Simon Abrams

The Taiwanese horror movie The Sadness is both conceptually exhausting and viscerally upsetting—an ideal summer movie for the third year of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The movie’s half-hearted jokes, on frustrated women artists and their blind male collaborators, tend to be one-note and thankfully besides the point. But if you adjust your expectations, you’re more likely to accept Lux Aeterna as a vigorously realized doodle.

I often wished there was more to Hatching than just a few weak digs at bad mothers who are a little too online. Maybe you have to be Finnish to see Hatching as a blistering and culturally specific satire. Or maybe there’s just not much to get about the movie.

The awkward transitions and clichéd merrymaking that define Lisa’s story will likewise be either more feature than bug for genre fans or just one more thing that makes Azuelos and Fierro’s narrative seem lazy and confused.

This sleepy and visually murky black-and-white drama belabors the same banal truisms about memory and role-playing during wartime –basically, it’s impossible to maintain your autonomy when you’re only a pawn in a complicated game — and tends to be more interesting to think about than to watch.

The Cellar doesn't even need to be a smarter or even more faithful homage. All it needs to be is a little more of something—energetic, gross, thoughtful ... something!—to make it compelling enough to withstand comparisons to its many generic precedents.

Pathological behavior seems to be the main subject of the bitter Ukrainian satire Donbass, an unpleasant, but as-advertised slice of life drama set in the title region, an embattled territory in Eastern Ukraine.

The film may be cinematic comfort food, but its creators do earn our trust and nail all the essential beats they need to along the way.

The dual nature of “Babi Yar. Context” as both an essay movie and a cut-up historic document might create an uneasy tension with viewers who would like to know more about whatever they’re looking at. If nothing else, Loznitsa succeeds at being upsetting.

There’s more atmosphere than plot in the Romanian drama Intregalde, a moody parable that sometimes feels like the Eastern European arthouse response to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Like the anime series, Jujutsu Kaisen 0 sometimes feels too much like a Cliffs Notes adaptation, despite also featuring more interaction between the supporting characters and the lead protagonist than the original manga.

Co-writer/co-director duo Harpo and Lenny Guit’s apparent disregard for their viewers’ comfort can sometimes be quite funny, depending on your tolerance for messy, meandering absurdist comedy.

Against the Ice delivers all the delirious period drama thrills and survival horror angst that you could want from a movie with that title.

The Burning Sea may ultimately be too uptight for its own good, but there’s enough here to satisfy disaster aficionados who’ve already been here before and only really want to root for more of the same.

Fistful of Vengeance is a movie in duration only; it’s pretty slapdash in terms of its execution, even during its glossy-looking action set pieces.

The camera loves Channing Tatum, and that makes up for a lot in Dog, a corny road movie that mostly panders to fans of Tatum and/or dogs, as well as any moviegoer who still thinks that making a big show of supporting the troops (any troops) makes them more human than, uh, most everyone else.

Sometimes, the suggestive nature of Gregg’s impressionistic mood piece—as well as a characteristically strong lead performance by Riseborough (Possessor, Mandy)—is enough to sustain one’s interest in Here Before. Right up until Gregg lobs an unsettling and only partly satisfying twist at viewers and leaves us to work through our feelings on our own time.

As we tag along with Haroun’s characters, we learn to appreciate their story as a small, but vivid study of lives that are so much more than their progressive developments.

Fans of cheap thrills and cheesy B-movies are sure to be frustrated by The Requin, a new shark pic that waits about an hour before introducing major carnivorous fish action. That alone might turn off viewers since The Requin only lasts about 89 minutes, and most of the movie plays out like a soapy two-hander about survivor’s guilt.

You Won’t Be Alone may not be a dumb or unimaginative exercise in style, but it also rarely encourages viewers to engage meaningfully with whatever’s on-screen.

A strong ensemble cast, led by Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall, does a lot of emotional heavy lifting in the otherwise lightweight mockumentary Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.

The British WWII drama “Munich - The Edge of War” starts off as a prim spy thriller and ends as an insufferable civics lesson.

The new New York Ninja often feels like a pre-fab midnight movie that was made with apparent love and care but without much urgency or creativity.

Unlike a lot of recent indie horror movies, An Unquiet Grave doesn’t feel bogged down by the last few decades’ worth of American horror. It’s a spare, dread-filled mood piece whose just-so dialogue, too-tight close-ups, and deceptively subdued pacing all tease out small, but essential details from both of these elusive central characters.

While many of the jokes in Hotel Transylvania: Transformania probably won’t linger in your mind, they are still fairly well-executed.

King Car may leave viewers wondering about a number of basic questions (mostly related to the plot), but it also often feels open and precise enough to work on its own terms.

There may be nothing new about America Underdog, but it’s still good enough, as far as non-perishable comfort food goes.

There are a lot of ideas swimming around in “The Pit,” but most of them aren’t arranged well enough to demand your attention.