Frankenstein Created Woman is an entertaining aberration in a series of films that have a tendency to run together somewhat, combining beloved tropes of the format–the laboratory sets and sci-fi rigmarole have never looked better than here–with a fresh take on this particular brand of mad science, which sees the title character looking inward, toward the primordial origins of what makes us human.

It’s not as sordid as it plays at, but Bone Lake is wickedly entertaining nonetheless.

Roth and Rendell find the perfect balance of humor and horror, understanding the absurdity of their premise while still making their characters buy into the world. What that creates is a film embracing its own silliness, free of irony, while avoiding the pitfalls of oversentimentality.

Hotel Mumbai may not be a perfect example of its genre, but its restraint from ideological grandstanding and a top-notch technical control of tone make it worthy of a watch.

While never didactic or patronizing, the movie should expand the horizons of some viewers and be validating for others who may see themselves on screen. But to be successful, the movie also has to be entertaining. And Anything’s Possible is.

The opening of the movie has some perfectly timed visually-delivered laughs, like an early car scene involving an accidental failure to reverse, and the bottle-episode staginess of later scenes limits the visual invention. Still, by this point you’ve boarded the ride, and Oh, Hi! keeps you captive in a way that Iris only dreams of: by sheer force of Gordon’s personality.

Kuras avoids fashioning Lee as a generic war biopic by using Miller’s life story as a means through which to explore the myriad experiences of women during war.

It’s a pretty great blockbuster if you don’t think about it much.

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.

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.

Ultimately, it’s unfortunate that Call Jane can’t decide whether it’s a character study or the study of a movement, as it’s a visual pleasure that successfully tiptoes in both directions before retracting its more confrontational opinions.

At the very least, it manages to remind us of how miraculous the commitment of human ingenuity can be, when it comes to making a new life possible.

Totally Killer isn’t as great as the sum of its parts, but its playful sincerity and creative chase sequences make it an easy, enjoyable Halloween watch that couldn’t have come at a better time.

If you’re blessed with matching taste, where you’ll put up with a bunch of over-literal, stiff-backed oddballs dealing with a clone crisis, you’ll find a rewarding and gut-busting film that’s lingering ideas are nearly as strong as its humorous, thoughtful construction.

As stimulating as it is, the animation ends up being more pictorial than expressive—an initially fancy but eventually rather monotonous way to dress up what is ultimately a mundane drag of a detective procedural.

Garai’s array of filmmaking techniques are impressive and haunting, breathing an unsettling melancholy into her script.

The Valet parks itself squarely between the lines of established genre tropes, but with such precision and flair that you can’t help but be charmed.

Going against the grain of a cultural landscape desperate to pretend like the COVID-19 pandemic never happened, Hammel dives headfirst into her exploration of the specific ways the universal experience of lockdown drove us all insane.

Director Chris Robinson’s go at Shooting Stars doesn’t reach the heights of its genre’s potential, but it’s not a completely blank slate either. It sits somewhere right in the middle of both worlds: You can feel the inspired approach to the material at a basic craft level, but it’s also never particularly surprising that it went straight to streaming on Peacock.

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.

[Keaton] has the kind of presence that makes you sit up and pay a little more attention to whatever he’s saying, and his restless, punchy manner is unsentimental enough to sell sappy material, even as he appears to sidestep it. Goodrich ultimately requires more sidestepping than one man can handle.

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.

Even at their breeziest, Crano’s punchlines cost exorbitant amounts of discomfort.

Dunham’s filmmaking remains disciplined throughout, building pressure within that’s eventually released in explosive violence. That’s what the title promises, after all. But that promise doesn’t blunt the jolting effect of The Standoff at Sparrow Creek’s storytelling or the gutpunches dealt in its climax.

For what it is, Fall is an excellent white-knuckle affair of the highest order, and it succeeds in what it sets out to do: Keep you locked in for an hour and 45 minutes with thrills, terror and suspense.

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.

That Buffalo Girls makes its stand as an empowering journey of perseverance and champion’s spirit, rather than a reflection on the larger societal underpinnings is not to its detriment.

The movie is an incessant interrogation of what our young people are becoming, what they want and what the rules are to get it, yet its humor and humility make it stand out as one of the better recent satires.