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: Jul. 5, 2024
Wide (United States)
Despicable Me 4
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
MaXXXine
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Expanding (United States)
Kinds of Kindness
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Limited (United States)
The Secret Art of Human Flight
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: Mendoza does a nice job making the film look better than its budget constraints and Orenshein’s script gets to the heart of love and loss in both its goofy and sad moments.
2024 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Daddio
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Inside Out 2
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
A Quiet Place: Day One
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts
- Excerpt: “Ben and Suzanne” has its merits, and the relationship in its center is appealing to watch. However, it frequently feels as a film that was supposed to be shot in the US, just found itself in Sri Lanka without being able to realize the difference or what to do with the fact.
Cat Call
Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: This is a very funny film. One that’s probably at its funniest when staging a death scene. It’s equal parts melancholic in its tale of rekindled love and absurdly fantastical in its bureaucratically pragmatic idea of the afterlife.
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: There is quiet wonder in both the laughter and tears.
Copa 71
- Excerpt: Despite the shocking sexism sometimes on display, however, the mood of Copa 71 remains mostly upbeat, as it should, because these women not only persisted but triumphed.
Dark Feathers: Dance of the Geisha
- Excerpt: As such, whether someone enjoys “Dark Feathers: Dance of the Geisha” exclusively depends on the knack for enjoying this type of films, essentially low budget Tarantino-style ones. Those, however, will definitely have a lot of fun with this.
The Devil’s Bath
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Devil’s Bath is a story about the ways people in 1700s Upper Austria tried to survive a world that didn’t accept them, and what often happened to those who simply couldn’t survive such a cruel existence.
A Family Affair
Allen Almachar @ The MacGufifn
- Excerpt: This is a throwback picture for those that like their escapism light, fluffy, and charming.
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: A Family Affair is the embodiment of a time waster, the type of film of which it can be said that it robbed two hours out of the viewers’ lives that they will never get back.
- Excerpt: As mundane as its title, with characters whose color-by-numbers personalities and motivations shift randomly to fit a predictable storyline, “A Family Affair” is a low-wattage rom-com.
Family Portrait
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: That so much of what’s said and done is hollow makes the notion that it will still be grieved after it’s gone more potent. In the end, these horrible days that feel more like work than vacation will be missed.
I Am: Celine Dion
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: The struggle of the singer’s fight with a rare neurological disorder, set against the backdrop of massive superstardom.
Janet Planet
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Baker leans into the leisurely pace of warm afternoons that blend the one into the other, heightening the blurred sense of pace through elliptical editing.
July Rhapsody
- Excerpt: Revisiting July Rhapsody is a reminder that Ann Hui is one of the most empathetic and important filmmakers of the Hong Kong New Wave.
June Zero
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s therefore tough to watch this well-crafted film without also engaging with the context that it is being released while Israel itself commits war crimes and genocide against Palestinians.
Kill
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @
- Excerpt: Not much more to say, if you want to see a genuine ultra violent actioner without any kind of straying away for contextual pretense, “Kill” is definitely the film for you.
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Kill has more knife fights than Mamma Mia! had ABBA songs.
Sharmajee Ki Beti
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Sleep
Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A beautiful, spiritual movie that left me a little choked up at the end.
Two Hearted Tale
Victoria Luxford @ Dirty Movies
- Excerpt: As pleasant as sitting in a fishing boat with a cold beer, A Two Hearted Tale is the sort of localised story you sense won’t be available to directors in the years to come.
The Vourdalak
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Adrien Beau exhibits a skillful ability to balance tone in his feature directorial debut…At times absurdist, surreal and playful before turning tragic and horrific, this French folk tale posits that love blinds us to danger.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: While the somber tone mixed with dark humor is great and the ending proves sufficiently bittersweet and damning, that slurping of bloody cotton is still what sticks with me most. What a horrific sense memory to be burned onto my brain.
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The Vourdalak is more than a gimmick—the eponymous creature is a life-sized puppet voiced by director and co-writer Adrien Beau—it’s a dark, and at times darkly funny, exploration of how love can be a real horror, akin to an infection such as vampirism.
2023 Films
Dear Jassi
- Excerpt: Overall, “Jassi” is an excellent movie that remains entertaining from beginning to end, while presenting its pragmatic comments in the most eloquent fashion.
A House Named Shahana
- Excerpt: Overall, “A House Named Shahana” emerges as one of those films that their importance outweighs any talk about their quality. At the same time though, it is also a movie that would definitely benefit from a better directorial approach, since its issues are painfully evident on occasion.
Meeting You Meeting Me
- Excerpt: Despite some issues with the writing here and there “Meeting You, Meeting Me” emerges as an accomplished film, both entertaining and intriguing and definitely a hopeful debut for Lina Suh.
