Doff may have thrown in a kitchen sink of clichés, but he knows exactly how to marry them together. The result is an endearingly uproarious affair.

It is somewhat disappointing to leave a movie without a full grasp of what you’ve just watched. Still, there’s something rather wonderful in seeing a filmmaker take a proper swing with an original concept in a tentpole world increasingly populated by sequels, remakes, and reboots. And while Tenet might not make it easy to connect the dots, it’s still a thrilling ride to herald the return of cinema-going.

By presenting all sides, Kopple’s film provides objectivity at the expense of immersion, crafting an all-sides look at a well-known period in American foreign policy.

By the time it reaches its broad, emotionally manipulative finale, it does have some refreshingly optimistic ideas about small, sacrificial gestures making a difference and that choosing emotion over logic while dooming us in other zombie movies is also what makes humanity worth saving in the first place.

An equal parts terrifying, thrilling, and satirical look at how social media can warp the mind.

In the world La Llorona creates, your sins will not only haunt until you make amends–it will haunt those who’ve protected you from those repercussions. Underscored with a foreboding sense of disquiet akin to last year’s Atlantics, the viewing experience is as satisfying as it is provocative.

Despite the on-the-nose delivery of its messaging being intentional, Coetzee’s script will surely alienate some viewers. The slow pacing won’t do it any favors either, considering it promises weightier drama than that heightened, moralizing tone could ever provide.

The result might not be unique in its narrative about a misunderstood man devoid of the means to get out of his own way, but Calm with Horses is stunning in its execution nonetheless.

It’s the type of human-interest story that touches upon the surface of what occurred in a way that hits audiences emotionally without actually saying much.

It takes us beyond the nuts and bolts we all heard while watching these battles unfold via the twenty-four news cycle and into the nuanced day-to-day struggles of the men and women working around the clock to curtail federal government overreach. This is the story of unrelenting, heroic lawyers.

She Dies Tomorrow is a bizarre and textured work of cinematic poetry, playing like a menacing death march into the unknown.

A film like Most Wanted is a welcome one, featuring a well-told version of this all-too-common real-world narrative.

A faulty delivery device doesn’t diminish that truth or take away from the requisite happily ever after we know is coming. Purefoy, Hayman, Middleton, and Mays are too good to let that happen. They’ve willingly embraced the clichés to honor a story brimming with the kind of hope we need currently and it’s worth following their lead.

Amulet in effect lulls us into a false sense of familiarity by positioning genre conventions and gender norms as an artificial façade waiting to be torn down.

A Girl Missing feels just as lost and hapless as its lead–more than on a quest for vengeance, a woman in search of a fully shaped self.

[Satrapi] does what she can to give some life to Thorne’s rather staid screenplay, but even that can’t stop the film from risking its audience’s attention with by-the-numbers plotting.

A sturdy, small-scale thriller that makes little lasting impact but certainly succeeds in providing some clever jolts.

It’s through these actors that we see how their characters process their pain above and below the façade created and understand why they’re incapable of looking beyond their tragic wealth of regret.

You couldn’t ask for a better guide through the psychological landscape of her character’s desires than Slate. Her ability to be hilarious despite a quiet role like Frances lends an indelible charm that ensures we’re in her corner from the beginning.

Every eye-popping sequence and strongly-performed scene feels too far from the next. Perhaps with a little less, there would be quite a bit more. There’s so much to respect in We Are Little Zombies, just not enough to hold on to.

It’s a repulsive punk rock work that falls short of achieving what it sets out to do, finding itself parodying work that’s already a parody of itself.

What the documentary overlooks, or mythologizes, only hurts the historical record of positive trans representation.

I do think the second half of The Beach House proves an effective survival horror, but it is tough to really stick with the characters due to a lack of resolution before the chaos hits.

It’s undeniable that Relic contains three stellar performances and an indelible image of multi-generational love and care in the face of slow annihilation, with mothers and daughters trying desperately to help each other approach the inevitable.

The difficulty here, as with many a modern war film, is tone. There is an impetus to honor these soldiers while also criticizing the framework that led them into what is essentially a deathtrap in the middle of Afghanistan. Screenwriters Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy do their damndest to thread the needle, but the results do wear a bit thin.

Nina Hoss is appropriately volatile in the role, her eyes working double-time as Anna’s sudden desires and decisions become more and more unhinged.

This tedious film’s biggest issues don’t lie with its simplification of politics or often taking the feel-good easy route, but rather how flat the comedy lands. This in part due to how weakly formed its characters are across the board, as well as the peculiar tonal approach that is taken.

Welcome to Chechnya is certainly an empathetic look at a harrowing struggle, but the necessary secretive nature of every element in the making of this documentary can at times leave one feeling disconnected from what’s happening.