At its most powerful, The Twister is remarkable for the brief moments it captures that are so rarely reflected in an accurate way.

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.

I don’t know how he does it, or for that matter why, but Spielberg turns Ready Player One into something that’s both nostalgic and new, something impersonal yet uniquely his. It is not one of his better movies; it’s probably not even in the top half. It’s way too long and packed with too much extra junk. It is still, somehow, a gas.

Despite stellar direction and cinematography, Holler’s pacing can feel gnawingly languid at times, due in no small part to Riegel’s inclination for brooding sequences with sparse dialogue over all else.

Mohawk is exciting on its own merit. Seen as a piece of Geoghegan’s growing filmography, it’s positively thrilling, a great extension of its author’s fascinations.

Teen Wolf, the series, excelled at weaving long emotional threads together not just over many episodes, but multiple seasons; a single 2-hour movie just doesn’t leave room for that kind of slow burn. But the trouble here runs deeper, as even with Allison’s supernatural return in the mix, there’s just not enough on the screen to justify The Movie even trying to weave something new together for those two hours.

At times, Armand threatens to lose itself entirely in the fever dream it conjures, like the film itself is going to reach its combustion point and ignite, but it gets just enough of its disquieting atmosphere across to lodge in the memory all the same.

It’s a frank and vital message for our cold civil war era.

Though the film doesn’t break any new ground in the realms of buddy comedies, road movies or teary-eyed tales of man’s best friend, it does take itself seriously enough to actually, if superficially, engage with the institution it depicts with some semblance of a critical gaze.

Great slashers manage to construct a fragile sequence of interactions and objects that tumble down and exact a gory toll—Sick understands this better than most.

Already at a disadvantage for sharing a name with a 1961 film that adapts Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents manages to conjure unique imagery of troubled youths—but doesn’t necessarily deliver on crafting adequate interiorities for these kids.

It’s genuinely passionate about telling the tale of a man who sought the truth and applied it to attain true equality under the law. Perfectly executed or not, we need these kinds of stories these days.

This is one of those rare occasions in which a movie uses the dusty trope of turning a group of oddball misfits into a “family” and actually pulls it off in an emotionally satisfying way.

It’s better as a comedy than as a wickedly sharpened thriller, making The Blackening one of those surefire “see it with a crowd” pleasers.

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.

The result is a ’70s vampire flick that has distinctly gothic imagery—the immortal temptress leering out from a century-old portrait, creeping up on the unwary in the form of a waterlogged corpse, surrounded by her leering thralls—even as it uses psychological horror techniques and roots its terror in the gaslighting of a vulnerable woman.

The Conference is one of the better slashers released this year if you’re in the mood to watch liars and brown-nosers get hacked, skewered and brutalized to bits, pulling overtime at the right moments.

Who Invited Them pays mind to cliquish popularity games more than its home invasion peers, which becomes its booze-soaked schoolyard charm.

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.

Veteran Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns to Anatolia, a place he previously explored in his Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep, in About Dry Grasses. Although Winter Sleep is both more explicitly interested in exploring class dynamics in rural Turkey and more literary than About Dry Grasses (Winter Sleep is an Anton Chekhov adaptation), these two stories could be taking place side by side.

A feat of passive yet passionate cinema, Arnold’s latest fits perfectly among her existing filmography, portraying the depraved livelihood of those exploited for the financial gain of others.

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.

The most emotionally captivating moments focus the film’s themes about the relationships people form with their pets, and the senses of duty we feel to the ones we love, all of which gives DC League of Super-Pets a big heart.

Good Boys manages to find that happy medium between outrageous and heartstring-pulling.

Ghostland is a movie and place borne from nuclear disaster, populated with the denizens of countless B-movies and the spectres of whiplash Hollywood careers.

By story’s end, I was happy to spend time in this original story that treats younger audiences, and the horror genre, with respect.

There’s no doubt that The Voice of Hind Rajab is a devastating and groundbreaking piece of cinema that achieves its goal of raising awareness about the plight of Palestinian children living under siege. But after years of documentaries that have captured the brutality of life under occupation without the farce of drama, and in the face of relentless bombardment from an Israeli state that refuses to abide by the terms of a ceasefire, raising awareness just doesn’t feel like enough.

It’s all pretty marvelous stuff, as much a well-oiled genre machine as it is a respite from big studio bloat, a flick more decidedly horror than any version before and yet another showcase for Elisabeth Moss’s herculean prowess.