in literally chaining the viewer to one terrifying location for the entirety of the film.

Though Sound of Violence marks a strong first leading role for Brown (who is cast in the forthcoming Scream reboot), it ultimately fails to impart anything more significant than the raw power of what one good actor with a brain-melting theremin can do for an otherwise underwhelming product.

Well-known for penning the scripts for Adam Wingard films like You’re Next and The Guest among other recent horror-thrillers, Barrett retains the essence of his previous writing collaborations in his directorial debut while paying constant homage to the films that inspire this specific project.

The Woman in the Window succeeds when it comes to constructing an adequate cinematic language to tell the story of its original source material, but tends to overcompensate for its narrative shortcomings.

The Columnist argues that silence can be more violent and political than speech.

Though the premise is gripping and the acting overwhelmingly solid, Here Are the Young Men falls short when it comes to communicating the raw emotional essence of preemptively coping for a future in decline.