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.
The new Fantastic Four movie is a little formulaic, but it features some of Marvel’s most impressive set pieces yet.
DC Studios’ new Superman movie feels like a wild comic book that’s been brought to life.
The M3gan sequel embraces sci-fi to tell a timely but muddled story about the dangers of artificial intelligence.
The new 28 Days Later sequel’s infected ghouls aren’t all that scary, but the film’s Brexit-y undertones sure are.
Hulu’s animated Predator prequel film feels like a perfect pre-Badlands appetizer.
Ana de Armas struggles to carry the weight of Lionsgate’s new John Wick parallel prequel on her back.
HBO’s Mountainhead is a snapshot of everything that’s ridiculous and terrible about Silicon Valley’s billionaire class.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a spectacularly silly tribute to the franchise’s explosive past.
The MCU’s new crossover tentpole is focused on trauma, bad jokes, and getting the movie franchise back on solid footing.
Ryan Coogler’s latest feature feels like a classic southern vampire tale with movie magic running through its veins.
Netflix’s terrible adaptation of The Electric State is as soulless as it is uninspired.
John Malkovich’s dulcet tones are the only thing that comes through clear in Mark Anthony Green’s debut feature.
Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 powers through its turbulence to tell a timely story about workers’ rights.
Marvel’s latest Captain America movie.
A24’s Heretic was one of last year’s more surprisingly fun (read: deranged) horror features, and it’s set to make its Max streaming debut on March 7th.
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An understated portrait of a life, oscillating between heartbreaking tragedy and hopeful beauty. The movie follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) from his quiet vantage point in Idaho at the turn of the century. An orphan who eventually finds a successful career in logging, his largely lonely life is upended when he meets a woman (Felicity Jones) and, with her, finds a real reason to live. And yet Grainier finds that death seems to follow him wherever he goes. Eventually he loses everything — and spends the rest of his days trying to find that reason for being again. (Train Dreams was acquired by Netflix, and so hopefully will be streaming in the near future.)
The festival comes to a close today, and while there hasn’t been a particular standout film, there is plenty to keep an eye out for once they hit theaters and streaming services. You can keep up with everything we’ve watched so far right here, including the likes of Artropia, Zodiac Killer Project, and Bunnylovr. And expect more updates throughout the day.
This incredibly meta story isn’t strictly about the Zodiac Killer, but rather a failed attempt to make a documentary. After director Charlie Shackleton lost the rights to adapt the book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, he decided to make a movie that shows what the film would have been like. It plays out like an extended director’s commentary for a movie that doesn’t actually exist. The result is a surprisingly compelling story on its own, but also one that serves as a clever deconstruction of true crime, and a very open look at the editorial decisions that shape the genre.
This film is gorgeous, taking place across a warm and cozy Paris, ultra modern Chongqing, and a virtual reality metaverse where players hunt down a mysterious, mystical deer. Unfortunately its parallel stories of estranged families aren’t particularly compelling on their own, nor do they intersect in a satisfying way. It attempts to throw in some tension through other means – like a surprisingly simple million-dollar art heist, and the search for the virtual deer – but ultimately Luz is too meandering to remain captivating for long.
Set in an unnamed, fictional European country that, due to a long war where residents only had cabbage to eat, has outlawed the vegetable and imposed severe punishments for smugglers. When a honeymooning American couple (Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg) gets caught with cabbages in their pants, they end up racing for their lives. The movie is, obviously, ridiculous – and there are some fun comedic performances from Steven Yeun, Dave Franco, and Matt Berry – but it awkwardly tries to mash its humor with a more sincere tale of a couple facing their differences that never really comes together.
It turns out Juliette Lewis makes a very good chair. In this surreal film her character Camille feels overlooked and ignored, until one day she finds the most beautiful designer chair, and the two somehow switch places. While Camille’s inanimate body becomes a strange source of fascination for her friends, she truly feels seen with her soul inside of the chair, which has become an obsession for pianist Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). The movie can drag in moments, particularly because of its lengthy narration, but its strange vision is weirdly charming and eventually pushes towards a surprisingly intense climax.
A zombie apocalypse isn’t enough to stop Vinita’s (Kiran Deol) podcast ambitions. She hosts the titular show despite the world coming to an end, and a planned live performance for episode 100 becomes a useful way to connect with survivors, who are largely isolated in this dystopic world. Didn’t Die starts out as mostly a comedy, with the scary bits serving as background, but when Vinita’s ex and a surprise baby get involved, it becomes a touching –and tragic – story of family and loss, one that ends on a heartwarming and hopeful note.
A gorgeous adventure in the mold of E.T., the movie has a lot of promise but is missing the spark to truly stand out. It takes place in an isolated mountain community, where ape-like creatures called ochi are hunted by farmers trying to keep their livestock safe. But when a young girl (Helena Zengel) finds an injured baby ochi, she sets off on a quest to return it to its family. The creature design is incredible, and there’s a lot of mystery to the post-apocalyptic seeming world. Ultimately, though, Ochi is a charming-yet-fairly-standard family-friendly adventure. (It hits theaters on April 25th.)
Paramount Plus’ new Star Trek film is the sound of scene chewing in space, which is to say, it’s pretty damn fun.
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu gets at the heart of what makes vampires an eternally fascinating fixture in our sexual imaginations.
Sony has made bad Spider-Man spinoff movies before, but Kraven the Hunter is another level of terrible.
Director Kenji Kamiyama’s new Lord of the Rings anime film feels like what happens when you try to turn a footnote into a feature-length story.
Jon M. Chu’s Wicked adaptation gets at the heart of what makes musicals such a spectacular form of storytelling.
Sony’s third Venom feature feels like another throwback to when comic book movies kept things short and silly.
Todd Phillips’ new Joker sequel is a pitchy mess that wants to explore what happens when villains become folk heroes.
R.T. Thorne’s postapocalyptic thriller frames farming and community as the keys to humanity’s survival after society collapses.
Former soldier-turned-farmer Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) is tough on her children because she knows how much more dangerous the world has become after pandemics, famine, and a second civil war in the US.
People would kill for their fertile plot of land up in Canada where precious produce still grows. And when gangs of hungry cannibals start popping up, the Freemans have no choice but to take up arms and stand their ground.
Equal parts post-apocalyptic thriller, family drama, and ode to Octavia Butler, the film is a brutal and beautiful debut from director R. T. Thorne.
Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating epic Megalopolis is a series of loosely connected ideas, tied together with an undercooked world and embarrassing dialogue.
An ol’ fashioned tear-jerker about Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield), who quickly fall in love after the former hits the latter with her car. The film does a great job of balancing its heart-rending story with hilarious jokes, but the most notable thing is the way it deftly jumps around in time.
Its non-linear story seems sporadic initially, yet I was never lost or confused, because it moves around in a way that lets you follow the highs and lows of their relationship in a completely natural way. Just don’t forget Kleenex.
Marielle Heller’s defanged adaptation pulls back from the book’s ferocious strangeness to lean into a more quirky, feel-good vibe.
