Excoriating and exhilarating in equal measure, it is the first truly great movie to deal explicitly with the unique madness and malice that the global pandemic revealed, a kind of touchstone for a time and place that with only a few years remove feels at once as fictional and otherworldly as a sci-fi novel, and at the same time the very real-world harbinger of the political shifts that proceeded.

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

Thanks to a persistently effective sense of atmosphere and a great cast, these elements coalesce into a compelling, often unpredictable horror story, and announce Zarcilla as an exciting genre voice to watch.

The heist-adjacent film presents a mesmerizing vision of New York that relishes in the city’s more intimate details while painting an overarching picture of those who survive by scamming one feckless schmuck after another.

The First Omen is an exceedingly successful first feature, and an invigorating film within a genre’s increasingly limp mainstream.

The Unknown Girl isn’t just about guilt but also racism, the folly of pride and our collective need to be absolved for the bad things we’ve done—even if the penance doesn’t fit the infraction. All of this is done masterfully, but I confess it was masterful in just the way I expected. As a result, The Unknown Girl filled me with guilt as well—for not loving it more than I did.

The movie never turns into a full-tilt caper, even as the obligatory end-credits appendix hints at enough material to inspire one. It’s stuck, charmingly and a little wanly, in another era.

The Smashing Machine is sensitive, texturally rich, and technically strong. But the melodrama of Mark Kerr—the real one—was somehow more potent when we saw it unfiltered.

More than a solid MCU entry, First Steps is among the most vivid, peculiar, and emotionally present superhero films of the past decade.

Leo proved to be a perfect, lighthearted watch on a rainy evening that left us with a feeling of bonhomie before switching off the lights for the night.

Kramer’s filmmaking is vibrant, vital, easy to swallow while retaining astounding verbal density; you may wish for subtitles and a notepad to follow along with the near-constant back-and-forth between her characters. But that’s a feature, not a bug.

The nun horror subgenre is a particularly difficult one to master because it is so overdone, and it inherently engages with so many ambitious themes. If you’re brave enough to tackle it, you’d better be sure you’re bringing something special to the table and, with it, have something substantial to say.

It helps that this quiet film is stocked with actors who can carry the weight of their long silences, as well as a stellar supporting cast.

Overall, Last Breath is an exciting, fun, and immersive watch that does justice to the heroic stories of Chris Lemons and the crew members that raced to save his life. It is action packed, visually exciting, and sure to please diverse audiences seeking authentic, heartwarming excitement.

Packing far more emotional weight than your standard buddy comedy, Jeff Grace’s Folk Hero & Funny Guy sets up something akin to The Odd Couple on the road and then proceeds to turn most—or all—of your assumptions on their heads with charm, wit and not a small amount of melancholy.

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.

It’s a slow-burning gem, and a wonderful addition to an already robust 2023 horror slate.

The Damned gets by more than well enough via the elemental strength of its moral dilemma and the pristine beauty and unrelenting inhospitality of the Icelandic wilderness that is its scene-stealing star.

The film thrives within a dream-logic vibe, especially in Olivares’ cinematography, with its heavy emphasis on symmetrical framing, stark contast and lush use of yellows and blues, evoking subliminal terror.

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.

While informative and worth watching, it’s much more of a self-authored back-pat than a critical exploration of a career or the justice system at large.

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.

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

We’ve seen a lot of this before, though the ’90s setting is a nice twist and provides a soundtrack that will prove consistently pleasing to any aging Gen Xer. But it’s Larsen who gives this weight and emotional depth.

Jharrel Jerome gives his all, but without a screenplay to stand on, balance is impossible.

Despite consistently astounding production values, Prometheus is hobbled throughout by a screenplay that would have been jettisoned out of the airlock normally reserved for scripts rejected by the SyFy Original Channel.

What’s most compelling about the documentary is the archival footage (some previously unseen) of the bands during their first fledgling efforts, though the presence of the tangible music that shot these musicians to stardom remains elusive.

Gorgeously shot and intellectually/emotionally provoking, the film tantalizes with transcendent revelations but is simultaneously unbalanced in how it approaches its characters and minimalist storytelling.