Ross McIndoe

For a film that’s so well versed not only in the genre but in its tendencies to recreate and recycle itself, it’s disappointing to see Faces of Death do so in such slavish fashion.

The film is lean, mean, and feisty, even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

The film is a witchy mall comedy that mostly keeps you under its spell.

While it isn’t an overt examination of it in the manner of The Moment, the film does feel like a natural cinematic extension of Charli XCX’s melancholy party-girl persona.

The film struggles to bring its non-zombie characters to life.

Nuisance Bear is at its most powerful when its message has been condensed down into a single image.

With so many engaging voices on offer, Suzannah Herbert wisely chooses to let the locals tell the story rather than providing any explicit narration of her own.

Sam Green’s documentary has a knack for finding moments where we can feel the broad sweep of a supercentenarian lifespan, condensed down into a single, everyday occurrence.

There’s a thoughtful zombie tale with its own distinctive personality lurking somewhere within We Bury the Dead, but it’s overridden by the film’s more generic elements, and that identity ultimately gets lost among the horde.

The film’s writing is the sort that begs you to find it cute and quirky, which makes it quite grating if you don’t.

This is an overtly political film that’s hesitant to express its own political views.

The film is sensitively attuned to how people’s feelings are shaped by cultural norms.

This is a historical drama with a handsome enough period setting and a couple of pleasant musical moments but whose roteness keeps it from resonating.

The film pokes fun at the conventions of detective stories but never becomes so self-aware that you stop taking it seriously.

Every segment passes the basic scary-movie smell test of showing you something that you haven’t seen before, and that includes a truly depraved death involving a large quantity of gumballs.

A horror tale told from the perspective of a dog, Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy is the sort of film that was always destined to live and die by the strength of its central gimmick.

Swiped’s story sits right at the center of so many vital issues, and a smarter, braver rendition of it—that is, one interested in actually probing beneath the surface of things—might have yielded a film truly worthy of comparison to The Social Network. Instead, we get a piece of corporate hagiography that sweeps all those issues aside to celebrate another tech billionaire.

The film effortlessly melds its sadcom properties with more predictable rom-com traditions.

As the plot progresses, the film appears increasingly adrift, discordantly sliding between farce, satire, and murder mystery.

A Samurai in Time isn’t just having fun with fake swords and chonmage wigs, as it also provides a lot of gentle reflections about history, modernity, and our place in it all.

Nick Rowland’s film doesn’t seem to have faith in the story the novel tells.

It seems unsure whether it wants to be a campy slice of macabre in the vein of Dexter and American Horror Story, where the religious imagery and bloodletting are played for both chills and thrills, or a genuine rumination on death, faith, and the morality of doing bad things to bad people.

40 Acres continually finds clever ways to either subvert familiar story beats or to make them land with extra impact.

Charles Williams’s feature-length directorial debut, Inside, centers on a trio of dangerous men who are forced into each other’s orbit, leading to an outcome that’s both violently chaotic and tragically predictable.

Eli Craig’s film works precisely because it plays things straight.

The first film was divided against itself—half a typically broad Paul Feig comedy, half imitation Gone Girl—and the sequel doesn’t fare much better as a genuine thriller.

The film is far from original, but it successfully translates game logic to the big screen.

The film’s strength is that it knows how to keep things moving.

McVeigh’s ominous atmosphere is omnipresent, clinging to Timothy like a dog to a bone.

It has its very powerful moments, but the oddly linear, untroubled journey of its two main characters robs the film of some of its emotional authenticity.

Ed Harris and Jessica Lange electrifyingly bring so many of their characters’ emotions to the surface, even as they convey that James and Mary are burying so much more beneath it.

When The Surfer does break out of the sun-addled fugue state that marks its midsection, it delivers a gonzo finale that lets Nicolas Cage rev himself up into his most manic, meme-able self.

The film is full of little moments that speak clearly to the particularities of father-son bonds.

Geeta Gandbhir’s trenchant documentary takes incendiary material and aims it at a larger target.

Grafted’s biggest problem is that it loses all momentum once the face-swapping kicks into motion, meandering along with no real sense of rising danger or ensuing consequence as the baton is passed from one victim to the next.

While it’s never didactic or heavy-handed about its messaging, Paddington in Peru also offers an idea of Britishness that’s multifaceted and modern.

The film is most interesting when observing the subtler power dynamics at play within frats.

In many ways, the film feels like a micro-budget rendition of Tenet, as our heroes discover that they’ve been caught in a “vice-grip” between past and future that functions much like that film’s famous “temporal pincer.”

The camera, the cuts, the needle drops, and story twists all contribute to the feeling of a machine that’s spinning faster and faster until finally it careens right out of control.

The film retreads ideas familiar from time-loop stories without offering anything especially new.

Blink Twice clearly has thoughts about the danger that men can pose and the way women are forced to perform happiness while in the company of such predators, but it never provides more than a surface-level understanding of such dynamics.

With The Outrun’s neat but poignant metaphor work in mind, mental illness and addiction are understood as natural responses to the conditions of a ravaged life.

Strange Darling is a cunningly devised thriller that wields our assumptions against us like a sharp implement, delighting in making us squirm.

Blue Sun Palace’s tale is filled with quiet spaces, and the way the texture of this quiet changes over the course of the film is a testament to its power.

Rather than grappling with the mind and soul of the man who birthed bizarre, fatalistically funny and existentially unsettling works like Waiting for Godot, James Marsh’s film seems content to merely adapt the “Personal Life” section of Samuel Beckett’s Wikipedia page.

Like a well-executed heist, the film knows how to get in and get out with minimal fuss.

It’s a film of familiar pleasures, but like Harold Faltermeyer’s still infectiously enjoyable synth-pop theme, they do remain highly pleasurable.

Kill continually finds clever ways to defy our expectations through the particular placement of dramatic beats, surprising shifts in tone, and even just the way it keeps flipping the geography of the action.

Ultimately, Richard LaGravenese’s rom-com is a little too packed with soul-searching speeches.

While it never quite reaches the hilarious heights or existential depths of the Coens’ finest work, it does offer similarly enjoyable mixture of the macabre and the absurd.

The Grab makes a clear choice to conclude not just with doomsaying, but with a call to action and a look at the things that can still be done to avert a global crisis.

The nimble way that Rachel Sennott hops between the two versions of her character easily makes up for the odd narrative misstep that I Used to Be Funny makes along the way.

Atlas seems like a story that should have been experienced with a gamepad in hand.

There are little moments of blackhearted comedy among the bloodshed, but through it all, The Last Stop in Yuma County makes sure that those gunshots resonate.

Lost Soulz is a road-trip movie driven by good vibrations and the joy of making music.

Benoît Delhomme’s 1960s-set directorial debut can’t decide whether it wants to be considered camp or not, awkwardly pitching itself between a somber drama and antic melodrama.

The film presents Amy Winehouse’s demise with a sad shrug, as one of those tragic things that just sort of happens.

Even as the shotgun shells start flying, it makes time for the quiet dramatic moments that carry its family drama forward amid the carnage.

As Knox Goes Away motors steadily toward redemption and family reconciliation, it leaves all opportunity for real moral reckoning in its rearview mirror.

As a WWE superstar, Cena is a perfect casting choice for a larger-than-life character like the formerly imaginary Ricky. He rattles off jokes with the boundless energy of a man used to spending three nights a week catapulting himself across a ring, and he’s completely at ease as the absolute center of attention.

Shot in the Scottish Highlands, Out of Darkness draws on the eerie atmosphere of a place that still feels ancient and steeped in mystery.

The film pulls off something truly bold: taking what are perhaps the most emotionally and symbolically loaded items in existence and subverting their meaning completely to end on a note of peace, joy, and hope for the future.

The film leaves on a razor’s edge between hope and despair, encouraged on the one hand by the passion with which justice is being demanded and, on the other, depressed by the widespread indifference with which these demands are met.

True to its name, the film puts the concept of forgiveness on display and asks us to spend some time in front of it and consider it from all angles.

The film is one that fully recognizes the power of a lingering gaze, a suppressed smile, the slightest movement of the littlest finger, and one which uses them all to maximum effect.

There’s never any danger of Self Reliance’s reach exceeding its grasp, but it gets a firm handle on the things it does want to achieve: tell good jokes, craft likeable characters, and strike a lighthearted tone that’s always just a little bit odder than you may be expecting.

This darkly comic and consistently revealing tale suggests that, without four walls around us to prop them up, most of our morals would crumble into dust.

Once the film turns into a paranoid home-invasion thriller, there’s no ambiguity left to the tale.

It might not be quite as incisive a piece of genre dismemberment as Wes Craven’s Scream or Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods, but it has a lot of fun poking at the tricks and tropes of slasher movies all the same.

Like any good fighter film, Cassandro builds to the sort of incredible final bout that makes your hairs stand up and the rest of your body want to.

A unique joie de vivre courses through A Trip to Gibberitia’s every meticulously composed frame.

Without a compelling reason for us to care about the people inside the car, a reasonably diverting journey never accelerates into an outright thrill-ride.

The film has the ethereal feel of a half-remembered, mostly pleasant dream.

John Travolta’s scenes are islands of tranquility in a jittery sea of rote crime-movie pyrotechnics.

The First Slam Dunk is able to throw a relentless series of new gambits, twists, and reversals at the screen that will keep even seasoned sports film fans on the edge of their seat.

The satire here isn’t quite as on point as that of its predecessors, but it helps that Boyega, Parris, and Foxx share the sort of chemistry that even the most secretive government lab couldn’t cook up.

Mel Eslyn’s film is a thoughtful drama about life, gender, and male friendship.

Aside from the red stuff, the film is scarcely interested in what’s inside its characters.

The film is an impressively complicated and compassionate drama about shame and desire.

The film stumbles sluggishly from one chapter in Foreman’s life to the next.

By stripping the story back to its most elemental form, Benjamin Millepied makes it feel mythic, poetic, and captivatingly romantic.

The film is consistently delightful, offering up an unrelenting supply of shimmering, sun-dappled visuals and a sweet, strange story about a young girl making peace with her past.

From the first blow to the last, Polite Society is a charm offensive that simply doesn’t let up.

While the film’s determination to spotlight the women who brought down the Boston Strangler over the killer himself is admirable, it leaves a hole in the middle of the film that nothing else really manages to fill.

Chevalier doesn’t match the revolutionary spirit of Joseph Bologne’s life, but there’s still a lot of enjoyment to be taken from seeing a towering figure, long forgotten by history, returned to his rightful place at center stage.

Hunt Her, Kill Her simply isn’t tight enough to maintain the tension that it seeks to create.

A fumbled ending lets the air out of what is otherwise a fun and quietly stylish caper.