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Furies
(2023)
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Sean Gilman
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Ngô films it all with style to spare, keeping the focus on the actors’ and stunt performers’ movements while cutting it all together in a kinetic style that matches the pounding electronic score and psychedelic lighting of the first film
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Full River Red
(2023)
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Neil Bahadur
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The numbers aren’t wrong: the most successful film of 2023 to date, and the most successful film of Zhang Yimou’s career, is also one of the best films the director has ever made.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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This Closeness
(2023)
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Morris Yang
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To pigeonhole this languid pessimism as yet another instance of American indie mumblecore wouldn’t be inaccurate, but it also glosses over the hermetic framing carefully employed here.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Parachute
(2023)
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Luke Gorham
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Snow deserves much of the credit for the film’s successes as well. As a director, she doesn’t bring much formal swagger to the table... but she does imbue the proceedings with a level of specificity that enriches the material.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Shazam! Fury of the Gods
(2023)
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Steven Warner
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Shazam! Fury of the Gods isn’t likely to inspire such titular rage in viewers, but that’s mostly because it isn’t doing enough to warrant any kind strong response at all.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Boston Strangler
(2023)
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Andrew Dignan
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Here, as in real life, the absence of any sort of forward momentum creates a vacuum which is only filled by wild speculation.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Rodeo
(2022)
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Sarah Williams
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The thematic throughline of Rodeo deconstructs a binary of gendered actions, and the relationship between Julie and Ophélie, though intentionally ambiguous, grounds an emotional arc for our unbound protagonist.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Moving On
(2022)
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Steven Warner
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At only 84 minutes, Moving On wastes no time in getting to the point, even as nothing of much interest ever happens, regardless of the sensationalistic hook of its plot.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Money Shot: The Pornhub Story
(2023)
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Emily DuGranrut
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Whichever side of the argument you’re on entering the film will only be reinforced because Money Shot offers such a dull version of the facts that it’s impossible to even be narratively stimulated.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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The Artifice Girl
(2022)
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Daniel Gorman
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If a computer program can learn to affect human emotions by imitating them, at what point does the line blur and the emotions become real? Ritch seems to have his mind made up, although some viewers might not be so convinced.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Another Body
(2023)
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Andrew Dignan
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A sobering reminder of the minefield the Internet can be for women, the documentary Another Body, from filmmakers Sophie Compton and Reuben Hamlyn, is perhaps one of the more unnerving recent examples of form being shaped by subject matter.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Confessions of a Good Samaritan
(2023)
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Andrew Dignan
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The film nibbles around the idea of deriving self-worth and personal satisfaction from such a benevolent act, but it largely plays the subject matter straight down the middle.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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I Used to be Funny
(2023)
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Andrew Dignan
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One must wait a small eternity for I Used to Be Funny to finally come out and simply acknowledge the thing we’ve been watching its characters endlessly talk past.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Aberrance
(2022)
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Daniel Gorman
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The contrast between modes doesn’t work at all — it’s like a solemn A24 picture occasionally interrupted by frantic music video antics. All of this adds up to nothing much, a 75-minute wisp of a movie that lumbers awkwardly from genre to genre.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Citizen Sleuth
(2023)
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Emily DuGranrut
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Even if you come to this already aware of the outcome, following all of the switchbacks still proves intriguing enough.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Anhell69
(2022)
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Michael Sicinski
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With Anhell69, Montoya has constructed an indelible, at times shattering portrait of a collection of lovers and fighters who have embraced hedonistic nihilism, just in order to find a place to exist.
Posted Mar 17, 2023
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Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre
(2023)
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Steven Warner
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Operation Fortune instead finds Ritchie in Man from U.N.C.L.E. mode, a breezy contraption that isn’t necessarily good, but never reaches the barrel bottom.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Unicorn Wars
(2022)
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Luke Gorham
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If [Vásquez's] work suggests that he doesn’t feel too optimistic about the state of modern existence and its future, we can at least feel better that he’s bringing something worthwhile to cinema’s current era of flattened and soul-dead animated art.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Champions
(2023)
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Steven Warner
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Therein lies the rub when it comes to Champions: the movie is so well-intentioned that criticizing it feels like kicking a puppy, but it also rarely rises above the level of patently mediocre.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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65
(2023)
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Andrew Dignan
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The film’s in such a hurry to get to the next “thrilling” moment or to “up the stakes” (it introduces a ticking clock element around the halfway point... that it hurtles past any of the theoretical grandeur of the premise.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Scream VI
(2023)
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Matt Lynch
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Scream VI, the latest in what’s becoming horror’s most insufferable series, is almost catastrophically tired, offering not a single novel or surprising moment.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Three Nights A Week
(2022)
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Sarah Williams
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Three Nights a Week is less the love story between a straight man and a drag queen it has been billed as, and rather a love letter to a subculture and the invitations that it opens.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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The Gravity
(2022)
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Daniel Gorman
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It’s all very exciting, and while Ido risks absurdity with his disparate influences, he’s so gleefully committed to his scenario that it all somehow manages to work.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Forever Young
(2022)
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Michael Sicinski
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Forever Young is two solid hours of theater-kid energy, a film that wholeheartedly believes that the art of acting is a beautiful, agonized, possibly holy mission, and if you don’t exactly subscribe to that ideology, this is an incredibly irritating film.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Saturn Bowling
(2022)
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Patrick Preziosi
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The muscle of this experiment is still commendable enough in and of itself, leaving plenty enough to chew on despite some notable imbalance.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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The Origin of Evil
(2022)
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Sarah Williams
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Sebastien Marnier’s latest breezy, twisty thriller The Origin of Evil may lack any deeper interrogation in its Agatha Christie-reinvention of deception, but its strong ensemble cast makes the endeavor worthwhile, if not substantial, viewing.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Smoking Causes Coughing
(2022)
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Morris Yang
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Smoking Causes Coughing is calibrated to an uncanny tonal wavelength, entreating eavesdroppers to indulge in the simultaneous exhibition of the comical and the creepy. Think midnight hangout movie, with quasi-stoner philosophy to boot — it’s quite a hoot.
Posted Mar 11, 2023
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Brother and Sister
(2022)
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M.G. Mailloux
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Open to appreciation on a number of different levels, Brother and Sister is pure Desplechin minus the self-mythologizing, a slight reset that still maintains the director’s sly humor and destabilizing approach to sequencing
Posted Mar 10, 2023
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Call Me Chihiro
(2023)
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Fred Barrett
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As far as Netflix originals go, one could do a lot worse than this warm-hearted, empathetic, and yes, occasionally uneventful and saccharine slice-of-life drama.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Children of the Corn
(2023)
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Greg Cwik
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Wimmer's film isn't particularly memorable, and the Children of the Corn series has yet to summon a single indelible moment in 40 years, but you have to appreciate a horror film that aspires to entertain, and often succeeds.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Creed III
(2023)
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Matt Lynch
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There’s so much richness to the world depicted... so much available to dissect about Black masculinity, class distinctions, racial conflicts, capitalism, on and on, that it’s increasingly disappointing to see those aspects... get pushed aside.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Palm Trees and Power Lines
(2022)
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Andrew Dignan
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The film takes its characters, as well as the viewer, to some extraordinarily dark places, acknowledging the predatory underpinnings of the relationship, before concluding on a note as quietly despairing as any film in recent memory.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Linoleum
(2022)
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Travis DeShong
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[Linoleum] jettisons the ruminative self-seriousness a more prestige-inflected drama might opt for, instead preferring a snug, pleasantly offbeat vibe that’s equally nostalgic and sanguine.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Gods of Mexico
(2022)
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Zachary Goldkind
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This well-meaning survey of beauty and might quickly collapses into the ornamental.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Perpetrator
(2023)
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Michael Sicinski
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Context is everything, and it seems that, for horror fans as well as movie lovers more generally, Perpetrator is being appreciated for delivering an unapologetic gorefest in a genre that’s become increasingly airless and antiseptic.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Past Lives
(2023)
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Lawrence Garcia
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With Past Lives, director Celine Song has a fine story on her hands — and she knows it. Unfortunately, a solid story hook is about all Past Lives amounts to, lacking as it does any robust cinematic interest.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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The Beast in the Jungle
(2019)
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Morris Yang
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There are some faults to this... Yet one can’t help but be beguiled by the mise en scène sensuously lensed by Céline Bozon, an aesthetic miasma that aches even as the languorous camera itself doesn’t.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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On the Adamant
(2023)
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Morris Yang
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On the Adamant undertakes the often thankless task of surveying the outer, sometimes inner, lives of the barge’s daytime inhabitants — for the Adamant is a therapeutic facility, and its visitors are those with mental disorders.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Music
(2023)
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Daniel Gorman
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If the tale of Oedipus is understood as a warning about fate, Schanelec instead seems to be suggesting that we can, in fact, free ourselves from a predetermined path.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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In Water
(2023)
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Ryan Swen
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So, it's fascinating to see how, if not [Hong's] mindset, then how his process is imparted onto someone on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of life and experience
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Our Body
(2023)
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Jesse Catherine Webber
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Besides functioning as an encouraging artifact for future patients... it may at least be able to serve as a more holistic model for a right relationship between doctor and patient.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Seneca - On the Creation of Earthquakes
(2023)
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Luke Gorham
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Seneca — On the Creation of Earthquakes is roughly as audience-unfriendly as films come, sometimes to its benefit, but mostly otherwise.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything
(2023)
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Fred Barrett
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Given the dismal state of eroticism in film, it would be nice to have nothing but good things to say about a drama as unapologetically sexual as this, and indeed there are things to praise... Sadly, issues do come to the fore.
Posted Mar 06, 2023
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20,000 Species of Bees
(2023)
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Mattie Lucas
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One of the most sensitive, honest, and easily recollectable on-screen portrayals of gender dysphoria and growing up trans.
Posted Mar 01, 2023
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The Fishbowl
(2023)
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Oliver Parker
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In general, the film lacks the stillness necessary to land with impact, surprising given the narrative; it only runs 90 minutes, but still feels frustratingly lacking in intent.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Animalia
(2023)
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Fred Barrett
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One or two moments of overt thematic signaling notwithstanding, Alaoui is content with letting the subtext be just that, communicating instead her most interesting ideas through visuals and tone.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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The Deepest Breath
(2023)
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Luke Gorham
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The narrative ultimately proves to be fairly straightforward, but as realized by McGann it’s massaged into a will-s/he-won’t-s/he docu-thriller, with the film’s language adopting a past-tense posture with both of the primary operatives’ storylines.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Landscape with Invisible Hand
(2023)
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Daniel Gorman
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Cory Finely’s Landscape With Invisible Hand is an innocuous, flimsy little sci-fi movie, bandying about high concepts and reasonably detailed world-building but resolutely refusing to engage with any of its ideas in a meaningful way.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls
(2023)
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Luke Gorham
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Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is a textbook example of the kind of short-form Internet meme-art that has no business attempting the translation to feature-length film.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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The Longest Goodbye
(2023)
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Emily DuGranrut
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The result is a tidily packaged film, easily sliding its focus between the individual astronauts, their families, the shared struggles they face, and the future of interstellar communication.
Posted Feb 27, 2023
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