Most useful to the ongoing dialogue about domestic terrorism is Against All Enemies’ investigation into the present and historical ties between American hate groups and armed servicemen and women.

Proof that Sandler still has the capacity to spearhead (as opposed to just for-hire headline) a competent movie—including one featuring those closest to him.

Bob Trevino spins a fascinating story into a superb movie with stellar performances from its two leading stars.

The Saint of Second Chances is a testament to prioritizing goofy, compassionate family entertainment over winning and profit, as so many associated with the Saints readily attest.

If its melodrama is unabashedly manipulative, it’s not altogether ineffective at eliciting waterworks.

A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular.

Energized by Ariella Mastroianni’s disoriented and frazzled lead performance, it begins unnervingly and ends, like all such sagas should, with haunting bleakness.

Its formal lyricism offset by a script that’s intolerably clunky, it’s an affected portrait of euthanasia and friendship that gets lost in translation.

An assured directorial debut about media reliability that unnerves by embracing the unknown.

Although handsomely mounted and occasionally chilling, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a one-note tweet.

Goes heavy on convincing musical performances to make up for the fact that it has nothing astute to say about its subject—in large part because it doesn’t seem to really know him.

Unabashedly romanticizing its subjects as paragons of strength and style, it doesn’t have much substance lurking beneath its surface—but then, with a surface like this, it doesn’t really need any.

Last Stop Larrimah is a tale about provincial dynamics and the hostilities they often breed, as well as about the unique types of men and women who willingly choose to spend their days and nights on the outer edges of civilization.

Helander’s latest tells its story with compact concision, even as it also indulges in great gooey gobs of over-the-top mayhem.

Even at its stagiest, it’s a film that, courtesy of both its director and star, burns with unbridled passions.

A compassionate portrait of mourning and the bonds that keep us united.

Despite winning the Best Actress (for its female ensemble) and Jury Prize awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s a bold gamble that doesn’t quite pay off.

Though Monkey Man is exasperating, Patel’s work shows heart, love, and promise—something that can’t be said about many other action films.

Occasionally stumbles along its well-worn path. Still, courtesy of [Mortensen] and Vicky Krieps’ excellent lead performances, it delivers moving measures of the genre’s beauty, brutality, and sorrow.

Electrifying a taut tale of tough times and the desperate men they breed, [Hawke] makes sure that, even when it could stand to be a tad weightier, this genre film packs a wallop.

The most surprising aspect of Rotting in the Sun isn’t how many hard dicks are knocking together at any one moment, but that it’s genuinely a blast despite all of that. It’s a sexy, searing satire of influencer culture and gay misanthropy, as well as a pseudo-murder mystery in one abrasive package (pun intended). This is the sleaziest fun you’ll have all year.

A rather obvious and pedestrian lesson, if one that’s embellished with a few memorably macabre sights.

[Song’s] sophomore effort embraces a lighthearted rom-com template and then plays its material inaptly seriously—making it the cinematic equivalent of a sugary soda gone terribly flat.

Threapleton is so good in part because you can see the conflict play out on her face, even as she delivers Anderson’s idiosyncratic dialogue with rhythmic perfection. She is also just fantastically cool, rocking a habit like a Met Gala look.

Like the best of its genre, it affords tantalizing entrée into a universe lurking just below society’s surface to which few are privy, and stages engrossing cloak-and-dagger games between players who know the rules and, more dangerously, how to break them.

A zombie film unlike any other, focused less on mayhem than on grief, loss, and the quiet, tragic terror begat by the dead’s return.

Evil Dead Rises is confirmation that—like so many that have come before it—Raimi’s legendary horror saga has run out of steam, continuing onward only because its easy-to-market IP value remains relatively high.

The Animal Kingdom is what an X-Men movie would look like if it doubled-down on its tolerance-for-outsiders metaphor and did away with any exciting superpowered spectacle.