If you’ll forgive the silly first and second acts and dig into the main dish of Asian Persuasion, your patience will be rewarded.

Ash is riveting, even as it drifts away from and back into the precarious tropes of the genre, like waves against the shore.

Rats! is a delirious thrill ride with a perfect mix of absurd comedy and WTF moments!

Every modification fails to improve the tale, and the whimsy and wonder of fairy tales are missing. It does not honor the original but shuns it instead.

It’s a most humane and beautiful story.

It’s a ballet of personalities, where the efforts of those attempting to be the most domineering end up directly leading to the sharpest and most tragic of downfalls. But there isn’t any righteousness or catharsis in these descents — everyone is a mangled menagerie of pieces, and they’re all just trying to get themselves through life.

The Invisible Raptor will have its fanbase, but it takes a little too long to get to the Raptor hunt.

The climax of this vampire romance delivers the expected level of carnage and lots of the red stuff.

This is high-octane fun that you would do well to check out in theaters.

More than just a crime thriller, The Accidental Getaway Driver is a melancholic journey through the quiet corners of lost souls.

Soderbergh does the whole movie in long takes using a wide-angle steady-cam setup. It is a situation fertile for great acting, as the long shots allow these performers to really inhabit their characters.

Rounding doesn’t offer answers, but it does offer a deep, unsettling dive into the fragility of the human mind and just how far someone can go when pushed to their limits.

It’s gripping, reflective, dramatic, and even a bit humorous.

Kung Fu Rookie is a heartfelt, high-energy tribute to Jackie Chan. It is packed with acrobatic action and playful stunt work that would make the legend proud. With thrilling fight sequences, goofy humor, and a love for old-school kung fu cinema, it is a fun ride that proves admiration is best expressed through action—literally.

The film’s repetitive themes and lack of emotional payoff leave it feeling more like a beautifully acted therapy session than a fully satisfying story.

No Address is very much an issues-based drama. Its purpose is to provide a soul behind the statistics.

One of the basic tenets of film-making is to show, not tell. You Burn Me wanders outside that guideline by making a show of telling, which is as interestingly meta as Piñeiro’s approach of juxtaposing the interaction of Sappho and Britomartis onto a modern-day tableau.

When a cast of minor characters is more interesting than the protagonist, you begin to wish that you were watching a movie about any of them instead.

While Bong Joon Ho delivers his signature visual flair and Robert Pattinson fully commits to the existential dread of his endlessly disposable character, the film struggles to keep its high-concept ideas fresh past the first act.

John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush deliver us a mighty duel, as well as a masterclass in character acting in James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen.

With its eclectic cast, unconventional visuals, and clever reimagining of mythological elements, Bruno Dumont’s film brings audiences on a peculiar adventure!

Queen of the Ring is a must-see for lovers of sports films, biopics, and period pieces. The drama surrounding Millie Burke’s life remains engaging throughout, thanks to the writing, directing, and acting.

A Sloth Story delivers a message with warmth, charm, and just enough energy for its younger audiences. The film’s heart is in the right place, balancing a gentle cultural exploration with the universal challenge of growing up and finding one’s own way.

None of the shortcomings diminish how ridiculous and darkly funny the narrative is from fade-in to closing credits. Bess and the cast take viewers on an engaging, comedic journey through making a deal with the demon, crafting an enjoyable reminder of how innovative indie film can be.

Lifeline is high-concept sci-fi, but it’s intensely dramatic and engagingly mysterious.

The Buildout is a haunting journey into faith, friendship, and the fine line between devotion and delusion.

A well-edited and rhythmically moving documentary, SPEAK. communicates with us and will continue to hold its own for many years to come.

To be able to understand these universal experiences on a deeper level because of this film is a true gift. Even if you don’t have a Zoe, just know that you’re never truly alone.

With a razor-sharp and timely screenplay by John Hibey, combined with stunning photography by Oliver Millar, this movie is professional as hell with a dynamite ending which combines a clever pay-off involving a household appliance and a next-level twist.

The film is an intersection between Fatal Attraction and Back to the Future, and if that sounds intriguing, you’re in for a treat.

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings, the qualities of The Fishing Place far outweigh them, making Tregenza’s film a fine work of art for the curious to explore.

The problem with Brave New World falls squarely on the writing and the story.

Love Hurts is a prime example of what happens when a film spreads itself too thin trying to juggle multiple genres—it drops all the balls. Ultimately, it’s a forgettable attempt at blending action and romance, proving once again that genre mashups rarely deliver a knockout.

Like Father, Like Son never truly absorbs us in its characters, leaving a lot of food for thought, but little to say on any of it.

It all works as a schlocky TV show. Mainly because the cast is on point, with a broad set of appealing characters generating their own stories well within the overarching silliness about the outside world.

Craig is terrific.

Companion takes a stab (literally) at sci-fi horror with an interesting idea, but making a robot the emotional center of the film is a misfire.

Didn’t Die is a hopeful zombie narrative with more than a few heartwarming moments and just enough quirk to earn its laughs.

The film is loaded with enough curious twists and turns to keep your eyes glued to the screen to see who lives, who dies, and if anybody is smart enough to close ‘the door’ on their way out.

Stir all of those ingredients together, and you have a production fuelled by countless hours of maneuvering a gamepad and the real-life trials and tribulations of those on the human side of the video screen.

Zombie Strain is the THC-heavy zombie jamboree your lungs have been waiting for.

Two Women showcases the rampaging wit of expert writing with the jaw-dropping technique of expert directing.

Detective Chinatown 1900 tries to be a high-energy action comedy but gets tangled in a web of subplots, leaving little room for the buddy-cop fun it teases.

Eternal You is an excellent documentary because it engages you along the way, and you’re constantly wrestling with the issue long after the credits roll.

The entirety of Give Me Pity! is more of an artistic treatise, a museum piece, a series of single-woman monologues, than a coherent, you know, film, and that’s clearly the intention. One can do a lot worse than take a look inside Kramer’s head, and this one makes her other explorations of humanity, Please Baby Please and Ladyworld, seem positively conventional. Quite the feat.

Life As A B-Movie: Piero Vivarelli is an endless feast for hardcore Italian film fans, but it’s also a fantastic introduction for newcomers to the wonderful world of Italian genre filmmaking.

Flight Risk is a fun yet simple and straightforward thriller where you have a general sense of where things are headed at first, and then Gibson pulls in a surprise or two or three.

The film bottles beautifully the neo-noir lightning that flashes down under from time to time, with it’s thrilling presentation of a remote beach town that has gone seriously wrong. The rest of it is often mystifying, sometimes maybe just indecisive, but it soon makes you question what you see with some pretty witty plotting.

You & I is a fantastic tale of modern romance.

The acting is sub-par, with Selena Gomez delivering the weakest performance. I don’t know Spanish, but even I can tell she struggles to sound like it’s her first language. As Emilia, Karla Sofía Gascón is stiff as a board and can’t sing. Zoe Saldaña is the only one putting an effort in, but even she can’t make horrible lyrics sound authentic.

You’ll be holding your breath at times.

Sometimes, a movie’s impact transcends its story, delivering something we desperately need—a chance to reflect, connect, and simply breathe. Somewhere in Montana is one such film offering a heartfelt reminder that, despite our differences, people can win the day.

It’s a given that Julia Garner can play fear, but Whannel barely taps into her skills.

It is refreshing to see an adventure flick that is not burdened by adopting a cynical and dark aesthetic. See this film if you’re a history buff and lover of old-fashioned adventure flicks!

The whole picture trades in the type of exotica that is fundamentally linked with the Arabian Nights stories, which melds amazingly well with the sci-fi tropes employed. The strategic use of location shots abroad, perhaps on a vacation, hides the fact that most of this was shot in Michigan, which is truly impressive.

As whacky as the characters are and as tense as the setting is made to be, the movie drags.

There isn’t a subtle bone in its body, and some of the acting choices are poor, but it’s pleasant enough.

It features likable characters, and though it may not offend or make you laugh, it ultimately leaves you smiling. However, you can’t help but feel a sense of loss regarding the potential the film and its story had to be truly great.

The Haunting Of Hollywood is effective when focusing on the characters and the horrifying and dramatic effects the past can have on people. The actors are compelling and deliver robust, humanized performances. For the most part, the directing brings forth the truth of the emotional baggage and trauma being dealt with. But when it goes into full horror mode, the style does not mesh and becomes jarring.

It’s all very granola and sentimental, a path well-trodden.

Twilight of Warriors is one of the best action films of 2024 and one of the best martial arts films in recent memory.

Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story is a phenomenal documentary and jubilant tribute to one of the best!

The Last Showgirl is a grand moment for Coppola, which she does well, especially with Anderson and Curtis, who are fully committed to their characters and well-studied for their roles.

Sabbath Queen constantly finds ways to renew our interest throughout its 105 minutes and does so with great intelligence and respect.

Directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir deliver an unpredictable and eerie narrative that lingers long after. With its sharp character development and refusal to sanitize its dark themes, this Australian indie is an unsettling yet thrilling watch you won’t forget.

The Becomers may not have the largest budget, but it has the largest heart.

At 90 minutes or so, with the needless pseudo-artistic embellishments and tautology tossed out, Armand would have been an intense and cerebral little psychological nail-biter.

Too much thought has been put into this one to write it off as a mere, well, write-off. But it’s also too slap-dash to be labeled a classic, nowhere near on par with Peter Jackson’s original trilogy. A curiosity then, worth checking out, especially for the devoted.

So, just know that A Complete Unknown comes off as really boring throughout. None of this will stop Chalamet from shining out with the ultimate movie Dylan. It is a tousled hair masterwork of a performance, completely adapting the essence of Dylan to a folk music Batman.

Kraven The Hunter doesn’t entertain. The only thing it does right is release the hostages after two hours.

Nosferatu is a failure on almost every level.

In the end, if you’re going to tell a story we’ve all heard before, do something unique. Better Man is unique, indeed. The chimp gimmick never gets tiresome; in the end, it plays out beautifully.

Sometimes, the seemingly smallest fracture that separates the sublime from the maudlin is actually, well, a great divide.

Dear Lord, this movie didn’t need to be made. It is profoundly awful. The foreshadowing is relentless. Sorry, Barry Jenkins just can’t direct animation.

While a rock doc on the surface, Resynator showcases all the conflicting nuances of reality with higher clarity than previous documentaries. Here we see the real life we live in, where everything is both so cool and completely sucks at the same time. We also get to explore how a person’s conception of an absent parent affects the architecture of their self-identity. It is fascinating to see how, as different mysteries are solved, it affects Tavel.

Sit back and get ready to melt into your chair.

The intense and fascinating vision and lens through which Guan Hu observes everything makes Black Dog unforgettable and haunting long after watching.

Werewolves is the best werewolf movie since The Howling.

Here’s something you haven’t seen before, masquerading as something you have 1,000 times. It may be a one-trick pony, but it’s well worth the ride when the pony is this unhinged.

Wicked: Part 1 is an incredible adaptation that captures the core of what fans adore about the stage musical while offering its own cinematic flourishes. Despite a few pacing hiccups, Jon M. Chu’s direction and the cast’s passionate performances create a magical journey worth experiencing.

Amy Adams delivers the knockout punch that will leave you floored by just how close it hits to home.

It would be blasphemous to produce another “Neeson-as-old-but-badass-motherfuck*r flick” after this one.

While The Shade does a decent job examining grief and the complexities of a brotherly bond, it never digs too deeply, relying heavily on its central actor to reveal more depth than it contains.

For Reijn, nothing is off-limits. Reijn is already aware of the criticisms that will and have already been levied on this film, and she’s laughing with cinematic spunk and a robust authorial presence.

The Sylvester Stallone-produced film categorically lacks any surprises and frequently devolves into mushy melodrama. Still, as a family-friendly story of survival in the wilderness, it gets the job done… just.

This is a thoughtful, visually inventive film showcasing Zemeckis’ continued willingness to push cinematic boundaries.

There are plenty of grisly and fun murders, and the effects are stellar. The cast, led by a terrific Holloway and an over-the-top Combs, is genuinely fantastic.

The Room Next Door lacks the transgressive quality that initially endeared me to Almodóvar’s films, especially his early work. Perhaps it is a reflection of the director’s style and a renewed interest in the philosophy of death and dying as he gets older. While it’s still worth a watch, the movie leaves me wanting more, and not necessarily in a good way.

The film moves deliberately as we visit, in turn, the struggles of each character and then zoom back out to see the results impacting the family as a whole. The performances are flawless, each actor holding back their character’s inner turmoil tightly, to be revealed gradually as slight tell on the surface.

Their chemistry as performers together is particularly noticeable, so it’s a shame more focus wasn’t given to keeping the three of them on-screen together as much as possible.

The laughs in Anora come in so fast and frequently that they almost eclipse the underlying tension; things are constantly on the edge of exploding, amusement on the verge of anxiety.

The artful cinematography and well-performed music make this a worthwhile watch.

Sirocco’s world resembles a phantasmagoric dream by Antoni Gaudí.

The film is so gloriously absurd that we are mainly driven through the narrative by the continuous reveal of new elements in this bizarre and hilarious universe. Still, when everything does come together at the end, there are some emotional payoffs that sneak up on you like a wandering turkey.

Its politics will please no one, but for fans of story and characters, the movie succeeds in its primary goal: telling a good story about humanity, warts, and all.

If you’ve ever had a friend or family struggle with an addiction, you know that nothing you say or do will change their ways. It seems to always happen at their rock bottom. Nora Fingscheidt’s feature, The Outrun, starts at the bottom.

It is well worth sticking your face into Hell Hole, as there is a prize inside the box of wood chips.

Blitz disappoints on nearly every level.