Richard Whittaker

Sporadically, the deliberately organic, semi-improvised tone doesn't quite gel, and there are momentary longueurs that could derail the story. But Myrick's decision to keep the narrative simple, and instead concentrate on the characters, means there's always a thick strand of sympathy and tragedy at play.

Like code that works but inefficiently, the length is both a feature and a bug. Mercifully, Ascher's most visually original movie to date keeps those TED lecture seat-shuffling blues at bay.

It's not if Michael gets out of his rut (or when he gets to chasten Pineapple a little along the way), but how, and it's a fun ride with him until he reaches that destination.

Winter can't resist the cheering idea that, for all its sins, YouTube has created a new, disseminated knowledge base. However, that core concern about its dangers is what really drives The YouTube Effect, and re-enforces its central finding that it has had an undeniably corrosive effect on our lives, even as we've fallen for its steady stream of pablum and bootlegged shows.

The interpersonal storylines, the tackling of the connections between grief and rage and flight, are some of the deepest and most nuanced in the franchise's history, as is the underlying narrative of two powerful nations heading to a needless conflict in the fog of war. When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is at its best when it looks at confusion rather than adds to it.

There’s an earnestness about Accidental Texan that can only warm your heart. Every moment is predictable, but in Bristol’s capable hands that becomes a strength.

Black Phone 2 may be a power ballad to the original’s minor chord metal, but it still rocks.

What really keeps Wander Darkly together is yet another convoluted, conflicted, and honest performance from Miller.

There are flashes of what made the franchise work. Turner, after stumbling through the part in the rocky terrain of X-Men: Apocalypse, finally gets to grapple with the emotional complexities of a woman whose gifts are the most constant curse.

Gloriously gonzo Appalachian creeper Spell makes one big change – having both the urban family in peril and the horrifying hicks with malicious intent be Black – and that's a refreshing change to a genre that's felt moribund since about "Wrong Turn 2."

While Enys Men may play with the trappings and symbolism of folk horror, it's ultimately more of an internal psychological drama, one driven by Woodvine's tragic and quiet embrace of the island's bleak remoteness.

It’s bleak and brutal, and Waugh’s cold tone (a definite throwback to Shot Caller) leaves no one with clean hands. But as a testament to the costs of a noble sacrifice in the face of institutional inhumanity, it’s as vital as any of his earlier films.

Cronin's film feels very Evil Dead-y – no mean feat considering these films have evolved from low-budget gorefests to comedies to high-budget gorefests. There are elements of all those prior summonings, making Evil Dead Rise a chimera that is somehow unique.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie may not win over many or even any new fans, but devotees of the TV show, and even diehards from the single-n Nirvana web days will relish having their favorite gentle idiots back and hearing the same joke on a bigger stage.

It’s not a grand landscape but a small portrait of wistfulness and wanting in the West, fluttering and touching.

Tran undoubtedly aims for an old school Hong Kong comedy martial arts movie feel, lighthearted and light on its feet, and he lands that blow dead on. But rather than a knockout punch, it's a tickle on the ribs and a tussling of the hair from this sweet and funny action flick.

As far as revisionist takes on the Santa story go, Fatman is a long way from the whimsical charm of last year's Oscar-nominated Klaus. Yet for all its bizarre Spaghetti Western nihilism, sporadically going full Franco Nero Django bloodfest, Fatman has an oddly warm heart under its brutal exterior.

In a drama that depends on its organic structure, the constructed nature is a little too visible under the skin.

Superficially, Wolf may seem like an entry into the queer canon, and it's not hard to see superficial similarities between the facility and a gay conversion therapy facility, or to superimpose transphobia onto Jacob's diagnosis of species dysphoria.

Smith presents the danger as the cumulative effect of being trans and Black and a sex worker in America. However, that's not all that Smith is talking about.

Knapp's script is ultimately about how we are trapped in our own pasts, and even when they can seem like a pillow they can become an anchor. It's a soft, sad, yet insistent message that, even as the grass overtakes the baseball pitch where Adam practices, and even as the last windmills slow their spin, becomes a quiet voice of hope.

The Strangler has been called a slasher, but it is not. It has been called a giallo, an anti-giallo, and even a revisionist giallo. But it is none of those things. Paul Vecchiali's newly restored 1970 crime flick is, instead, a meditation that crawled onto the Left Bank of post-war French philosophical ruminations.

A loving, gory, ribald slasher flick that is both serious about the genre and gruesomely ridiculous.

At its best, there's an undoubted thrill and wonder to Pom Poko, like the massive parade of phantoms the tanuki conjure up as one of their harebrained schemes. Takahata's misfire at least provides some wonderful sparkles.

As a simple story of a moralizer being brought down by their own bloody instincts, it works; but asides about the catharsis of gore, and the inner evil of humanity not needing horror movies to be seeded, imply the script wanted something deeper.

What Taylor illustrates in this version of Little Red Riding Hood is a sensitive portrait of guilt, of the difference between people who simply want to bury it and those that are consumed by it.

Both Koepp and Soderbergh are to blame for the underdelivery of a pivotal, plot-defining, single line of dialogue that should have been a strand woven throughout the film.

What makes Orphan: First Kill worthwhile is that it acknowledges the original before taking a hard left turn into overblown soapy madness. The modern gothic of the first film transforms here into a perfectly fitting explosion of operatic schlock.

There's an extraordinary immediacy to Luxor, born of director Durra's unromantic but loving view of the environment.

When the segments do gel, they share a wickedly witty and suitably sickly, gory sense of humor that relishes insider horror jokes but never feels cliquey.

Sam & Kate doesn't try to elicit big emotional responses, but that's exactly why it gets them.

When it comes to the segments, Scare Package II is much more successful than the first film in striking a unified tone – maybe less outrageously funny, maybe a little drier, but still entertaining.

If you're not au fait with the scandalous yet prim world of the 1950s West End, See How They Run is still a silly if slight affair, playful without ever being weighty, and mostly given a sense of giddiness by Rockwell's gruff detective and Ronan as his determined if doubting assistant.

Even if it beat Videodrome to the screen by two years, it's not quite the same level of must-see programming. It's fascinating, but less coherent, less scathing, and far more meandering.

So often, romance subplots in Texas noir feel like afterthoughts, there to increase a little bit of tension. But South of Heaven’s most meaningful moments are in the interplay between Lilly and Sudeikis as the star-crossed lovers with time most definitely not on their side.

Social anxiety abounds in velvet-black British college reunion comedy All My Friends Hate Me, a seething sneer of a satire that swirls around angst-plagued Pete (Stourton), the milquetoast member of a group of friends who come together to celebrate his birthday.

Yes, The Old Way is at first glimpse merely a classic revenger, but it's also vintage low-key Cage, with that acid little twist that makes it all the more fascinating.

Brutally honest, startlingly insightful, and poignant when it could have been bizarre, Dead Dicks earns its tragic, purposefully misleading title and reframes it with dire meaning.

Uncle Frank revolves around Uncle Frank, and Bettany's career-great performance as a man who knows where the gaps are in his life, and how much his whole relationship with his family is about holding his breath.

There’s a ridiculous level of glee to how the Indonesian filmmaker orchestrates a good old-fashioned headshot, or a kick that sends a knee buckling the right way.

Anyone just expecting a cutesy animal romp may be sorely disappointed, but that’s because this isn’t about the quietly expansive inner life of Juan Salvador.

Brimming with cornball humor and overt sentimentality, there’s something compelling within the film’s unyielding commitment to its own idiosyncrasies, not to mention the emotionally cogent backbone.

For those of you who had your brain bent in real time by the ultimate superstar outsider of Eighties comedy, there’s still enough new here to make retreading his familiar career worthwhile.

What makes Fully Realized Humans all the funnier is the couple's conviction that they're always doing the right thing: and, again, if it wasn't for the wide-eyed smart-naïve performances from Wexler and Leonard the whole thing would be insufferable.

Fascinating as the The Infiltrators is, it remains a beginner’s primer to the for-profit immigration system with an oddly jaunty narrative over the top. Like the NIYA activists, its heart may be bigger than its head sometimes, but that’s not the world’s biggest sin.

McAulay has crafted a terse, bleak drama. It's reminiscent of the portrait of a corrupt male friendship in Super Dark Times, but with the added pressures of kinship and family. To describe Don't Tell a Soul as a story of toxic masculinity is both accurate but, in a time when every film with a flawed or unpleasant male an/protagonist gets that tag, almost glib. There's something rancid between the boys.

After the gimmicky Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, the clunky semi-reboot of Jigsaw, and the misguided Spiral: From the Book of Saw, Saw X feels like a welcome return to form.

The aliens look better than ever, Morgan delivers just the right kind of dry-witted action heroics, and Skylines takes the trip to the stars that the franchise has been promising.

In his debut feature as a director, The Valhalla Murders creator Thordur Palsson lets the icy-blue pitilessness of the inhospitable Westfjords permeate every frame and every moment.

That Silo centers around the people of the town is what differentiates it from a media satire like Ace in the Hole, and places it alongside The Straight Story, God's Own Country, and Minari: films that feel like studies of rural life.

It’s not just that it’s a great thriller. Its importance as a film is that it really weaves the lead character’s disability into the script, in a way that arguably wasn’t equaled in the subgenre until Mike Flanagan wrote a deaf heroine for Hush.

Nope is spectacular and intriguing, but also frustratingly incomplete.

Too often, the kid in such cinematic scenarios ends up teaching the parent some life lesson. Instead, Nilon’s script depicts a different and deeply compassionate dynamic between father and sons.

While understated and deeply personal, Mayor cannot avoid the current conflagration in the region.

The Mystery of the Pink Flamingo is not about flamingos, but about how people imbue an abstraction with value, which becomes an exploration of kitsch. But then it's not really about kitsch, no matter how many pink knick-knacks are on display. Meneo's quest becomes the purpose, in a ludicrous, adorable, playful story of finding yourself.

This first film is a delight, a giddy old-school serial adventure romp that will introduce kids to the wonders of vintage cinematic detectives.

If it wasn't for Thorp, this would be intolerable, but as Signe she creates a fascinatingly off-putting character study of a menace to society. There's no redemptive third act here, yet she still creates a rounded depiction of a singularly minded bully.

The strange and challengingly charming awkwardness of Alana and Gary, as well as the more entertaining anecdotes, will get you past the somewhat lumpen structure.

Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes may not have as much to say as you might hope, but what it does it recites with an enthralling elegance.

Writer/director Megan Park follows up her debut feature, the South by Southwest award winning high school shooting drama The Fallout, with another look into the lives of teenagers. But whereas her first film took a suffocating dive into the emotional extremes of their inner lives, coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass is sweeter without being cloying.

By turns funny, grisly, tragic and insightful, Jakob's Wife carries the smartness of years. Never has the idea that vampire and vampire hunter are caught in a codependent relationship been more elegantly and humorously framed.

With their debut, Charbonier and Powell proved a rare grasp of childhood horror, and keeping the perspective of youth among adult sins. The Djinn is even more reliant on that ability, and on their extraordinary relationship with the returning Dewey.

What Stitch Head mostly aims for and generally achieves is a warmth of comedy and emotion that will sit well with young audiences.

Modigliani's fly-on-the-wall documentary verges toward the hagiographic, but that's not the most damning criticism, because he makes the case of O'Rourke's quiet charisma.

At the end of the day, Brewer reminds us, it’s all about hands touching hands.

It does not reinvent the wheel (or, more aptly, sled runner) but it's a tale that survives the retelling.

Bawdy, insightful, and full of heart, The Re-Education of Molly Singer gets a gold star on its report card.

Mid-Century may fit well into the zip code of architectural horror like 13 Ghosts and The Night House, but its unique design makes it well worth the visit.

There's never a singular direction for the film and its sub-plots, but instead it's as if Daneskov strikes for a central mood, then lets each element wander a little away from it: not far enough to be disruptive, but never quite cohesive. Like the misguided men it follows, its charm is in its disorder.

My Penguin Friend is ultimately a charming story of quiet resilience and healing as much as it is about a man and a bird. May we all find such friends.

A testament to the adage that a good filmmaker can make anything out of nothing, Undertone should go in your playlist now.

Originality is what made Alvarez famous. If only he showed more of it here when it comes to storytelling, not just innovative jump scares.

Clunky horror in-jokes, like a heavy-handed Scream nod in the name of Winnie's aunt (Isabelle), feel labored, and it's all plagued by the same unevenness that afflicted director Tyler MacIntyre's Tragedy Girls: The gore and the comedy are well-executed, but the timing is off.

Huang's understatement often seems flat. There's nothing visually distinctive about his depiction of diverse working class NYC, and major events bubble up with surprisingly little impact. With so much on the line, Boogie just sort of dribbles to nothingness.

It’s not frustrating, but then, it’s not quite that engaging. It may spark a little light self-recognition among filmmakers, and that’s all Hansen-Løve seems to aim for.

Prows lets all those subplots divert him from saying something meaningful about how even the best-intentioned of cops end up part of a nightmare machine. Luckily, the plentiful and creative gore splatters enough blood and ichor to provide camouflage disguising those shortcomings. Or rather, enough to make Night Patrol entertaining – just not enough to completely obfuscate what it could have been.

These digressions aren’t enough to build anything like a real conversation about the Austin-made classic. There needs to be something more.

But while Argylle’s stunt-filled antics are suitably loaded with those Vaughnian action sequences, it’s also bloated by more plot twists and reveals than a breezy action comedy can or should be forced to endure.

Written by Mark Duplass and first-time feature director and veteran producer Mel Eslyn (Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off, The One I Love), there's no doubt that Biosphere is filled with ideas, and they're given easy life by Brown and Duplass.

The Outwaters stumbles because it fails to clear the second hurdle of any found footage movie: not simply answering why would the camera stay on (that's the easy part), but why would anyone edit what's been recovered in this way?

Maybe some grasp of the dynamics of the modern publishing industry would have added some grit, making it more than it is: a formulaic and forgettable pulpy beach read.

If you weren't afraid of heights before, then Fall will give you the fear. Welcome to vertigo hell, mainly due to the work of cinematographer MacGregor.

Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners.

What I Want You Back really has going for it is Slate and Day. The set-up may be a Ryan deep cut, but their awkward energy, and shared ability to scattershot subtle one-liners without them getting buried by the sillier antics, harks back to another of her classics: When Harry Met Sally.

If The Five Devils more bravely embraced a single perspective, that might have better bound together its depiction of a family splitting apart.

Misericordia feels like a big metaphysical shrug, sluggish to the point of lethargy.

FP2 is all stupid surface, held together by Trost’s surly charm. It may be filled with dumb “beat off” puns, but it’s just smart enough to be all heart.

Poser, the debut feature from local filmmakers Ori Segev and Noah Dixon, is so in love with the scene from which it draws, with the bands given momentary cameos, with the cool hipness and store brand subversion of it all, that they never seem quite capable of giving it the critique for which they seem to aim.

Ultimately, the slow boil bleakness of the script, with its subtle ruminations of what it is to go on in a time of hopelessness, is what marks Settlers apart, even as it looks and feels like so many of the post-apocalyptic drought-plagued SF dramas of the last few years.

PAW Patrol: The Movie is bigger and prettier than the TV show, but it's still PAW Patrol. What makes it worth the time investment for kids is that it's really about introducing the street-smart long-haired Dachshund Liberty (Martin) into the team, while giving a little drama to Chase's life as he processes some old trauma about being a stray in the big city.

As a heartfelt feel-good story about industrial espionage and how to win the right way, Hero Mode is charming if undemanding, and feels at least a little authentic to its milieu.

The animated feature directorial debut of both Kim Burdon and Robert Chandler (writer/producer of The Amazing Maurice) is a light jaunt that's mostly delivered in mid-tier CG and mildly overblown celebrity voice-acting. However, there are still some delightful flourishes, like opening credits that evoke the distinctive vintage British Rail tourism posters, and a flashback involving articulated paper puppets.

Taken on its own fluff piece terms, Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too.

The result is something that feels like an adult’s idea of a sophisticated kids’ movie, its sense of adventure and imagination overruled and undercut by its tone of mature melancholy.

True, the odd quill may scratch the surface, but there’s nothing really penetrating.

Underlit, shot in the same murky beiges that plague so many low budget horrors, and not as profound as it thinks it is, it isn't quite exploitation schlock or a cerebral shocker, instead relying on both conventions for a hybrid that ends up with the satisfaction of neither.

It’s an inevitable problem with the screenlife format, to find a way to keep this deluge of pop-ups and cutaways all interesting without the audience’s POV ever leaving a desktop screen.

For all the effort that Van Sant and his team put into making Dead Man’s Wire look like 1970s Indianapolis, its ability to really summon the spirit of the era only goes skin deep.