Explicit and spontaneous, Aviva is a film with several brilliant moments that sometimes loses its way in overly indulgent sequences and set pieces as it dares to chronicle nearly every intimate encounter its characters and many of their friends have over the course of about 40 years. While overly ambitious, Yakin imagines the private life your lover had before you with a sociological lens.

A timely but confusing mess of styles, tones, and subject matter.

Where Fisk follows a lead, uncovers details, and logically extrapolates what probably happened, cable news takes his hypothesis, makes it sacrosanct, and does more damage than good.

I went in expecting a generic plot-based thriller with Max knocking on doors for a mystery that risks his life and mostly received an emotionally introspective character drama about mortality and grief instead.

The result can be frustratingly militant in its desire to show all angles of its central conflict (and how it sparks others), but the questions it makes us ask ourselves are worth it.

It’s a beautifully intimate look at how a place can affect your identity and actions so wholly and how history is never just something you read.

It’s the director’s most emotionally attuned and narrowly focused work, a film in which our attention is not pulled along by heavy dramatic shifts or distracted by a mountain of subplots, but rather how trauma can form a life of complacency and it’s only slivers of progress that hint at a more promising future.

You Don’t Nomi is another essential chapter in the Showgirls story–and completes the cultural reappreciation the film deserves. How can one not appreciate a film so devoted to “doggy chow,” chips, and ice cubes?

Putting a modern, live-action spin on this fable-esque puppet tale, director Mirrah Foulkes crafts a vibrant, brutal directorial debut, even if the ultimate catharsis leaves something to be desired.

Instead of sinking in, I found myself yearning for the classics it has either been influenced by or is borrowing heavily from. If this were a more academic exercise it should have come with an extensive works cited page.

A genuinely suspenseful ride thanks to all the moving parts and multi-layered motivations.

While Poser and Adams do so much to overcome the production’s limitations, they unavoidably show through nonetheless.

Splitting skulls and still managing to hit the brain, Becky is a blood-splattered crowd-pleaser that would destroy at a drive-in.

I Will Make You Mine is a brisk and somewhat scrappy film at times rushing its third act and embracing its small-budget roots. While an abrupt climax leaves messy lives a little too neat and resolved, the film is a fitting and sweet third chapter in the Surrogate Valentine series.

While a few too-prescient touches pull one out of the experience and its inevitable conclusion leaves a bit to be desired, The Vast of Night is a mightily admirable and entertaining tale that heralds the birth of a career to watch.

Because Lerman and Hawkes are so good, Adalsteins can let their resentment and fear exist unspoken.

One hopes this is a smaller film that benefits from this moment. Many are staying in and staying safe, looking for art that will comfort them like a warm blanket. Look no further than The High Note.

Their newfound friendship strips them down to their raw humanity in a way that allows them to see each other like no one has ever seen them. They grow together, acknowledging self-destructive natures without passing judgment until inevitably unearthing the undeniable truths even they refused to see within themselves.

Poking fun at those who left and those who couldn’t, Take Me Somewhere Nice conjures up a love letter to a restless generation mired in a frustrated quest for belonging — one that stretches far beyond the country and time it’s set in, and reads as an engrossing, bittersweet memoir.

Once Z digs its nails into trauma in the film’s final act, the proceedings get complex, bizarre, and wildly messy.

The Lovebirds mostly feels algorithmic, a generic composite of romantic comedies and chase thrillers that races to a brisk 86 minutes. That’s more an indictment of the screenwriting than its two leads, Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae, who do their best while hopscotching around a nondescript New Orleans.

Inheritance might have benefited from its third act being a tad subtler, but I get the allure of throwing away nuance for splashy suspense.

The narrative might get a touch too solemn, injecting a bit of reality when it comes to unanticipated hardships, but some welcome closure is offered without tying things up with a neat bow.

The script is sadly too shallow to bring everything together.

Alice is truly independent like never before and she’s confronted with the unfair fact that she probably won’t be able to maintain it if she also hopes to keep Jules. To watch Piponnier weigh that abhorrent truth is to witness the internal struggle every woman who’s experienced this type of coerced acquiescence faces.

Capone isn’t a knockout comeback, but it’s an undeniably striking and bold endeavor that transcends genre constraints and conventional molds.

Neulinger dives in headfirst to break down every single aspect of his journey towards the truth.

Marrero delivers a wonderful performance culminating in a final twenty minutes that open her character’s eyes wide enough to acknowledge how much of D. has rubbed off on her.