By-the-numbers, as the movie turned out, Alcock does capitalize on it to showcase that she possesses the makings of a promising star capable of portraying a character with sharp edges and complicated feelings. Hopefully, she can now fly elsewhere from here.

Any opportunity for the story to advance receives the shove to the side Edward Burns believes it deserves, only for him to fire up what he believes is comedy, and instead be that person in class who will not stop talking. Breathe. That’s all Burns needs to do. It may not be enough to save “Finnegan’s Foursome,” but at least you’ll be doing something other than what’s being shown.

La Ola is far from perfect, often losing sight of its broader ideas for less well-executed narrative beats that don’t always cohere, but it still finds a tune where it counts.

Unidentified ranks among a rare class of movies that forces viewers to re-interpret everything they’ve just seen once the full picture locks into place. Whether that makes everything that came before worthless or worth it may be less a reaction to al-Mansour’s filmmaking and more of a reflection of the audience’s own subject position.

There’s a great evisceration of Hollywood in here that gets a bit too buried until sentimental schmaltz.

It’s easy enough to admire the evident technical merits, yes, but difficult to find any element that invites a viewer into the specific, soulful experience of the characters. As The Death of Robin Hood circles the obvious ending, the main point of reflection it invites is the missed opportunity to flesh out this world with a level of detail on par with its ambitions.

In Disclosure Day, cosmic truth does not arrive as salvation or doom, but as a question of whether humanity can still hear something beyond its own terror. The film’s answer is fragile, luminous, and deeply moving: maybe awe is what survives when we finally stop shouting.

Pressure moves along with enough of a hook to keep one invested, despite its predetermined conclusion and overly familiar structure. As far as paying respect to the unsung heroes that meteorologists were in the war effort, the film carries out its duty. In terms for bringing the winds of change to the subgenre of WWII films, the result is more static than airborne.

Backrooms could have easily been disposable internet-horror junk food—a feature-length extension of creepypasta aesthetics with nothing underneath. Instead, Parsons delivers something far more haunting: an affecting horror film about imprisonment, memory distortion, and the private hell of mistaking isolation for refuge.

From the sigh-inducing jokes to the rom-com blueprint “Ladies First” never strays from, the film keeps threatening to become stranger and more interesting than it is.

As enigmatically as “The Meltdown” unfurls, it leaves enough clues above ground for one to patiently decipher the intricate ideas Martelli is working through in her quietly commanding, narratively rich sophomore film.

Masters of the Universe asks the audience to care about its hero’s destiny while constantly reminding them how silly it all is. By the end, the power is there in theory, but conviction never dares to show its face.

This dramatic, grandiose treatment ultimately feels forced, ill-suited to a character who, despite the director and star’s joint efforts to mystify him, never ceases to come across as ordinarily mediocre.

Minotaur is searingly political yet controlled and understated, maintaining a cold grip on its narrative as the world around it descends into chaos. Urgent and restrained, personal and political, it is one of the more pointed films about the present state of the world in recent memory.

It takes what could be a lean, mean little zombie movie and jams in too much excess noise, when the most impactful bits came from keeping things simple. Even as it’s not without its merits, it’s a film that can’t keep getting out of its own way, constantly stacking more and more nonsense on top of itself until it nearly buckles under the weight.

There is a place for this, but the inherent ideas are often, for lack of a better word, basic. Overall, it’s simply not clever enough to transcend the genre.

It feels natural to expect blood-dripping gore and reckless violence from a film titled Victorian Psycho, but, with his latest, Zachary Wigon chooses instead to lure the audience with the fresh smell of ripped flesh, only to trap them under a heavy blanket of frustration.

The unassumingly magnetic Okonedo radiates the assertiveness and tranquility of someone secure in her reality.

We’re not sure Lucila is a fighter, but she’s a survivor. And over the course of the film, she learns many life lessons in a very short time. So when Diaz finally lets Lucila’s joy or pain cry out, it strikes you. And sticks with you.

Unlike other period tales of hidden queer love, including one that debuted at this same festival a year ago, Dhont isn’t interested in dripping his canvas in tragedy. He’s going to leave you with a glimmer of hope. Actually, more than a glimmer. A wry smile of anticipation that suggests all isn’t lost and love can find a way.

The Javis have a lot to say not only about Spanish history, but also about how emotions can endure and live on through something tangible. Whether it’s a painting, a recorded piece of music, or even a long-lost play, queer or not. They use the omnipresent theme of snow and the poetic spirits often present in Lorca’s work to tie these threads together. A complex puzzle where almost everything settles into place.

While Sachs’ vision is at the center of it all, this moment is also a stark reminder of Rami Malek’s considerable and we mean considerable talents. A gutsy and vulnerable version of the actor that has not graced anyone’s screens in at least a decade.

Far from defending the behavior of this abusive artist, Sorogoyen exposes him as trapped between his memories and his imagination.

The result is a film that’s both shattering in some moments and superficial in others, making it hard to write off and even harder to fully embrace.

Despite not being top-shelf Almodóvar, it remains the work of a director long settled into form and, as such, offers its fair share of delights.

In disregarding the much more interesting machinations of the Resistance in favor of shrouding his protagonist in a thin cloak of importance, Nemes’ pompous drama ultimately loses sight of both the audience and its thesis, all while patting itself on its self-aggrandizing back.

Against the austere beauty of Beanpole, Butterfly Jam can certainly seem messy as it borrows from the crime thriller, depicts a merciless act of violence, and, at times, borders on magical realism. But Balagov’s newest film also has the biggest heart.

Orphan feels like an exercise more concerned with the precision of its technical execution than the more ungovernable reins of its emotional axis.

For all its dull, forgettable, and sometimes egregious misjudgments, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is not terrible, exactly. It is occasionally cute, occasionally funny, and sometimes harmlessly silly. But it is also completely disposable, and that may be worse.

As Another Day winds down, the weight of throwing almost everything against the wall, hoping it will stick, is a bit too much for the movie to bear. Despite her best efforts and avoiding melodramatic (if not often realistic) rock bottom moments, Herry cannot avoid treading into television movie of the week territory. All while a fiercely committed Exarchopoulos does her best to overcome the shackles of the genre.

It is a great disappointment that we had to wait a decade for the Danish director to return to filmmaking, only to wind up with something that much more resembles the drivel of Copenhagen Cowboy than the fresh panache of Drive.

There are many promising pieces here and some great performances, though little in the way of actual meaningful insights.

Despite the mid-runtime ebb and an overlong runtime that works against the film’s firm grasp on the slippery tautness of good action, Hope still proves one hell of a time.

Even a lesser Kore-eda is still at least interesting, even frequently insightful, about the ways that we move through a world of pain and loss. It’s just a shame that, for a film that’s ultimately about the power of imagination and our ability to tell stories as a way of enduring, this one was unable to dream bigger.

Visuals and lighting aside, the production fails to impress in any meaningful way, and for a story rooted in art, con jobs, and detective work, Forge doesn’t seem to have much fun exploring any of them, allowing a person room to wonder who this movie is for and why.

Thankfully, Drucker has enough charisma to hold your attention in even the most mundane moments.

Paper Tiger may be built from recognizable Gray pieces, but he keeps finding new variations inside the same mournful blues. The result is familiar in outline, but authentic, poignant, and quietly devastating.

[Kreutzer] might have served Gentle Monster better by narrowing her focus to a pure character study. But one hardly has to squint to find those elements in the film. They’re present every time Kreutzer trains the camera on Seydoux and lets her demonstrate why she’s among cinema’s finest working actresses.

Although Firstman’s brand of modern humor highlights the absurdity and hypocrisy of social interactions, it is in no way cynical. On the contrary, his comedy playfully exposes those primal emotions and impulses that we think we’re hiding better than we actually are. This comedy of honesty carries well into drama, essentially blurring the boundary between the two.

Even as emotions may overcome the viewer, Hamaguchi never pushes All of a Sudden into saccharine terrain for empty positivity or cheap inspirational aims. It all feels earned.

The Iranian filmmaker guides his lukewarm homage to the seminal work of the renowned Polish director with an A-list French cast, crafting an examination of the traps of creativity that lacks the driving force of the spark it sets out to dissect.

Ultimately, you get an acceptable thriller with some sharp lines, two leads you like, and far too much scaffolding for what arrives in return. Not a disaster, but no sign of peak Ritchie either. It is, in a way, fitting that it ends up in the grey.

With Magic Hour, Aselton and Duplass have again given us something uniquely special.

This contemporary Japanese drama centers on the relationships between two vaguely thirtysomething women and two middle school-age boys. Two pairings that find a common connection in the most unexpected of circumstances. It’s the context of their attractions and the contradictions Fukada delicately presents that eventually beguile the viewer, even if his restrained aesthetic may test your patience getting there.

Reuniting with a majority of his “Ida” and “Cold War” collaborators, a 1:37 aspect ratio, and cinematographer Lukasz Zal’s masterful black and white compositions, Pawlikowski, whether intentional or not, has crafted a trilogy of films that chronicle the painful reverberations of the Second World War. With “Fatherland,” he’s also holding up a mirror. A reflection on today and, more likely, the near future. How will you treat those complicit in war crimes and humanitarian horrors? How will you grieve a world that is gone? Or will you grieve at all?

It is a film that feels movingly personal while speaking to the ubiquitous tussle between duty and desire, and that does so through the gnarling of fresh and guts and bones to find what is buried deep within one’s being: a throbbing vein of wanting, undeniably alive, and that, once freed, will not stop until its thirst is quenched.

Through the increasingly ghastly parade of grotesqueries, Barker sharply comments on poisonous relationships.

"Billie Eilish: Soft & Hard” is thrilling as a concert film, but its force comes from how carefully it maps the machinery behind the magic—the lighting choices, stage movements, emotional calibration, hidden pathways, and private moments of anticipation. It is vivid, immersive, and unusually personal, a portrait of a performer who understands the scale of her platform and still wants every person in the room to feel seen. For a film this massive, its most impressive trick is how close it comes to witnessing everyone.

By the end of Blue Film, it’s hard not to feel like it didn’t quite live up to its potential. As a novel, it would be engrossing. As a movie, it’s got good bones but a cowardly lack of boners.

There’s plenty to like, and this starter kit for detective fiction ought to serve as more of a net positive for kids than another soulless reboot of existing IP. But it’s a shame to settle for merely good when something great was very clearly a plausible outcome.

We’re not sure there will ever be another “Devil Wears Prada” installment, but be glad this one came along. At worst, to reinforce that shining memory of the original, at best to simply delight you for two hours. Hey, it might even be an improvement on that first flick.

The action scenes and kills are bloody, and the performances and muscles are big. After Amazon’s “Reacher,” consider “Motor City” another showcase for the above-the-title billed Alan Ritchson as a credible, cinematic leading man.

Theron can survive almost anything onscreen. Apex proves, once again, that she can carry weak material farther than most actors. It also proves that even she cannot quite drag a dull survival programmer up the mountain.

If you want to relieve some of the MJ magic, Jafar, Fuqua, and those timeless bangers will quench a nostalgic thirst that will make you want to forget all that “negative stuff.” For a few moments anyway.

McKenzie may frame the journey with some bemused curiosity, but the movie lands somewhere much angrier than that. Fair enough. A system this shady doesn’t deserve awe. It barely deserves the dignity of confusion.

The scattershot Mother Mary can never effectively find the connective tissue between different modes of storytelling. To put it in musical terms, this is less a mixtape and more of a playlist on a chaotic shuffle.

For all its rage about moral decline and the psychic poison of content culture, Faces Of Death never rises above the same cheap sensationalism it pretends to condemn. Instead of confronting the sickness, it feeds on it and spits out something just as rancid as the faux snuff films it claims to abhor.

Outcome—and it’s bad scenes shot behind obvious blue screen and fake, manufactured sunsets—is terrible. But what makes it memorable is the queasy way the movie keeps collapsing into the very pathology it thinks it is exposing. It wants to mock the famous for living inside a bubble of privilege, paranoia, and vanity, yet it ends up sounding like it was made from inside that bubble.

The problems are many, the ease with which it goes down is high, and whether Thrash set out to craft a solid thriller or a purposeful schlockfest, it lands squarely in the middle, destined to be forgotten.

The Drama remains a vital, bleak, and admirably mean-spirited look at the cost of being known and, more expensively, the price of trying to save face. It doesn’t fully cash in on the nastiness of its best idea, but it is funny, queasy, and wholly willing to make everyone miserable for your amusement. In an era of soft, therapeutic romantic storytelling, that alone gives it biting validation.

It’s disturbing and engrossing. It doesn’t fully grapple with every moral, political, or philosophical consequence of the AI rush, and there are moments when it arguably lets some of its most powerful interview subjects off the hook too easily. But it still lands because it understands the essential terror at the center of this conversation: not simply that we are building intelligence at breakneck speed, but that wisdom—human, moral, civic—may be arriving nowhere near fast enough.

As the film nears its conclusion, “Exit 8” becomes as emotionally enriching to feel through as it is enigmatically engrossing to play through. These minimalistic trappings help construct a shared space in which the redundancy of the setup can give way to meaningful reflection.

The brisk pacing of Fantasy Life is a credit to this editorial restraint, yet it also leads to one of the production’s few stumbles: its refusal to offer a satisfying, narratively cohesive ending. Even so, the film stands well on its own.

Super Mario Galaxy is nice to look at and dead inside, a committee-made franchise object masquerading as an adventure, and ultimately little more than an empty commercial for Super Mario branding.

In the end, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” remains a classic banger, but Pretty Lethal never finds any remotely memorable rhythms of its own.

Wishful Thinking is then one of those great films about love that treats it not just as an abstract concept, but as a living, breathing, and constantly evolving state of being, painting a full portrait of its couple who find themselves swept up in it. You fall in love with the film just as you do both of its characters, together and separately, even as they may, too, break your heart.

Burroughs’ off-the-cuff backroom commentary registers almost more than anything else shown on stage in this curiously essential document of a time when things were changing more than anyone could comprehend.

What could have easily been an overstuffed confluence of ideas – a haunted house, a ghost, a witch, a murder, oh my! – comes together so effectively because of McCarthy’s masterful command of what scares audiences.

While the documentary may not offer a startling new thesis, it still lands in its own subdued way. What lingers is not simply the ugliness of the rhetoric, but the banality of the scam.

Its lack of visual cohesion and bizarre finale get in the way of enjoying the whirlwind of fists, bullets, fantastical fights, and a sword with katana-like powers of cutting bodies in half. No one can accuse this film of becoming boring, but its over-stuffed narrative never quite delivers on its promising start.

It seems like Over Your Dead Body is caught between deconstructing itself and just going through the motions.

Some might dismiss the film as minor Wheatley — made in just a couple of weeks, on a budget likely smaller than even many of Wheatley’s inexpensive earlier pictures. But there’s a lot going on in it, from the genuinely profound portrait of how families can bring out the most toxic sides of their members when they’re together, to a light sprinkling of state-of-the-nation, post-Brexit commentary.

Even with some perfectly fine comedic gags, Power Ballad can never overcome the emptiness of its characters and the equally flat, overlit visuals that make the entire thing look more like a bad TV episode than an actual film.

Buffeted by both an incredible cast and crew, I Love Boosters is an unexpected celebration of friendship, community, and solidarity.

For a film so fixated on provoking fear and dread through the medium of audio, it’s naturally strongest when it does not bother to stimulate the eyes at all.

As Coppola teases Jacobs’ brilliance over the decades, you realize he may not have gotten his due as one of the most influential designers of the past 50 years. He may have been taken for granted both inside the insular fashion world and by the public at large. And, at worst, you just hope sometime soon, another filmmaker tackles an extended film or docu-series about him and really gives him his due.

Project Hail Mary cycles through many phases, including a survival thriller, a buddy comedy, and a sci-fi adventure. Lord and Miller build appropriately toward this more serious pivot, even if there’s some herky-jerky motion amidst the transition. But that scrappy spirit of perseverance through imperfection feels in line with their hero’s own default operating mode.

Don’t expect the film to live up to its title. Don’t expect Marczak or his subject to find a way to tie up every loose end. Take in a difficult period in the life of a grieving father, unable to let go. It’s straightforward, sad, and somehow beautiful.

In the midst of our planet’s ongoing chaos, to see a beacon of light emerge from within doesn’t just make for a compelling film. It’s a message of hope, a story found alongside countless others scattered throughout the rubble of war.

Unafraid to shy away completely from the occasional crude humor, especially an early scene begging to be led by Will Forte, it fortunately never overstays its welcome, and for those who enjoy the payoff of hanging onto every line of dialogue, the best jokes throughout are the ones tacked onto the ends of conversations, almost as a comedic afterthought. It’ll make sense once you watch, more so than the plot itself.

Amidst all the noise and nonsense, Hoppers makes a winning case for the enduring value of dignity and respect for all creation.

There’s a floor for entertainment with a cast this strong, especially two leads who can contort themselves bodily and emotionally with such dexterity. But “The Bride!” spends too long operating at that level because it cannot escape the mire of confusion about its own identity.

Once the basic parameters of Franco’s thought experiment in Dreams are grasped, what’s left is an obvious parable about immigration with little to offer beyond spitefulness and a smugly superior sense of self-loathing.

Alas, for a film that sets out to understand the specific malaises of the bourgeoisie at a time of increasing sociopolitical unrest around class inequality, Mundruczó’s drama feels not only tone-deaf but also egregiously vapid.

The material’s dualities trap Ford between continents, not to mention genres and tones.

Honey Bunch is a work of art, but it won’t go down easily for everyone, and it’s sure to be divisive. Definitely watch it with a friend or loved one — whether you’re picking apart the plot holes or reveling in the reveal, you’ll need to debrief afterward.

This film stands comfortably alongside its ancestors, a perfect detour in a time when it’s most needed and a wonderful experience overall.

Fennell leans into excess not as provocation, but as emotional truth, letting obsession swell until it becomes the only language the film speaks. The feeling cuts here not as poetry, but as pressure—barbed wire wrapped tight around a heartbeat. In all its wildness, Fennell seals the film with an embrace and a bruise, then lands the kiss like a sudden dagger to the ribs.

Frank & Louis slips into being a film that’s observed and admired from a distance, not experienced emotionally.

Framed by fearless and charismatic turns by newcomers Bahraminejad and Mana and beautifully shot by cinematographer Ali Ehsani, “The Friend’s House” is a remarkable depiction of life in contemporary Iran that will haunt you for weeks.

“American Pachuo” is just a nice movie about a visionary guy. Entertaining and educational, to be sure, but so frictionless it barely sticks.

The overall point or purpose, beyond showing how a polar bear deals with a nearby human presence and vice versa, is conveyed relatively quickly, leaving the rest of the film to rinse and repeat until that final shot of a drowsy bear, resting atop a snow pile before a setting sun. It’s undeniably gorgeous, but what’s the greater message?

Hanging By a Wire is a nail-biting watch, one that never allows itself to become bogged down in excessive setup or backstory.

The downside is that Lagos is a more interesting character in this film than Lady herself, who Nwosu outlines with far less finesse. Such a glaring imbalance is symptomatic of the script’s overall flimsiness, which stands in contrast to this debut’s heartfelt performances and staggering visuals.

While the kids are pretty fantastic overall, it’s the collaboration between Brill and Bonilla that takes Heller’s screenplay to another level.

Like many Vietnam stories, the film openly contends with the futility of the war, questioning the larger purpose behind it and how it affected these specific men. The film’s greatest strength, then, is in that specificity and its historical corrective.

There’s a good movie about therapy and PTSD inside Jay Duplass’ See You When I See You. The trouble is, it’s buried in a so-so family ensemble film about shared grief and recovery.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York might not be anything revolutionary, but it sure is revelatory. Segan laments a bygone bustling past, speaks to an uncertain present, and points to New York’s eternal beacon of hope to tease the promise of future renewal.