Simon Abrams

Thankfully, despite its creators’ general fussiness, The Truffle Hunters is good enough, if only because guys like Carlo and Angelo are more charming than they are eccentric.

Thankfully, Jodo’s latest is also way too weird to be hagiographic. It’s indulgent, absurd, frustrating, and more than a little gross. It’s also idiosyncratic and funny enough, and in ways that Jodo’s fans will probably love.

Retrograde, bloated, and formulaic. It's also consistently sincere, energizing, and charming.

The spectacularly dumb, and weirdly entertaining bad-taste thriller Bad Samaritan is the kind of movie that many will assume can only be enjoyed ironically, or just with some sort of emotional detachment.

This is a comedy that encourages viewers to be impulsive, and pointedly seek love and acceptance outside of "normal" social institutions, especially when it comes to family and romance.

Ratnam and his collaborators stick the landing on their gargantuan pot-boiler, and while Krishnamurthy’s world may not look as grand as it seemed, either in the moviemakers’ heads or on the page, it is big enough to get lost in.

It’s a series of comedic sketches about people who are too self-involved to empathize with each other. It’s also a plaintively blunt wake-up call, and an effective demand for viewers' vigilant sensitivity.

For those who have understandably not seen Takakura's original film due to international distribution issues: think "The Fugitive," only this time, Tommy Lee Jones' gruff cop is replaced by a more sympathetic hot-shot detective.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 not only has a more involved story, but also features more engaged filmmaking throughout, with more camera setups and visual brio.

The film will only work for you if you expect it not to make sense, and enjoy jokes that go on and on and then suddenly (and repeatedly) jack-knife off a cliff or two.

Loro feels like the work of a more mature artist. Sorrentino knows exactly who his Berlusconi is, and, with the help of Servillo — who delivers a characteristically impressive performance — manages to make the former Prime Minister’s total lack of introspection seem ironically revealing. Ecco Silvio: pathetic, alone, indestructible.

A surprisingly effective new horror flick.

Dumont's characters' motives are consequently hard to divine, despite convincingly twitchy performances from French actors Fabrice Luchini and Juliette Binoche. So while I do recommend Slack Bay, I must warn you: this is a misanthropic comedy that features cannibalism, weird religious overtones, and a lot of goony pratfalls.

It takes a moment for the action to start—about 38 minutes—but once it does, this otherwise generic thriller’s flimsy relevance and unusual pacing not only seem more forgivable but maybe even sneakily clever.

Cornish's gift for working with child actors is still apparent, as is his knack for dynamic action set pieces. The Kid Who Would Be King is not, in that sense, everything that it could have been. But it is fun where it counts and that's realistically what matters most.

Here, the filmmakers know exactly what kind of movie their audience wants and have a better-than-average plan to deliver it. You say you want more bromantic chemistry, over-the-top action, and flamboyant, logic-defying plot twists? “War 2” delivers all of that.

An average scene in Confess, Fletch features several different kinds of humor, including callbacks, running jokes, physical comedy, and character-driven wordplay, all of which either flatter the individual actors or show off how well they work with their co-stars.

While most other films sprint through expository dialogue, and bluster their way through action scenes, The Last Witch Hunter is measured enough to make you want to suspend your disbelief.

There’s no question that Neel’s the key to Salaar’s success, so it’s hard to get too upset for his reminding us with every italicized, bolded, and underlined flourish.

While the action scenes may be the best reason to watch "Striking Rescue," they're not the only ones. There's almost enough off-kilter energy to keep pace with Jaa's on-screen intensity.

A very good film, but only if you're willing to inevitably submit to its anarchic sensibility.

I can’t honestly recommend Climate of the Hunter to everybody; it’s not a generic horror movie, but rather a dark arthouse fantasy that brings to mind the films of Ingmar Bergman and Andy Milligan. To say that Reece’s movie is bound to be an acquired taste would be something of an understatement.

The Taiwanese horror movie The Sadness is both conceptually exhausting and viscerally upsetting—an ideal summer movie for the third year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Yen doesn’t exactly swing for the fences here, but Sakra still lands exactly where its multi-hyphenate star needs it to.

Unlike a lot of recent indie horror movies, An Unquiet Grave doesn’t feel bogged down by the last few decades’ worth of American horror. It’s a spare, dread-filled mood piece whose just-so dialogue, too-tight close-ups, and deceptively subdued pacing all tease out small, but essential details from both of these elusive central characters.

The exceptionally fun martial arts beat-em-up Kickboxer: Retaliation is a very dumb, and very satisfying throwback to a simpler time when American action films were as predictable as they were formulaic.

An irresistibly gory science-fiction melodrama, is B-movie schlock done right.

What Winchester lacks in originality its creators amply make up for in execution.