Three tween boys ditch school and go on an adventure that involves drones, drugs, and a suspicious number of sex toys in Good Boys. 90-second review: If movies like Superbad and Booksmart prove anything, it's that watching uncool teens try to be cool is a comedy gold mine. Good Boys mines the same tropes for humor — the entire plot revolves around…
Luce follows a mystery surrounding a small town's golden child and him and his parents' run-in with a teacher bent on his demise. 30-second review: Luce is so successful because its story has a clear message and point-of-view it wants to communicate, but director Julius Onah presents it in a completely fresh and original way. Though at its core…
The Perfection follows two students of a renowned music academy whose first encounter leads to sinister results. 30-second review: The Perfection's first half portends a sharp and tense psychological thriller with two committed performances by Allison Williams and Logan Browning as the former and current star students of a prestigious music academy respectively. But one…
Rocketman follows the meteoric launch and the explosive fall of one of music's most iconic artists, Elton John. 90-second review: Let's get the Bohemian Rhapsody comparison out of the way early. Rocketman is the better film. Not only is it competently made, it's not just a paint-by-the-numbers biopic that plugs in the right plot points…
In the late 1960s, a group of teens finds a book that brings their nightmares to life in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, based on the book series of the same name. 30-second review: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark has the creature design that made producer Guillermo Del Toro's career such…
Midsommar is a Swedish folk nightmare for a couple and their group of friends caught in the middle of a sinister summer ritual 30-second review: All the tools that Ari Aster used in his directorial debut Hereditary — a film I adore — are on display in Midsommar. It’s impeccably shot and directed with the same unflinching…
The Lion King reimagines the 1994 classic animated film of the same name in "live-action" with Donald Glover, Beyoncé, and James Earl Jones. 90-second review: For a remake to be successful it has to have a reason for existing. And having the technology to make photorealistic animals and environments is almost reason enough for a…
John Cho shines in Searching, an engaging and suspenseful thriller that takes place completely on a computer screen Searching begins with a very familiar landscape with rolling hills, a blue sky speckled with clouds, and mountains in the distance. This vista is the desktop of a computer. That's where the entire running time of Searching, like the film Unfriended before it, takes place.…
Suspiria, a remake of the 1977 classic, gets an upgrade in plot and horror. 30-second review: Suspiria doesn't feel at all tamped down by the 1977 original Dario Argento film. If anything, it feels more like it is inspired by it rather than remaking it. However, that's what director Luca Guadagnino—his last film was the Oscar-winning Call Me By…
You Were Never Really Here is a hypnotic and thrilling crime drama that doesn't let you go until the credits begin to roll. A third of the way through the breezy 90-minute running time of You Were Never Really Here, essentially director Lynne Ramsey's arthouse version of Taken, Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) lays down next to a hitman he…
