Tomris Laffly

Despite a strong ensemble of actors and some impressive photography, Mayday drowns inside its own overambitions.

As Birds of Paradise reveals its (admittedly predictable) secrets one by one, it does so with style and a merited sense of confidence so assertively that even the biggest skeptics of the genre might pause before dismissing it as just another slight YA entry.

Think of John Ford vistas by way of Kelly Reichardt’s lyricism, soulfully underscored by Bach, and you’ll be roughly in Mahdavian’s vicinity.

The finish line in Bergman Island is of the opaque kind. But anything else would have done Hansen-Løve’s wistful sleepwalk through memory, time and cinema injustice. Her film is less a direct, clear-cut homage to Bergman, and more a searching exploration of reality and art in the way they mirror, propel and feed on one another, washing ashore remembrances both dreamy and lifelike.

It’s deceptively simple yet deeply philosophical stuff, channeled by first-rate genre filmmaking.

The Lost Daughter leaves you haunted, shaken, and crushingly scarred like only the best of films are capable of doing.

A stunning documentary of bone-deep moral resonance and cinematic mastery that deserves to be experienced on the big screen.

It’s cinematic poetry, if there ever was one, bourgeoning in meaning the more you linger in its shadow.

Reminiscence aims for something existential within a well-recognized film-noir template. Sadly, the result is an unpersuasive, vaguely pessimistic dystopia at best, one that liberally pulls 101-level references from recognizable Hitchcock flicks and neo-noirs alike, only to drown their time-honored spirit in murky waters.

Most of all, [Heder] makes us see and believe in our bones that the Rossis are a real family with real chemistry, with real bonds and trials of their own, both unique and universal just like any other family.

Along with his editor Kent Bassett, Bruckman weaves these events together rather conventionally yet thoughtfully, making plenty of room for Barkan’s home life and appealingly chipper character that he somehow manages to maintain through all his battles.

It’s exciting, quietly volatile stuff that digs refreshingly deep into the fears of the coming-of-age genre.

The strongest point Gutnik makes with his film is that we all have a concealed story when we share common spaces in silence. But that sadly isn’t enough of a hook to carry out this scattershot effort.

There is so much earth-shattering bravery on display in the miraculous Sabaya that you wonder how the Swedish-Kurdish director Hogir Hirori managed to pull off a documentary that avoids showy, predictable notes of brouhaha throughout.

Writer-director Sabrina Doyle’s fable-like tale of working-class Americans on the fringe navigates its elusive waters with compassion and care, even when it veers into some predictable shallows from time to time.

Despite an obviously resourceful filmmaker at the helm and a more-than-game Beckinsale with proven genre chops, the film’s ultimately empty action bores more than it intrigues.

Perhaps Wilson would have benefitted from the subtle method of Jaws, or even The Reef, by prioritizing teasing over showing. But here, the shark’s frequent appearances and unrealistic looks lessen the impact of the fear it’s supposed to spread, despite some truly unnerving camerawork by Tony O’Loughlan.

The result is a well-meaning but somewhat granola, partly engaging yet disorganized documentary, one that searches for an imprecise story and struggles to keep its chief ambitions afloat.

In spite of its icy backdrop, the part home-invasion chiller, part murder-mystery Till Death could prove to be the actual summer movie you’ve been craving for a while: undemanding, a little silly, but a thoroughly engrossing and handsomely paced edge-of-your seat experience all the same.

More concerned with paying homage to ’90s-era Quentin Tarantino than telling a contemporary coming-of-age tale with believable stakes, co-helmers Manuel Crosby and Darren Knapp’s debut feature First Date saddles a young couple not with a romantic night out, but with a haphazard all-nighter crime-comedy that’s mostly unfunny and free of convincing suspense.

A deftly made suspense film, but one that falls somewhat short of its aspirations, both as a satire and as a psychological thriller with a critical societal eye.

Maintaining a lean sense of suspense throughout, the scribe fashions all her characters with memorable attributes and plenty of social observations, yielding a compelling range of suspects none of which you can write off entirely.

An unsettling, often tender and thoroughly well-timed film.

Jubilant, unapologetically massive, and bursting with a cozy, melancholic sense of communal belonging, In The Heights is the biggest-screen-you-can-find Hollywood event that we the movie lovers have been craving since the early days of the pandemic, when the health crisis cut off one of our most cherished public lifelines.

The film unfortunately anchors itself in an exploitative mode, insincerely using terminal illness as inspirational fodder.

One almost wishes Chaves and Johnson-McGoldrick had not tried to reinvent the wheel, and instead just stuck with the franchise’s sophisticated simplicity and tried-and-true paranormal formula. Without a focal haunted house, this one just doesn’t feel like a film that belongs in “The Conjuring” universe.

While Plan B is not a perfect teen movie, it's one with a defiantly good heart and a vibrant, colorful atmosphere crafted by a talented director. On those grounds alone, this is a ride worth hopping on.

A near-future dystopia that navigates a fractured society hours away from collapse, Michel Franco’s New Order is a relentless and blood-soaked study of social injustice, gripping to watch despite its graphic and escalating brutality. Sadly, it’s also one that only vaguely engages with the need for prosperity for all.