Natalia Winkelman

Select another critic »
Film Threat, IndieWire, The New York Times
For 253 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 32% higher than the average critic
  • 9% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Natalia Winkelman's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 The Sky Is Everywhere
Lowest review score: 20 Distancing Socially
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 104 out of 253
  2. Mixed: 125 out of 253
  3. Negative: 24 out of 253
253 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Swapped
    Pelage and plumage noticeably lack the tactile quality of a Pixar extravaganza, but the animation gets a pass for the movie’s purposes — namely, to impart a message that communities should trust each other, whether they’re covered in rotely-rendered feathers or fur.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Two Women
    Ultimately, Two Women is less a message movie than a featherweight comedy, gesturing at big ideas about sexual politics before settling in as an amusingly mischievous diversion.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo)
    In his first feature, the writer and director Joel Alfonso Vargas takes a rather unremarkable premise and unspools it with sedulous care.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Travel Companion
    There is charm in the film’s allusions to New York City indie filmmaking, like the crew member who fibs that he’s shooting a mayonnaise commercial. But that specificity does not extend to Simon and Bruce’s bond, which consists of parallel play or the odd story about getting too stoned.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Marc by Sofia
    Two creative decision makers more at ease behind the scenes, they are, perhaps, not the most natural chroniclers of their own careers and social lives, and as the film goes on, it strains to arrive at even the most basic personal revelations.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare
    Although chiefly a straightforward — and at points repetitive — synopsis of the events, Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare distinguishes itself in its devotion to elevating these men as heroes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Idiotka
    The American dream gets a quirky wardrobe upgrade in Idiotka, a lightweight but winning comedy that feels like a Netflix movie’s indie cousin.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Midwinter Break
    The saving grace of Midwinter Break is the pair of stellar leads, who would be appealing to watch just fumbling for their reading glasses. That also happens to be the pinnacle of action, however, within this prosaic drama.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    By Design
    Kramer has constructed an ironically detached artifact that invites questions about ownership and image and then bats them away, making it a frustrating experience with an intriguing veneer.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Jimpa
    The men give Jimpa a warm, intergenerational quality, gesturing at the power of queer family over time. If only the film didn’t ask the audience to invest in so very many subplots; the clutter ends up sucking the air out of all of them.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Natalia Winkelman
    See You When I See You
    It’s so earnest, so vulnerable in its portrait of the disappointments and anxieties of young adulthood, that one tends to forgive its tweer flights of fancy.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Leviticus
    Leviticus is not a perfect horror film . . . But the film’s moody atmosphere — including a soundtrack full of clanks and bangs — makes it an enjoyably disquieting ride.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Mr. Nobody Against Putin
    The documentary tries to heighten the stakes of Talankin’s story by casting his efforts under a pall of danger, dread or distress. But these bids for drama are far less persuasive than the horrifying raw footage Talankin captures, such as one scene in which young students are coached to march down a hallway, as if preparing for battle.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Sound of Falling
    Here is a movie whose atavistic excursion through time transfixes, even as its psychology remains as fuzzy as a photograph smeared by motion.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    We Bury the Dead
    We Bury the Dead is most haunting when it gestures at a world dazed with trauma and explores a path to personal closure through collective efforts.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Goodbye June
    The story, about a dying matriarch and her stricken adult children, paints by numbers with stock characters and cloying scenarios.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Fackham Hall
    Sending up costumey, upstairs-downstairs tropes, the movie seldom lets five seconds pass without a wisecrack, pratfall or sight gag, sometimes all three stacked on top of each other.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Left-Handed Girl
    Expressive visuals and evocative scenes, including one involving an overactive meerkat, make Left-Handed Girl a memorable family affair. It’s only when the film introduces one too many social realist tropes . . . that the melodrama grows unwieldy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Natalia Winkelman
    The Great Escaper
    If earlier segments of Middletown suggest that we’re building to something revelatory, the latter half feels a bit like a train that chugs on aimlessly after passing its destination. It’s a pleasant ride. It just lacks a little edge.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Cactus Pears
    While the film centers on the comfort Anand finds with Balya and vice versa, it is also an elegantly reserved study of Anand’s grief, finding a rhythm in its scenes of ritual that allows us to ache alongside.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Bunny
    Bunny is a New York movie that eschews realism but still brims with authentic affection, and in doing so, bursts with life.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Sarah's Oil
    A David and Goliath story with big feelings, edifying speeches and a swelling score, Sarah’s Oil is a movie that will surprise nobody. Viewers might even make out a regressive strain reinforcing the feel-good mood.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    Hedda
    While DaCosta’s intelligence as a writer and director makes Hedda a standout film, her penchant for play makes it a delightful one.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Regretting You
    It’s formulaic and predictable, with goofy writing and clumsy editing. The saving grace is the actors, who manage to perform even the most ridiculous lines with a straight face.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Roofman
    Here is a protagonist who clearly straddles the line between right and wrong; the trouble is that in Roofman, that line wobbles, leaving the movie somewhere between a fun-loving caper and a finger-wagging morality tale.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Steve
    In hewing closely to Steve, the whole affair takes on a grating note of self-sacrifice, of perseverance through suffering.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie
    What comes next is a case of sensory overload without substance, complete with nondescript pop songs and an array of outfits — each purchasable online! — for Gabby and the gang. Even Wiig, giving it her all as a modern clone of Cruella de Vil, appears somewhat shipwrecked amid the sugary material.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Peacock
    Watching Matthias on the job is entertaining enough, even as the movie’s allegorical ambitions are stymied by a narrative inertia, and by a sneaking suspicion that we’ve seen this sort of social commentary before.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Infinity Castle
    It could take a lifetime, or at least the sustained attention of an aficionado, to untangle all the lore. But the themes — solidarity and self-interest, allegiance and betrayal, love and loathing — are easy to follow. For the casual fan, the chief reason to seek out “Infinity Castle” is for its visuals, which position passionately emotive characters over impressionistic backdrops.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The History of Sound
    The History of Sound doesn’t trust its own gentleness, and the inertia of the filmmaking gives the whole affair a detached, try-hard feeling.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Tinā
    The earnest mood and regional touches of Tinā, a New Zealand movie that centers on a choir instructor who teaches her students to harmonize, distinguish it from others using the familiar formula.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    A Little Prayer
    This is a filmmaker able to wrest real feeling from his actors, and from his audience.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Eenie Meanie
    While an early, silly death . . . suggests an exuberant self-awareness a la Quentin Tarantino, other scenes, like those that position Edie and John as star-crossed lovers, indicate that this movie’s melodrama takes itself deadly seriously. But it’s hard for the audience to do so in a story that asks us to not merely suspend disbelief, but slaughter it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    East of Wall
    Narrative beats aren’t what make East of Wall worth watching. That would be the people — particularly Porshia and her jubilant pals, whose skills in the saddle leave a lasting impression.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Boys Go to Jupiter
    Here is a movie notably unafraid to manifest the weirdest of the weird, no matter what the Mr. Moolahs of the world have to say.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Souleymane's Story
    Boris Lojkine’s Souleymane’s Story, an affecting film about struggle set over two days in Paris, is the rare character study that does not only build empathy with its hero’s pain but channels its sensation.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Diciannove
    If the dearth of character development is a gag, Diciannove doesn’t offer much of a punchline. But Tortorici’s filmmaking is stylish enough to make even the slipperiest sequences pop.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    No Sleep Till
    No Sleep Till is an understated — and somewhat sleepy — film. Its mood of boredom tinged with dread sometimes verges on outright listlessness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
    Because she lacks a conception of colonialism, Davidtz sometimes struggles to negotiate the film’s fidelity to her point of view with a more complete picture of the war.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Kill the Jockey
    The director, Luis Ortega, doesn’t give much reason to care about Remo’s conflict — the protagonist’s catatonia inspires the same in the viewer — and instead exhausts his efforts on a mannered blankness of style and mood.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    My Mom Jayne
    It is the exquisitely relatable messiness of this exceptional family tale that lingers.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    The Queen of My Dreams
    Kaur acts as an amiable anchor, gamely embodying a mother and a daughter across time periods.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
    Directed by Mark Monroe, the film wisely does not linger in the lurid details of the Titan’s catastrophic end, and instead uses an investigative framing that sketches the company’s origins and use of carbon fiber while chronicling a series of problematic dives leading up to its final plunge.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Bad Shabbos
    This is, after all, a situational comedy, in which the laughs spring from reaction shots and line deliveries. Luckily, the actors prove up to the task.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Sister Midnight
    In his first feature, Kandhari makes use of morbid humor and expressive imagery, including stop-motion effects. He rarely relies on dialogue and favors a fuzzier plot, which leaves the story with a shapeless and sometimes confusing midsection.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Summer of 69
    Fortunately, Summer of 69 is a two-hander, and Fineman brings comic chops and genuine feeling to playing the tutor with a heart of gold.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Bonjour Tristesse
    A work of image and mood, Bonjour Tristesse captures the mythopoetic wonder of an adolescent summer, and the effect is trancelike.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Magic Farm
    Ingeniously simmering under the folly is a health crisis that has afflicted the agricultural area for decades. This is the film’s joke: If the crew could only get their heads out of their rears, they would uncover a gonzo documentary gold mine.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    Grand Tour
    Beauty is pleasurable, but the film’s use of evocative visuals to focus on storytelling more broadly is what makes it a quiet knockout.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Bob Trevino Likes It
    Any genuine feeling emanates from Lily. Ferreira pitches herself into the trite story line with enthusiasm, and her verve breathes life into even the most leaden lines.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna
    The film’s biggest letdown lies in its cursory tour of who Hutchins was apart from her final hours. Despite testimony from Hutchins’s friends that repeatedly references her artistry, Mason rarely incorporates clips of Hutchins’s cinematography outside “Rust.”
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Queen of the Ring
    It’s a middling entry into the biographical sports movie genre, and the director, Ash Avildsen, cannot resist pummeling his audience with a simplistic girl-power message.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 58 Natalia Winkelman
    Seven Veils
    Acting as the film’s teetering anchor, Seyfried channels a fascinating blend of composure and chaos that, in a less muddled movie, would have sung. Yet here, her portrayal of an assured woman unraveling under pressure merely lends a haunting note to a tale that strikes as simultaneously laborious and opaque.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    A Sloth Story
    A Sloth Story suffers from a plasticky visual design. The characters seem stiff, like action figures, and their food items, meant to look appetizing, are often rendered as colored medallions.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Old Guy
    Beyond the stale plot and groaners that make up the dialogue, “Old Guy” suffers from haphazard pacing, as if every third scene was cut out in postproduction. Watching, one wonders who this movie is for — even within the target demographic stated in the title.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Paddington In Peru
    It’s a somewhat rote exercise in soul-searching, and the script lacks subtlety. (At one point, a character actually says, “you have found yourself.”) But the experience is still a worthy one for our furry leading man.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Kinda Pregnant
    Most egregiously, the world of Kinda Pregnant is filled with dopey men and despairing women whose torments, parental or otherwise, make for a land mine of comedy duds.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Lurker
    If Lurker eventually succumbs to certain genre tropes and a handful of story bumps, it makes up for its limitations in perspicacity and the overall strength of its filmmaking.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Natalia Winkelman
    Last Days
    All the promise of this premise is squandered in Lin’s adaptation, which in style and structure hews to hackneyed convention at every turn.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Marcello Mio
    Some might call it a “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” for fans of European cinema. Others might say it’s a trifle. The film’s ending, however, amounts to a bemused shrug.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Natalia Winkelman
    The Wedding Banquet
    While watching Andrew Ahn’s amiable dramedy, which expands on the original premise while maintaining its central themes of found family and tolerance, one rarely questions the story’s relevance. More vitally, it lacks panache.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    One Of Them Days
    Lamont and Singleton effortlessly mix the silly with the sincere, and although “One of Them Days” favors razzing over heart-to-hearts, our belief in this pairing never wavers. For that, hats off to SZA and especially Palmer, who lights up the screen with starry zeal.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    2073
    Kapadia is a gifted storyteller in both modes, yet one wishes for a version of “2073” in which the veil between them was more permeable. As the film makes clear, they may soon be one and the same.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Dirty Angels
    Suffers from the discord between the real-life conflicts that make up its setting and the cartoonish characters who propel its plot.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    The Girl with the Needle
    The Girl With the Needle is most intriguing when it lingers in its disturbing fictions, which come to life with exceptional style.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Moana 2
    Squint your eyes against the specifics, and the odyssey tends to deliver a mood that fluctuates along a scale of benign to bright.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Bread & Roses
    While the immediacy of the storytelling may blur out precise details, it excels at building stakes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Hippo
    Like a stubborn toddler zipping his mouth shut while stomping his feet, “Hippo” manages to be noisily aggravating while saying nothing at all.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Elevation
    Directed by George Nolfi (“The Adjustment Bureau”), Elevation is distinctive not for its innovations in form or narrative — it’s got nothing new to offer — but for the anxieties and attitudes it telegraphs.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Pedro Páramo
    Where this rich, metaphysical text might have come alive in dreamlike abstraction, Prieto and his screenwriter, Mateo Gil, instead content themselves with a prestige Western on terra firma — grave, good-looking and uninspiring.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Chasing Chasing Amy
    Rodgers, a sheepish and at times bewildered guide, seems ill-equipped to reconcile Adams’s reflections with his admiration for Smith and “Chasing Amy,” and instead pivots the story to focus on his own personal and professional evolution.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Black Box Diaries
    For the most part, Black Box Diaries — per its title — is a personal testimony of a stressful journey, illustrating how survivors struggle, cope and find relief in support.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Allswell in New York
    If few of the melodramatic plot lines wrap up by the end, at least the members of the ensemble cast commit to their roles with naturalistic gusto.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    The Wild Robot
    The movie is a dazzling triumph of animation in which you feel the filmmakers’ attention on every frame. In a revivifying turn away from the gag-a-minute, computer-generated extravaganzas clogging up the animated zoological canon, this is a work that cares most about two things: big feelings and great beauty.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 58 Natalia Winkelman
    Emmanuelle
    In aiming for a piece of atmospheric sensuality, she instead lands in an erotic no man’s land, where the dramatic but obvious filmmaking — like an orbital shot when Emmanuelle finally reaches orgasm — isn’t surprising or evocative enough to make up for the silly monologues and empty characterizations.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    All Shall Be Well
    The film’s most extraordinary trick is how Pat’s presence hovers over the film. It is a feat of filmmaking and performance that a character only onscreen for a few scenes can feel truly missed by the audience. The home Pat and Angie built together aches with her absence, and so does the film.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Girls Will Be Girls
    The screenplay suffers from some unevenness, but it never wavers in its empathy. It helps that Talati demonstrates a keen eye for composition.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    I'll Be Right There
    Even as the gifted actresses trade jabs and punchlines gamely, the moments leave a sour taste.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Seeking Mavis Beacon
    Seeking Mavis Beacon still goes down smoothly, at least until its conclusion; while other films tie up too neatly, this one could use a bow at all. It helps that Jones and Ross are clever and likable guides.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Natalia Winkelman
    My First Film
    Although it tells of a production gone ostensibly wrong, My First Film is, at its core, a movie not about upheaval but about yearning — and about how, sometimes, giving that yearning up can be a beautiful, generous act of creation all its own.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Close to You
    As attentive as Close to You is to family dynamics, its dialogue, which the actors largely improvised, rarely achieves verisimilitude.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The Good Half
    Snow, as the daughter who always played second fiddle, brings real feeling to her role — suggesting that she may in fact be the good half of this insipid drama.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Coup!
    This implication that virility trumps effeteness is, amid an otherwise straightforward comedy, an uncomfortably regressive way to tell the story of how people vie for power in hard times.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Join or Die
    Throughout, the film unabashedly adopts Putnam’s doctrine: Become a joiner or democracy is doomed. Some of the film’s points feel simplistic, and questions linger.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Confessions of a Good Samaritan
    What begins as an optimistic piece of advocacy eventually veers into something more complex, ambivalent and even frantic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Summer Solstice
    A triumph of sensitivity.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Ezra
    What keeps the story sweet is the chemistry between Cannavale and Fitzgerald, who build a bond worth cherishing.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Mother of the Bride
    Mother of the Bride is directed by Mark Waters (“Mean Girls”) with an apparent allergy to verisimilitude.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Turtles All the Way Down
    What “Turtles” does offer in surplus is texture, thanks to Marks’s springy, stylish direction.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Dead Don't Hurt
    A tale of romance and revenge that culminates in a shootout, The Dead Don’t Hurt is not a total misfire. There are moments of excitement, and the film’s semi-nonlinearity allows for a few midpoint surprises about characters we thought we knew.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Girls State
    Girls State endears, but it also leaves viewers with the sense that, for a film about young women eager to take on the world’s challenges, the movie could stand to tackle a few more.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Asphalt City
    This jittery drama wants viewers to appreciate the unique burdens facing emergency medical workers. Its approach to achieving this goal, however, involves a profusion of overly literal allusions to the paramedics as arbiters of life and death.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    The Beautiful Game
    The Beautiful Game is a model of a modern “nice” movie.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Stormy
    After so much media coverage, certain details of the events feel overly familiar. But the director, Sarah Gibson, is often able to put the episodes into fresh contexts.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Cabrini
    It’s inspiring stuff, rendered stodgy and repetitive.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Shayda
    In her first narrative feature, Niasari, who based the story in part on her own experiences, demonstrates an astounding control of pacing and mood.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World
    Even if some scenes want for energy, the compassion of the “Veselka” subjects — and its filmmaker — never wavers.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Upgraded
    The movie is unevenly directed, and some scenes struggle to clear even the low bar set by more polished streaming originals. But Young succeeds nonetheless in channeling the freshman thrill of plunging into an alluring adult milieu.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Drift
    Drift, a patient character study set on a craggy Greek island, proves a mesmerizing showcase for the actress Cynthia Erivo’s talents.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Fitting In
    Its revelations about gender, sexuality and identity tend toward the obvious, and sometimes veer into the facile.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Peasants
    As the story’s melodrama grows repetitive, so do the visuals.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Role Play
    One is quick to forgive faulty plot machinations when an action movie really revs; Role Play merely spins its wheels.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Rose
    Alongside Oplev’s commitment to genuine feeling and complexity — you won’t find easy solutions here — Grabol’s performance shines.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Total Trust
    Total Trust is not a chronicle of how circumstances can go from a simmer to a boil, but rather a moment’s temperature check.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Who We Become
    The issues explored in Who We Become are essential, but the film’s content can occasionally feel superficial.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    Monster
    Lovingly detailed and accented by an aching score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died in March, Monster is one of the finest films of the year, and its structure — like its circle of characters — carries secrets that can only be unraveled through patience and empathy.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    JFK: What the Doctors Saw
    You will finish the film agreeing that what the doctors saw is crucial. But what it all means for America’s most enduring mystery is less clear.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Radical
    Despite its foundation in reality, Radical is as by the books as it gets.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Five Nights at Freddy's
    You may chuckle, but it’s hard to tell if the movie is laughing with you.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Waiting for the Light to Change
    In her feature debut, Tran is intermittently successful at capturing the listlessness that defines that liminal space between adolescence and adulthood; as “Waiting” progresses, malaise envelops her characters like the gray fog over the shoreline.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Reality Winner
    The film is clear in showing how the media put her into boxes: a traitor, a terrorist, a progressive, an innocent, a lost cause. But who is Reality Winner? This documentary doesn’t dig deeper than her patently well-meaning exterior.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    My Love Affair with Marriage
    The result evokes an adult puppet show crossed with a graphic novel, and like the budding female identity the film untangles, the whole thing takes a little time getting used to. Once you do, it is remarkably beautiful.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Reptile
    The trouble with Reptile is that this impressive moment-to-moment control does not extend to the contours of the broader story, which the writers overstuff with clumsy twists and contrived devices.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Cassandro
    Williams, an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, is an expert orchestrator of naturalism. The trouble is that lucha libre, built on glitz, is anything but naturalistic. The self-assured freedom Saúl channels in bed never makes its way into scenes in the ring, which tend to tire when they should dazzle.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Love at First Sight
    What are the odds that a premise as unimaginative as this one should emerge as a sturdy little romantic drama?
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Lee
    Though it is not an unpleasant experience, it is a limp one.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 58 Natalia Winkelman
    The Promised Land
    This sweeping, stagy movie sags and drags, never quite able to shake the weight of its own loftiness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Dumb Money
    This energetic, enjoyable movie does not set out to break ground, but in putting centerstage those who are typically left on the sidelines, the movie emerges as a rousing success.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Scout's Honor: The Secret Files of the Boy Scouts of America
    Knappenberger does, thankfully, make space for survivors to share their own accounts, and their vulnerability lends authority to an otherwise anonymous film.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia
    In a film whose moral emphasizes the necessity of artistic freedom, there is a deceptive simplicity to this aesthetic style that makes it all the more special.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Billion Dollar Heist
    Billion Dollar Heist is not totally bankrupt, but in mining its central cybercrime for tidbits while smoothing over its complexities, the film erodes its power both as seminar and spectacle.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The Last Voyage of the Demeter
    The script does find time for a feeble feminist gesture — the story’s sole woman can cock a rifle — and a monologue about racism. These efforts to update the tale are about as successful as those of the sorry crew, whose fates were written over a century ago.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    What Comes Around
    The story, though neatly plotted, is engaging enough. The trouble lies in its staging.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Susie Searches
    Susie Searches is more than comfortable drawing on the staid tropes of its genre, particularly those that paint mental illness as a path to depravity. But despite its narrative shortcomings, the film builds a tense and mischievous mood that acts as its hook.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Deepest Breath
    We learn precious little about the personal lives of these impressive individuals. When it comes to what drove them, how they associated with others or how they dealt with danger, The Deepest Breath offers only surface-level observations.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The YouTube Effect
    The internet moves quickly, perhaps too quickly for an overview this unfocused.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    Not even the matriarchal link at the story’s center feels satisfying, its good intention strangled by the plotty chaos.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    American Pain
    The utility of an energetic character study of depraved opioid kingpins is questionable. But the documentary unspools with enough style and spark to engage.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Take Care of Maya
    Take Care of Maya is grueling, but it is also oddly deficient, wanting for the precision and perspective essential to deriving insight from profound trauma.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Rise
    This is a sweet, uncomplicated story relayed with enough entrancing dance breaks to fill an American halftime show.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Victim/Suspect
    The film, which examines cases in which sexual assault survivors are charged with false reporting, is the rare entry whose revelations feel cogent, earned and memorable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Museum of the Revolution
    This is an engrossing documentary, and one that raises questions about the ethics of intervening (or not) in the lives of people struggling to get by. That these queries hover unresolved may leave viewers uneasy, but it also positions us alongside the subjects, waiting for a solution that’s yet to arrive.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Butterfly Vision
    The film might aim to deliver an aesthetic and emotional jolt, but it is the mundane, interpersonal moments that linger.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    The Starling Girl
    A tender tale, The Starling Girl twirls through a spate of clichés — many surround Jem’s relationship to her alcoholic father, Paul (Jimmi Simpson) — but sticks the landing thanks to Parmet’s rapt attention to the shifting desires of her central character.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Anxious Nation
    When it comes to the causes of this mental health crisis or the precise ways in which it manifests, the documentary falters, unable to distill its empirical material into insights.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Centurion: The Dancing Stallion
    A formulaic family melodrama . . . which stars a stable of equine and human performers gamely mounting a Nicholas Sparks-like story line complete with romance across social classes, a conniving antagonist and grave health crises.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting
    In tuning the project to the key of advocacy, the directors have created a film to nod along with, not one that unpacks complexity.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Tommy Guns
    It’s a stylized spectacle, and the effects can feel discordant. Conceição eventually chips through the horror genre enamel to expose a message about the futility of war, but the tale’s miscellany of moods dulls its ultimate power.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Human Flowers of Flesh
    There is little story beyond the snatches of conversation we receive, but Human Flowers of Flesh brims with visual and aural detail from the rocky coasts and gurgling reefs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
    Here is a documentary that casts a clear eye on the offenses of an industry driven by capitalism while never losing sight of the workers whose safety and success should be that profession’s number one priority.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Petite Solange
    As Solange’s teenage woes bubble up and then cool to a simmer, Ropert reveals a knack for calibrating emotion. It can be agony to accept one’s parents as people with needs and faults all their own, and Ropert observes Solange’s coming-of-age lucidly and without judgment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Forger
    Peren is clever to favor mischief against a backdrop of gloom, but in doing so she draws a frustrating distance between her subject and the audience.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    The First Step
    At once a story of legislative struggle and an admiring profile of a crusader, The First Step sometimes gets bogged down in bromides about community and common ground rather than unpacking the specifics of Jones’s approach and how it differs from his detractors’.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    Huesera: The Bone Woman
    "Huesera" is the type of staggering supernatural nightmare that is as transfixing as it is terrifying.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Somebody I Used to Know
    The film lacks the indelible details and authentic feeling necessary to encode it in long-term memory. Indeed, soon after finishing the movie, it already feels far away.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Baby Ruby
    As moody and messy as its eponym, Baby Ruby aspires to demonstrate how postpartum psychosis can feel like a horror movie. It just fails to make the condition feel like a particularly convincing or cohesive horror movie.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    The Mission
    One hopes that such access would yield new insights into the church. But as the events unspool, the film struggles to crystallize more than a handful of compelling points.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    All Eyes Off Me
    Within this framework, Avishag’s wants and needs are not quite legible enough to trace a satisfying arc, but unspooling under the film’s stylish, judgment-free gaze, her interactions are alluring nonetheless.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?
    We already know that Menzel can belt to the back row; a richer profile would have coaxed out a more intimate voice.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari
    Once the ash settles, we long for insight, but only the trauma lingers on.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Darby and the Dead
    As familiar as this tale of female transformation feels, there is an authentic sweetness to Darby and Capri’s fledgling friendship. Their bond resuscitates a movie that might otherwise have been dead on arrival.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The Son
    Despite its contemporary New York City setting, The Son seems to have appropriated a midcentury understanding of mental illness, and the emotion on display feels even more artificial than the rooftop vista erected outside the windows of Peter’s industrial-chic Manhattan loft.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Bad Axe
    This is a hermetic story, but one wishes that Siev had balanced its coziness with acuity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Nothing Lasts Forever
    That marketing campaigns are built on fallacies isn’t exactly revelatory, but in pairing his excavation of the diamond myth with new inquiries into how the industry is evolving (and how it’s stagnating), Kohn strikes on something valuable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
    If Guadagnino sought to reflect the romance of Ferragamo’s red carpet creations, his storytelling is at once more conventional and more awkward in construction. Forget feet; defter hands might have helped.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Run Sweetheart Run
    Bursts of experimental style feel at odds with the movie’s core: a simplistic parable of pervasive sexism.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    The Fire that Took Her
    In interviews, the director Patricia E. Gillespie has said that while pitching the film, people often asked whether she could cover or blur Judy’s face to shield audiences from her burns. Gillespie refused, and her resolve to train her camera on Judy gives the film an unflinching quality.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Rosaline
    The engine of this movie is snark, and Dever, overtaxed with carrying the comedy, brings a dauntlessness to the role, even during more daft moments.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Significant Other
    Significant Other does not reinvent the genre, but its narrative flourishes make for an exciting outing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    God's Creatures
    God’s Creatures is ultimately a movie about the collision between a mother’s fidelity and her moral conscience, and Watson is terrific at telegraphing how these instincts grind against each other to terrifying ends.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Argentina, 1985
    Cinema prizes a good man making history, but this story’s heroes are manifold.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Invisible Demons
    Through a series of arresting images, the director Rahul Jain presents a city on the verge of apocalypse.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    End of the Road
    Even when the movie wants for tension, it brims with playful style.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Our American Family
    Addiction is a complex, challenging topic, and Our American Family, in its sharp specificity, handles it with grace.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The Invitation
    Had the movie emerged as a friskier game of eat the rich, it might have had a fighting chance of survival. Instead, it’s middling, morbid pap.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Look Both Ways
    Never mind that Look Both Ways seems to posit that, for women, child rearing and a career are in relative opposition — when Natalie comes to a fork in the road, the movie hardly lets her look both ways. It bulldozes her down one path, and then the other.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Rogue Agent
    The real account of Robert Freegard might have been unbelievable. Its dramatization, however, is preposterous.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Wedding Season
    Wedding Season is mostly flavorless, but its interest in capitalistic success inspires a pucker of bad taste.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Natalia Winkelman
    Girl Picture
    In spite of the movie’s tropes, Haapasalo clearly understands that, when you’re young, desire can feel confusing or gratifying, thrilling or overwhelming. In her snapshot of contemporary girlhood, Haapasalo contains all of the above — making the movie an affecting achievement that never feels less than loving.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    How to Please a Woman
    This hook piques curiosity — at least enough for a coy eyebrow raise. Light intrigue is often not enough, though, and in this case, the movie strains to sustain charm.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down
    Even during more analytic or crusading sections, the documentary’s mood never strays from inspirational.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Fair Play
    While its stylings, including perky music and cutesy graphics, can sometimes verge on trite, its insights and guidance are encouraging, actionable and necessary.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Sniper. The White Raven
    Like many other movies trailing a lone gunslinger, Sniper: The White Raven builds to a tense face-off, which for our hero comes to represent a small measure of justice.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Wildhood
    The quiet candor with which Hannam addresses issues of masculinity, and how it intersects with an Indigenous and queer identity, elevates this otherwise conventional story.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Jerry and Marge Go Large
    While the movie sustains levity, its lack of subtlety — and a lack of stakes, save for sweepstakes — make for an altogether bland bonanza.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Being BeBe
    With her feature debut, Branham exposes her hand as filmmaker, and reminds us that Being BeBe is only a snapshot of Ngwa’s persona; the real thing is so much richer.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Hollywood Stargirl
    Hollywood Stargirl could be seen as a filmmaking exercise. How do you build a story around a character who was auxiliary by design? Hart’s solutions are manifold, but her most effective one is to quash the grating altruism that drove Stargirl in the first movie.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Paulie Go!
    Directed by Andrew Nackman in his feature debut, Paulie Go! unabashedly aspires to the sentimental whimsy that once swamped film festivals, and certain moments — including a self-consciously awkward dance scene — seem near quotations of dozens of offbeat movies that came before.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Cyber Hell: Exposing an Internet Horror
    What could have been an urgent inquiry into the systems enabling sex criminals becomes something more pedestrian — a stylized replay of a game of cat and mouse.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Sneakerella
    If this spin on the tale is not quite diverting enough to justify its existence, the movie, directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, is at least not a soulless exercise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen
    Raim is interested in how Jewison sought to preserve the story’s essence while making creative updates, and in doing so “Fiddler’s Journey” touches on issues of Jewish representation but does not interrogate them.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Stay Awake
    It’s an earnest look at the collateral damage surrounding addiction, and the movie is at its strongest when it homes in on the experiences of Ethan and Derek. But as the main characters of the movie learn, compassion alone isn’t always enough.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Sexual Drive
    Consistently intriguing and occasionally hilarious, the movie does not depict sex itself. Instead, the characters eat food items that become objects of titillation, lust and pleasure: the sticky goo around soybeans, chili oil sizzling in a wok.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Dual
    There is something insincere in this movie’s manner, an aloofness that masquerades as satire but repels inquiry or emotion. “Dual” takes a worthy idea and throws a smoke bomb in its middle, leaving the audience to squint through the haze.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Metal Lords
    Conventional but genuine, Metal Lords comprehends the riot of adolescent emotions and the many ways teenagers manage them.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King
    This sensational documentary feels bankrupt at its core.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Outside Noise
    Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Atlantide
    Had Atlantide granted deeper access to Daniele and Maila, these images might have lent a moody complement to the characters and their struggles. As is, any sense of meaning is cast adrift in a sea of pretty pictures.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    The Adam Project
    Blissfully under two hours, The Adam Project is no modern classic. But it does benefit from an affecting finale that pays special attention to Adam’s strained relationship with his father.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Lucy and Desi
    Here is a documentary that invites us to delight in the unexpected pairing of a famed funny lady and a hunky musician — but without analysis or nuance. Better to flip on a few “I Love Lucy” reruns instead.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Servants
    Ostrochovsky often begins shots with characters frozen in place for several seconds before they launch into action, as if they were chess pieces moved by God across the bare lines of the seminary’s crumbling stone architecture.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Natalia Winkelman
    Happening
    More than anything else, Diwan seems interested in exploring how, at many points in history, young women had no choice but to bear this particular burden alone.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Natalia Winkelman
    The Sky Is Everywhere
    Too many works aimed at younger age groups ooze with sentimentality or buckle under a condescending tone. Here, in figurative voice-over full of imagery, we receive Lennie’s unbridled imagination and worldview.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Book of Love
    When, and in which picturesque city, Henry and María will acknowledge their mutual affection is the burning question of this romantic comedy trifle, which offers a few laughs and many more exasperated groans.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 42 Natalia Winkelman
    Summering
    A misfire that’s as stilted as it is inert.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild
    Of all the movie’s sins, [Scrat's] omission is unforgivable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Fresh
    Cave has an imaginative sense of camera placement, and she’s an expert at inserting ultra-close-up shots at precisely the right moment to induce a laugh, gasp, or shiver. Her camera is always in service of the story, rather than distracting from it with artifice.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    The King's Daughter
    Here’s a tragic tale: Once upon a time, an action-adventure drama began production. Nearly eight years, a title change and a new distribution plan later, the movie finally sees the light of day. Nothing about it feels worth the wait.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Brazen
    Brazen occasionally scratches the same itch as does a cop procedural, or a Lifetime drama so formulaic you foresee every beat.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Back to the Outback
    However generic this movie is in premise, there is wit to be found in its details, and warmth in its message.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Wolf
    Wolf may lead with an open curiosity, but in tackling big ideas about identity, openness is not always enough.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    A Boy Called Christmas
    Magic abounds in A Boy Called Christmas, Netflix’s first prestige holiday movie of the season, but pulsing through this winning adventure tale is something even stronger: the immersive power of storytelling.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Aulcie
    There is a contagious thrill to the movie’s portrait of its subject’s achievements, especially his whirlwind romance with the Israeli supermodel Tami Ben Ami. But when it comes to Perry’s moments of struggle, Aulcie trips up.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Clifford the Big Red Dog
    Genuine sweetness can be found in Emily’s fidelity to her rowdy new best friend. Still, naturalism is hard to fake, and it’s difficult to divorce Clifford from the lines of code that animate him.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    A Mouthful of Air
    Directed by Amy Koppelman and based on her novel of the same name, A Mouthful of Air aspires to show how depression can sully even the loveliest of scenes. The scenes the movie chooses, however, play like a parody of white privilege.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Luzzu
    Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, vérité approach, he captures something special — not one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Natalia Winkelman
    Distancing Socially
    It’s fine that nothing major happens in this charmless quaran-com; it is concerning, however, that neither the audience nor the actors, sitting stiffly behind their screens, are given reason to care.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Nightbooks
    Its devotion to frights makes it memorable.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Cinderella
    Among the countless iterations the story has weathered through the ages, this Cinderella (streaming on Amazon), starring Camila Cabello as the orphaned maiden, is forgettable. It is oddly transfixing, though, as a study in the semiotics of the modernized fairy tale.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    The Smartest Kids in the World
    The Smartest Kids in the World aspires to offer a study of teaching methods worldwide, but the documentary (on Discovery+) contains little rigor. It’s a dippy lecture in motion.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    The Kissing Booth 3
    Like a scoop of vanilla ice cream atop scoops of chocolate and strawberry, The Kissing Booth 3 rounds out the sugary teen trilogy with a fitting, if bland, finale.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Playing with Sharks
    Playing With Sharks would like to position Valerie as both intrepid diver and valiant activist, but with its focus on thrills and gills, the film goes light on the context needed to reconcile these two identities.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Last Summer
    For all the beauty of its dazzling vacation setting, Last Summer coasts, but not toward any satisfying destination.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Jagame Thandhiram
    Some moments feel fresh, but the movie’s patterns are familiar: scheme, slaughter, repeat.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Wish Dragon
    Wish Dragon is a transporting experience, but it’s far from a whole new world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Changing the Game
    Changing the Game could have gone further, analyzing how fairness in sports is a myth to begin with. But the movie isn’t interested in rewriting the rules; it would rather introduce us to the brave young people who are.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Apocalypse '45
    Apocalypse ’45 knows that war is hell for everyone. But it’s difficult to escape the sense that, in this film’s view of history, America is top of mind.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Broken Harts
    With a bolder and broader framework, Broken Harts might have been more than fast food for true-crime obsessives.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    In Our Mothers' Gardens
    As a director, Lewis is admirably present. She seems to have gained the trust of her interview subjects, and has taken care to create a space for openness.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Natalia Winkelman
    Red Moon Tide
    Though thin on story, the film (streaming on Mubi) is a majestic vision. But most captivating are the settings.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Ride or Die
    The movie gracefully captures the rhythms of intimacy, how it deepens quicker in stolen time. But even as they develop a kinship, the women themselves remain ciphers.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Future People: The Family of Donor 5114
    Although Future People struggles to break through to the kids, an engaging family portrait emerges nonetheless — of a group clustered by biology, but bonded by a singular shared experience.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Seaspiracy
    Even the film’s notable points seem to emerge only briefly before sinking beneath the surface, lost in a sea of murky conspiratorial thinking.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Groomed
    Van de Pas calls on experts, psychologists and a convicted sex offender for interviews, but the most illuminating examples come from her own story.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Yes Day
    Though Yes Day does not lack for energy, the jokes are too broad and the mishaps too safe for the movie to emerge as an honest or imaginative journey through family conflict and compromise.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    The Walrus and the Whistleblower
    Frustratingly, the documentary declines to probe Demers’s evolving relationship to his activism and newfound fame.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Little Big Women
    A gentle panning camera and a bland score milk every scene for emotion, and at more than two hours, the women’s journeys drag. By the time it is over, Little Big Women has lost any sense of restorative power — all that registers is tedium.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    There Is No I in Threesome
    As our central couple’s connection falters, the documentary evolves into an astute examination of perspective.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Palmer
    That Palmer eventually embraces Sam as an ally in misfitdom is inevitable. So is the annoyance inspired by this prosaic masculine melodrama.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Locked Down
    The best that Locked Down has to offer, at least while we remain in the throes of a deadly crisis, is a window into a luxurious space to quarantine.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
    Grooving through the decades, this entertaining documentary aspires to prove that the Bee Gees were more than a hitmaker for disco nightclubs. Rather, Barry, Maurice and Robin were master songwriters and chameleons, continually reinventing themselves to harmonize with the times.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Godmothered
    Is the film trapped in Disney orthodoxy? If the shoe fits.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    The Christmas Chronicles 2
    As Kate and Jack’s adventures turn to lessons in love and courage, the movie starts to feel mechanical, like the Village’s churning candy cane mill. But its output is always as sweet.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Ainu Mosir
    Rather than relying on dialogue, Fukunaga allows emotion to shine through musical performances — a school anthem, folk songs, drunken karaoke. These scenes speak for themselves, and they build upon the story with quiet power.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    Come Away
    Like a magic brew thinned into bouillon, Come Away folds spellbinding storybook tales into a mundane melodrama.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Natalia Winkelman
    Holidate
    Far worse than these characters’ grating personalities are the regressive strains underpinning their flirtation.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Over the Moon
    Over the Moon deserves credit for launching an unflinching lesson about grief. If only it had taken a different flight path.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Blackpink: Light Up the Sky
    While its salute to the artists flicks at the cynical side of their industry, it is less a probing profile than a backstage pass for fans of the band (a.k.a. Blinks) old and new.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Natalia Winkelman
    David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
    The film’s grand achievement is that it positions its subject as a mediator between humans and the natural world. Life cycles on, and if we make the right choices, ruin can become regrowth.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Kiss the Ground
    The film makes a case for the healing power of soil, arguing that its capacity to sequester carbon could be the key to reversing the effects of climate change.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    Unpregnant
    Its driving force may seem topical, but the story’s heart is timeless: the harmony between longtime friends, and Veronica and Bailey throw themselves into even the most fraught situations with giddy enthusiasm.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Love, Guaranteed
    Love, Guaranteed, simmering at a low boil, is a short and mostly sweet affair. Its successes are due in large part to Cook who, donning a vast array of snug fall coats, is endearing as a willful working woman with a new crush.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Rising Phoenix
    By avoiding complexity, Rising Phoenix preserves its inspiring mood, but offers only a platform for champions who already dominate the arena.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Chemical Hearts
    Despite the movie’s sympathy for the high stakes of Henry’s adolescence, the myopia of his point of view settles over “Chemical Hearts” like a layer of grime.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Natalia Winkelman
    Work It
    Work It is no “Step Up,” but its best sequences involve Jake and Quinn, who share a chemistry in motion that, for a beat or two, conjures the genre’s magic.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Natalia Winkelman
    The Kissing Booth 2
    If The Kissing Booth, stacked with regressive relationship dynamics, is Victorian in its views, The Kissing Booth 2 progresses to the midcentury.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Feel the Beat
    The harmony among the kids, particularly the older girls Kari (Lidya Jewett) and Sarah (Eva Hauge), is the film’s greatest asset, and the director, Elissa Down, uses their natural charm as a crutch for the run-of-the-mill story.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    I'm No Longer Here
    Frías de la Parra is thoughtful and precise in conveying the cultural identity of these young people, and their spirit pulses through the story.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Natalia Winkelman
    A Secret Love
    It is a compliment that A Secret Love, which runs under an hour and a half, could stand to be longer, with an expanded portrait of Terry and Pat’s early life as a couple.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Little Woods
    Affecting, sincere, and most importantly socially astute ... it’s one of the sharpest and most promising first films I’ve seen in some time.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Natalia Winkelman
    Tyrel
    A finely gradated study of race and masculinity in the age of Trump, Tyrel is also an engrossing portrait of the revealing power of language.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 91 Natalia Winkelman
    I Think We're Alone Now
    I Think We’re Alone Now is an exercise in ambiance, and Morano is nothing if not a brilliant conductor of tone. Favoring dreamy over dreary, the movie is a handsome and often mesmerizing addition to Morano’s expanding oeuvre.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Natalia Winkelman
    Never Goin' Back
    You can expect the same defecation and drug humor that crud up comedies of this ilk. Of course, its vacuity is intentional, and maybe we could always use more movies of the women-behaving-badly variety. But there’s also a real danger in perpetuating this type of teenage girl; it propagates the idea that, for women, defiance is power, radicalism is freedom, and being really hot is often all you need to survive.
next
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »