For what it’s doing and for how visually appealing it can be, Dark Harvest delivers October ickiness with a crooked smile.

You can’t fault an attempt to transform a viral sensation into the next bonkers realization of contemporary horror that exploits our ever-volatile online climate—but you can always fault a genre film that doesn’t do the chosen genre justice.

Blue Giant is a somewhat tropey story that captures its characters’ big feelings, and its incorporation of live combo recordings contributes something unique to the steadily growing canon of musical anime. While not quite the feature I would’ve expected from Tachikawa after Mob Psycho 100, it’s a strong next step in the director’s career.

Tragos and her brave, badass subjects spend almost all of Plan C zipping through explanations of a constantly evolving abortion landscape.

The generic moniker proves accurately foreboding for the run-of-the-mill film, one that desperately latches onto the goodwill of a familiar title but has nothing meaningful to add to its legacy.

The many great scenes in Janet Planet underscore the frustrations of its few bad ones: Even an emotionally tumultuous childhood can be a lot more absorbing than the indulgences of the adult world.

Despite Seydoux’s uniquely magnetic ennui – could any other contemporary actress imbue a beautifully bored model with such empathy? — and MacKay’s gameness to bring a little nuance to a real creep in the 2014 section, The Beast has an undercurrent of restlessness, maybe even listlessness.

The dreaminess, a clear evocation of Fellini, feels well-worn and contrived instead of exciting, coasting on aesthetics.

Perhaps what was once haunting and unsettling on the book page has not, in more overt staging, translated well to the screen.

Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit.

[Green's] new film The Royal Hotel could be summed up as Smile More: The Movie, which grounds a clash between two globe-separated cultures in old-time misogynist tropes that know no geographic borders. Like The Assistant, the movie revolves around women in the presence of atmospheric male domination. Gendered maltreatment is in the very air they breathe.

Luckily, Hewson’s grounded performance and Carney’s witty script largely succeed in keeping this treacly dramedy afloat.

Though Green may alienate some audiences with choices nowhere near as terrifying as William Friedkin’s original, something about the film’s heart endears beyond another exorcism retread satisfied to follow the same blasphemous beats.

Zlokovic’s film misses the point of celebratory tongue-in-cheek referentialism, not to the point where the horror cinema gods will force reassessment of The Babadook’s status as a contemporary classic, but enough to cheapen everything of merit about Appendage.

Radu Jude’s literalized mouthful Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World depicts, perhaps, the most accurate representation of the dystopia we live in, and the supposed impending dystopia that we’re in the process of arriving at.

The payoff is grand, as a macabre exercise and a moving gut punch.

The Taste of Things is, in basic terms, a very nice and sweet movie, although Dodin’s grief as the paramours suffer tragedy in their autumn years is emotionally punishing. But there’s not necessarily anything wrong with a movie being “very nice and sweet,” especially one as lovingly crafted as this.

We're presented with a mixed bag that feels emblematic of the series itself: Peaks and valleys have always been the norm.

A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.

It’s torture-forward, funny, preposterous, imaginative and puts into practice what the franchise should have learned a long, long time ago: There is no reason to reinvent the saw blade.

A few key performances and a filmmaker with a clear vision unite for a film that truly feels fantastical, like someone somehow snuck a camera as they were falling into a holy reverie.

I found myself oscillating between being impressed by The Sweet East and feeling like it was trying very hard to impress me. And it did, though probably less than it intended.

Regrettably, a gross number of missteps overshadow the Hawkes’ good intentions with this film. Even without Maya Hawke’s frumpy hag drag as O’Connor, complete with too-large dentures and an unfortunate wig, the lack of creative risk taken by the filmmakers, as well as the lack of research done by the team, sinks Wildcat before it gets started.

If Stallone has gone through long stretches of unrelatability in his worst movies, The Expendables 4 does bring him back him down to the common man with its flashes of dorky buddy-movie glee: Hey, I like Jason Statham too!

For a designated last great hope of original sci-fi, this is a surprisingly programmatic picture.

Rhys Darby’s charm, some decent jokes, and a handful of interesting theories save Relax, I’m from the Future from being a total slog, but its unfocused script and unexplored ideas hold it back from greatness.

Despite walking well-tread but welcome ground, My Sailor, My Love never fully takes advantage of the comfort that comes with repeating familiar story beats.

The lessons are sweet, the kid actors are cute, and the kid audience will probably enjoy it accordingly. Whether it sticks in their memory for 20 years or even a few months, though, is another question entirely.

While its minimalist approach keys into creepy unknown anxieties about our extraterrestrial neighbors, Duffield’s signature dose of emotional heft floats away into the clouds this time around.

This inept, unpleasant, cobbled-together debut only reveals its first-time helmer as a Dr. Frankenstein about to lose his license.

It Lives Inside shows that a generic, uncertain script isn’t improved with a single coat of paint, especially if the ugly original is bleeding through the patchy, translucent renovation.

With The Unknown Country, filmmaker Morrisa Maltz takes viewers on a journey through the American West that creatively blurs the line between fact and fiction with illuminating results.

What Dumb Money does very well is show that the GameStop stock story is more than just a meme for our times, but a first stone in the pond with a ripple effect that’s still a work in progress.

If Election is a shot of tequila, The Holdovers is a slow succession of sips of bourbon that you don’t realize have affected your spatial awareness until you get out of your armchair.

The concept behind the film is an amusing, if obvious, one-note gag stretched out to nearly two hours, and not a gag that’s particularly novel or one that offers Larraín much to expand upon. As a would-be political satire and a vampire film, El Conde simply doesn’t have much (sorry, sorry, I know) bite.

I’m not sure White ever cracks his own film’s code, but you can tell he’s passionate about whatever Outlaw Johnny Black becomes. That conveyance elevates what could have been an even messier modern Western with throwback appeal.

Like a dream itself, Dream Scenario guides us through multiple tone shifts, from comedy to horror, rather smoothly, but the head-first jump into sincere romance toward the end of the film is bumpy, even if it is silly and sweet, and the imagery is lovely.

Thankfully, 2023 continues to be a banner year for animation of all kinds, with The Inventor proving that its traditional techniques of animation—done with such skill, heart and passion—are just as timeless as the man who inspired their use here.

There’s not much to Elevator Game, and McKendry struggles to find the film’s extra gear, which underwhelms in its familiarity instead of finding comfort in the YouTuber satirization that has become popular with the rise of social media.

Of the Poirot trilogy, A Haunting in Venice is undoubtedly the best crafted and most enjoyable film to watch.

The charm of the living memorial comes across quite earnestly, magnified by the sweet performances of Phillips and Dexter Fletcher as her husband, Val.

The Dating Game plot is strong, and while it is a rather freaky piece of trivia, it is more of a footnote in Alcala’s murder spree than the entire story.

More hollow than hollowing, director Jonathan Glazer’s Edenic nightmare is better when taken metaphorically. There are no people to grasp onto here, only concepts.

Satanic Hispanics, a horror anthology from a quintet of Latino filmmakers and an energetic ensemble cast of actors, embraces the versatility and sense of diversity that can work so well in this format.

If you’re expecting a totally original horror flick, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for a film that cohesively fits into and helps explain the Conjuring universe, you should know better by now. But if you’re looking for nothing more and nothing less than a film where a barbaric nun slaughters everyone in its sight, well, look no further. Everyone else will be nun too pleased.

Even though the plot of the movie is wispy, it still features the humor that made the original so beloved.

It takes a shock to the system to draw honesty out of an influencer, and Rotting in the Sun is absolutely a shocker. But rooting himself in the fabrication-friendly space of social media leads Silva, and his film, toward an earnestness that outmatches even his best work to date.

What truly makes Sitting in Bars with Cake work are the standout performances from Shahidi and A’zion.

While Scout’s Honor may only anger and dismay the audiences that watch it, it’s still a brutal depiction of the foundation of violence, ignorance and apathy which the entire country is built upon, and of the perpetrating parties who continue to profit from it. In that way, Scout’s Honor is as American as apple pie.

With such charming old-school performances, Hit Man peels back the layers of genre to reveal something alive–lovely in its full-bodied animation.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial isn’t Friedkin’s most sophisticated directorial effort, nor is it his most advanced thematic musing on man’s capacity for evil. Yet it enshrines him as an actor’s director, one capable of coaxing out subtle responses that can, by decimals of a degree, change the temperature in the room.

Cooper’s struggle to structure his stories and reign in his melodramatic tendencies flattens its successes into a somewhat lackluster, occasionally brilliant, ode to an American icon.

It is a deliciously amoral journey, the kind that has already secured Lanthimos ample praise over the course of his career. But this is perhaps the filmmaker’s most garish and confident endeavor, using Bella’s naive perspective to design a world so heightened that it exists somewhere between a nightmare and a dream.

Those who choose to embrace the uncertainty get an enjoyable exercise in suspending rationality. Tucked away in the film’s charmingly light and plucky script is a profound challenge for Fodor, and for us: To hold logic and antilogic in our minds at once.

Writer Josann McGibbon’s script plays it safe from beginning to end. The potential cleverness of the format is never tested or pushed to explore any truly weird choices for Cami.

Ferrari is a loud and thrilling race that leaves the figure of Enzo stranded on the side of the road, unknown and lost.

Like all worthwhile children’s work, Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia is driven by something deeper than the need for superficial laughs or spectacles: The desire to inspire its young audience to pursue their passions and stand up against authorities that threaten their freedom of expression and individuality.

By the time the credits roll, all the ingredients Reeder’s been carefully marshaling come together in surprising, satisfying ways, delivering a horror film that leaves the world a little bigger, a little stranger and a little scarier.

It’s as if Neeson is attempting to maintain the same schtick from Taken, with the children remaining the same age despite his own age ever trudging onward (there’s a twisted Dazed & Confused joke someone could make here). It is a workaround refutation of his mortality without the use of de-aging CGI.

Army of the Doomstar prioritizes well-earned sentimentality over grisly comedy, and balances the film’s heart with the best animation of the series to date.

People don’t always want Goldilocks movies, but amid the melodramas and rom-coms, the IP blockbusters and action movies, Fremont’s easy flow and small scope provide the same reassurance (and opportunity for projection) as a small, optimistic piece of paper.

If You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah does have the feel of an expensive, well-appointed, but not exactly lushly-made family project – maybe even a coming-of-age gift to the younger Sandler daughter – at least it mounts a charm offensive, rather than treating its audience like a pack of easily manipulated rubes.

Through its aspatial editing, refusing to ever let a racetrack be understood in continuity, Gran Turismo becomes a cacophonous collage of experience based on real car racing as much as real videogames, but fundamentally opposed to the reality of either.

Bad Things wants to be quirky, callous and cutthroat before an explosive ending, but never aggressively combusts as we’d hope—even with chainsaws and flesh-cutting blades in play.

Strays is bad, but it’s not offensively so—and it’s certainly better and more watchable than something like Cocaine Bear (a low bar to cross, albeit).

Moss’ creation is more than a sentient pile of parts with a fresh coat of mortuary makeup: It’s a savvy, gross, black-hearted gem with a humanity all its own.

Miguel Wants to Fight is a flyweight comedy with the misfortune of coming out the same year as the similarly style-forward, action-spoofing teen reckoning Polite Society.

Though aimed at a slightly younger audience, The Monkey King still has the mix of high-stakes peril and high-reward comedy that has become part of Chow’s signature style.

There may be bolder DC superhero movies, but despite that body-horrific transformation, Blue Beetle sure is the nicest one in a while.

Make no mistake: Puppy Love is a bad movie. This isn’t an exact precise calculation, but it certainly seems like at least 30% of the 106-minute movie are montages.

Heart of Stone is murky, drab and always going the wrong speed. It’s either motionless, allowing exposition scene after exposition scene to lay out the boring details of what might happen if the wrong folks get control of The Heart, or erratic, dicing its badly remixed action sequences like it was trying to avoid a copyright strike from the movies it steals from.

If Aporia’s airiness gives the story a bit of distance from the world we’re living in right now, the film nonetheless does what good science fiction is supposed to, forcing viewers to bring the future conundrums it raises to their present.

King Coal might not be an invigorating, fire-lighting work like Harlan County, USA, but it is still a startling piece of anthropology: An expression of a place and a people, and their local god, ruler and captor.

Like many of the bright suggestions The Pod Generation offers, it would have been better left trimmed from the story, not because the outcomes and repercussions of the tech shouldn’t be explored but because there isn’t room to explore them all in under two hours.

Matthew López’s take on the story suffers from breakneck pacing, shallow characterizations across the board, and filmmaking choices that sometimes baffle, and sometimes betray the film’s low budget. It’s a disappointing, slapdash cash-in that does a disservice not only to McQuiston’s book, but the genre it’s part of.

The real problem with The Last Voyage of the Demeter is just how nondescript and unmemorable it is.

As a feature film debut this is a miraculous venture, one that feels glamorous and big while still relishing in the sparks that emit from talented actors finding new and interesting ways to fill an empty space.

It’s nearly impossible to talk about Alzheimer’s without forefronting misery, anger and despair. It is a cruel and callous disease that destroys lives piece by piece. Perhaps the greatest feat of the courageous The Eternal Memory, then, is Alberdi, Góngora and Urrutia’s ability to broach the subject with all of these emotions—but with an emphasis on life, not death.

There is power in the inescapable, in the dreaded endpoint of becoming news after a lifetime spent fearing it—mourning it. But despite its length and artistic competence, Brother’s lack of affecting specificity displays rather than embodys grief.

Directed by Ben Wheatley, Meg 2: The Trench earnestly takes on the challenge of being even more brazenly goofy and ludicrous than the first film.

A Compassionate Spy is not a thrilling recollection of treason. It has little to say about the actual espionage that Hall pulled off when he was an 18-year-old Harvard grad working on the Manhattan Project.

A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive.

The sensation of observing these details fold into one another and unfold as a narrative isn’t that far off from turning the pages of a novel, or even a newspaper; that’s the journalistic effect of Sorogoyen’s filmmaking.

The First Slam Dunk, with familiar characters, an innovative art style, and a narrative that’s helped structure an entire subgenre of anime, plays both sides of the court as it finds a delicate balance between flash and fundamentals.

While it has a few action sequences that hint at the gloriously overblown operatics that define the middle era in the series, Resident Evil: Death Island doesn’t work as either camp or as something more self-serious, making for an underwhelming scuffle with the undead.

While most of the story takes place in a constrained setting and it wastes no time in introducing us to the dangers of being trapped in a metal box with a delirious Nicolas Cage performance, Sympathy for the Devil’s inability to paint its characters in anything but the broadest strokes makes it difficult to see past the artifice of it all, dulling its attempts at dangling these people’s fates over the precipice.

Fierce, fun, and steeped in youthful energy, it’s a film that’s willing to go to some truly dark places in its exploration of grief, death and what it means when we reach too far into the beyond, but it’s also never afraid to laugh along the way. That juxtaposition alone is enough to make it one of the year’s must-see horror films, an addictive thrill ride that never loses its own playful spin on some classic horror ideas.

Pleasant and contemplative, Close to Vermeer chronicles an exhibit of a master that both civilians and historians know startlingly little about, considering the profound impact he’s had on the craft of painting.

A movie like Haunted Mansion is always going to be, at its heart, a cinematic advertisement for the theme park, but couldn’t we at least run with that idea and make it fun?

A still somewhat convoluted wrap story that clarifies a few of the show’s bigger mysteries while indulging in a parade of series callbacks of varying quality.

Bursting with big ideas on the complexities surrounding womanhood, patriarchy and the legacy of its eponymous subject, Barbie scores a hat trick for its magnificent balance of comedy, emotional intelligence and cultural relevance.

Vannicelli weaponizes therapy-speak where other titles become preachy, uses role-playing as an abusive confusion tactic, and provokes a rather alluring mindf*ck that doesn’t have nor need all the answers to captivate viewers.

On a scene-by-scene basis, though, They Cloned Tyrone is well-crafted entertainment, buoyed by its three major performances.

The movie is more nuanced than I anticipated and while it doesn’t completely get into the psychology of why, as Robbie puts it, America lost its mind over Beanie Babies, it is a cuddly, enjoyable and often humorous edition of the American dream gone awry.

It’s a fascinating spectacle in large part because Nolan isn’t especially Malickian at all (though at least that frame of reference might temporarily ease the overworked, underbaked Kubrick comparisons).

Mutt makes space for the sadness, mundanity and possibility of life in transition.

While the informative aspects of The Deepest Breath are enthralling in their own right, the footage that McGann procures is nothing short of enchanting.

Quicksand swings and misses as the next buzzy nature-born thriller. Beltrán can never decide if he’s making an upscale SYFY B-movie or an overserious examination of marriages so stale that self-destruction seems the only answer.