Simon Abrams

The Surrender accomplishes a lot with a sketch-sized story and matching compositional agility and precision. It’s short (less than 90 minutes!) and sweet and the best kind of upsetting.

Yeon's patient direction and clever plot twists make Seok-woo's transformation from selfish antihero into brave caregiver consistently compelling.

One of the main pleasures of watching The Raft, a new documentary that combines decades-old footage of the Acali's 101-day voyage with modern-day commentary by the ship's six surviving crew mates, is that the Acali's story isn't just told from Genoves's self-mythologizing perspective.

Don't let the tacky American-friendly title of Kill Zone 2 fool you: the martial arts genre's next big thing is here, and it is way meaner, more technically accomplished, and more exciting than its disappointing marketing strategy implies.

Witching and Bitching is accordingly overlong, and conceptually thin. But like most of de la Iglesia's films, it's also freakishly energetic, and often hysterical.

The film's retro, John Carpenter-esque synthesizer score, composed by Jeff Grace, further pushes viewers away.

This movie’s not frustrating because it’s blunt or vicious, but because its creators are only so interested in a world condemning Agnes to a dire fate. Her actions may ultimately be shocking, but her story is anything but.

That opening scene is also, in retrospect, somewhat depressing for the way that it conflates a glib fatalism with an unbelievable sort of turn-the-other-cheek optimism ("If they hurt others, it's because they hurt, too,” as Benedicta says in one scene).

Woo and Tjahjanto not only share a half-cynical, half-romantic view of violence but also likely some of the same influences. What sets them apart as filmmakers isn’t where or how much they’ve swiped but how well they synthesize their apparent pulp fiction love into something new and cinematic.

Francisco’s committed and surprisingly nuanced performance makes it easier to invest in the movie’s otherwise unexplained style of magical realism.

I found myself captivated by The Devil's Candy because of how well Embry conveys his character's angst-y struggle to understand himself.

Oppressively bleak mood piece Alléluia is a horror film for people who like to be scared by a grim, joyless and thoroughly depressing character study.

James Murphy never says that his music will sound different after LCD Soundsystem disbands, so why fearfully anticipate a change that we don't even know is coming?

This might have been a better movie if its creators embraced their fitful bloodthirst. Instead, they seem to hope that you like these stock characters enough that you’ll gasp when their friends and enemies inevitably bite the dust. A machine to kill vague people, “Whistle” never delivers on its frightful promise.

Liang and Zhang’s young heroes would be far more universal if they were just credibly hormonal.

Weathering With You, Shinkai’s latest animated romantic-fantasy to be released in America, has the same spark of ingenuity and consistency of vision as his earlier work.

A Finnish ensemble comedy about a wannabe black metal band, is probably the only film you'll see this year with a crowd-surfing corpse. Don't let the last part of that sentence dissuade you from seeing Heavy Trip: it's a real crowdpleaser.

Farrier doesn’t really take us to any dark corners of Organ’s life that he can’t talk his way out of, but Mister Organ does capture the miasmic anxiety that surrounds his mysterious subject.

Mistaken for Strangers doesn't reveal anything about Tom but his own insecurity.

So really, what's great about "Master Z" isn't the way that its creators transcend their chosen formula, but rather how they perfect it.

Come for the gory swordplay, stay for the half-serious melodrama.

The film may be cinematic comfort food, but its creators do earn our trust and nail all the essential beats they need to along the way.

Xu (The Sword Identity) may not be a household name, but The Final Master proves that he's the next big thing in martial-arts cinema.

Aat some point, every character in Youth falls out of love with the way of seeing the world. That kind of anti-epiphany is major—not on a universal, but rather a personal scale.

Haunted by death-obsessed men of action, Un Flic (A Cop) is a fitting final act for noir master Jean-Pierre Melville

So if you're wondering if you should see He Never Died or not, consider how much time you want to spend in Rollins's company. He proves himself to be as charming as a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger, but his appeal is just as limited.

A puzzle movie with too many unnecessary pieces and not enough essential ones, but it's superior to its predecessor in a few basic ways.

Siva rarely challenges his charming ensemble cast to step outside of their comfort zones, but he and his collaborators still deliver a lot of what you might want from an action-musical about a pack of murderous, but righteous pirates.