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2.5/4
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Marya E. Gates
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Lively does her best to add emotional layers to Lily so we see her internal growth, but this process is often hampered by the film around her.
Posted Aug 07, 2024
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Yintah
(2024)
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Robert Daniels
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“Yintah” vigorously paints a resiliency that will never surrender.
Posted Aug 03, 2024
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Memories of a Burning Body
(2024)
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Robert Daniels
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Reminding you in a short 80-minute span that the beginning of one’s life doesn’t have to spoil the end.
Posted Aug 03, 2024
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3/4
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Kneecap
(2024)
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Sheila O'Malley
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This doesn’t feel cheeky or intellectualized. It feels local and authentic.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2/4
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Coup!
(2023)
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Glenn Kenny
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A tiresome self-satisfied tone that is made a fair bit more tolerable by Sarsgaard’s juicy lead performance.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2.5/4
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Detained
(2024)
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Brian Tallerico
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There’s something charming about its single-setting stupidity, dropping a bunch of idiots in an impossible situation and bouncing them off each other until most of them are dead.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2/4
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Peak Season
(2023)
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Peyton Robinson
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There are poignant moments, namely in the film's conclusion, but for much of the run time, the observation grows stale as we struggle to connect to the performances on screen.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2/4
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Doctor Jekyll
(2023)
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Clint Worthington
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[F]or as much as "Doctor Jekyll" rides high on its compelling central performance (and the gender politics therein), the film that surrounds that star turn can't quite hide (or Hyde?) its weightlessness.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2.5/4
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Sebastian
(2024)
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Monica Castillo
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For all its gloomy aesthetic, there is something life-affirming about the kindness of a stranger who wants to read your work and the power that comes with owning one’s own words and stories.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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.5/4
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Harold and the Purple Crayon
(2024)
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Peter Sobczynski
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A film that pays lip service to the importance of creativity without ever displaying a demonstrable shred of it during its seemingly interminable run time.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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3.5/4
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War Game
(2024)
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Nell Minow
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The set-up is detailed, serious, and all too believable.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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4/4
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Hundreds of Beavers
(2022)
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Matt Zoller Seitz
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Exceeds expectations in every way, including the promise of its title.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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0/4
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The Instigators
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
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This Apple TV heist flick is underwritten, dreary, tedious, inert, and without any stakes.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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2.5/4
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Trap
(2024)
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Brian Tallerico
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Josh Hartnett almost makes “Trap” worth seeing, imbuing his character with a playfulness that can be captivating. It’s just a shame his great work sometimes feels trapped in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with it.
Posted Aug 01, 2024
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2/4
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The Last Breath
(2024)
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Glenn Kenny
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As goofy and unconvincing as it often is, “The Last Breath” is difficult to get exasperated over. It may go down easier still if you opt to see it in a very well-air-conditioned setting.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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1.5/4
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The Fabulous Four
(2024)
|
Nell Minow
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The stars do their best to bring warmth and charisma with criminally under-written characters engaging in silly antics.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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3/4
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The Way We Speak
(2024)
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
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The performances are uniformly excellent.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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|
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The Girl in the Pool
(2024)
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Marya E. Gates
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What could have been a deliciously dark satire, instead remains in the liminal space known as aggressively average.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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2.5/4
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
|
Somehow, despite the silly mayhem and hyper-meta goofing, I kinda did care about the characters, especially in the finale, which unspools a pathos firehose and blasts us with it.
Posted Jul 24, 2024
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2/4
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Find Me Falling
(2024)
|
Monica Castillo
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By the end, “Find Me Falling” lands on uneven ground.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3/4
|
SCALA!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-Up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits
(2023)
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Matt Zoller Seitz
|
It's a treat to see so much energy expended to recall a venue and a community that was unknown to most, but felt like the center of the universe to the merry few who were part of it.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3.5/4
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Crossing
(2024)
|
Glenn Kenny
|
Akin is here working in a tradition established in Italian Neo-realism ... but his narrative approach brings a vivid freshness to the proceedings.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3.5/4
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Oddity
(2024)
|
Sheila O'Malley
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Mc Carthy uses the single settings of his films with sensitivity and creativity.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3/4
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Great Absence
(2023)
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Brian Tallerico
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Cconveys the bursts of anger and lashing out that often adjoin dementia, and it makes for a showcase for one of Japan’s best actors.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3/4
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Hollywoodgate
(2023)
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Brian Tallerico
|
It’s a film that feels like an overture to an international crisis, a warning as much as a documentary.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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2/4
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Skywalkers: A Love Story
(2024)
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Nell Minow
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Zimbalist (a sometime rooftopper) and his co-director Maria Bukhonina make it clear that the stunts are real but never get beyond a Photoshop version of the characters.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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2.5/4
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Customs Frontline
(2024)
|
Simon Abrams
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“Customs Frontline” is not quite as thrilling or as relentless as Yau’s other recent successes ... but it still delivers more twists and surprises than you might expect from this type of sudsy, formulaic cop drama.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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2.5/4
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Widow Clicquot
(2023)
|
Glenn Kenny
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While the movie initially offers little beyond the dreamy foofaraw too often used to describe “creative process,” it eventually does pay attention to the practical aspects of winemaking.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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1.5/4
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My Spy: The Eternal City
(2024)
|
Christy Lemire
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Whatever comic gems you’re expecting from a cast like this never truly emerge; there’s too much going on, as “The Eternal City” lumbers from broad violence to treacly sentimentality.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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3/4
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The Convert
(2023)
|
Monica Castillo
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The movie takes on a bittersweet note, bringing history to life in all its messy complexity - and the everyday players who shape it.
Posted Jul 21, 2024
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2/4
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Crumb Catcher
(2023)
|
Robert Daniels
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The title of “Crumb Catcher” is all too apt. Skotchdopole sprinkles bits and pieces that add up to very little.
Posted Jul 19, 2024
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3/4
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Twisters
(2024)
|
Tomris Laffly
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Despite some miscalculations that weigh this installment of fearless tornado chasers down, “Twisters” is an enthralling summer blockbuster on the whole, thanks in large part to Powell’s presence, which is fun, disarming, and even cheekily silly.
Posted Jul 17, 2024
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4/4
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Sing Sing
(2023)
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
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It doesn't move or feel like any other prison movie, or movie about theater students, that I've seen, and its commitment to the truth of its characters -- and of life itself -- is rare and precious.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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3/4
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Family Portrait
(2023)
|
Brian Tallerico
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It’s a foreboding film, a drama that recreates the sense that something bad is going to happen or may have happened already.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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3/4
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Dandelion
(2024)
|
Peyton Robinson
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Even with a shaky conclusion, the swarming warmth of Riegel’s direction and the meditation of her writing results in a film that displays the fleeting, volatile kind of love that forces you to grow
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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3/4
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National Anthem
(2023)
|
Sheila O'Malley
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"National Anthem" is tender and sweet, and it expresses all of these things in its visual language, allowing these sensations to be present without speaking them out loud.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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4/4
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Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
(2024)
|
Peter Sobczynski
|
This is an examination of cinema history so rich in detail and observation that it rivals most current film school curricula while being uncommonly watchable and entertaining.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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0/4
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Lumina
(2024)
|
Brian Tallerico
|
A film so breathtaking in its overall incompetence that one starts to wonder if it’s not intentionally so in the hope of being the next “The Room” or “Birdemic.”
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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2.5/4
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Sorry/Not Sorry
(2023)
|
Matt Zoller Seitz
|
Although the movie never convincingly answers the unspoken question that dogs many New York Times-produced long-form videos—"Is this topic better suited to a newspaper article, or perhaps a podcast?"—it is handsomely assembled.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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2/4
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Sisi & I
(2023)
|
Tomris Laffly
|
Where “Corsage” was cheeky, playfully dark and came with a dose of heart-tugging mischief, “Sisi & I” feels tame and square by comparison.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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3.5/4
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Touch
(2024)
|
Nell Minow
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Its sensibility is as exquisitely tender as the flutter of a butterfly wing.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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2/4
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
|
Christy Lemire
|
Tonally messy and overlong, director Greg Berlanti’s film ultimately squanders the considerable charms of its A-list stars.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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2.5/4
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Longlegs
(2024)
|
Brian Tallerico
|
Absolutely no one is phoning in “Longlegs,” and that commitment to craft and mood has an impact.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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3/4
|
The Secret Art of Human Flight
(2023)
|
Monica Castillo
|
What will stick with viewers is most likely Mendoza and Orenshein’s tender portrait of the act of grieving.
Posted Jul 14, 2024
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|
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Three Days of Fish
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
|
Dutch writer/director Peter Hoogendoorn’s “Three Days of Fish” is a stirring picture of male vulnerability.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Stranger
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
|
Chinese director Zhengfan Yang’s “Stranger” is an absorbing, though at times, uneven omnibus whose interest in liminal spaces explains much about how we define home and identity.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Rude to Love
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
|
Japanese filmmakers have so perfected the melodrama that, even when the film is far less than perfect, it still manages to be incredibly affecting. Such is the case with Yukihiro Morigaki’s intense breakup film “Rude to Love.”
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Windless
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
|
It's every regret you've ever had with a parent put into a movie, making for a beautiful reckoning.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Tiny Lights
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
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This is one of those few child performances that doesn’t feel rehearsed to death or trite. It’s thoughtfully conceived, aching, and relatable.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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Loveable
(2024)
|
Robert Daniels
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Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s feature directorial debut “Loveable” is a nimble Norwegian portrait of regrets.
Posted Jul 11, 2024
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