The Woman in the Window succeeds when it comes to constructing an adequate cinematic language to tell the story of its original source material, but tends to overcompensate for its narrative shortcomings.

The film’s rock-solid survival story is enhanced by its charming ensemble and striking, elegant environment.

Spiral might have rhetorical wrinkles that set it apart from its predecessors, but this franchise is still going around in circles.

Oxygen and Laurent’s performance rely on how human nature manifests in us all: With a desire to live, no matter the cost. And none of what is achieved in this claustrophobic mystery would be possible without Laurent.

As an arrival, Undergods impresses, but what’s under the surface needs finessing.

There’s a very scary, thrilling, insightful movie to be made about these kinds of accidents and the people they happen to. Silo isn’t it.

The Columnist argues that silence can be more violent and political than speech.

Despite it all, The Water Man’s adventurous premise ultimately redeems it from its tonal confusion and scrappy character work. It’s narratively propelled by the intriguing belief that belief itself is one of the most life-sustaining forces there is.

The film is better at punching the clock than punching the bad guys. To that end, it’s an honest day’s work from Ritchie and Statham, but not an especially entertaining one.

The documentary’s abundance of archival footage and personal yarns will immerse viewers in the wonderful world of Sesame Street and remind them how powerful, influential art grows from bright ideas and enthusiastic, collaborative minds.

The realness Tran weaves into his story is welcome, but the smart filmmaking is what makes The Paper Tigers a delight from start to finish.

Beast Beast is made with integrity and its narrative leverages violence in a way that simultaneously critiques and perpetuates said violence. The issue is not that the story doesn’t build to that place, but that it—like us—seems uncertain how to react to this fire once it’s been undeniably lit.

Were Nozkowski’s debut not blessed with Henry’s ridiculous acting abilities and the film’s constellation of warm sentiments, it would have collapsed into an unexamined chasm of its own social pitfalls.

It’s easy to feel as lost or overwhelmed by the flashing lights and exhilarating sights as the central family fighting on one side of the title’s grudge match, but it’s equally easy to come away with the exhausted glee of a long, weary theme park outing’s aftermath.

Making it just a little bit smarter—taking out perhaps just one of its multiple, intelligence-insulting ending clichés—could make its plot simply boring rather than asinine, which would make the film dangerously forgettable, able to inflict 100-minute gaps into moviegoers’ memories at distances of up to 500 yards.

It’s a slow-burn stunner.

The funny and worthwhile film, directed by Maureen Bharoocha, is a centralization of both female friendship and the glory of arm wrestling that contains the witty repartee and quarter-life crisis meditations of fellow indie comedies like Save Yourselves! and The Boy Downstairs.

Though the premise is gripping and the acting overwhelmingly solid, Here Are the Young Men falls short when it comes to communicating the raw emotional essence of preemptively coping for a future in decline.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train continues to prove the power of animation and how it can make the story of a boy slashing up demons with a katana about more than sleek fights, but also about how violence affects its characters.

Stuffed with bombastic bit parts from a roster of recent television’s greatest comedic talents and casually incisive dialogue that lays waste to media empires and preconceptions of women’s autonomy alike, the film is an unexpected, welcome antidote to emotional isolation and toxic masculinity that meanders in and out of life lessons at a pleasingly inefficient clip.

It might not fix videogame movies overnight, but Mortal Kombat might finally deliver their sweepingly bad reputation a devastating fatality.

Imagine spending an hour and a half or so watching a film that, the minute the credits roll, dissolves from the mind like cotton candy in hot water. That’s Vanquish. Nothing that happens throughout its narrative happens for any good reason, other than the plot dictates it must for the sake of limping to the next scene.

Even in its over-the-top finale, Nobody never quite reaches the bloody ballet of Wick, nor the depth that franchise’s odd underground world offered, which dulls the tip of its action.

With Jakob’s Wife, come for the campy gore, stay for the surprisingly feminist message about vampirism as a way to set you free.

The premise itself might seem like one set up for failure, but Monday manages to stray away from the petty voyeurism of blow-out fights in order to convey something deeper about love and relationships.

As opposed to relishing in the eerie yet widely disputed history of the creepy old house (re-dubbed the Morley Rectory), the film steeps itself in awkwardly placed commentary on fascism and feminism, effectively diminishing any ambiance invoked through the otherwise alluring 1930s set dressing.

Honeydew is a cannibalistic descent in a vintage-inspired hell complete with antique lace doilies and ceramic kitchenware. It is a fascinating, hallucinatory puzzle that is short a few pieces, but is still reminiscent of a classic like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

While the visual and thematic richness of Night in Paradise could adequately carry the film on their own, the wry comedic tone that often infiltrates even the darkest exchanges between characters enhances the overall emotional payoff.

But there’s so much done wrong as the film tries to be funny that when it is funny, the funniness goes down like a bitter pill: Why can’t it be good all the time?

When The Power is on, it’ll have you white-knuckling a flashlight all night. When it starts flickering, well, even its least nuanced moments or most telegraphed turns still have a level of craft that make certain Faith will be able to keep the lights on as a filmmaker for a long time to come.

The bonds formed in Moffie are complicated, and defy neat resolutions. The viewer is left with many more questions than answers. In that sense, this film is a cautionary tale, a reminder of the stakes of possibly losing our collective humanity.

And as far as criticism goes, the tedious and trite, regressive and ridiculous Voyagers doesn’t need any more than it’s already going to get.

While this suspension of narrative convention is a welcome deviation from the cut-and-dry formula of many coming-of-age films, Giants Being Lonely stops just short of actually saying something salient.

Yes, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is constitutionally sad. It’s also angry, restrained, abandoned, exuberant when cracks open between its downward facing emotions, and, above all else, impeccably constructed.

Since we don’t really have characters and we pretty much know how this story is going to go, all we’re left with is images—and Staub proves himself a greenhorn every step of the way. The script, for all its by-the-numbers structure, still has plenty of potential for some engaging and unique moments.

Marvelously uncomfortable and cringe-inducingly hilarious, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby rides a fine line between comedy and horror that perfectly suits its premise—and feels immediately in step with its protagonist, the college-aged Danielle.

Judged purely on the promises made by the title, it’s hard to see Godzilla vs. Kong as anything but a success. As a film, on the other hand, Wingard’s G v. K often still feels like it’s held together with copious amounts of cinematic duct tape.

Where What’s Love Got to Do with It was a midlife coming-of-age—a “Hello, here’s my story”—Tina is a redefining, empowering farewell that adds perspective as she tips her hat and has her happily ever after out of the limelight.

What’s most distinguishable about Bad Trip is the way that it depicts the public which it interacts with. The film never aims to humiliate or dehumanize its subjects—instead of being disparaged or mocked in the name of comedy, bystanders are portrayed as more of a righteous tribunal than mere crabs in a barrel.

After a rocky start, Miracle Fishing is a gripping journey featuring one of the first great documentary moments of the year.

Ultimately, Zack Snyder’s Justice League feels like just another name for a Special Edition Blu-ray that contains all the scenes.

Overall, however, the viewer gets an essential introduction to Wojnarowicz—enough to foster a desire to look more deeply into his own, numerous written accounts of his life, and to examine their own upholdings of moral decency in art, sex and access to an unencumbered life.

If the idea of killer jeans makes you crack a grin, and even if you’ve been disappointed by horror movies with similarly silly central conceits, it’s worth your time to try on Slaxx. You might be surprised how enjoyable this bootcut bloodbath feels.

First-time feature helmer Grabinski firmly steers his script away from sticking in one mode or another: It’s neither purely scary, nor purely tense, nor purely hilarious, but instead most or all of these at once, producing a uniquely unnerving tone where shortness of breath in one moment instantaneously gives way to cackles in the next.

Merlant’s writhing, fainting spells and intense gaze do well to communicate the intensity of desire and, although the film can sometimes be a dizzying attraction to climb on, Jumbo is certainly worth the ride.

It’s a lightweight film befitting its premise’s “good vibes only” origins—and its uninspiring construction makes its solid performances a pleasant surprise rather than a compliment to an already good movie—but you could do a lot worse than say “Yes” to Yes Day.

A worthwhile effort that’s premise and delivery demonstrate the difficulty of bridging the gap between spectator and celebrity.

Burns conjures horror so vivid and tactile that at any time it feels like it might leap off of the screen and into our own imaginations or, worse, our own lives.

Despite (or perhaps due to) having four writers contributing to the script, Stay Out of the Attic is disjointed and incongruous, with thematic ties to twin experimentation, eugenic science and the medicinal properties of the optic nerve that never connect to reveal anything substantial.

So often the medium focuses on being flashy with quick cuts, long action sequences and epic characters who must save the world. But, not in On-Gaku: Our Sound. Here, Iwaisawa pushes the form in a new direction that ebbs and flows with the sound of music.

Rather than embracing its premise’s unique potential, Boss Level mires it in tropes and convention.

Told through a series of metropolitan vignettes, documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Lo’s Stray deftly weaves together a sprawling narrative of human and canine vagabond life on Istanbul’s city streets.

Chaos Walking feels like a condensement of Ness’ trilogy of books instead of a straightforward translation of the first, and consequently there’s too much that needs to happen in too slim a running time, which leaves little space for making the movie’s conflicts matter.

Coming 2 America achieves exactly what an effective sequel should: It reinforces themes from the original film while offering new, intriguing points of tension, nodding to old gags in a way that rewards fluent fans without alienating newbies.

The World to Come doesn’t offer queer viewers anything revelatory in the realm of lesbian period romance—an increasingly prevalent subgenre that could stand to closely scrutinize the involvement of men behind its scenes—but its audiovisual creativity might very well justify Fastvold’s adaptation of yet another sad Sapphic story.

Does it push the sponge forward? Probably not, and that’s ok. There’s something timeless about Bikini Bottom remaining as it is, with spin-offs and new series serving as the appropriate playgrounds for new outlets of storytelling. Sponge on the Run lovingly splits the difference, but doesn’t take anything away from what many know and love.

After one of the toughest years that many people will ever experience and with debates raging on about how much the pandemic has ruined any progress for women in the workplace, it’s still nice to spend roughly ninety minutes watching how a tiny woman from Brooklyn helped break down obstacles for us bit by bit.

Eremita (Anthologies) offers bursts of such inspired and inhibited strangeness in an uneven assessment of life, documenting this specific period around the world through a diverse spread that’s very imperfection is relatable to anyone that’s tried to get anything done under quarantine.

A splendid showcase for Tran, a lead duo of inventive and endearing original characters, and a big final swing make Disney’s tour through Kumandra one worth taking even if it’s shy of a tour de force. Raya and the Last Dragon is an admirably mature tale in a rich and vibrant world that parents and kids alike won’t mind trekking across over and over again.

While the movie is often adorable and overwhelmingly wholesome, it lacks the true essence of Tom and Jerry cartoons: Goofy, slapstick barbarity perpetually enacted between the two characters.

The overlong and tedious film opts for rudimentary Oscar-bait trappings and a crudely voyeuristic portrayal of the renowned jazz singer—a commanding performance by first-time actress Andra Day notwithstanding.

While the Russos and Holland clearly want to break out of their professional boxes, pulverizing this film with their big swings, Cherry is a bomb.

Similar to how the characters are there to serve Anthony, Colman, Gatiss, Sewell and Poots are there to serve Hopkins. The stage belongs to him. What he does with it is something special, an unmissable performance from an actor with a filmography loaded with them.

The Vigil hopefully marks a trend where Catholicism no longer reigns supreme in the world of horror and filmmakers of all creeds can continue to play with decades of generic expectations.

While a little dark and a little unsteady—and boxed in a bit by the limitations of its genre—Flora & Ulysses still hits most of the right beats and manages to find some resonant, intelligent things to say about some pretty grown-up topics.

Some of the film’s punchy dialogue pops us on the nose now and again with its Themes (specifically its notes on sexism and the American Dream), but if you’re willing to look past that and a contrived half-hour detour, I Care A Lot is a savvy and wicked endeavor peppered with personality.

Despite Shook’s occasional heavy-handedness, the film mostly reaches the glaring social critiques its strains for. If you can put up with substitute social media app interfaces and won’t whimper at fuzzy images of brutalized doggos, Shook is worth a shot.

The Mauritanian plays by the numbers, hitting courtroom conspiracy drama beats dutifully but without any urgency. From the start, everyone on every side of the court is running out of time, and hitting their heads on brick walls of government silence, which, though drawn from real life, remains a well-worn genre cliché played too heavily by Macdonald’s direction.

Aside from the globetrotting and the drama, at the heart of all three To All the Boys movies is the charming Condor, who infuses the movies with validity and radiates happiness. She is a delight to watch—always and forever.

Sator’s dedication to its own nuanced premise, location and tense pace make it the rare horror that’s so aesthetically well-realized you feel like you could crawl inside and live there—if it wasn’t so goddamn scary.

Music is a bad movie, but I wish that were all it was. I can handle its poor pacing and stiff dialogue, but even doing research and writing an essay on the film’s problematic elements pre-release were not enough to prepare me for how harmful Music is to autistic people.

Judas and the Black Messiah’s greatest success is not that it somehow humanizes the Black Panthers, but portrays the Black Panther movement as self-evidently legitimate.

Frankly, Earwig and the Witch looks ghastly enough that storytelling merit doesn’t even matter. It’s a movie almost too ugly to consider beyond the surface.

It’s less a story and more a fragile white male provocation, and it’s repulsive.

The stylistic intentions of PVT Chat welcome not only a rigorous examination of our own personal proclivities, but a sincere respect for the boundaries inherent in the sexual inclinations of others.

It may not be a must-see movie for everyone, but a select few—scrappy DIY filmmakers, lovers of hands-off fantasy, those that love a good “film still as portrait”—will find something to enjoy. The rest might chafe a bit, but will still hang on to see where The Wanting Mare’s ride takes them.

While not compelling enough to be one of the two options—either a destructive or awakening force for our own personal simulations—winkingly proffered in the doc itself, A Glitch in the Matrix still has genuinely gripping segments.

With In the Earth, Wheatley hits a brick wall, but he hits it hard enough that whether one sees the film as successful or not, the effort remains admirable.

At its grimmest the film hits peaks of nerve-shredding dread. But more than being just frightening, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is confidently weird and deeply sad.

A protracted folkish horror story that mistakes miserablism for period accuracy.

The frequently complicated relationship between mother and daughter has fostered plenty of cinematic investigation, but El Planeta easily distinguishes itself as a uniquely meta and universal addition to the canon.

Interested in interrogating the exploitation of fantasy and imagination for human consumption, Shaw’s psychedelic, patently adult animated feature brings daydreams into the pointedly violent and bleak reality that its genre contemporaries are privy to ignore.

What’s delivered is a flat drama with some admittedly striking nature photography, though the biggest survival struggle becomes that of your own attention span.

While its larger ideas never fully find their feet, The Queen of Black Magic lights a fire beneath the soles thanks to its continuous flow of gags—eventually developing into an almost Hellraiser-esque carnival of punishment.

If it’s hard to shake the feeling that The Little Things strives to be Se7en or Zodiac, it still manages to satisfy in a meat-and-potatoes sort of way, delivering its twists and turns effectively while having the confidence to not wrap things up too neatly by the end of its runtime.

There’s texture here, unnerving ambience as proof of Glass’ budding talents. But less isn’t always more, and while Saint Maud doesn’t need much, it simply doesn’t have enough to make an impression lasting beyond one second of terror.

Psycho Goreman is a necessary explosion of ridiculous fun in a time when it’s needed most. Fans of practical effects and over-the-top horror-comedy will instantly fall in love.

Although it all may veer towards a cliched representation of British-ness, Fiennes and Mulligan’s leading turns as Brown and Pretty are charming.

All this seriousness about love, loss and the human needs that start up early and continue until the end aren’t without a sense of fun. Some Kind of Heaven’s glib punchlines (like its title) and aesthetic choices (like a voyeuristic camera and thrillery score accompanying Dennis’ more slimy schemes) work best when they’re paired with some nicely dry moments of undermining honesty.

As the argument expands, all of these men start to look less like icons and more like, well, men: Regular people with regular concerns and everyday flaws. They’re mortal and imperfect, and to witness their mortal imperfection is One Night in Miami’s greatest joy.

Hunted doesn’t exactly rewrite the original tale, but it doesn’t have to. It just has to have teeth, and Paronnaud’s kept those canines sharp and savage.

Locked Down is a crushing miscalculation on every level that should’ve stayed locked up.

Though the filmmaking is perfectly competent and sometimes engaging, these moments where things click in a way that doesn’t feel like a teacher tap-tap-tapping on a chalkboard’s spelled-out “themes” are rare. It’s a muddled and messy movie, colorfully congested with ideas that often seem contradictory.

Wonder Woman 1984 has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor. Fortunately, the exact mix and proportion of those strengths and weaknesses has shifted for the better.

Night of Kings aesthetic dissonance is discombobulating, but the discombobulation is surprisingly pleasing in its headiness, as Lacôte plays with naturalist filmmaking and spectacle right out of The Lord of the Rings, intertwining the two so much that they are, at the end, inseparable from one another.

Soul stuffs its playful optimism into a simple message and delivers it with colorful, endearing beauty.

It’s the thought put into the writing that leads Promising Young Woman astray: The movie knows what it’s about, but waffles over how to be about it. The ferocity Mulligan funnels into her performance hints at the story that could’ve been—merciless, cool and vividly stylized. But her ruthlessness, her “no fucks to give” demeanor, isn’t matched by the picture surrounding her. She realizes her promise as Fennell struggles with her own.

Although it has its share of cliches, it remains a gripping, chilling story throughout—one that strikes a little too close to home in the context of 2020.