Thom Ernst

Psycho Therapy is a charming return to form for the adult comedy—dialogue-driven, character-first, and delightfully absurd. A smart and silly piece of narrative chaos that earns every word of its unwieldy title.

A hybrid action/war/revenge film with enough octane to blast Michael Bay out of competition.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert doesn’t ask you to worship Elvis so much as to remember what it felt like when the man took control of a room and decided—joyfully, deliberately—to make it move with him.

It’s rare for a feature debut to be as fully realized and executed as Firecrackers. It’s as if someone forgot to tell director/writer Mozaffari that making your first feature film is a tough go, filled with doubts, indecision and second guessing; her choices never seem obvious yet always feel right.

Despite lacking the visual scope and timeline of Polley's earlier works like Take This Waltz, Away From Her, and Stories We Tell, Women Talking is her most accomplished film to date: An intimate portrayal of a group of people driven to the brink of rebellion lest they concede to defeat.

Cregger’s film is a standout — unsettling, odd, and wickedly fun. Weapons might just be the horror movie for people who don’t do horror.

Kneecap is one of the most likeable films this year. Turn up the volume and enjoy.

A good script can sometimes be held hostage by the performances. Harpoon relies heavily on the strength of its three leads to carry not only the film's suspense but also the characters’ internal hypocrisy. The leads here do not let the script down.

The Reason I Jump is a remarkable documentary not because of what it includes but because of what it avoids.

Kaurismäki does not shrink from present-day buzz-kills like updates on Russia’s attacks against Ukraine, or the afflictions of poverty on Helsinki’s working class. But here again, is the contrast; even amid conflict, things charming and funny can occur.

It’s enough to know that Gerwig directs romance in a similar way that Tarantino directs violence. The romance—like Tarantino’s violence—comes in large sweeping gestures turning in on itself before pulling out again. It’s all so authentically cinematic that some of it seem surreal.

The writing in The Coffee Table is almost acrobatic in its delivery, manipulating feelings and ideas by rendering deep guttural emotions in the all too familiar ways. The terror in Casas’ film is linked to the unknown. But differing from other horror films, the unknown in Casas’ film is neither ethereal nor otherworldly.

Tick, Tick…Boom! packs a great deal of joy into a story that pushes a more modern and darker take on the make-it-or-break-it mantra of classic ‘40s musicals. The songs are engaging and staged with a feel-good choreography that consists less of formalized dance (for the most part) than it does gleeful bursts of movement.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kid Detective. It’s not the kind of picture that wins awards, which is too bad because nestled within a traditional tale of a detective in need of redemption, is a story surprisingly unique and humane.

Is Glass Onion fun? Yes, it is. It's a lot of fun. More fun and more comedic than its predecessor. The twists resonate stronger than the original and are not as easy to see coming. Plus, the reveals (of which there are a few) resonate with the satisfaction of a game well played.

Sinners, the new film directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, needs no more than a one-word review; Stunning. Magical also works. So does unforgettable.

Agnes is a genre breaker that veers into unanticipated areas of drama, some of it absurd, some street-wise, and yet inescapably entertaining.

Beyond the humor and pathos, Will & Harper is a touching and heartfelt exploration of friendship.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is not likely to make the same rounds at the Academy Awards as its predecessor. But it remains a winning formula. And when someone tells you that it has the best action sequences put to film—believe them.

The Menu is the most entertaining ensemble film since Knives Out, and the most engaging horror-satire since Get Out. But no matter what comparisons and assumptions are made, The Menu will not be the movie you expect.

Simply said, there is magic in this film, rising out of simple observations, allowing the camera to linger through moments of play, pausing for glimpses of charity while holding fast to the possibility of tragedy. A film that nurtures a balance of trust with betrayal.

As you might expect from King, The Monkey is dark, ruthless, and violent. What you might not expect is just how funny it is. Like, it's genuinely hilarious.

Freaks is a mind-bending thriller that is subversive enough to be rebellious, and in this era of CGI superhero cinema, the revolution is welcomed.

Sure, The Eternal Memory is tough and occasionally relentless, but it is also affirming in ways unexpected. Significant and intense indeed, but the excursion is far from weary.

The Father is a compelling, illusionary story about aging's disorienting symptoms. It is a masterpiece of structure, narrative, editing, and performance.

Johnson delivers a wicked satire on faith and fanaticism, a lively mockery of far-right politics cloaked in the sacred robes of a classic whodunnit. It’s feel-good entertainment with just enough spiritual cleansing to seal the deal.

Aside from the exquisitely executed acts of outrageous (comic-book) mayhem, KILL is fun. KILL unleashes a vicious ballet of hand-to-hand combat, all within the narrow confines of a passenger train en route to New Delhi.

Set, script, performances, and direction - it all works.

The success of Miranda’s musical story is not just the strength of its lead, but the strength of the supporting characters.

No one should mistake The Long Walk for fun. But there’s satisfaction in its endurance, in the way grim inevitability drives the narrative with allegorical force. By the credits, you’ll feel as though you’ve marched every mile alongside the boys exhausted, shaken, and strangely, perhaps, wanting more.

Credit goes to the Philippou brothers for their originality and perfectly queasily executed bits of ghoulish anarchy.

What begins as a weird tribute to The Wizard of Oz becomes a genuinely creepy horror. West chooses deliberate methodic movements rather than jump scares to terrify the audience, and the film is all the better for it. And he never lets loose of an underlying sense of humour that is as clever as it is demented.

Mulan is distinct enough from its predecessor that it hardly seems like a remake at all.

The humour remains, only now there is an added charm missing from previous installments. That charm is courtesy of the movie’s protagonists, a typically atypical family, and their equally quirky neighbours. Including a lovelorn teen boy and an old dude with a shotgun.

Scott contrives a convincing resemblance to events leading up to the last court-sanctioned duel-to-the-death with a meticulous eye for specifics. He transfers a riveting piece of history into a riveting film—mostly.

If Hokum proves anything, it’s that McCarthy isn’t just part of this new wave of horror filmmakers—he’s carving out his own narrow corridor within it. A place where folklore, psychology, and just enough chemical suggestion collide.

Ruskin gives a fresh bend to the story of the Boston Strangler, and indeed to the true-crime genre. There are plenty of true crime films to entertain, but few that reach alongside the likes of Richard Brooks’s In Cold Blood (1967), in Fincher’s Zodiac (2007), and in his abandoned television project, Mindhunter. Ruskin’s Boston Strangler belongs on this list.

As a feature-film directorial debut, 40 Acres marks a stunning entrance for Thorne into the cinematic landscape—Canadian or otherwise.

Knives Out is a charming and wonderfully crafted whodunnit that, despite the inevitable presence of a dead body, plays like a warm and cozy antidote to the winter chills.

Despite some impressive kills and a respectable body count, Heart Eyes is more romcom than slasher. However, it's a genre mishmash that creates a wholly unexpected delight. Imagine Jason Voorhees stumbling onto the set of Sleepless in Seattle or an entry in the Scream franchise directed by Garry Marshall.

From the first act straight through to the third, the film engages on a level far higher than it needs to. Which is what happens when you put real craft behind a premise that could have coasted on novelty.

The film is Roth’s, and so expect a silly premise, comic-book violence, and gory set pieces. What you might not expect is the humour. Thanksgiving is funny.

If John Wick is a ballet of ultra-violent choreography, then Sisu: Road to Revenge is its bad-ass country cousin: a full-body-contact square dance where you don’t just swing your partner to the left, but off the top of a speeding train, headfirst into a tree.

DeBlois elevates a beloved cinema memory and creates a spectacle, a mythical fairy tale—Game of Thrones lite—with enough DreamWorks Animation magic to warrant its own theme park ride.

Know from the start: Halloween Ends has some of the best kills in the franchise.

Censor is an off-brand horror treat that walks the distance between artistic freedom and the scrutiny of morbid excess to which the title refers.

Wicked can at times feel like a movie that’s one brick short of a road. But when all is said and sung, it’s still a road paved in gold.

Is Killing Faith a great western? Hard to say. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely. Because sometimes it’s the films that bewilder us that leave the deepest marks: hoofprints on wet grass, difficult to follow but impossible to forget.

There is no question that Gyllenhaal packs her film with so many ideas that it can become dizzying. The themes sometimes pile up, the tonal shifts arrive quickly, and the story occasionally feels less like it’s unfolding than tangling itself into elaborate knots. Some viewers will likely bail when the plot begins tripping over its own ambitions. But the film also has an undeniable boldness. A willingness to be strange. To be excessive. To be gloriously weird.

Schimberg’s film is a blend of low-level science fiction and mid-range body horror, though it’s body horror with a social conscience. It’s remarkable viewing, even as it distills its theme into a well-worn message of resilience that’s idealized rather than realistic.

Visually, Antlers is stunning as a portrait of a town dying. And there are plenty of gruesome, hide-behind-your-eyes scenes to satisfy most genre fans. But it's Cooper's commitment to his characters and the performance of the film's two youngest leads that make Antlers more than just a movie about killer—well, you'll have to see for yourself.

It would be easy to simply recount the stages and progressions of growing up, coming age, self-discovery, and sexual awakenings. Wildhood is all that, but it also dips into identity issues that run deeper than what is affected visual clues and by the preference of touch.

The Black Phone doesn’t disappoint, although it delivers in ways unexpected. And though it takes time, the payoff is worth the effort put into packing up old expectations and unpacking new. But fair warning: The Black Phone is not the easy-to-digest horror film you might think.

In drawing similes between the then and the now, Goulet juxtaposes history with prophecy. Using conventional science-fiction tropes—the collapse of society, a military state, dystopia, and unidentified flying orbs—she creates a sound case for entertainment to share the screen with stories that have meaning and social impact.

As is required of the story, Branagh isolates and imposes suspicions and conflicts so that every character becomes equal part victim and villain.

The Sadness is good. Not just genre-specific good, but cinema good. And even when it arrives at the inevitable ‘who are the real monsters’ scene, The Sadness still has bite.

The Rule of Jenny Pen is a dark and deeply unsettling film. Lithgow is unhinged and Rush is the perfect foil to attempt to bring him down.

The movie feels like a novel with well-developed characters weaved through the story without feeling like segmented excerpts from a more extensive work. The film's love story is made more palatable by casting two beautiful people as the leads. And Kajganich's script finds all the right words and tone to tell the story.

This is arthouse vacation horror. As such, Infinity Pool scrapes closer to Spring Breakers than Hostel. But it's also science-fiction, and it's the science fiction that moves the horror beyond shock.

Ignore the nay-sleighers. Violent Night is the counter-Christmas B-movie that ditches the ho-ho-wholesomeness of the season for a damn good, bad Santa.

Ultimately, Bring Her Back is a film of contradictions: intimate and epic, bloody and cerebral, empathetic and terrifying. It’s the kind of horror that might take until long after the credits roll before its full impact lands.

The Toxic Avenger (Toxie to his friends) returns, not as a cheap shock-off of the cult sludge from which it emerged, but as a formidable companion piece to Lloyd Kaufman’s gloriously grungy original.

Weir is beyond amazing, out-cursing Linda Blair's Regan from The Exorcist, out-dancing M3GAN, and out-terrifying the child with the garden-trowel from Night of the Living Dead.

There’s a particular confidence to Undertone that doesn’t announce itself with spectacle, but with restraint. It’s the confidence of a film that knows exactly how little it needs to show you in order to get under your skin.

Love Lies Bleeding is bent in the most unexpected ways, filling the screen with the impossible while refusing to make excuses.

A vicious, relentless dark comedy, the film takes the well-worn “unlikely duo forced to work together” premise and strips it down to the bone—then starts gnawing.

Vogt masterfully—undoubtedly infuriating for some - understates the horror in his film by filtering it through a bright summer Nordic sun while adults mill about oblivious to the violence around them.

It Feeds delivers a layered and unpredictable narrative. Much of that independent energy comes from its strong ensemble cast: Ashley Greene, Ellie O’Brien, Juno Rinaldi, Shayelin Martin, Shawn Ashmore, and Scott Baker.

Plenty happens in Exhuma, which branches out from its home base in South Korea, briefly touching down in America, with added references to Japan. It can make for a crowded narrative, launching several storylines of unsettled spirits and ghostly miscreants. Yet Hyun's story is told efficiently enough not to seem convoluted or aimless.

It’s a ghost story, a minor entry in Soderbergh’s oeuvre but still worthy of attention.

A raucous, non-stop, full-throttle slapstick comedy that makes an episode of The Three Stooges seem like a production of Swan Lake.

This is a filmmaker in full control of her craft. But as accomplished as The Souvenir is, the story it chooses to tell can leave audiences both mesmerized and alienated.

What the film lacks in traditional scares, it makes up for with an unsettling scenario that plays slowly throughout the film, indicating harsher realities even legends can't compete with. And DaCosta's vision is highly stylized, accented with performances that resonate with disquieting accuracy.

Beans is an ambitious film that, for the most part, works. It extends its efforts to reach a larger audience, but the story it tells is easy to admire.

Director James Watkins’ American remake of Speak No Evil, starring James McAvoy and Scoot McNairy, is a thrilling, fun night at the movies.

The film is gentle, subtle, patient and wholly authentic. What makes it essential is not only in its ability to create a drama that’s real, harrowing, haunting, and hopeful but in its ability to keep playing in our heart long after it’s over.

Those living in Birdy’s fictional universe see her as an irascible (albeit endearing) nuisance, but in movie language, Birdy is a feminist out of time, and time is the device Dunham tinkers with most. Dunham faithfully recreates the era and then infuses it with an alt-mix soundtrack, presumably as a way of drawing the politics of then into the politics of now.

The Vigil is a satisfying work of suspense and mystery with a few well-executed jump scares.

While so many movies lack a decent wrap-up, Theatre Camp goes out on a high note. You might not walk out humming show tunes, but you will leave smiling. After all, no one does curtain calls better than theatre people.

In a Violent Nature follows the traditional path of a slasher and rises above the genre to be something other than the norm.

I Saw the TV Glow demands the audience's attention. I can’t say that, even with all synapses firing, I was able to catch every (maybe none) of the nuances Schoenbrun was tossing out. But it’s at times like that when I find it best to relax and experience the film rather than struggle to make sense of it.

Director West makes excellent use of the film's set pieces, from runaway trams to spectacular underwater lava spills. Yes, Skyfire stretches believability to its breaking point. But with comic-book action so firmly planted in most every scene, any attempt at credibility would only be an unwelcome intrusion.

Director Ben Wheatley gives the summer blockbuster the finger, and it’s the funniest damn thing I’ve seen this year. Meg 2: The Trench is flawed to perfection; a satirical pummeling of commercial cinema and the first out of gate with a Barbie send-up.

Until Dawn is a gleeful reimaging of the classic slasher film, modifying the tropes enough to turn the familiar into something fresh.

This is not art, it’s not brooding, it doesn’t offer any relevant commentary, it’s not even a refreshingly feminist take on an overtly masculine saturated movie-industry. It’s a loud, sometimes disjointed, mildly convoluted, ultra-violent comic-book adventure that moves at a break-neck speed. And, if you stick with it, it’s loads of fun.

In the end, Nobody 2 is about gratification. The fantasy that the bad guys never stand a chance. That justice is swift, brutal, and delivered without hesitation. It’s not subtle, but then again, subtlety never gets a standing ovation. And maybe, this summer, we need that more than ever.

Demigod is a small but effective seasonal treat; One of the few independent horror films that get tossed into the October horror real-estate that deserves a look.

Mohr appears to be in control even when the film takes wild swipes from the absurd to the dramatic. Still, Boy Kills World works.

Cohen’s script doesn’t get backed up with messy gags that would rather have you gagging than amused. Instead, it’s flushed with charm, warmth, and just enough horror to put you on the edge of your seat—or rather, put your seat on the edge.

V/H/S Halloween marks the eighth entry in the franchise, and somehow it manages to feel just as effective, maybe even more so, than its predecessors.

One Night in Miami is a powerful imagining of one of the most intriguing private gatherings in contemporary history. And though we are merely a fly-on-the-wall, eavesdropping on a conversation that is likely far more electrifying than the actual discussion, it's still a remarkable experience.

The Beekeeper is mindless, overblown nonsense timed perfectly to drag us from a haze of prestige films and an awards bait stupor.

Lisa Frankenstein can be fun, but there is a mean-spiritedness to Cody’s script that doesn’t fit with the film’s premise. It comes mainly at the hands of the creature whose victims are far from charming but don’t necessarily deserve the extreme comeuppance that’s dealt to them.

The horror in the film can be as equally as subtle as the humour—it is easy to miss both.

The result is a surprisingly entertaining, gory delight. Even hard-lined horror abstainers can comfortably enjoy the film’s grim humour and excessively over-the-top carnage.

There are remarkable and rewarding moments in the film despite its lack of bite.

In the Earth is engrossing even in moments that might challenge both patience and logic. And despite the slight nudge towards something more commercial, Ben Wheatley’s art-house reputation remains solid.

Over the Moon is a delightful tale sure to appeal to a younger audience without too much fear of chasing away the rest of the family.