Cage and Kinnaman work well together, with the former being gloriously over-the-top and the latter keeping things grounded in a form of reality. All in all, this thriller works from beginning to end.

Olivia Côte and Laure Calamy make the film worth watching if you are in the mood for a story about an awkward but enduring friendship.

For those who don’t care as much about the moral of the story, there are many ways to enjoy this film. It’s a good time, and one can easily just vibe on the music and color palette, the goofy humor, and an amusing nostalgic catalog of Mattel toys and accessories without investing too much brain power into the social justice commentary.

Black Ice is the kind of film where you are in a different world once finishing it.

Higuchi’s knowledge and commitment to the lore, franchise, and Toku genre make Shin Ultraman a must-watch for fans. The film balances classic tropes and introduces new characters in a format allowing any newcomer an ideal entry point into the many Ultra-verses. It’s a masterclass on reintroducing a beloved character while keeping the overall legacy in mind.

This is an inspiring and emotional watch with one’s mom, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The film works best on a subconscious level.

Even in the more chaotic moments, the filmmaker still delivers a beautiful, exciting, and interesting movie in a way only Wes Anderson could.

Cruise and McQuarrie promised an action film like no other, and they delivered.

A rather forgettable affair.

What enriches this film’s frothy concoction is its strong intellectual underpinnings. The questions raised about how social media has increased public persona versus private interactions carry a lot of weight.

The performances of the three leads and all of the cast are all solid and authentic. The film looks and sounds great.

While this funny and humorous study of a post-apocalyptic change excels in exploring some of its more philosophical traits, the substance regarding its core story is not quite there. Yet, this deserves a watch for its comedic rendering of the complex storyline.

Insidious: The Red Door has some wonderful jump scares, some very creepy sequences, and it gives new terror to the prospect of receiving an MRI. This is an excellent summer horror film, and if you like having the bejesus scared out of you, Insidious: The Red Door will provide about 2 hours of entertainment.

Joy Ride breaks through all the preconceived notions of female-led sex comedy and an all-Asian cast. Director Adele Lim has brought back for this brief moment in time the over-the-top sex comedy and delivers.

It’s tough to watch, and you will fight the urge to walk out but stick with it.

I love the chemistry between Lawrence and Feldman. The comedy is funny and unafraid, and importantly, it has a heart and emotion that works. We need more movies like No Hard Feelings.

Prisoner’s Daughter is a drama that stings hard but also unleashes a lot of hope. It is a splendid reason to be excited about the great American indie again.

While it will not win many (if any) awards, The Blackening is hands down the best time that has been offered up in a movie theater since the Dungeons and Dragons movie last March. This horror comedy plays with genre conventions in a sparkling and vividly delightful way.

Once Upon A Time In Uganda is a triumph on all levels. It is filmed with style, follows immensely likable people, and has an infectious, exuberant spirit that is impossible to resist.

Mangold attempts to send Indy on one last adventure but never recaptures the glory days of searching for the lost ark.

This little drama serves as the perfect alternative to the big studio dreck, plus no subtitles! Simple and sweet!

Writer/director, Kaveh Nabatian, is an excellent storyteller. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the beautiful musical world of dance, love, and heartache that is Sin La Habana. It’s a world definitely worth exploring.

Ultimately, those hungry for a film that prioritizes a great performance over cheap thrills will not be disappointed.

Those individual, deeply felt, beautiful moments sadly fail to add up to a deeply felt, beautiful whole. As such, Revoir Paris gets a B- for effort.

Ultimately, The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future represents one of the sternest examples of sacrificing the heart of a film for the demands of a specific message. Every genuinely compelling moment is forced to become an object of one-dimensional dogma. And all of the film’s latent wonder is sacrificed at the altar of hollow reductionism.

It is all exciting and goofy and fun.

Klondike plunges you into the midst of a nightmarish life, on the brink of utter and complete collapse, leaving you wrung and dry. Not a light weekend watch, then, nor a particularly original or subtle one – but artfully produced, deeply affecting cinema nevertheless.

There is an earnestness within how the story is told and an attention to detail that is increasingly lost in the world of high-definition digital filmmaking. The movie may have its rough edges and shortfalls, but it effectively captures the underbelly of a generation.

It’s a moving drama with an excellent central performance.

Watching Flamin’ Hot mirrors the joy of scarfing down a bag of the crunchy red stuff yourself. It makes your eyebrows raise, is instantly addictive, and goes by very fast.

Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) is a grand rock and roll buffet with something for everybody.

Due to the lack of immersion in the Ape community, this often feels like a finance doc with a few fun moments rather than the story of Apes who conquered Wall Street.

The gags are a series of really lame dad jokes, and it’s missing the awe and wonder that will delight children and adults.

The power of Cadejo Blanco comes in its mystery and reveal. As such, don’t look much into it; don’t even watch a trailer. Instead, let the story wash over you and be awestruck by the impressive talent on display.

Fangs Out is rough from start to finish.

The story structure and characters are compelling, while their actions are intentionally offputting. Plus, the meta-angle isn’t overplayed and is used just enough to make everyone watching question where the plot will go next.

Although the main narrative thrust may seem redundant for the genre, this perspective makes this well worth watching. This is especially true thanks to good humor, interesting family and community dynamics, and the lead’s convictions which have been decently constructed.

Chasing Chasing Amy is Sav Rodgers’ heartfelt, transparent, and articulate look at what it is to grow up gay and transgender in a world of heteronormative hostility. This is, hands-down, one of the best film experiences you will ever have.

The only thing wrong with Transformers: Rise of the Beast is that it’s bland and boring.

The framing, editing, and overall rhythm of the story brim with intelligence. When coupled with a star-making performance from McEwen, we have what should be a new LGBTQIA+ classic drama.

Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story entertainingly gives you everything you need to know about the actor and his life. Ironically, his story has ended up as an almost fairytale-like dream despite the nightmare that Freddy gives so many others.

For those following the career trajectory of Pietro Marcello, the feature works as another example of a nuanced filmmaker delivering a surprisingly different kind of cinematic experience. At its core, this is a memorable portrait of a father-daughter relationship and the power of dreams above all.

Montreal Girls is as much a visual and sonic poem as it is narrative storytelling.

In the end, Past Lives plays with your brain and heart. It’s one of those films that leaves you thinking about and yearning for what might have been.

Ultimately, the story is the film’s star, and director Andrew Muschietti knows how to tell a comic book story. As much as there is excessive fan-baiting and nostalgia, it earned it at the end by holding most of it off until the end. I’m sold.

With Candy Land, Swab has delivered a historic flashpoint in the darker side of the film universe. It is a supernova of seediness. The flick is the true bastion of this under-utilized subgenre.

The director succeeds in telling the story of his sister in an unfiltered, brutally honest, and respectful way. But the audience isn’t always there alongside them.

Gringa is an unusual hybrid of dysfunctional family drama and an escapist sports movie.

Could this version of The Little Mermaid stand alone if the original didn’t exist? Possibly. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken’s songs and story structure remain intact and are its only salvation. But, again, why watch the live-action remake when the original is so much better and suited more for kids?

Move Me No Mountain is an emotional ride that exhilarates as much as it moves. The performances are perfect, and the story is heartbreaking.

Fast X is an entertainer. You need to leave the brains out and have fun.

If you love all things space, It’s Quieter in the Twilight is must-see viewing. A lot of technical information is unloaded upon the audience, but Miossi lays it out in digestible chunks.

I’m not sure where Schrader’s career will take him after Master Gardener, but here’s hoping the next decade is as impressive as the current one.

The Night Of The 12th will emotionally exhaust audiences and get under their skin with its haunting ending.

Knights of the Zodiac is a good production in terms of its action and cast. But when one focuses so much on the fantasy-action set-pieces, having a soulless story makes all efforts fall flat.

Slow pacing and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details abound, placing the film in the tradition of foreign arthouse films.

If you’re a fan of crime documentaries or are fascinated by the grey areas of law, Michael Neelsen’s Beyond Human Nature is a sobering look at American justice at its best and worst.

Rally Road Racers may not change the world or elevate the art form of animated features. Instead, it’s one of those films my kid would watch over and over again. It is good, wholesome fun, with some classic actors to help appease the parents looking for things to do with their kids.

BlackBerry is another movie where we all know the ending, but the fun is in finding out how we got there.

Bhagwan Bharose fully envelopes everyone watching into its character lives.

For a drama about family dysfunction, Dealing with Dad is surprisingly funny and optimistic.

Employee Of The Month ratchets up the zany antics into a thrilling and hilarious conclusion. By the end, the point the filmmakers are driving home is well made and never feels didactic. The cast is great, and the ending is pitch-perfect. So get ready to laugh until your sides hurt.

Thanks to Jacquelyn Mills’ direction, Geographies of Solitude is a visually remarkable documentary that explores the natural world through the eyes of someone who sees the connectivity of all living things. If only the rest of the world cared as much as Lucas and Mills to preserve the natural world.

Writer Jemima Khan and director Shekhar Kapur not only bring the Pakistani perspective on romance but incorporates it into modern English culture.

Caviar is an audacious first feature. But King’s confident direction and bold storytelling give way to a thrilling experience. While the deepfake technology ranges from good to not, the cast more than makes up for it.

The rise of anxiety is a serious problem with no real end in sight. Films like Anxious Nation are important for spreading the message. However, the only realistic way to change attitudes on mental health is to normalize seeking care and to make more people aware of the solutions.

Kitchen Brigade tells us to take risks, be brave, and cook like hell along the way. That is if you can cook. If not, just get someone to do it for you and focus on the life stuff instead.

Four Quartets is a special experience.

If you’re suffering from superhero fatigue, this is just the palette cleanser you need.

So much of Art for Everybody follows a traditional rise-to-power and fall-from-grace structure. The story gives equal time to Kinkade’s adoring friends and his harshest critics while allowing his family to serve as both. Yousef never tries to immortalize or romanticize the painter but instead focuses on the person and his path to the limelight.

Assassin is an engaging look at the pursuit of revenge despite its cost to one’s soul and mind. The cast is excellent, and the dialogue is clever. While the plot isn’t strikingly original, nor is its twist, there is still plenty of fun to be had. Plus, it is nice to see Willis giving it his all for one of the last times.

If you like anything David Lynch or any of the surrealist masters, like Luis Bunuel have ever made, then you will like Giving Birth to a Butterfly. It also has a kick of Douglas Sirk/Ranier Fassbinder melodrama which I always love. If these are things you seek out in films, you will be right at home here.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 has way too much story crammed in its two-and-half-hour runtime, but the reason to see the movie is the Guardians themselves and how they’ve grown and evolved since they were first introduced.

In the end, Sisu is all about the violence and blood, and there are buckets of both. This is one of those action films where you can just sit back, unplug your brain, and hop on for one wild ride.

The Rose Maker is at its best during its quiet moments when characters are allowed to simply exist and grow.

No stranger to eliciting powerful performances from his entire cast, Ozon does it again here, with nary a foot stepped wrong.

Thematically and artistically, Suzume is a gem. I was in awe of its animation and often found myself on both watches just looking at the vast backgrounds of each scene or relishing in the story’s emotional beats.

It’s a challenge that may ultimately be gratifying for the right audience — just make sure you have a comfy chair.

The countryside visuals, emphasis on naturalism, and remarkable ensemble must make Alcarràs the most grounded and humane interpretation of a telling representing an entire culture and living.

It is an assured film, mature in its own right and poignant in its ruminations on madness, obsession, and futility; it knows the precise story it wants to tell and tells it with surgical precision.

I’m not suggesting Cherry should have a laugh track, because it is not funny at all, despite several attempts at humor.

There’s no shortage of entertaining moments in To Catch a Killer, but that won’t stop audiences from wanting more. Other than the performances from Woodley and Mendelsohn, there’s not a lot to grab onto, which would help distinguish this from countless other entries of this ilk.

Although Passion concludes with hasty acts of passion and emotion, it does connect to a more significant issue of how love is fleeting and that commitment is the foundation for moving forward in a life worth living with someone.

It is, first and foremost, a blistering character study, raw in its power and realism, its beats as unpredictable as its protagonist. I’d say buckle up, but dirt bikes don’t have seat belts.

Renfield is a good movie that squanders its potential to be great.

If we’re going to save this planet, we need more love. Space Oddity shows us the blueprint for the mission.

Dark and uncomfortably funny, this work showcases a filmmaker acutely aware of the nuances of modern society.

If you are new to the Child’s Play/Chucky universe, the informative side might be stretched too thin. However, for fans of the snarky killer doll, Gardner has crafted a gleeful celebration of all things Chucky.

Deep down, it’s a story about family and how the strong bond of the family comes in many different and imperfect forms. The cast gives it their all and finds the heart of this sweet narrative.

Chrissy Judy is a heartfelt, visually pleasing, and bittersweet take on friendship and drag. It will surely stir feelings within you regarding the friends you had to let go of for one reason or another.

Summoning Sylvia summons plenty of laughs and will hold your interest in its bony grip.

This film is a pleasure indeed. The concoction of Agatha Christie elegance with Sandler’s teetering on the edge of taste humor is high-impact relaxation, like a warm bath for your frontal lobes.

Not sure if anyone wants to hear this, but A Good Person is a simple yet complex drama with the intention of bringing some good to this world.

Operation Fortune is an action movie. So, how are the fisticuffs and shootouts? They couldn’t be any blander. Yes, there is a lot of action, but I don’t remember anything cool until the end. It’s your standard gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and car and motorcycle chases.

Unwelcome will work its way into your heart, one tiny stab wound at a time.

Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan: Brothers in Blues is that rare insider music documentary that skips the skin and gets down to the bone.