Derek Smith

Ultimately, The Boogeyman is like so many other modern horror films that prioritize mood above all else.

The film is a pointlessly complicated house of cards that crumbles due to its own hollowness.

Christophe Honoré’s film tackles grief in a subtle, intriguingly indirect manner.

With Beau Is Afraid, his third and easily most ambitious feature to date, Ari Aster traces, to more cosmic and absurd ends, how tragedy is birthed by, well, birth itself.

The film brims with authenticity and the electrifying emotional intensity of the best melodramas.

The more that Zach Braff’s script tries to thematically tie its disparate threads together, the more that A Good Person comes to resemble the very same type of neat and tidy self-contained version of reality that it ironically skewers in its prologue.

In the gradual development and expansion of the Wickaverse, the filmmakers seem to have lost the thread of what makes the first and, at times, second film in the series work so well.

As Champions tediously veers between the increasingly rote narrative beats of an inspirational sports story and a love story of opposites attract, it further stresses its own archaic qualities with a consciously anachronistic soundtrack that includes Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping,” EMF’s “Unbelievable,” and Outkast’s “Hey Ya.”

The film comes down to a draw between its flashes of brilliance and its missed opportunities.

Quantumania feels less the start of a new phase of Marvel films than a tired retread of adventures we’ve already been on.

At its core, 20 Days in Mariupol is a testament to the citizens of Mariupol.

Humor for the sake of humor is a worthwhile pursuit, but Missing’s final act is more unintentionally funny than intentionally funny.

There’s enough sardonic humor to keep the proceedings edgy enough, but it’s hard not to wish that the filmmakers would’ve taken a cue from their eponymous villain and really pushed things past the boundaries of good taste.

The film often feels like one of the corpses in its story: cold, lifeless, and without a heart.

Ultimately, it’s the filmmakers’ insistence on both subverting the expectations of the family Christmas film and upholding them that leaves Violent Night feeling like it wants to have its Christmas cookies and eat them too.

This unfocused, awkwardly paced film never quite gets off the ground and, as a result, will do little to change perceptions of the Korean War as the “forgotten war.”

While Strange World’s examination of generational tension is tender and inspiring, as well as nicely tied to its theme of the necessity of adapting to changing times, the film’s sci-fi elements and environmental message are more half-baked in their execution.

The film signals that Alejandro G. Iñárritu, perhaps, is unable to push the limits of his own artistic expression.

Because of Chinonye Chukwu’s willingness to let small-scale, ancillary scenes play out unhurried and at length, Till taps into to a deeper well of emotions than most biopics.

Pearl is ultimately an empty exercise in style masquerading as a character study, and for as fantastic as Mia Goth is, her performance mostly succeeds at making Ti West’s homages just a little bit easier to stomach.

Funny Pages eschews the platitudes and carefully scripted character arcs that often cause coming-of-age tales to feel not only predictable but coated in a sheen of nostalgia.

George Miller’s film is a passionate exploration of how image-making is inextricable from storytelling.

Not Okay doesn’t make any points that, now over a decade into the ubiquity of social media, aren’t painfully obvious.

The film is a perfectly entertaining retelling of an offbeat tale, but it’s also superficial and borderline exploitative.

The film spins a soapy yet dramatically inert and often tone-deaf yarn about societal rejection and female empowerment in the wetlands of North Carolina.

Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On convincingly proves that bigger sometimes is better.

The original Brian and Charles short focused entirely on its titular characters, and it’s clear that was for the best.

Emergency is uneven, but it’s grounded by dynamic performances and a vivid portrayal of the minutiae of friendship.