Fire Walk with Me isn’t what many wanted it to be, it’s easy to accept the film for what it is: a bracing look at incest and rape.

The movie's potential blossoms whenever it toys with the allegorical ingredients head-on. DeMonaco's script plays like a devious Brothers Grimm tale told through the filter of Occupy Wall Street.

Washington, Henderson, Davis, and Hornsby are each “holy shit” great in their own ways, the four of them deepening the dynamics they forged together during their time on stage.

The filmmakers manage to improve on the limitations of the original by showing more of Gore’s resilience in the field.

As coming-of-age stories about wayward teens go, writer-director Jason Orley’s debut is a sturdy, endearing portrait of youth in revolt that takes few surprising turns. But the two actors sell their dynamic well enough to inject the story with palpable authenticity despite the familiar premise.

The result is a cozy crowdpleaser with real heart and some lovely songs, and one that doesn’t trade honesty for predictable beats.

Make no mistake: Culkin is the movie’s heart and soul as the eccentric, unpredictable wanderer Benji, but “A Real Pain” is — at the risk of it being too early in the filmmaker’s career to coin this term — Eisenbergian through and through.

The best thing about writer-director A.B. Shawky’s feature-length debu...is the way it burrows inside Beshay’s life without devolving into a pity party.

The First Purge is another absurd B-movie, uneven and ludicrous across the board, but altogether transfixing for the way it funnels Trump-era terror into an empowering crowdpleaser.

Destination Wedding makes the case that the two-hander isn’t dead, even if it struggles a bit when forced to come to a neat, movie-ready conclusion.

Madre turns out to be the least twisted, and most empathetic, entry in the damaged mother movie canon in some time.

Not since Klaus Kinski has Herzog aimed his camera at such an uncontrollable subject, and that includes the erupting peaks of “Into the Volcano” and the radioactive crocodiles in “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”

What Sam Boyd’s tender and winning debut feature lacks in originality and ambition, it makes up for in honesty and charm.

Lessons about loving oneself, accepting one’s faults, and being the best version of yourself are cheesy, but not without purpose. Call it cinematic comfort food, but Dumplin' knows how to satisfy.

The scares are mostly metaphorical and the sparse imagery becomes repetitive by the end, but “The Damned” remains a promising debut that offers a moody exploration of the human condition.

It’s a blockbuster that funnels the appeal of big-budget action and horror with an almost sacred reverence for the material. That’s absurd, but Snyder’s a true believer in go-for-broke escapism and at its best, the mayhem in Army of the Dead is an infectious zombie bite of its own.

While still invested in grandiose swipes at big ideas and the epistemological babbling of a late night college dorm room conversation, Cahill generates an authentic sense of mystery by keeping a tighter lid on the secrets of the universe.

“Shang-Chi” may be built on familiar lines, but in the moments when it’s allowed to be its own film, it’s a vastly different (and vastly superior) film compared to its predecessors.

32 Sounds wants nothing more than to send audiences back out into the world with ears wide open. With the on-screen help of Le Tigre musician and co-conspirator JD Samson, Green accomplishes that goal so well that it feels like he probably could’ve gotten the job done with just 16 sounds instead, but this playful and aggressively pleasant little film is an easy sit, and the strength of its individual episodes — in addition to the echoes that resonate between them — helps to absolve the discordant chaos of their arrangement.

COVID-19 serves as a fitting backdrop for an amiable romp about the freedoms we take for granted, and the confines that dictated our lives long before we were forced to spend them at home.

There's no question about the efficacy of Scorsese's filmmaking prowess, only that he never knows -- or doesn't care -- to slow down and deepen the material.

Fans of the two cinematic titans will find plenty of cinephile brain candy in the meandering back-and-forth. It’s a long, drunken party conversation that allows you a seat at the table.

Rockwell’s direction is sophisticated and visually imaginative even as the movie could benefit from a tighter edit around its New York cast of characters and the rapidly changing city in the hands of mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a touching little two-hander that does right by its title character even if the lion’s share of the conflict in this audience-friendly charmer hinges on Nancy’s seesawing relationship with herself.

Running eightysomething minutes with credits, “Sacramento” never aspires to be much more than an incisively rendered sketch, but its casual nature and outward lack of ambition belie how well it manages to convey the terror that change brings into our lives, the mania of trying to deny it, and the relief that comes from recognizing that someone else in your world is changing with you.

The director shoots the place with a Haneke-like remove that makes every member, caddie, and Chinese tourist feel like they’re conspiring to bury an awful secret of some kind.

Although made up of many mesmerizing moving parts, “Harvest” ends up as feeling less than the sum of these. There are sparks of what makes an Athina Rachel Tsangari film great within this impressionistic period fable, even if — unlike the fires that bookend the film — it never fully takes the blaze.

With elegant acting from its two young leads and picturesque cinematography from Matthias Koenigswieser, it serves as a competently executed morality play for audiences craving a bit of unambiguous humanism.

Even a movie as evocative and well-mounted as this one can’t help but feel like a shadow of a shadow. It traces the silhouette of “The Strange One” without ever achieving the emotionality it needs to feel her touch first-hand.

It’s not unusual for such high-concept films to indulge in a thorny and fascinating second act only to find itself grasping for a more defined conflict in the third, and that’s essentially what happens here, as the broad philosophical mysteries take Leyla down a rabbit-hole that might be too deep for her to ever climb out.

Luzzu is beautifully shot, if at times emotionally restrained, in its centering around a man who’s occasionally hard to read. But it boast a true discovery in the casting of Jesmark Scicluna, a real fisherman who plays a version of himself, and here playing a struggling parent trying to eke out a living along the docks.

Like Whedon's whip-smart "Avengers" screenplay, Thor: The Dark World manages to acknowledge the inherently silly nature of its premise while compellingly asserting that, hey, sometimes it's fun to suspend your disbelief when the results look this good.

Despite the simple question at the film’s core, Carax is unsurprisingly more interested in assembling compelling images and sounds than offering a sincere look inside the man crafting them. He orbits vulnerability like a moth swirling around a streetlamp, getting ever closer and occasionally touching it before instantly recoiling.

Coggeshall’s script isn’t especially sharp, as the movie really does hinge around that big twist, but the visual approach and performances from the actors give Orphan: First Kill an edge that should satisfy fans of the original.

Bercot's solidly engaging if fairly routine social-realist drama mainly stands out as an actor's showcase.

Bruised isn’t breaking any new ground from a narrative standpoint, but it does show the strength of Halle Berry as a director, boasting a powder keg of dominating performances within a simplistic story.

While there's a casual dissonance to each twist in its winding plot that results in a disconnected and emotionally vapid experience, Detective Dee unquestionably achieves the escapism it intends.

The result is sometimes overlong and wears out its welcome, but it clarifies Hosking’s distinctive tone — a playful and often charming blend of outré humor and genuine emotion that makes him one of the most distinctive new voices in current cinema.

Things get harried in a hurry, and while Duffield doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to the various “Home Alone”-like battles that pit Alien vs. Dever, the “Spontaneous” director stages them with rare aplomb and an unerring respect for the fact that Brynn’s house represents her entire universe.

Chock-full of popcorn nostalgia and fan favorite characters and villains and power moves exactly like what any fan of the long-running saga is looking for.

Thomas and his co-writer Diane Ruggiero have penned a self-avowed love letter to the fans of the series, but grounded it in a solid thriller with compelling characters and bright comic moments.

While the documentary's structure is somewhat uneven, its protagonists remain fascinating subjects whose recollections — along with backstories fleshed out by their wives and parents — include revelations of much greater challenges than the movie itself.

Black Rock never reinvents the rules, but it understands them just well enough to make its bloodless stabs at ingenuity stand out.

Even if 1001 Grams isn't Hamer's best, it sees the director's enjoyable style come into full form.

The actors’ gifts are all heightened by Msangi’s delicate touch in this empathetic portrait of immigrant life in America that is, refreshingly, less interested in big drama than in a family quietly building itself back up when it may be too late.

Onward doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but spins it so well that it conjures a spell of its own as a new decade dawns with the Pixar touch intact.

Set in a single location with a cast of five, the movie offers a lesson in minimalist drama, unfolding as a sharply acted mood piece that never crescendos, but hums along with wise observations and first-rate performances.

Khan’s film pulls liberally from the genre playbook — stars and co-writers Ali Wong and Randall Park haven’t been shy about the film’s early inspirations, especially classics like “When Harry Met Sally” — but it also offers its own charms, thanks to Wong and Park, who delight both on-screen and on the page.

In the end, Silent Friend is a film of contradictions, profound, complex, and beautiful, but occasionally interminably boring.

Despite its shortcomings, The World's End glistens with a comedic energy not present in equivalent mainstream blockbusters.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a true masterclass in exploiting juicy IP, building out an intricate-yet-familiar world that’s littered with video game Easter eggs that could set up other movies.

Stories that are “timely” or “prescient” may be the norm these days, but Spellbound works a little magic to ensure that such messaging, as important as it may be, doesn’t get in the way of a good time for the entire family. That’s another thing we need now, more than ever.

Perry and editor Robert Greene switch back and forth between twin time-frames with no fuss or warning - and flashes of virtuoso flair - finding ironic parallels between the happy gathering of the previous summer and the more fraught atmosphere of the present day.

Packed with major talking heads, zippy animation, and a bouncing (and bouncy) sense of time (and timeline), “It’s Dorothy!” succeeds mightily when it comes to its most elemental thesis.

Though its darkness may be alienating, there’s something to be said about a love story that isn’t afraid to admit that one of the lovers isn’t the charming dreamboat he appears to be. And to Golding’s credit, there’s no vanity in his portrayal of Nicolas.

If this was the last romantic comedy of 2023, it’d already have been a great year for rom-coms.

Nobody really asked for another “Charlie’s Angels” reboot, but this one will leave you eager for more. It seems these women might still have the element of surprise on their side, after all.

Di Stefano's memorable debut feature makes up for its lack of sophistication with constant forward motion.

Red, White, & Royal Blue is a hopeful, fresh twist on a genre that should charm both fans of the book as well as anyone who enjoys a frothy love tale.

In the moment, it’s hard not to get pulled into the spectacle, stuck to the story, really connected to this crowd-pleasing (and -screaming) little ditty of a midnight treat.

The Threesome doesn’t always feel like what you might think of when you imagine a “modern” rom-com, but that’s what makes this one of the rare movies that actually fits the bill.

The Mastermind is a study in one man’s selfishness, his compulsion toward crime as a thrill sport, toward daring himself to execute a challenge to shake up his own humdrum day-to-day schtick.

From its title on down, Letter to You is a testament to the power of communion.

Daaaaaali! sure seems like the one movie that Dupieux was destined to make.

Joe Cornish’s long-awaited and largely delightful follow-up to “Attack the Block” is a unicorn of a children’s fantasy movie: It’s imaginative, it’s heartfelt, and it never feels like it’s trying to sell you anything more than a measure of hope for the future.

While the central character’s arc will likely launch a dreaded “discourse,” there is a tenderness to Master Gardener that may prove its biggest surprise.

It’s a knowing smile of a drama that leaves you eager to follow Haugerud through his other two new films about the life of the mind, the last and best of which (“Dreams”) recently won top prize at the Berlinale.

Detroit is extremely powerful when its wandering eye is trained on the moment at hand, when it’s performing a bracingly direct meditation on white violence and black fear. The film only runs into trouble when it clumsily attempts to contextualize the events of its horrific second act.

Ashe’s film gets a bit too flat for the big finale to arrive with the oomph that it should. And yet, as out of sync as you might get with the way that Sylvie’s Love riffs on its themes, you never want Ashe and his band to stop playing.

Finally, the Fifty Shades phenomenon has yielded a disarming comedy that makes this ridiculous material fun to watch.

Raw and compelling from its poetic opening shot to its gut-punch finale, Gook doesn’t always find the best way to express itself, but it knows what needs to be said, and it knows that words can lose their meaning in a conversation where so many people are denied their own voice.

It may feel a little too surreally awkward and plodding in its first hour. But as a sweet movie smartly attuned to the power of the weirdo bonds that bind us to our family no matter the geographical distance or emotional dislocation, Defa achieves a sledgehammer of an ending in which not a single word rings false or feels sentimental.

Wicker threatens to feel largely like a logline writ into something grander (i.e., a short story with a wild idea stretched into a feature), but these actors are irresistibly weird and wonderful, as only they could be.

Mickey and the Bear only accomplishes so much in its modest 82 minutes (like most films of its kind, it builds to nothing more than a nudge in the right direction), but Attanasio makes you believe in the reality of these characters and the place that binds them together.

The Killer is nothing if not committed to its own one-note bit, an existential nihilism that stays the same even as the protagonist, in a mostly silent Michael Fassbender performance, starts to change. It’s as unfeeling as any Fincher thriller, at once predictable in its simplicity but also strangely daring because of it.

An impeccably produced look at a heinous crime, Popplewell’s documentary meticulously weaves together a wealth of information . . . that it almost feels too readymade for the film treatment. Almost.

Rich in its execution and careful in its approach, The Sounding resonates.

The overly earnest movie falls below the rich ambiguities that Keaton brings to the part, resulting in a measured drama so restrained it sometimes underserves the material. Where "Birdman" magnified Keaton's talent, Spotlight leans on it.

As cinema, it's alternately engaging and overly blunt. But there's no denying its efficacy as a major celebratory gesture.

One development gets short-shifted: the onslaught of studios drowning out what made the Con so attractive in the first place.

Whatever their respective agendas, Navalny finds subject and filmmaker alike bound together by the shared belief that authoritarian governments are as scared of their people as their people are of them, and the documentary is galvanized by the spectacle of Putin shitting his pants.

As an act of preservation, Frozen Time is a marvel, a miracle, a complete good. As an act of storytelling, it’s still a bit too cold for the nitrate to catch fire.

Sunny, seductive, and strangely refreshing even when things get dark, Summer of 85 is the cinematic equivalent of someone going back to their childhood home and seeing it through the bleary eyes of an adult, clouded by memory but also liberated from the teenage myopia that once made every new emotion feel like a matter of life and death.

September 5 works most powerfully as a behind-closed-doors, single-room thriller, even as what we see on a wall of monitors is almost too unreal to believe.

“Ouija” is genuinely frightening and smart, the rare horror prequel able to stand on its own merits and deliver a full-bodied story that succeeds without any previous knowledge or trappings. However, in outfitting this particular haunted house with monsters to spare, Flanagan loses the thread of what’s really scary: Everything we can’t see.

A schematic but sensitive prison drama about a maximum-security lifer who begins to care for an older inmate suffering from early-onset dementia, Petra Volpe’s Frank & Louis soberly interrogates what it really means to “serve time.”

Chew-Bose’s directorial debut is a sharp offering that adds to the mystique of the original material and makes a strong case for its own existence.

Wonder is as manipulative as movies get, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a story needs to steer you; sometimes a story tells you what to feel, but redeems itself by virtue of the sincerity with which it shows why you should feel that way.

But Nobody uses its boundaries as an asset. This giddy approach to action in place of story has held appeal ever since Wiley E. Coyote chased the Road Runner off a cliff, and Nobody lingers in a ludicrous plane that works in bite-sized pieces.

With the exception of a few candid moments featuring James at home, Knuckle isn't particularly well-made, but there's an inherently fascinating quality to the material.

If 20 Days in Mariupol is about anything, it’s how much destruction can be done in such a short time.

The result is an entertaining and insightful mashup of tropes, both respectful of what came before and willing to try new tricks. Being a weirdo, it seems, has never gone out of fashion, but now it has a different kind of future to conjure up.

The plight of the alienated monkey is at turns absurd and genuinely bittersweet, not to mention a whole lot better than its premise might suggest.

United States vs. Reality Winner is less expose than repudiation of a system that lacks the humanity to address the subtleties of her case.

Even as "Gabi" steadily slides downhill and ends with a shrug, it remains intermittently fun and never entirely unbearable-much like Gabi herself.

It’s an obvious but enjoyable period piece — and a throwback to another era of Hollywood filmmaking, resurrected in the 21st century with two of the best actors working today, who elevate this didactic form of storytelling above the market standard for schmaltz.

Matsoukas’ fast and furious filmmaking doesn’t always click, but it always crackles with purpose, refashioning the lovers-on-the-lam trope into an emotional black-lives-matter lament, and it deserves to be met on those terms.

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed lacks for drama in its portrayal of the quotidian realities of sexual kink, but Arnow’s voice is distinctive, shrewd, and spiky enough to keep it afloat.