Steven Scaife

Subtlety dissipates as Justin Chon’s film grasps for something louder and more obvious.

The film bottles a palpable emotion of unabashed joy, even when the rest of it seems to barely hold together.

Despite the affinity the Adams clan has displayed for spooky, goopy imagery in the past, Mother of Flies finds them reluctant to fully exercise those talents for fear of tipping their hand.

The craft brought to bear on Only the River Flows is captivating, but when it comes to matters of story, it cultivates a frustrating air of disinterest.

Violation impressively pushes against the typically straightforward trajectory of the rape-revenge film.

For how committed it is to convincing the audience of the profundity of a rudimentary point, the film’s measured pacing comes to feel like a kind of torture.

Larry Fessenden diagnoses the rot of our era through the shifting personalities and power dynamics of solipsistic men.

In the film’s world, there can be no real resistance, as the suburbs have already won.

Through its exploration of Selah’s complexities, as well as the bravado and posturing that comes with being a credible drug dealer, Selah and the Spades locates a larger truth about the presentation of self and maintaining one’s image.

After a while, writer-director Iuli Gerbase’s boldly mundane take on forced isolation gives way to a regular sort of mundanity.

In the end, Leave the World Behind is content to blandly shrug in the direction of an amorphous calamity, reaching for a profundity that it fails to achieve.

The Deer King leaves one with the impression that it hasn’t given itself enough room to truly soar.

The film is more straight-faced than Alexandre Aja’s prior work, trading absurd kills for narrow escapes from gaping alligator jaws.

The film doesn’t quite live up to its promising premise and handful of clever camera gimmicks.

Michiel Blanchart’s film often feels like a patchwork of half-developed ideas, each more loosely and tenuously woven into the whole than the last.

Because we’re tasked with inferring so much about the characters, especially their pasts, so much of the film’s romance is unconvincing.

The film single-mindedly sees its elderly characters as objects of disgust or receptacles for harm.

Clay Tatum’s film is wholly and refreshingly uninterested in tugging at the heartstrings.

Perpetrator cycles through characters and settings at a considerable clip, never stopping long enough to flesh them out beyond an outline.

Throughout, Josephine Decker effortlessly keys her intimate and eccentric style to her main character’s complicated inner turmoil.

Roseanne Liang leverages the absolute implausibility of the film’s later scenes into something brisk and exciting right to the very end.

Pulled awkwardly in so many directions, this Toxic Avenger all but comes apart at the seams.

The film is loud and obvious about declaring its themes, as if to distract from their ultimate shallowness.

A few scenes show glimmers of promise for what Alex Thompson can achieve when he’s more in his wheelhouse. It’s a shame that the horror and tension that make up the bulk of Rounding are so clearly outside of it.

The film falters when it attempts to mold its best instincts into a discernible narrative shape.

Sergio Pablos’s film is essentially a metaphor for its own unique and refreshing mode of expression.

The film is a thoughtful examination of the human desire for it and the accompanying hope that it may exorcise the emptiness we feel.

The film coasts far on the pleasant surprise of some sharp plotting.