Here are some reviews of films coming out at the theater this week as well as others that may be in theaters or newly on home video.
Opening: Feb. 2, 2024
Wide (United States)
Argylle
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Scrambled
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Limited (United States)
Bushman
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an eye-opening work about race, justice and democracy in America while also offering a profound contrast between a native black culture and one uprooted and transplanted.
Disco Boy
- Excerpt: Disco Boy doesn’t quite work, though thanks to some quality craftsmanship and the always-fantastic Franz Rogowski, it does come close.
How to Have Sex
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [an] honest look at the irresponsible debauchery encouraged by youthful peer pressure and the array of interpretations of what sexual consent means.
2024 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
I.S.S.
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Mean Girls
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Night Swim
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American Star
- Excerpt: American Star is a commendable self-reflection character study, bolstered by Ian McShane’s brilliantly contained performance, a thematically rich narrative, and a truly gorgeous location.
As We Speak
- Excerpt: A didactic discussion of the legal war waged against a single kind of (conspicuously Black) writing.
Between the Temples
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Between Two Temples, written and directed by Nathan Silver, explores this unexpected relationship at the intersection of faith, expectation, and love, using humor and heart to examine how what makes sense on paper is rarely what the heart yearns for.
Brief History of a Family
- Excerpt: Crafted with such delightful suspense that you can’t help but smile as you squirm, Brief History of a Family pulls from plenty of genre influences (its have/have-not friction and affluent apartment confines will be familiar to Parasite fans) to construct a tight dramatic metaphor encompassing Chinese parenting values and the end of a sociopolitical era.
Dario Argento: Panico
Desire Lines
- Excerpt: Jules Rosskam’s hybrid film hides a trove of charming interviews with trans men, about their experiences making contact in a queer world still stacked against them, inside a grating drama.
Dìdi
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: Writer-director Sean Wang delivers an accomplished and empathic jolt of coming-of-age anguish with Dìdi. The young ensemble cast is phenomenal and funny while the film grapples with the meaningful hardships – and total dickish tendencies – of male growing pains.
In a Violent Nature
Kat Hughes @ THN
Jacob Oller @ Paste Magazine
- Excerpt: With grim patience, vibrant realism and a genre-savvy sense of humor, Nash marches us one plodding bootstep at a time through the procedure of slashing.
In the land of Brothers
- Excerpt: A brutal, beautiful depiction of life persevering against bigotry, filmed with a painterly eye and a compassionate heart.
Last Night at Terrace Lanes
- Excerpt: This throwback to cult and survival horror may not be the most polished or slick, but it has an admirable spirit that makes up for its rough-hewn nature.
Love Machina
- Excerpt: Love Machina may want to take a peek behind its own curtain every once in a while for a reality check.
Love Me
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Sam and Andy Zuchero’s film suggests a Pixar film by way of Stanley Kubrick.
The Moogai
- Excerpt: The Moogai is a scare-free blunt instrument, imprecise and uninterested in its own genre beyond its potential for metaphor.
Razing Liberty Square
- Excerpt: …thanks to global warming, rising sea levels and increasingly violent tropical storms pose a threat to beachfront properties, making Liberty Square (elevation: 12 feet above sea level) attractive to commercial developers. Calling their plans “neighborhood revitalization” is not sufficient to allay the fears of residents, who suspect the real plan is to force them to move elsewhere so richer people can move in.
A Real Pain
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Eisenberg’s film doesn’t embraces easy answers or platitudes.
Ru
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Director Charles-Olivier Michaud’s adaptation of Kim Thúy’s award-winning novel takes liberties in portraying the narrative, but maintains the emotions expressed on the page. And even though it focuses on one family several decades earlier, it’s a universal immigrant story that will resonate with audiences.
Trunk: Locked In
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Works better as a visceral experience rather than a logical one.
The Underdoggs
- Excerpt: The chemistry between the kids is definitely fun and charming to witness, but the non-stop profanity, a crazy alcohol-stimulated sequence, and so many other terrible messages for young audiences make this movie one to avoid.
Veni Vidi Vici
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: The film’s humor is a clenched-fist assault on runaway greed and systemic corruption.
2023 Films
20 Days in Mariupol
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
All of Us Strangers
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American Fiction
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Anatomy of a Fall
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Evil Dead Rise
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A Haunting in Venice
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Oppenheimer
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Origin
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Poor Things
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The Zone of Interest
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The Bitcoin Car
Josh Thayer @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: We’re not even a month into 2024, and I already have a contender for most bonkers movie of the year. Coming from Norway, The Bitcoin Car is a tragicomic musical about a small village that begins to experience troubling phenomena when a brand-new bitcoin mining facility starts operations.
Bobi Wine: The People’s President
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is an extensive, uncensored, and expertly constructed look at the lengths a dictator will go to wield his military regime and secure power. [And the] tireless work [of Bobi Wine to] inspire the masses [against it].
Brooklyn 45
- Excerpt: The 3rd Annual JanuScary Special continues with Brooklyn 45! A suspenseful little thriller that shows what happens when you mix ghosts with friendship and post-war trauma!
Fireworks
- Excerpt: I’m not goinh anywhere.
In the Shadow of Beirut
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: By following four families during the course of five years, the documentary proves a damning indictment on living conditions made increasingly worse with every new law change.
The Peasants
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Besides the gorgeous time-lapse transitions between the seasons, the whole simply looks like a rotoscope pass of an already shot live-action movie. What does that layer of paint therefore add?
The Promised Land
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: an old fashioned epic spiked with modern ideas about racism and class, its hero made a better man by witnessing the evil perpetrated by his villainous foe.
Saw X
- Excerpt: The 3rd Annual JanuScary Special continues with Saw X! A middling midquel that doesn’t feel necessary. That being said, I’ll be back for Saw XI.
