The Order is a fine police thriller in an escapist sense, but it also illustrates the cancer of hate at the heart of an increasing number of those in America.

Even as Plaza’s character and presence nudges the movie out of its comfort zone, the youthful, romantic recklessness it tries to celebrate feels theoretical – a lesson, not a life.

The End’s major downfall, aside from being overlong and ideologically tepid, is that its musical numbers are dull and discordant.

Touching upon (but never proselytizing about) matters of misogyny, religion, caste and gentrification, All We Imagine as Light exudes unwavering naturalism, undoubtedly influenced by the filmmaker’s documentary background.

Despite a furiously alpha-male James McAvoy raging through the movie—nearly making this new take into an enjoyable, scareless, hoot-and-holler romp—Blumhouse’s hollowed-out remake undermines its nasty source material with its Americanized sheen.

If the micro-drama over-proliferated cinema as a result of the pandemic, His Three Daughters, considering its subject matter, is much more appropriately situated within its small, stationary setting. I’m not sure it dodges the stuffy allegations, and its tedium can feel more contained and mechanical than it intimates. But then again, grief is defined by its tedium, if anything.

An open riff on First Blood, with shades of the 1973 Joe Don Baker vehicle Walking Tall, Rebel Ridge also feels like a determined return to the relentlessness of Saulnier’s first films.

Look into My Eyes is a unique window into the minds of those who, like Wilson, experience a lot of feelings about the state of the world, but aren’t quite sure what to say or do about them.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice acts as something of an inverse to its predecessor: Whereas the first film follows a relatively simple throughline of small-town domesticity coming crashing down under the sudden cognizance of life after death, its sequel is defined by an excess of storylines, all vying for their claim to a meager slice of the 100-minute runtime.

It fancies itself to be a likeness of reality but is simultaneously unapologetic about mythologizing its central figure, obfuscating Reagan’s sins along the way and refusing any narrative that doesn’t paint him as the Christian, capitalist savior of the family unit.

Making such an insubstantial film about one of our era’s greatest technological shifts isn’t just annoying. It feels downright irresponsible.

Even the movie’s best moments – and much of Blink Twice is entertaining through those moments – have the uncomfortable feeling of satire designed from a moneyed remove.

Like his Shell remake, the Sanders Crow makes something oddly compelling out of a bad idea.

It’s the palpable, playful chemistry between Emmanuel and Sy that finally gives this version of The Killer a reason to exist. Their rapport is a little bit sexy, witty and plenty world-weary. Every time they reunite, the film crackles back to life.

Although many Hong Sang-soo signatures are present in his newest film—scenes written the morning of; long, inebriated talks over delicious meals; lovely performances from his regular players—By the Stream marks a subtle but striking shift in his preoccupations and artistry.

The results are mixed, but while Hell Hole is not the family’s best film, it is proof that they’re still among the most fascinating and consistently entertaining players in the horror game.

Tina Mabry’s new film The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat plays like a Golden Corral that’s begun to tarnish with an overstuffed menu of narrative choices, none of which arrive fully cooked.

Rasoulof knows a much more challenging and incomprehensible reality than many of us ever will, but it’s missing from the straightforward obviousness of The Seed of the Sacred Fig.

The movie seems to pre-suppose that in our desperation to spend time with Wahlberg and Berry, any empty stupid simulacra will suffice as an excuse.

Disappointing but not outright disastrous, Skincare never penetrates past superficial observations of how beauty, success and artificiality constantly commingle among the Los Angeles elite.

It Ends with Us is in deep solidarity with its source material when it comes to constructing a work that is uniquely bland and unmemorable.

Rawly exposing the cruelty imposed upon predominantly Black children by the carceral state while also capturing the emotional whiplash of this fleeting encounter, Rae and Patton construct a visually stunning and narratively resonant portrait of love and longing.

Alien: Romulus isn’t outright awful; its dystopian intro is compelling and there are quite a few devilishly constructed scares. But in its attempts to emulate every shifting form the series has taken over the years, it ends up less a perfect organism, and more a flawed creation that doesn’t meet company standards.

At his heart, Feig isn’t really a satirist – or an action director, despite his repeated efforts. He still makes a convincing underdog, though, fighting his way through misbegotten genre that shouldn’t work here nearly as well as it does.

At Borderlands’ best, we see some nice concept art, divorced from the movement or humanity of cinema. At its worst, we see some poor saps clearly wandering through unreality, stuck in a CG hackjob not quite as convincing as a Spy Kids sequel.

Cuckoo is a twisty, giallo-inspired, semi-body horror mystery that double acts as an impressive lead showcase proving that Schafer is more than just an “it girl.”

In Dìdi, development is occurring on multiple axes: technological, social and generational, and the film is best when it’s unmooring these at once. Dìdi is bogged down, though, by its reliance on coming-of-age clichés: sex and drugs as markers of maturity, family conflict that’s easily smoothed over, the struggle of forming an identity when one has an insecure sense of self.

While the domestic crisis that unfolds is purely hypothetical, the scenarios and potential solutions are supposed to hew closely to what would occur in real life.

Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is a visually clever, character-redefining film for the strongest of animated smart gals, Sandy Cheeks.

Trap is a sturdy and fun little thriller despite its third act stumbles; a lean, simple story that taps into what one could glean is Shyamalan’s fear of being a bad father to his own daughters.

None of the players here were in Ben Affleck’s The Town, but this feels like a companion piece to that one, too, in both its entertainment value and occasional overplayed hangdog Damon-Affleck pathos.

The true fatal flaw of Harold and the Purple Crayon is that everything—from the story to the visual design—feels like it came pre-packaged in a microwave dinner.

Mäkelä can capture something real about queer nightlife, shooting evocative moments at a drag king show, but that ability only makes you wish he’d abandon his main character—or at least let him mature a bit before subjecting us to him.

Deadpool & Wolverine is another mind-numbingly corporatized CGI fest, divorced from any true emotional stakes. It’s a picture that would rather tell you how to feel than make you feel.

Shujun’s script, co-written with Yu Hua and Kang, eschews any viewer hand-holding, keeping its messages and themes backgrounded; if there is a greater context for the film’s plot, perhaps it lies in its depiction of law enforcement in mainland China, and the toll police work takes on the people conducting it, though Western critics lacking background in contemporary Chinese social and political mores can at best only speculate at best.

Starve Acre is not one of those horror films that everyone going in blind will enjoy. It’s not a crowd pleaser or a popcorn thriller. It’s a steady, methodically engineered, beautifully realized meditation on the slow, persistent sting of grief, and a gentle unearthing of the things we bury deep in our souls.

If you’re using “fabulous” to mean fable-like, then The Fabulous Four is in fact fabulous—in that we’ve seen it in too many other stories before.

Oddity is simultaneously an impressive production and a bizarre lesson in the vagaries of fear: without visibly shifting its tactics, it can be shiver-inducing in a few scenes and tedious in others.

Twisters is, at best, pretty fun—a decidedly breezy two hours. It has thrills, and chills, and Glen Powell doing his darndest to bring the concept of “movie star” back into the year 2024.

Skywalkers: A Love Story certainly delivers on its promise of exhilarating footage of high-flying adventure-seekers.

In taking care to depict as much disappointment and frustration as heedless creative joy, the movie shunts some of Dandelion’s breakthroughs off-screen. It ends with a triumph that almost seems unaware of the degree to which Dandelion’s story hasn’t quite figured itself out.

Look Back is a requiem for art lost to violence, to circumstance, to conformity. It is also an argument to create.

This approach fundamentally misunderstands Eno’s entire creative ethos, which relies on technology to elevate—not replace—the unique human ability to create art, a quality that is sorely remiss here.

Precisely crafted and just odd enough to disarm you, allowing its evil to fully seep in, Longlegs is a riveting tale of influence and immersion.

Made in England winningly humanizes two filmmakers who were at one time so mythical that Scorsese genuinely had doubts about whether they really existed, or if those names might be pseudonymous, he admits in the documentary.

This closely choreographed chaos, paired with a harsh soundscape that gives off an anxiety-inducing underwater effect, ushers us into an enigmatic story of a family on the brink of unraveling.

It’s pleasant summer-evening entertainment like something out of 1995, and only occasionally gets too puffed up about what should be modest aims. That’s the advantage of pastiche: It’s hard to do it quite so self-seriously.

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is wry with a side of quirk, unblinking in facing its subject matter head-on while refusing to pull punches; it isn’t without mercy, either.

Within the framework of grueling training exercises that never seem quite as difficult as the movie tries to make them sound, Space Cadet has some dumb fun. It pushes its luck big time when it moves into a hasty Armageddon knockoff that this movie has neither the budget nor the gravity to pull off.

The third release from Studio Ponoc, a Japanese animation studio formed by former Studio Ghibli staffers, The Imaginary is a little twinklier and more straightforward than its Ghibli cousins, with some dreamscapes that look suspiciously Lisa Frank-y. But it has more legitimate imagination than the sweaty whimsy of IF.

MaXXXine is iterative to the point that it might be too repetitive of previous entries, but at least it has a good time getting to the point.

Chicken for Linda! is a puckish film from directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach that gets at this question, using creative animation to portray a family coming to terms with an old meal and all the heartbreak that comes with it.

Despicable Me 4 loses focus like a golden retriever in a Petco plushie aisle, splitting characters into bottled subplots that can only be addressed in single-file order.

Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F is a standardized comeback that moderately succeeds in balancing tradition with reinvention. The film doesn’t kick your door down and challenge your Beverly Hills Cop fandom—Molloy knocks politely on your door and shows you what you want to see. It’s a humble nostalgia bomb à la Live Free or Die Hard, one afraid to upset the apple cart and detrimentally one-note. But Eddie Murphy’s still Eddie Murphy, and that’s like sneaking in a cheat code.

The premise of Michael Sarnoski’s Day One hints at a more filled-in world, but plays more like a maudlin, shallow commercial for the franchise, aided by an overused, cloying score and simplistic, navel-gazing character arcs.

When King and Efron are grooving to their boss/assistant bickering beat, Affair is the most believable and entertaining. As for the rest, it’s been done better and with more depth in a zillion other films.

Those unfamiliar with the director’s penchant for narrative opacity might find Music falling on deaf ears. For those up for the challenge, there are splendid moments of visual poise to soak in, but little to actually take away in terms of tangible storytelling.

The Devil’s Bath is motivated by its character study, exploring the dread found at the intersections of rural peasant life, untreated mental health issues, a patriarchal environment and religious dogma through its almost documentary-like lens.

The veteran-comes-home revenger Trigger Warning is thoroughly idiotic and deathly slow, filled with so much ugly camp that it could stand in as the first Lifetime Original action movie.

What’s special about Humanist is how Louis-Seize maintains an easygoing atmosphere despite the heavy material, and despite the determined stillness of Shawn Pavlin’s photography.

In a world marred by the tragedy of displacement—casualties of myriad geopolitical, colonial and economic interests—Green Border’s resonance speaks for itself.

As Potrykus’ unromantic Midwestern losers mature, so too does his filmmaking. But Vulcanizadora still feels like a natural progression of his slime-slacker milieu: At the movie’s heart, there’s still a ridiculous and upsetting idea, thrust upon desperate members of the lower-middle class, seen through to its tragicomic conclusion.

It’s a shame, because the idea of a serial killer approaching his work with a kind of dutiful, world-weary professionalism is funny enough – maybe only comedy-sketch funny, but then again, The Shallow Tale produces a profound longing for the number of laughs that could sustain a five-minute sketch.

The triptych of dark, minimalist fables that comprise Kindness share actors, an unnerving Twilight Zone tone, and a series of rhymes and echoes that sometimes feel like a chorus repeatedly transposed into different keys. But they most immediately, obviously share a lack of interest in being liked.

In movies like these, heartfelt relatability and comic setpieces (or even just consistently funny dialogue) form their own odd-couple symbiosis; Buffett’s movie feels more like a super-lo-fi Bridesmaids without enough of the aesthetic tradeoff that should come from ditching that movie’s generic glossiness.

Stewart and Erskine, on the other hand, are doing work so lived-in, so much more shaded than the nagging wife/girlfriend figures that typically orbit male immaturity narratives, that it’s hard not to wish the movie were about them instead.

Say Anything is an improbable, borderline fantastical love story that feels utterly true. This variation is more believable on paper, yet ultimately plays like moon-eyed fantasy.

Writer/director Nicholas Colia builds out Griffin’s world slowly, and winds up with a quietly formidable ensemble.

Though so many trans stories investigate the ramifications of trauma, 20,000 Species of Bees adopts the warm embrace of a summer breeze.

Parents of teens will be charmed (and definitely feel validated) by how accurately the movie captures this period of time.

Writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma bobs and weaves in ways American exorcism stories couldn’t fathom.

The film’s confounding tonal discordance, salvaged only in spurts by a commendable performance from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, makes its observations far more embarrassing than existential.

Brats is an ’80s-infused trip down memory lane mixed with savvy insight, revealing interviews and deft directing.

The French Italian is frequently clever and observant, but is it consistently funny? Like laugh-out-loud, forget-the-contrivances, hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner funny? Sadly, no. It’s a little too cluttered with dead-end oddities.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a genuine crowd-pleaser, just undeniably captivating, funny and raging, neon-pink copaganda.

Through its colorful cuts of animation and superpowered antics, it’s a family-friendly film that hones in on the greatest battle of all: parenting.

There’s room in the horror space for a movie like this – a daft campfire tale best told in the damp morning after, part creature feature and part noodling about the nature of humanity. The Watchers may even find an enthusiastic sleepover audience, with its endearing PG-13 spookiness. But unlike other Shyamalan forays into the uncanny, it’s more functional than fully formed.

Zauhar’s filmmaking style has matured along with her characters. Where Actual People took us on a fast and loose misadventure from New York to Philly, This Closeness is controlled and taut, displaying immense restraint and intention.

Admirably high-concept, endearingly silly, but also not quite ambidextrous enough, Rumours marks a wobbly transition from the avant-garde to the mainstream for its directors, who’ve never made a work this “accessible” before.

It’s spread a bit thin, but not distractingly so if you anticipate the stories as parts of a whole. Through episodic logic, Costner and co-screenwriter Jon Baird balance the film quite well.

A film so ambitious lives and dies by its central performances, but Rogowski is typically brilliant, and acting newcomer Adams marks yet another casting coup for Arnold.

For all of its cosmic implications, the film remains steadfast in its human devotions.

AI may not be advanced enough to make a movie even as crappy as Atlas, but in the meantime, it seems like autocomplete is having a go at it.

While its plotting can’t quite keep up with its fantastical flourishes, My Oni Girl still proves a pleasant, albeit slight production with just enough going for it to appeal to 2D animation enthusiasts.

Furiosa is a film well-planned and deeply dreamed.

Lacking the whip-smarts of previous works, The Second Act only winds up feeling as self-important—and as insecure—as the very characters it caricatures.

All told, it’s a surprisingly good time. The Garfield Movie may be as disposable as one of those numbered paperbacks that ex-kids of a certain age may fondly recall from their Scholastic book orders, but it approximates their sense of fun, too.

While Megalopolis might appear gift-wrapped for the cynic, then, if you meet it with any kind of goodwill, you may see in its unabashed rejection of nihilism, defiant unorthodoxy, and complete lack of artistic insecurity exactly the kind of challenge cinema needs right now.

Younger horror fans who haven’t caught up with the earlier films may well receive this one as a perfectly creepy little genre exercise, and there are moments where it plays that way even to a more experienced audience.

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black—her attempt at telling the taboo tale of one of music’s most tragic figures, Amy Winehouse—leans too much into the dark cloud looming over the singer’s sad demise, in turn fumbling what could’ve been a rare, successful dramatization of fame and addiction.

When Power sticks to its experts, its case is compellingly assembled, its points lucidly made (backed up with archival images) and its unspoken importance undeniable.

The movie gets so wrapped up in sorting through the whimsical bureaucracy of discarded IFs that it forgets to create an actual world to hide it under.

By the time the title credits for Babes slide in on the hospital elevator doors, Dawn has left a steady, hilarious stream of screams and fluids in her wake.

While the youth are still game to rebel, the film’s calculated spontaneity leaves its travelers stranded in search of something real, an ironically contrived quest whose very undertaking undermines its goal

Not every story needs to follow the hero’s journey, but it’s a bold choice to craft a main character who does nothing but reject the call to adventure. Poignant? Perhaps. Entertaining? Less so.

Misunderstandings abound in this ultra-lite comedy of errors. Physical pratfalls (think groin area injuries) get a lot of screen time. But there are moments where Mother of the Bride digs a little deeper, especially when it comes to Lana and Emma’s relationship.

After 55 years of different directions, this is far from the most exciting Planet of the Apes has been, but it’s also far from the worst, and I’m open to seeing wherever this leads.

What initially feels like a budget presentation about the issues of being stuck in space and several proposed solutions (explored at various lengths) ends up feeling both too structured and, eventually, too scattered for its fascinating yet still speculative subject matter.