Katie Rife

Fast X suffers from the same condition as latter-day MCU movies, where it’s so laden with internal mythology that it feels more like homework than popcorn entertainment.

Like most Netflix movies, no matter what The Mother would be a perfectly serviceable thing to have on in the background while you tidied the living room or answered emails on your phone. The spy-movie setup is generic enough to follow while doing something else, and the villains’ motivations are only as specific as the plot needs them to be, which is to say not very specific at all.

These character arcs play out in subtle, naturalistic ways, with restrained performances that underline the tension between the film’s polite surface and unsettling subtext.

It’s titillation with a side of radicalization. And if any teenagers whose folks have installed parental controls on their computers do watch this documentary late at night with the volume turned down, they’ll learn more about workers seizing the means of production than they learn about sex — which is far more dangerous to the powers that be than any bare breasts or asses.

This is one of those movies that shows rather than tells—always preferable, even in the moments when the big picture is still coming into focus.

Once it gets out of its own way and gives the audience what they came to see, Evil Dead Rise is an absolute blast.

As Vázquez keeps adding elements in its last half hour, Unicorn Wars starts to feel like the beginning of a trilogy, or maybe a TV series that got canceled unexpectedly and had to wrap up its storyline in a handful of episodes.

While it isn’t the worst film the franchise has to offer, that’s only because the competition is so weak.

Making her feature debut, writer-director Chandler Levack has pulled off a rare trick here by making a movie that feels warm and safe without coddling its protagonist.

These events unfold with a sense of sickening inevitability, and when the scenes we all know are coming finally come, they’re as icky and hard to watch as they should be. But beyond simple documentation, the movie’s intentions are fuzzy.

Experienced performers take the film partway, but the script kneecaps everyone—especially MacDowell, who suffers the worst of the film’s dialogue-based indignities. Happy or not, you might find yourself wishing it would end already.

Although the film’s halfhearted attempt at a message lands with a splat, Cocaine Bear does all it really needs to do, by providing an hour and a half’s worth of winking, druggy, bloody amusement.

Huesera doesn’t necessarily re-invent either of those subgenres. But it does present them in a vessel that’s so artfully crafted, and filled with details that bring the characters and their relationships to such vivid life, that it accomplishes a lofty goal for genre cinema: Taking a familiar formula and turning it into a personal statement.

Allowing both love and money to complicate the primal enjoyment of watching muscular men in sweatpants gyrate ends up diluting the film’s once-simple pleasures. Maybe you can’t have it all.

The squibs are juicy, the nudity is full-frontal, and the psychedelic orgy sequence is extended. But there’s a trenchant point to all the blood, sex, and urine.

As filmmakers try to figure out how to lasso the internet and tame it for the screen, Cat Person is mostly useful as a lesson in what not to do.

In keeping with our current “poptimistic” age, “Kids Vs. Aliens” keeps the aggressive neon splatter, but loses the cynicism—a choice that, for all the F-bombs and fake blood, makes it a surprisingly pure film.

This is a strange film all around, distractible and full of Olympic-level tonal gambits. Viewers’ mileage will vary. Wildly.

The plot does have a few weak points and dangling threads, and the PG-13 rating ensures that the violence is tamped down before it can reach its full bloody potential...But the tongue-in-cheek tone is so consistent that M3gan is a hoot anyway.

While the points where Wildcat goes beyond simply being a feel-good nature documentary and delves into Harry’s mental health struggles are honest, they raise more questions than they answer.

This is a nice film. A sweet film. A film you can watch with your mother-in-law.

A sense of play and joyful collaboration permeates Leonor Will Never Die, even as it engages with serious issues of life, death, and legacy. It reminds us that love, like creativity, is a living thing, and that both are meant to be shared.

The film has fun lobbing snarky one-liners and outrageous bloodshed at the audience, but on the whole, Violent Night’s big red bag of self-aware tricks is overstuffed.

The third film from writer/director Travis Stevens (“Jakob’s Wife,” “Girl on the Third Floor”) is forged in fire and blood, taking his eye for striking visuals and elevating it to psychedelic new heights.

It’s true that Lib smashing against the brick wall of blind faith is an essential part of the story, but at some point, The Wonder crosses a line between eerie ambiguity and aimless floundering.

A lot happens in Bardo, much of it surreal. Elaborate musical numbers, dream sequences, alternate histories, and chronological hiccups all factor into this sprawling, whimsical, personal film. But once the lights go up and the spell is broken, all that striking imagery ends up feeling remarkably empty.

Taurus isn’t meant to lionize its protagonist. But even in offering a cautionary tale, all it can deliver is shallow provocation and monotonous cliché.

The film comes directly from its writer-director’s own lived experiences with racism, which gives it a rawness and an urgency that’s hard to ignore. And given America's cognitive dissonance about the looming threat of white supremacy in this country, an unsparing take on the issue like this one is very much needed. If you feel sick watching this movie, that means it’s working.