You simply don't know how you're going to handle a situation until you are in it; until you've dug yourself a grave you can't get out of. In God's Creatures, this inquiry, and the way it forces the audience to look at themselves as harshly as its characters, is not only the film's sturdy foundation but its greatest emotional asset.

Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers may at first present like a run-of-the-mill effort from the face of Spanish cinema, but there's a deceptive amount of variation here. It's both a perfect distillation of his artistic fascinations and marked evolution in the depth of his thematic explorations.

It is difficult and uneasy, and often feels more punishing than entertaining.

Like a beautifully constructed puzzle box, The Wild Goose Lake various layers unfold in satisfying ways. With elegant violence, emotional richness and a complex yet coherent storyline, this is a rare bit of crime thriller treat that truly pays off.

Vera Drew is both the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and we should all be so lucky to bear witness to her madness. The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules, and The People's Joker refuses to follow any of them.

This is a tonally rich, libidinously powerful, and psychologically complex tale told by a master filmmaker equally at ease with European art-film conventions and B-movie hijinks. It’s this exceptional balance between the profane and the profound that sets Benedetta apart, truly proving to be penetrating in its effect in more ways than one.

Slightly confused as Titane might be in what it's trying to say, at least it is saying something bold and wild and challenging. It's a head-pumping, face-splitting, heart-tugging visceral experience of a film that is better left, well, experienced for yourself.

Bleak, severe, and awesome, "The First Omen" is the best horror movie of the year so far.

The film may end on a bleak note, but there's some levity mixed into the very batter.

If you’ve seen The Godfather Part III, you’ve essentially seen The Godfather, Coda. Those expecting something drastic, like Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Redux, are going to be disappointed. Instead, the filmmaker has made little cuts here and there. Cuts that indeed make the lengthy film and its sprawling narratives a bit more concise – it’s eleven minutes shorter than the theatrical cut. And while that may make for a (slightly) brisker experience, it can’t fix all the problems that are irreconcilably baked into the film’s DNA.

Though Strange World has no meme-worthy songs like "Encanto," its imagery is singular and unforgettable, and its adventurous spirit is genuine and thrilling. This is the kind of thing Disney should make more often.

Holy Spider shines a light into the murky corners of a society that emboldens its aggressors. In that sense, the film is essential viewing. Even if it is completely devastating.

For a film that grapples with so many capital-letter themes about loss, identity, and perseverance, it's the central question about belonging — and our difficulties in ever really getting to know how we fit into another person's life, even a spouse or parental figure — that truly sets After Love apart.

Spring Awakening: Those You've Known hits the majority of the marks you'd want it to. It's nostalgic and brimming with warmth, funny and heartbreaking secrets are revealed, and the archival and reunion footage of the show transports you to the emotional peak akin to the kind of highs you might've experienced watching it live, either back then or if you were lucky enough to see the reunion concert in the flesh.

Casablanca Beats drums its ideas loudly and effectively. The result is a boisterous and crowd-pleasing delight, showing a community with deep specificity that nonetheless speaks to the concerns of young people all over the world.

It's not "elevated" horror attempting to reinvent any wheels. It is, however, a very satisfying, very fun, and very well executed scary movie.

At the end of the day, it's an earnest, good movie looking at a very specific part of this mythical figure's story. It's a story that deserved telling, and this was the right guy to tell that story.

Kidman's performance is simultaneously vulnerable and feral, yet another tally on the board proving her as one of the greatest to ever do it.

Amy Seimetz plays by her own rules like this is the last film she’ll ever make (it won’t be, no shot). She Dies Tomorrow ponders self-fulfillment with agency and riveting execution. Seimetz’s fearlessness is what sells every ounce of this uncontrollable narrative’s every zig and zag. From tone to philosophy to composition, this is Seimetz’s soul on celluloid.

Not many films have started this funny and uplifting, while ending this bleak and depressing.

Howard feels like an in-memoriam tribute from a friend: made with a rosy sense of nostalgia, and perhaps a few too many photo montages, but with love.

Natalie Erika James’ debut doesn’t just tug at the heart, Relic wraps around it and steadily sinks its teeth into it.

I left 28 Years Later nervous about what might come next. After The Bone Temple, I'm thrilled at the prospect of where this story could go. That's what I call progress.

Its disquieting moments of magical realism paired with the all-consuming romance shared between Undine and Christoph — which feels as grand and tragic as the best cinematic love stories — add some warmth to Undine‘s chilly, cosmic exterior.

The Boogeyman doesn't set out to reinvent the wheel, but thankfully, it doesn't need to. Savage knows exactly how to push all the right buttons and pull all the right levers to engineer maximum potency, utilizing classical set-ups and pay-offs in entertaining, satisfying ways.

This is a movie that is both familiar and fresh. Scary, yes, but mostly disturbing, gory, smart, quite expansive, and all around created in the bowels of hell itself. 

Jason Yu knows how to stage a tense thriller and gives Sleep a sense of claustrophobia, using the small size of the apartment and some inventive camera movements to slightly change the apartment throughout the film, showing how the characters are losing their grip by making them unfamiliar with the place they know best in the world.

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