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: Jun. 7, 2024
Wide (United States)
Bad Boys: Ride or Die
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Banel & Adama
- Excerpt: What do you do when the love you need to survive appears to threaten the survival of everyone around you? Such is the spiritual question at the heart of Banel & Adama, the hauntingly beautiful directorial debut of French-Senegalese filmmaker Ramata-Toulaye Sy.
2024 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Challengers
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Fall Guy
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Hundreds of Beavers
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
IF
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Immaculate
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
In a Violent Nature
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Aisha
- Excerpt: Aisha starring Letitia Wright and Josh O’Connor is profoundly humanistic cinema.
Art College 1994
Backspot
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: While the result is uneven, there’s enough intrigue to draw us in and hold our attention.
- Excerpt: Wonderfully shot, choreographed, scored, and acted, BACKSPOT is not only everything you could wish for in a sports film, but also everything you want in a queer coming of age story. Dark and light collide to create magic under neon and laser lights. D. W. Waterson will have you cheering for their energetic, affecting, and intelligent work. Elite level filmmaking.
Daddio
Christopher Reed @ Hammer to Nail
- Excerpt: Both actors are in excellent form, inhabiting their respective characters with depth and sincerity. Daddio seamlessly gets us to our destination with nary a clumsy swerve off a well-planned route.
Dancing Village: The Curse Begins
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Exhuma
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Taking it at face value – from the scares, shocks, and suspense building – it clicks on all cylinders.
Ezra
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A father’s fierce love for his autistic son drives a heartfelt narrative about parental rights and state intervention.
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: EZRA isn’t made as much to educate people on autism as it is to entertain audiences with more wins than losses. So, while what occurs on-screen is authentic, it can also seem too easy.
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Ezra is especially frustrating, as it gets so much right in authenticity and big-heartedness, but the plotting is so misguided.
For Love & Life: No Ordinary Campaign
- Excerpt: The film carefully balances the most painful moments with glimmers of progress and hope and makes a powerful argument for looking at struggles so easily ignored.
Gasoline Rainbow
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a paean to the joy of living life to its fullest and embracing what cannot be seen around the bend of the road.
Grave Torture
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Housekeeping for Beginners
- Excerpt: Housekeeping For Beginners is queer joy, human heartbreak, and all the definitions of love.
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Hundreds of Beavers
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Writer/director Mike Cheslik has so many gags designed in this story of a hapless fur trapper that I can’t even begin to think how one designs a screenplay like this so successfully, let alone manages to pull it off on an incredibly low budget.
The Idea of You
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
- Excerpt: Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara by Marco Bellocchio is a psychodrama and satirical tragedy where the mind of a child is emblematic of the splintered states around the period of Italian Unification.
Pitch People
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: The goofy-90s-cheese factor is high in this look at home-shopping TV hucksters, but any nostalgia is small and cheap. The chipper vibe is distasteful in a way it perhaps wasn’t in the booming 1990s.
Secret: A Hidden Score
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: In the end, “Secret: A Hidden Score” is a mixed bag of a film that draws the viewer in with the charisma and beauty of its protagonists and a story that seems intriguing in the beginning, only to disappoint in the end. Probably fans of romantic TV dramas will be the ones that will enjoy the film.
Tell That to the Winter Sea
- Excerpt: Tell That to the Winter Sea dives into the complex, ever-evolving humanity of the joy and pain of friendship and love.
Tuesday
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pusic takes a well worn genre and totally transforms it with wit and imagination. It’s a bit weird, but a true original.
Viet and Nam
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: In the end, though, Minh Qyu Truong handles all the different elements of the movie rather well, resulting in an intriguing spectacle, that may be chiefly addressed to arthouse fans and festival goers, but definitely has enough elements to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Wild Diamond
Dennis Schwartz @ dennisschwartzreviews
- Excerpt: Malou Khebizi aces her role.
The Young Wife
Jared Mobarak @ Hey, have you seen …?
- Excerpt: It’s an exhilarating experience that presents the tug-of-war we all must endure to maintain a level of self within the communal “us” that’s born from the relationships we cultivate.
Young Woman and the Sea
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: In a sea of biopics, this makes an unforgettable splash.
- Excerpt: It is old-fashioned in the best sense, a straightforward story of a woman of extraordinary spirit and ability overcoming obstacles to achieve her dream.
- Excerpt: There is a memetic saying, “Of all the things that didn’t happen, that didn’t happen the most.” YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA indulges in so many patent falsehoods that no one even has to do even the briefest fact check to know they are being fed an idiotic narrative masquerading as truth.
2023 Films
Andragogy
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Arirang Rhapsody
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: On the other hand, as a chronicle of something personal that becomes wider in the face of the Zainichi, and even international with the history of the two countries, “Arirang Rhapsody” definitely works, resulting in a movie that demands patience, but is definitely rewarding.
Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes
- Excerpt: A really full artist
Hijacked Youth – Dare to Stop Us 2
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Dare to Stop Us 2” will definitely find its appeal among film buffs, with the various tributes that make up the narrative being quite rewarding in terms of information and entertaining overall.
Kyrie
Panagiotis Kotzathanasis @ Asian Movie Pulse
- Excerpt: “Kyrie” is a mixed bag, which, as I mentioned before, depends largely on how much one likes Aina the End’s songs. At the same time, as a story that celebrates youth and its dreams, as a presentation of show business in Japan, and as an eye-candy, it definitely works, with the sum of all its elements definitely leaning towards the positive side.
The Lost Boys
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Queendom
- Excerpt: In our current era of “just be white and hetero like me” (many of whom are lying to themselves out of fear of the truth), this film is a must-see for the millions amongst us who need to better understand, empathize and celebrate all of those who have the courage of their convictions.
