Are you looking for recommendations about the best and worst in current film releases? Our movie reviews try to get past brief opinions and dig into why a given movie works, and what it has to offer.
An amazing name for a horror satire that can’t really decide what it wants to be. Its story of a high school science teacher (Brandon Routh) saving a small town from an infestation of violent plants is meant to be a send-up of ‘90s-era horror like The Faculty. It looks and sounds the part, but leaves itself stranded in the middle: not funny enough to be a spoof, and not scary enough to work as horror.
In the future, a test makes it possible to scientifically determine your ideal soulmate. (It’s a premise very similar to last year’s Fingernails, only less gross.) Initially, it seems that the film is going to do the typical romcom thing when best friends Laura (Imogen Poots) and Simon (Brett Goldstein) have a clear connection despite their opposing views on the value of the test.
But instead of being obvious, All of You skillfully explores the mess, chaos, and pain inherent in love. I wish its sci-fi elements were more developed, but the rest hits hard.
Before N.E.R.D, The Neptunes, and becoming one of the more convincing arguments for the existence of vampires, Pharrell Williams was a kid from Virginia Beach who didn’t know that most people don’t see sounds as colors. He had no way of knowing that his love for music would transform him into one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. But those who knew him could always see that he was destined for greatness.
The doc is gorgeous, but far from revelatory, and features too much Robin Thicke and Justin Timberlake for its own good.
Though mother (Amy Adams) loves her husband and son, she can’t deny feeling trapped in her life of suburban domesticity. She would never admit to feeling like a caged animal — a dog, specifically — being driven mad. And yet when she starts sprouting hair from strange places all over her body and craving red meat, her feelings seem to be transforming her in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
The film skews more comedic than the book, and eases up on the body horror to its detriment. Adams is great, but this could have been so much meatier.
For broke cinephiles like Nasir Shaikh (Adarsh Gourav), piracy is the ultimate form of flattery. It’s the only way he can bring the world’s films to his hometown where his families expect him to be responsible and get a humdrum job.
It’s hard for Nasir to explain why he can’t get over his dream of making films. But when he starts creating experimental parodies, his peers can’t deny his talent or their desire to join in. As biopics go, the film’s a stunner that starts wobbly but sticks the landing.
An oil tycoon (Michael Shannon), art curator (Tilda Swinton), and their son (George MacKay) are separated from the apocalyptic horrors outside, spending their time in a bunker writing books, arranging flowers, and eating lots of cake. But the facade steadily slips away after a young survivor (Moses Ingram) enters their home.
Filled with dark humor and even darker revelations, the film also happens to be an uplifting musical, but those two sides never gel in a satisfying way. Instead, it ends up feeling bloated and, even worse, doesn’t have memorable songs.
Nobody shines quite like TV aerobics star Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), but when her sexist boss fires her on her 50th birthday, she spirals into an existential darkness that feels like death.
All she wants is for the world to see how powerful she still feels inside, which is why she doesn’t think twice about injecting a mysterious cosmetic drug known simply as “The Substance.” And while The Substance gives her exactly what she wants, it comes with some deliciously nightmarish, Cronenbergian side effects that will speak to the Malignant lovers out there.
An attempt to turn the story of the Swiss folk hero into a historical epic, which ends up quite bland. There’s a lot of build-up to the moment — you know the one, where Tell (Claes Bang) shoots an apple off his son’s head — but once that’s over so, too, is the film’s momentum. Despite being a movie filled with blood and dirt, it’s all too clean, adhering to a strict formula of daring heroes, cartoonish villains, rousing speeches, and battles that, like the arrow hitting the apple, are never in doubt.
It’s nice to think the G7’s septet of world leaders would be able to commit to a plan of action in response to a mysterious global crisis.
But in Bleecker Street’s surreal black comedy Rumours, German Chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett) and her fellow heads of state are too busy losing their minds to get anything done as their summit is besieged by... horny monsters. The ghouls might actually just be protesters — you’re never meant to know for certain.
But you are meant to spot the kernels of reality baked into this batshit story.
Space trucker Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) spends his days hauling nuclear waste from Earth to Jupiter’s moon Callisto, enjoying the solitude by listening to records and playing chess with a joke-obsessed robot. But a disaster, possibly a world war, destroys the Earth while he’s flying — making that solitude a lot more permanent.
So when Andriy hears a voice message from somewhere near Saturn, he clings to it with a ferocious intensity. The film laughs its way through tragedy with plenty of dry humor, but ultimately ends on a beautiful and hopeful moment.
In an afterlife where ghosts have to work their asses off to survive by becoming urban legends, all Rookie (Gingle Wang) wants is to haunt her little corner of Taiwan in peace.
But when she starts to fade into nothingness due to being forgotten, she realizes it might be time to get her license and become a proper myth so terrifying that she’s sustained by mortals’ fear. Professional ghosting is a cutthroat industry, though — one Rookie isn’t cut out for.
Think Monsters, Inc. meets All About Eve — it sounds wild, but it absolutely works.
And now you can watch it at home.
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut has Get Out aspirations, but it lands somewhere closer to Don’t Worry Darling.
Though Fede Álvarez’s new Alien film is gorgeous, its questionable optics leave much to be desired.
Director Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo feels tailor-made for this summer of atmospheric, unsatisfying horror.
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is a pitchy mess about who gets a pass.
Beneath the dick jokes and solid X-Men cameos, Deadpool & Wolverine feels like Marvel’s way of admitting how much of a mess its multiverse era has been.
The latest installment of Ti West’s X franchise is a glamorously cutthroat send-up of Ronald Reagan-era excess and moral panic.
Director Muta’Ali’s MoviePass, MovieCrash is a thorough but circuitous breakdown of how executives’ obsession with exponential growth all but destroyed the company.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes remixes beats from the franchise’s previous films to tell a story about how myths evolve.
A24’s I Saw the TV Glow from writer / director Jane Schoenbrun is a brilliant exploration of how people can find and lose themselves in the media they love.
Netflix’s Rebel Moon films both feel like Zack Snyder trying to celebrate sci-fi classics by gently riffing on them in some of the least inspired ways possible.
Director Alex Garland’s new dystopian thriller seems like it has something to say about American society, but it doesn’t have the guts to articulate a cohesive, thoughtful point.
Dev Patel’s directorial debut surges with enough energy to make its action work, but it stumbles as it veers into social commentary.
Director Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong sequel is big on bombastic spectacle and new lore but woefully lacking in terms of story and substance.
A24’s phenomenal new surrealist comedy feels like a story that only writer / director Julio Torres could pull off.
Bertrand Mandico’s feminist spin on Conan is a heady smorgasbord of gorgeous visuals and meditations on violence.
Denis Villeneuve’s second Dune film brilliantly lays bare the dark truths central to Frank Herbert’s operatic opus.
Here’s JP Brammer on Madame Web’s appeal:
Madame Web is about PepsiCo Inc. There are multiple instances of unabashed product placement for Pepsi. Madame Web is not shy about reminding the audience about the crisp, refreshing taste of Pepsi.
It’s also about carjacking. The cars she hits people with do not belong to her.
I cannot emphasize enough how trash this movie is. As someone whose last movie before the pandemic was Cats, I urge you to check it out.
[holapapi.substack.com]
Sony’s Madame Web isn’t especially great or terrible, but it’s surprisingly committed to transporting you back to 2003 — a golden age for comic book movies that were aggressively mid or worse.
Co-directors Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares’ new action drama is a masterclass in using near-futuristic, sci-fi storytelling to illustrate harsh realities about our present.
Despite occasionally gorgeous visuals, James Wan’s Aquaman sequel feels like a testament to everything that went right and wrong with the DC Extended Universe.
Michael Mann’s biopic of the Italian sports car maker feels at home in the director’s canon of obsessive men.
The latest Studio Ghibli film is out in North American theaters after premiering in Japan earlier in the year.
Toho’s latest Godzilla film from writer / director Takashi Yamazaki takes the kaiju king back to its roots to tell a sobering story about reckoning with the present.
Writer / director Kristoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario capitalizes on Nicolas Cage’s status as a living legend to tell a brilliant story about the perils of fame.
