Vince Mancini

The beauty of 80 for Brady is that it manages to communicate, entirely through construction and subtext, that Fonda, Tomlin, Moreno, and the gang, actually are too good for this.

M3GAN is a pretty pitch-perfect satire, of both parenting in the age of predatory technology, and of the tech industry itself. Both of which tend to pit convenience and luxury against mental health and a right to privacy.

Plane perfect movie for Gerard Butler solidify Gerard Butler brand action movie. Everyone know Gerard Butler not Daniel Day-Lewis, he even maybe not Bruce Willis, but Gerard Butler Gerard Butler, and sometimes Gerard Butler good.

Ever the canny salesman, The Fabelmans is mostly a clever mix of things the audience has seen and expects, with enough new to tantalize without scaring anyone off. It’s nice to see Spielberg finally giving us a bit of himself, even if it could be more.

Babylon is a movie that absolutely shouldn’t work, but objectively does, three hours and nine minutes that didn’t bore me for a single second. Instead, it sails, on the crest of a glorious wave of blood, sweat, tears, tits, shit, vomit, and piss. Damien Chazelle elevates Cinema by dragging it back to the gutter.

Empire of Light, by and large, strikes me as one of those stories that maybe started out as a bit of a corny idea, the kernel of it something like this monologue, but in the course of writing it, the characters became real enough that they sort of took on a life of their own. Which is exactly what’s supposed to happen, at that point you can throw out the initial pitch. Empire of Light creates this beautiful relationship that defies all categorization.

It’s an imagery-first kind of film, and it delivers quite a few that are probably going to stick with me for a while.

It’s a perfectly-cooked cheeseburger of a movie, which isn’t trying to be foie gras seared on a hot rock over a bed of foraged botanicals, but in which every element — bun, patty, cheese, veg — is lovingly prepared, perfectly executed, and working together in perfect harmony.

If 1917 (and to some extent, War Horse) were stories of survival, gussied up with big technical gimmicks, All Quiet On The Western Front is an even more visually beautiful film that never lets you forget the main point about The Great War: that it was A Bad Idea That Ended Badly. Berger drives this point home studiously, meticulously, poetically, and by the end, a little repetitively.

Weird is constantly riding that line between too-stupid-to-be-funny and so-stupid-it’s-hilarious.

This is a movie that’s just good enough at a handful of things without really being great at any one. The who’s-going-to-live, who’s-going-to-die of it is compelling enough, though never quite white knuckle intense. And while there is some thematic heft, it’s never explored quite deeply enough to leave you thinking about it after you leave the theater. The acting is solid from top to bottom, if never quite delicious.

Amsterdam goes from wacky farce to preachy allegory before finally coming to rest as a sneakily profound riff on finding personal edification, just when it matters.

Mottola still shows a clear flair for the humanistic, good-natured comedy of Superbad and Adventureland, and most of the joke writing in Confess, Fletch is sharp, to the point of being exceptionally so.

Marilyn Monroe was a confusing, alluring contradiction, and so, necessarily is Blonde, over reductive when it isn’t inscrutably impressionistic. But it’s also mesmerizing, hard to watch and impossible not to watch almost in equal measure, a somewhat guilty pleasure, compelling in spite of, partly because of, the fact that you don’t quite understand.

It’s snappy, looks pretty, and moves along affably enough.

Just when you think Barbarian can’t get any sillier or further from the promise of its intriguing premise, it does, in a way I had to sort of begrudgingly respect. It feels like Zach Cregger really had something here and couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it and then just started flailing. But that flailing is so transparent and unabashed that it’s almost a kind of performance art.

it’s a silly action comedy where the action is actually fun, the jokes mostly land, and neither detracts from the other. All in all a reasonably fun streamer.

A lot of movies are funny, but very few are funny on a cellular level. Few announce themselves as something different from the very first frames. Even most good comedies are mostly built from familiar situations and people, but Funny Pages is that rare breed; bewildering and strange before its characters even begin speaking and projecting its inherent twistedness with every aspect of its construction.

Vengeance may have a sort of old-fashioned setup, but its takes are razor sharp, such that when the comedy starts to turn earnest, and the story begins to evolve from fish-out-of-water comedy into more straight-up potboiler (Jason Blum having produced it and whatnot), it doesn’t feel like an apology or a digression. It feels like a deepening of themes.

Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe feels not only like logical product, but something that should exist. In a weird way, Beavis and Butt-Head Do The Universe feels even more timely than their last movie. If that was a way to capitalize on the cartoon while its popularity was peaking, Mike Judge’s latest effort is a reminder of how comedy can be.

Elvis – in so many ways a sort of kitsch-art earnest version of Walk Hard – is to the traditional musician biopic what Las Vegas is to a traditional city. An idealized reality so manically constructed that it becomes a sort of grotesque, like an absurd parody of Americana rendered in pastel Formica and crushed velvet. It’s real sicko shit, and in that sense it’s hard not to love it.

The Forgiven is the rare adult drama that doesn’t feel like a museum piece. It lives and breathes, it teases and provokes, the kind of movie that seems designed to be discussed and fought over — in a world where adults might still do such things.

If you always had a vague sense of Wes Anderson’s real-life inspirations, watching Fire Of Love is like seeing them suddenly rack into focus. It’s like the Kraffts sprung directly from his psyche. And if Anderson’s twee bullshit never worked on you before, this time it just might, because this eccentric love story with the bittersweet ending is more than just a style choice.

A few sour notes aside, Hustle is a solidly compelling, surprisingly watchable basketball movie.

The Northman is Shakespeare, but it’s also a movie about muscular shirtless men growling at each other. For me, it was near to perfect.

What makes Everything Everywhere work is not that it’s zany, it’s that it actually finds a purpose for its zaniness, or least tries to. The Daniels are provocateurs, brilliant technical filmmakers. More importantly, they actually strive not to be full of shit. God bless them.

Exploitation has always been Bay’s foremost skill, and in this era when movies have begun to seem chintzy and distinctly unglorious, Bay’s talents as a hype man and product pornographer seem oddly refreshing. If anyone was going to make a mid-budget action movie feel like the biggest, coolest, sexiest thing in the world, it was Michael Bay.

Deep Water is not only a refreshing throwback to the days of mid-budget thrillers aimed at adults, but perfect for at-home binging.

It’s a toe-tapper, and Levy excels at this kind of upbeat, PG-friendly action rendered in major key. It looks great, and you can tell what’s happening — a bar most action movies fail to clear these days, including the most recent one, The Batman.

Turning Red is fun and sweet and strange, and really, what more could you ask of it?

Dog attempts and mostly does a solid job walking a perilous line, being honest about and sympathetic to the concerns and inside jokes of veterans without licking boots or justifying endless war.

Home Team is one of the most conceptually-strange cinematic ventures I’ve ever seen, an image management exercise disguised as a scruffy kids comedy.

To say that I was mildly disappointed in Jackass Forever is true. To say that I spent the entire movie screaming, stomping my feet, covering my face with my hands, and squealing with joy, and would’ve happily sat through another 90 minutes of it is also true.

I find myself at a bit of a loss when trying to explain exactly what about it had me so engaged, probably for the same reasons Julie can’t seem to decide on a career. The Worst Person In The World feels like life. And how do you sum up a life?

Finland is a weird little place, and Dual is a weird little movie.

It’s silly without being stupid, smart without being dull, and broad without being corny. It’s a hell of a feature debut for Mimi Cave and a solid sophomore effort for Lauryn Kahn.

Hand of God is a charming, frequently funny coming-of-age tale shot so exquisitely that it would make any Italian-American angry at his ancestors.

Don’t Look Up is a strong idea (with story credit to McKay and journalist David Sirota), and lots of the individual jokes work, but at times it gets so caught up trying to make fun of so many different things that it seems to lack an internal logic. Satire in and of itself isn’t quite a story.

Flaws aside, Gyllenhaal genuinely feels like a new voice as a storyteller, and not just an actor stretching, which is a rare thing.

Benedetta is the rare, almost miraculous, really, two-hour-plus movie (131 minutes, to be precise) that only seems to get better in its second hour. The momentum builds and builds until the action comes to a glorious crescendo.

Licorice Pizza seems to further all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s pet themes while adding a personal twist, and at this early stage it’s hard to think of it as anything other than a masterpiece.

Baker’s indelible portrait has the natural rebelliousness of characters who refuse to perform the societal script they’ve been handed.

7 Prisoners refuses to cheat, almost to a fault. (It’s art, you’re allowed to cheat a little). That makes it slightly disappointing in the end, but not enough to undo what an adroit snapshot it is of the way exploitation thwarts organization and dulls its opposition.

Finch feels downright innovative, boldly trusting that Tom Hanks training a robot to take care of his dog in a post-cataclysm Earth is a sentiment sweet and humane enough to carry an entire movie.

The French Dispatch feels like a confident and even vulnerable exploration of Anderson’s own psyche; it’s his best film in at least a decade.

It’s silly, thoroughly disposable, and a breezy 90 minutes long. What else could you ask for?

I’m not entirely certain I understand what Titane is, but I’m convinced that all movies could stand to be a little more like Titane.

It’s an immersive, transporting, intriguing, fully-realized world that we can enjoy spending time in without rating against our ideas of which characters should “win” in that world. I don’t know how this story plays out but for now I’m content to bask in the spice glow.

Eternals is hard not to recommend solely on the grounds that it’s so flailingly bizarre. It’s odd to a degree that’s impossible to convey without spoilers. I need you to see it so I know that I’m not hallucinating.

Vacation Friends isn’t exactly groundbreaking or revolutionary in its comedy — it does have a few stock situations and characters (the extended stylized drug scene, the disapproving father played by Bunny Colvin) — and one could argue that it doesn’t have much in the way of nutritional value. Yet it allows us to enjoy empty calories in a way not many movies of its ilk do, offering just enough to elevate the genre.

Candyman is certainly elevated in terms of acting and of composition (with fittingly spooky shots of the Chicago skyline), it was just hard to appreciate much of the action on a visceral level.

The Protege‘s stunts are actually pretty good.

What started as this slightly subversive send-up eventually descends into the usual convoluted savin’-the-world nonsense.

The beauty of Green Knight is that it’s so fully realized on every level — score, cinematography, production design, acting — that even when you don’t know entirely what Lowery is on about you can’t look away. It’s almost as if every individual shot has a narrative arc unto itself. It’s so compelling on a micro level that the “big picture” becomes irrelevant.

The beauty of Pig, the new Michael Sarnoski movie starring Nic Cage as a bedraggled truffle forager, is that while it is utterly bonkers, it’s not bonkers in any of the traditional ways that we’ve come to expect. It’s quietly bonkers, meditative and subdued, rather than loud and frenetic.

While Roadrunner is a love letter to Bourdain and a nostalgic watch for all of us who thought we saw something of ourselves in him, it’s also a comment on our inability to truly know anyone else. In that sense, it’s a fitting tribute to its subject, a man who tried assiduously not to present himself as someone who had all the answers.

Never before has a streaming release so capably evoked “Summer blockbuster.”

The plot makes you study each frame intently, and the execution of each shot is so effective that your eyes never get bored. It’s just fundamentally sound, meat-and-potatoes filmmaking.

It ends up being pleasant enough and occasionally pretty funny but not quite a romp.

It’s a film that seems to go to great pains describing the very specific niche that each character occupies, carefully crafted anecdotes defining attributes ultimately signifying nothing. Detailed information is given, then discarded. It’s almost an anti-movie.

It’s true, North Hollywood‘s story isn’t quite as affecting as its style. As such, it’d be easy to label it “all style, no substance.” But as North Hollywood proves, when you do it well enough, style is substance.

Something about Mortal Kombat‘s total lack of pretense towards nutritional value is weirdly refreshing.

It’s more competent than inspired, however, with skillfully shot action but not much in the way of bold choices. It’s compelling enough while it lasts, but all but guaranteed to vanish from memory the instant the credits roll.

Godzilla Vs. Kong is entertainingly preposterous, but also overstuffed with plots that seem designed to involve an entire sub-universe of past and future monsters.

God willing, this will be the last ever superhero team-up movie. I wouldn’t count on it though. Even when it’s a relative improvement over its predecessor, it’s still pop-culture slurry for babies.

It’s a wild concept, that offers both big laughs and big cringe in almost equal measure. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a film vacillate so wildly between borderline unwatchable and irresistibly watchable.

It’s incredibly difficult to pull off, this delicate dance between grounded enough but not mundane, yet Long Weekend, the unlikeliest of movies, does it shockingly well. The ending is satisfying but ambiguous enough to dream, ultimately ephemeral but with an enduring sense memory.

Overall, there’s very little to complain about in Coming 2 America, a worthy sequel that does justice to the original without trying to recreate everything about it. It’s a winning, maximalist musical extravaganza.

White Tiger subverts expectations right up until the very end, self-consciously commenting on what it doesn’t do as much as what it does. In that way White Tiger allows other stories to define it maybe more than it should.

Cahill is so effective at blurring the lines and making both “realities” feel equally plausible that it’s hard not to feel your own reality attenuating as you watch it. Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek, something of an odd couple on paper, are also perfectly cast.

We know what we’re getting with this particular genre, and The Marksman, starring Neeson as a Texas rancher protecting a young boy from drug cartels, is a perfectly adequate exercise in providing it. If it lacks some of the panache and grindhouse appeal of previous installments, it also avoids the xenophobia and general mean-spiritedness.

Some Kind Of Heaven is a surreal, visually sublime slice of life that offers escapism and subverts it in the same breath, an enduring portrait of a particular subculture the likes of which I haven’t seen probably since Wildwood, NJ. I spent virtually the entire 83 minutes laughing, slapping my forehead, or both.

Sylvie’s Love is heartbreaking and heart melting in almost equal measure, a film about professional disappointment and the importance of timing as much as it’s about love. I haven’t been so emotionally wrecked sitting alone at a festival movie since Brooklyn. Sylvie’s Love is damn near perfect

Through its personal approach and creative structure, Dick Johnson Is Dead manages to make reckoning with a loved one’s mortality not just entertaining, but oddly uplifting. The empathy and humanity it applies to death make it, above all else, life-affirming.

The Devil All The Time is a lovingly-constructed quilt of interlocking insanity, about how the simple life is anything but simple and salt-of-the-earth folk are every bit as screwed up as debauched debutantes. You want to reminisce about the good ol’ days, kid? Well then, let’s peel away the postcard facade. The Devil All The Time is a masterpiece of dark Americana.

Mostly, everything in it seems designed to build and maintain suspense that carries us from scene to scene, a task it more than accomplishes.

A pleasant enough and consistently chuckle-worthy comedy while it lasts that could maybe use one or two more ingredients.

There’s a lot of beauty in First Cow, I just wish I could turn the volume up a little.

Palm Springs is the perfect kind of art-comedy. It comes on like a brilliantly silly little lark and eventually lands on you like a ton of bricks.

Babyteeth, from director Shannon Murphy and writer Rita Kalnejais, always keeps us half a step off balance. Their film has that a sense of casual naughtiness, a straightforward love of innocent mischief common to the best Australian movies, which in this case serves to leaven the central tragedy.

Greyhound is an exciting, non-stop battle scene from start to finish. Which might be enough to make us watch it, but is not enough to make us love it.

The strength of Eurovision is that it’s well-written enough that it might work even if it was neither a Will Ferrell vehicle nor a comedy, which isn’t normally true of Ferrell vehicles.

Judy and Punch may not be as thought-provoking as it wants to be, but what it lacks in cultural critique it more than makes up for in escapism, eccentricity, and eye candy. It’s transporting, in every sense of the word, and it comes along just when we most seem to need it.

Miss Juneteenth is a promising debut feature in a lot of ways, but like a lot of tweener indies, it has trouble transcending its own pitch.

The vague title is a tell. There’s the general tone of uncovering something shocking and nefarious, but Bad Education is far more interesting when it’s sympathetic toward its stated villains.

Extraction is constant, hyper-stylized murders and maimings, shot clearly and intelligently without too much unnecessary plot. It’s exactly what I’d been missing about action movies.

Where gangster and mafioso stories so often seem epic, taking the shape of classic rise-and-fall narratives, Arkansas is elusive and ephemeral. Its characters struggle to survive against a universe that doesn’t really care about them. It’s not the most escapist quarantine content, but there’s a simple beauty to it.

The humor is stylized but sharply-structured, slightly shticky but well-timed and mostly gentle in tone.

Greed is solidly entertaining throughout, but its attempt to mix comedy, tragedy, reality, absurdity, exposé, and mockumentary… is maybe biting off a little more than it can chew.

Movies that make you think are great, but most of our finest filmmakers attempt that (even sometimes when they shouldn’t). With Leigh Whannell, we have a hyper-competent craftsman who seems like he’d rather make us shit our pants. It’s nice.

Onward is a perfectly fine movie made up of elements of Guardians of the Galaxy, Zootopia, Coco, Wall E, and assorted other Disney products that it doesn’t employ quite as well. Your kids probably won’t notice, but you will.

In The Way Back, Gavin O’Connor has made another reasonably entertaining sports movie.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire doesn’t shout at you. It whispers gently from the porch of another house, leaving its message to be carried on the breeze.

As a storytelling exercise, Birds of Prey is mostly pretty bad, but aside from a sneaky wit and committed Margot Robbie, what it does have going for it is consistently spectacular stunts.

“Fred Durst and John Travolta team up to ineptly recreate Big Fan” is a compelling pitch, perhaps the most compelling pitch, and the movie itself mostly delivers on the kind of train wreck absurdism that it promises.

Like The Art of Self-Defense as a whole, it’s glib and obvious in a way that leaves me a little cold.

Once Upon A Time may be a more languid journey than usual, but it gets to a familiar place eventually. In a way Tarantino has turned himself into the kind of Spaghetti Western anti-hero that’s always obsessed him — flawed but ultimately triumphant. I’m still happy to be along for the ride.

It’s the concept we need right now, with an execution that’s sometimes lacking. Like slaying the rich with a rusty guillotine.