Ross McIndoe

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.”

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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