Rodrigo Perez

Shyamalan’s crafts a deceptively simple experience. The plot is rather ingeniously straightforward, at first, but the fraught journey of a father and killer trying not to upend and upset the carefully constructed delusional fabrication of his life—and how the two identities crash into each other on one fateful day— is exhilaratingly multifaceted.

The Babadook is a smart, respectful horror that puts character and emotional issues first, yet never at the cost of a delightful and haunting fright.

Warm, soulful, funny and quietly insightful, Boyhood shines in its engrossing, experiential understanding and it’s a special achievement that should be cherished and acknowledged.

It’s part raw and ugly character study, part ensemble comedy, but it’s that first element that is so striking, bold and unnerving, while the latter element is sometimes amusing, but familiar.

Stutz in the end isn’t revelatory per se, but it is deeply heartfelt, intimate, nakedly honest, and engaging.

McKay’s movie is bold and impertinent and perhaps won’t be for audiences that want a film to play by the rules, but his chutzpah and ambition is something to behold.

Melding the anxiety of the unknown and the fear of who we truly are in our core, all that we try and compartmentalize emotionally as human beings, Gray crafts a movie that is deeply personal, thought-provoking, and thrilling.

Black Widow is mostly an entertaining and adequate tribute to Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow, and Scarlett Johannson’s time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, it’s not quite the bittersweet, moving, or resonant send-off one might have hoped for based on the initial movie’s promise of exploring a dark and damaged past and what that does to the soul.

Kaufman and fellow director Duke Johnson strike the right balance here, deftly mixing spiritual crisis and despondency with moments of painful awkwardness and biting hilarity.

Baumbach’s sharp examinations of the limitations of the callow arrogance of youth and the fatuous nature of egocentricity are pointed and riotously enjoyable.

As an sensory experience, 'WOWS' is mostly a terrifically visceral one, a full throttle fast and furious bacchanalia of drug-fueled madness. But as a scathing indictment of American rapacity, it isn't particularly deep or resonant beyond the exterior.

A darkly mysterious and extremely accomplished first feature.

Ultimately, the film is not only about children who refused to surrender, but also about a country that, for a brief moment, managed to put aside divisions in service of something greater. Like the best of Vasarhelyi and Chin’s work, it transforms an extraordinary true story into something more universal: a tale of endurance, release, and the desperate search for light.

I Origins is a fascinating examination of belief, spirituality and otherworldliness through the skeptical lens of science, however, it's not always perfect.

Perhaps the biggest achievement of The Threesome is how it manages to remain real, grounded and tender but still succeeds in finding opportune moments of comedy in an undoubtedly absurd situation.

It’s a sublime little travelogue, deceptively simple, engaging, and thoughtful.

Big, wonderfully oddball, sometimes confounding and beautiful, Inherent Vice supplies good dosages of stoner giggles. But its doobage is potent and reflects some heavy ideas you’ll need to unpack and meditate on for a long while.

While Muscle Shoals and its presentation doesn't reinvent the wheel—this is your standard talking heads documentary—the treasure trove of stills and found footage makes for a compelling and effortlessly watchable film that even the casual music fan should find themselves totally engrossed in.

Ultimately, Between The Temples is achingly, evenly deceptively sweet and from the heart. It’s a dexterously comic but moving examination of a life interrupted, seemingly demolished, and a life of unfulfilled dreams, clashing, colliding, and perhaps finding a tender togetherness that suggests second chances and no term limits on coming of age

Through sheer force of filmmaking will and mediation on what it means to be self-aware, Villeneuve’s towering picture still manages to inspires awe and contains profoundly beautiful moments.

Holofcener knows human pathos, the melancholic, absurdist tragedy of it all, the laughter, the tears, the dark biting irony. She understands human behavior and her sharp, well-observed ‘Land Of Steady Habits’ is as lovely and near amazing as anything she’s made thus far.

As an experience, “A Quiet Place Part II” is still riveting and intense and should check all the boxes for most audiences, especially in the “I just wanna be gripped and entertained” post-pandemic age. For those looking for a little more depth and soul and a movie to fully coalesce in the end? Well, you might have to wait for the next chapter for some true thematic and emotional closure, but still, it’ll be hard to argue this won’t be an escapist thrill for most audiences in theaters, at least.

Leave The World Behind isn’t as perfect as its best-written moments —the ones that are somehow expertly frightening, funny, stressful, and cleverly observational, all at the same time—and the movie even f*cks up its Chekov’s gun tease. But as a wicked, playful, tension-filled, and alarming treatise on humanity, its deep flaws, and how fragile, questionable, scattered, and thus vulnerable we are to attack?

As outlandish as Timestalker is, Lowe’s film holds its idea together well with style, wit, resourceful imagination, great lovelorn music, the sincerity behind heartbreak and deep yearning, and hilarious, sharp laughs to boot.

Narco Cultura is gripping, gruesome and arresting; a disquieting look a pop (sub)-culture phenomenon that is mushrooming all over the United States and Latin America.

Kumiko The Treasure Hunter is a striking film, a bizarre joy and a beautiful delight.

Ultimately, Spider-Man Far From Home turns all its intelligent themes into a triumphant story of self-belief for Peter Parker.

Immense, remarkably captivating, imposing, and right on the edge of overblown, filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” is a spectacular blockbuster epic in the grandest sense of the tradition.