Rodrigo Perez

There’s great craft, impressive creature design, a lugubrious, eventually-soaring score by Max Richter, an excellent Paul Dano nailing the childlike tenor of his inquisitive creature, and low-key Adam Sandler sitting in the pocket, enjoying the chill ease of never overdoing it.

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.

It’s a compelling, lovely little journey about friends reconnecting and rediscovering each other in a portrait that’s tender, humorous, considerate, and more than deserving of your attention and care.

If Suncoast ultimately lacks major insights, it is hard to argue that it at least combats its slenderness with a poignant sense of empathy and compassion for draining emotional hardships.

Aesthetically detached, clinical, and with murderousness always happening in broad daylight, Veni Vidi Vici might arguably be more clever than laugh-out-loud funny or insightful. Still, some of the facetious formalism goes a long way.

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

Make no mistake, Exhibiting Forgiveness can be painful but rewardingly so; it’s complex, unresolved ending all the more honest and true.

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

Flawed but still engaging, “The Kitchen,” at least, has good intentions about togetherness and brotherhood and is a promising debut for Kaluuya and Tavares.

While “Frida” does show signs of promise, especially when it leans into the distinctive, and Kahlo’s penchant for magical realism, it’s never as vibrant as her. One wishes the doc could similarly unshackle itself, match the artist’s radiant spirit, and push itself into the next innovative frontier.

Ambitious, impressive, and genuine, with a great sense of vast scale and awe, as its title suggests, Society Of Snow is not only a three-dimensional cinematic feat of wonder, terror, and emotion-stirring courage but a deeply felt portrait of togetherness, brotherhood, and survival, poignantly commemorating the painful memory of indescribable loss and tragedy.

Good Grief arguably doesn’t quite get there in the end, but there is a promising sense of possibility for what the future could hold for Levy as a filmmaker next.

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?

“Rebel Moon” is nearly unwatchable and one of the most stunning misfires of this scale in quite some time.

[Clooney's] out-of-current-fashion movies can feel quaint in some ways, but more power to the filmmaker who can make whatever the hell they want and do it well and do so on their own terms.

Knock Helgeland’s unpersuasive plot, his broad writing platitudes, and some of the more ridiculous twists of the genre all you want, but the filmmaker at least seems to know, understand, and capture the milieu and people of these communities. Sure, that’s not enough to save Finestkind, but there is something there.

“You Have to See It to Believe It” is a well-worn movie cliché, but trust that it applies to this utterly bananas corporeal bath of cinema in all its glorious sound and vision. As the film ratchets up to its batshit, gnarly, and beautifully mutilated conclusion, man, prepare yourself for how transgressive and hypnagogic it gets.

As an intriguing and complex portrait of humanism vs. idealism (to be civil about it), there’s also a fine line between faith and madness, and to their credit, The Mission filmmakers leave it up to the audience to decide where they stand; perhaps the sign of sharp filmmakers hoping to leave their viewer hashing it out for hours afterward (something that doc certainly engenders).

Make no mistake, most audiences will find ‘Believer’ revolting, but that’s also the point. It’s fascinating in the way it swings for the fences, is full of conviction, and is overflowing with stimulating ideas about acceptance, denial, community, and more, many of them engaging, many of them handled with no sense of taste (to which Green would probably argue is what Friedkin’s film did; good taste be cast out!).

As imitative as Edward’s movie can be, it’s an undeniably impressive piece of work. Its concept and plot are easily identifiable, but the grand sci-fi dimension works well with a personal tale of love, heartache, parenthood, surrogate children, and consideration of humanity for all things living, breathing, or connecting data points with something that may even resemble a soul.

No One Will Save You is a very bizarrely unremarkable, abnormally lifeless movie, seemingly starting right out of the gate in the second act and then trying to reverse engineer the audience’s sympathy—and everything else— for the unknowable protagonist.

In the end, Widow Clicquot is a drama about turning heartbreak and tragedy into something brighter, richer, and spilling over into good fortune. And it’s tastefully made too.

The aspiration itself—what seems to be the clear desire to elevate a conventional murder drama to something greater—feels unmistakably tangible. And ambitious attempts are often intriguing even if they don’t always land.

Holland has made a righteous, masterful work, arguably her best since “Europa Europa,” but it’s not for the faint of heart or those inclined to turn a blind eye to suffering. And again, that’s the point.

If this E6 portrait gets anything right it’s the chaotic creativity that seemed to burst out of many of its members like exploding sunlight their bodies could not handle as if something out of a kooky sci-fi film.

Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies.

The Deepest Breath isn’t hiding the fact that there are daring hazards involved with athletes risking their lives for world records, but it isn't exactly forthcoming either, and the failure to effectively thread that needle is its biggest problem.

Crafted with stillness, empathy, and clever drollness, “Fremont” is so striking it will simply and calmly demand your attention. So seemingly introverted, humble, and unassuming, it’ll force you to lean in, listen and heed all the humorous words of wisdom in its many little moments of providence.