At its best, Damsel suggests a dark fantasy riff on Neil Marshall’s The Descent.
We’re having a lot of déjà vu this year.
Though its lugubrious and plodding narrative spins its wheels ahead of someone coming along to fill T’Challa’s shoes, Wakanda Forever does stand out for its depictions of grief.
Wendell & Wild is easily legible as a retread of Henry Selick’s past work.
The fundamental ineptness of Gunpowder Milkshake appears to be a consequence of the exponentially swelling glut of streaming options.
Soul gets a reference-quality presentation, but the supplements package (and packaging) lacks in, well, soulfulness.
In a troubling reversal from Pixar films past, it’s kids who will have to do the most heavy lifting to keep up here.
The film doesn’t offer the most incisive social commentary, but as a document of our contemporary political moment, its force is undeniable.
Bumblebee exudes some of the tediousness of a reformed sinner who decries hedonism, trying hard to convince us that it now believes in something.
The film receives one of the best blockbuster home-video releases of the year—and just in time for the holiday season.
Fallout’s action scenes are cleanly composed and easy to follow, and so abundant as to become monotonous.
There’s a narrative lopsidedness to Black Panther that sharply undercuts Killmonger’s emotional journey.
Though it eviscerates the white establishment from the opening reel, much of the film exhibits a deeply conservative worldview, even for 1991.
Like its predecessor, Babak Najafi’s London Has Fallen is content to dumbly relish in the inanity of Mike’s rampage.
This bold, imaginative, infuriatingly neglected work of expressionist agitprop receives the gorgeous transfer it deserves.
Chi-Raq is a Spike Lee joint in the urgent sociopolitical register of Radio Raheem’s boombox.
This is the kind of filmmaking that gets touted as “workmanlike” when it’s really straight-laced to the point of tepidness.
The episode ends American Horror Story: Freak Show on an unsurprisingly dour and haphazard note.
Freak Show helps to confirm an unofficial rule about the series at large: The more a season actively utilizes its chosen setting, the better it is.
“Orphans” finds Freak Show taking a surprisingly earnest detour from its usual preachy, ultra-violently “relevant” shenanigans.