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: Mar. 8, 2019
Wide (United States)
Limited (United States)
Gloria Bell
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Julianne Moore gives us a woman we wish was not alone, yet feel perfectly comfortable leaving that way.
The Kid
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: With so many different iterations of the same exact story flooding the cinematic market every year, it’s nice to look at a common narrative through a new lens.
2019 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Fighting with My Family
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Greta
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How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
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The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
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The Aftermath
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Post WWII upheaval is a cheap backdrop to beautiful people getting it on. Characters and situations are undeveloped, and there little genuine romance here, and too much laughable preposterousness.
Apollo 11
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Miller has used this pristine, richly colored footage wisely, letting it speak for itself. There is no narration. There are no talking heads. There is just a sterling, 93 minute recreation of one of mankind’s most miraculous technological feats…
Apollo 11
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
Birds of Passage
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: unlike [“Embrace of the Serpent”], while this also charts the corruption of long tradition by greed and wealth, “Birds of Passage” becomes more of a family saga, a familiar story of drug money instigating violence.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A tribute to a creative, determined, and compassionate African boy.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Chiwetel Ejiofor’s directorial debut is a modest film about human ingenuity in the face of incredible obstacles. It’s simple, but very effective.
The Cannibal Club
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Although the upper class may not literally be eating the lower classes, they’re damn sure doing the job on a figurative level.
The Cannibal Club
The Changeover
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Climax
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: [Noé]’s produced a film that features all of his taboo busters and yet, surprisingly, it may be his most accessible to date…a film that grabs you from its opening shoot and never lets go.
Debt
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While we quickly become sympathetic to the plight of the hapless Tufan, every character around him is experiencing some kind of pain, be it financial or emotional, and how they interact with each other is subtly exposed as a series of debits and credits.
Everybody Knows
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Asghar Farhadi attempts to meld melodramatic mystery with his usual humanistic drama, but leaves little space for either impulse to be satisfied. Disappointing and strangely anticlimactic.
FP2: Beats of Rage
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: As the opening frame warns, Beats of Rage requires a three-drink minimum for maximum enjoyment. So collect some rowdy friends, tie one on, and get ready to Beat Beat this shit fo real one more time.
High Flying Bird
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: High Flying Bird is a masterfully constructed drama that tackles the professional sports business with as much intrigue as a heist movie.
The Hole in the Ground
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Even if the climax is a bit anticlimactic compared to the atmospheric build-up, “The Hole in the Ground” remains attentive to its characters and achieves a mood that is creepy, unsettling, if not exactly frightening, and finally open to ambiguity.
The Invisibles
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Shifting readily between fiction and non-fiction gives us the best of both worlds because the proof of what we’ve seen arrives directly after seeing it.
Leaving Neverland
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Leaving Neverland is not an easy watch, but it’s a necessary one that finally allows the victims to speak for themselves.
Leaving Neverland
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: Reed does something great with with this material, which could so easily have been sensationalized or turned into cheap, ghoulish true crime fodder. His approach is elegant, refined and simple and yet holds the weight that such a discussion deserves…
Life After Flash
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
Lords of Chaos
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Lords of Chaos is, at times deeply, darkly funny, taking nothing away from its very true to life horror. Neither does it detract from Åkerlund and co-writer Dennis Magnusson’s focus on how the gruesome history of Mayhem is a hard lesson about authenticity, exploitation, fame, and the often self-fulfilling prophesy of those who step too close to the edges of true darkness.
Pledge
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Pledge offers a hyperrealistic vision of the frat world that’s simultaneously outrageously exaggerated and also true to the nature of these violent, male-dominated institutions.
Saint Judy
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: An ethically rich drama about asylum law and the uplifting emotion of elevation.
Sonchiriya
- Excerpt: Director Abhishek Chaubey’s ‘Sonchiriya’ is a superlative ode to lives in Central Indian ravines. Actors Manoj Bajpayee, Ashutosh Rana, Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar and Ranvir Shorey are matchless throughout with each of them acing the Bundelkhandi dialect to perfection.
Starfish
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [It asks] us to confront our longing for a past mired in nostalgia that we must forget in order to forgive ourselves enough for happiness to become possible again.
Transit
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: With his latest, adapted from a 1944 novel, yet set in modern times, Petzold centers on a male refugee on the run assuming the identity of another man, then falling in love with that man’s wife, a “Casablanca” for today.
Transit
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Capping his “Love in Time of Oppressive Systems” trilogy, Petzold creates a latter day Casablanca roiling with bureaucracy, paranoia, and hints of heroism. Caught in between the land and the sea and even during time periods of the past and present, Transit is a bittersweet tale harboring connections to our own time.
Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family Funeral
- Excerpt: …casket-filled clownery. Predictably contrived…Perry…we beg you–stop the inane gimmick and allow Madea to retire in her flowery bloomers in peace.
The Wild Pear Tree
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: while much of “The Wild Pear Tree” revolves around the written word and oral debate, Ceylan’s masterful eye, especially for landscapes, ensures his latest is yet another luxuriating, cinematic soak.
Woman at War
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the blend could be adjusted to taste, its funnier moments on the gentle scale of humor, “Woman at War” continually reinvents itself, Geirhasdóttir’s vibrant performance its compeling constant.
Woman at War
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Majestic and sometimes inexplicable, “Woman at War” is a fabulously thought-provoking film that inspires and entertains.
2018 Films
Anna and the Apocalypse
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Aquaman
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Bad Times at the El Royale
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Beautiful Boy
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Bohemian Rhapsody
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Bumblebee
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The Cloverfield Paradox
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Halloween
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The Hate U Give
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Hereditary
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Mary Poppins Returns
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Night School
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Overlord
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A Quiet Place
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Second Act
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A Star Is Born
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Suspiria
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Venom
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Widows
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All the Creatures Were Stirring
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: There is an inherently mixed-bag quality to the omnibus structure, as not every storyline can possibly be tantamount to a bull’s-eye, and in the case of “All the Creatures Were Stirring,” only two out of the five are solid.
A Bread Factory
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [It] speaks about just how inseparable art and life is—the ways we use it to heal, grow, and see. Art is that which makes us human.
Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: While it has maybe half the heart, “Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween” is still an undemanding, briskly paced diversion.
Hell Fest
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: A slash-orama set inside a horror-themed amusement park, “Hell Fest” scratches a horror fan’s itch to see a straight-up, R-rated throwback to the slasher pics of yore with a killer backdrop.
Knuckleball
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: “Knuckleball” is an admirably stripped-down thriller that escalates with a sense of portent and overturns expectations by not exactly going where one predicts.
Monster Party
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: The emptily mean-spirited “Monster Party” is depraved fun, until it’s not.
Never Look Away
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [The film] really draws you into this chaotic and fractured world to see truth rise from the ashes and memories that won’t allow themselves to be buried away forever.
Of Fathers and Sons
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: A true underground reporter in a dangerous world, Derki captures the life of this Syrian extremist and his six sons, all 13 and under.
The Possession of Hannah Grace
Jeremy Kibler @ The Artful Critic
- Excerpt: Unless self-opening morgue drawers and the sounds of bones cracking are unnerving enough for 86 minutes, “The Possession of Hannah Grace” just kind of lies there without any legitimate scares.
2017 Films
Monsieur & Madame Adelman
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
- Excerpt: In keeping with the literary aspects of the story, the film plays with the concept of the unreliable narrator.
