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: Sep. 14, 2018
Wide (United States)
The Predator
A Simple Favor
White Boy Rick
Limited (United States)
Don’t Leave Home
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …Tully’s creepy Catholic allegory hits high notes in its climax that recall Kubrick and Polanski.
2018 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Avengers: Infinity War
Crazy Rich Asians
Eighth Grade
The Happytime Murders
The Meg
The Nun
Searching
14 Cameras
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: In a day and age where stories about landlords spying on their tenants have become sadly commonplace, 14 Cameras is incredibly relevant. It reflects the fears we have about urbanism, all the anxious aspects of living in a city.
Los Amores Cobardes
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
Annihilation
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Garland continually proves his worth as an artist capable of envisioning new ways the future can scare us, whether it be his perspectives on the undead, synthetic humans, or the violence of evolution.
The Announcement
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Recalling the bone-dry wit of the likes of Pablo Larrain mixed with a dash of the absurdity of Samuel Beckett, this is as much a waiting game as an action plan
The Bookshop
Andrea Chase @ Killer Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: rightly dwells on the details in this perfectly realized character study
Camorra
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Not much explanation is needed to be immersed in the mournful and well-edited examination of a city in which the citizens become unwitting “foot soldiers’.
The Captain
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: If you think war is hell, see what happens when it stops.
Cold Skin
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Cold Skin is not for faint of heart. But it’s pure cinematic art.
The Commuter
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: The Commuter is a bait-and-switch action picture that’s got good bait and a very weak switch. You’ve already seen this movie. Trust me, dear reader. You’ve been through the paces.
Deadpool 2
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
The Death of Stalin
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Deva
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Szöcs has good ideas for the look and framing of the film but a feel for the characters is missing.
The Endless
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Lovecraft looms large over the movie, no doubt. Regardless, Benson and Moorhead tread their own ground, specifically when it comes to the entity of the story, and the plot is not cold or totally devoid of hope.
Everybody Knows
Diego Salgado @ Guía del Ocio [Spanish]
The Favourite
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Well-executed dark comedy of court intrigue in 18th-century England
First Reformed
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: First Reformed questions how the ancient world of tradition and the modern world of capitalism co-exist when they are fundamentally opposed in so many ways. Above all, Schrader examines how extremism can sprout from many dark corners of the human psyche, of which religion is merely one.
Godzilla 2: City on the Edge of Battle
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Too bad, for a monster movie, it’s humans who really have room here.
Hal
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Ashby’s daughter Leigh MacManus is one of the few contributors to offer an off-set perspective of the man – and it comes with a poignancy and beat of heartfelt truth that is lacking elsewhere.
The Hate U Give
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: George Tillman allows his actors and Thomas’ words to ignite and elevate this story for the big screen, and the result is astounding.
Husband Material
- Excerpt: In his first full-fledged love story, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap presents three characters who are liberated, flawed and original, substantiating the film’s Hindi title to perfection.
I Am Vengeance
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: Routine revenge flick offers little to the genre.
I Feel Pretty
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: There is a good message in I Feel Pretty, but the delivery needs work. Apart from two standout performances, I Feel Pretty feels pretty rote.
If Beale Street Could Talk
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Much like with Moonlight, Jenkins seeks to express [sacrifice and heroism through survival with] a poetic construction of resonant images, sounds, and experiences. He brings us into this world of aching love and romance tinged but never tainted by the horrors of what looms large above every action.
Incident in a Ghostland
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Several reviews out there have criticised Incident in a Ghostland as being misogynistic, when it’s actually critical of misogyny in horror rather than playing a part in perpetuating the genre’s problems. Sometimes you have to dig deeper.
Incredibles 2
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Insidious: The Last Key
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I don’t know if there are plans for an Insidious 5 – I hope not. I’ve had all the ups and downs with Elise Rainer that I really want for a while.
Isle of Dogs
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: It is possible to incorporate the most diverse intentional visions of the director here, be it the anti-Trump reading, the hero’s journey with existentialist pitfalls or criticism of all kinds of ideological brainwashing and prejudice to convince the masses to hate something …
José
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Although the story is slight, Cheng treats the subject matter with care, allowing a slow but certain heat to build between José and Luis
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Kin
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: At one point, James Franco whips it out and pisses all over a gas station floor – that about sums up Kin. A movie about a firearm fetish masquerading as an indie road trip drama; the longest 102 minutes of my life.
The King
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: The King is interesting in some aspects, as meandering as the road in others.
L’enkas
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Where most films of this ilk are driven by aggression, Marx instead pushes hers forward with a mix of melancholy, quiet desperation and futility.
Let The Corpses Tan
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Little Stranger
Darren Mooney @ the m0vie blog
- Excerpt: The Little Stranger could do with being… well… a little stranger.
Lowlife
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: What Prows manages to do is present a multicultural view of those stuck suffering under the bourgeoisie class of America, and the hierarchy in which many of these people perpetually exist.
Mandy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Panos Cosmatos’ drug-fueled revenge flick is a heavy metal giallo with imagery seemingly inspired by a custom van mural painted by Frank Frazetta and a Nicolas Cage performance for the ages. This witchy, satanic throwback to the 80’s trumps most actual horror movies of the era…
Mandy
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Sure, dip your bare hands into this powerful hallucinogen and see what the hell happens.
Mandy
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Esoteric and psychedelic, ferocious and gore-soaked, see Mandy in a theater if you can, loud and bold, confrontational and inescapable.
Mandy
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Cosmatos and Stewart-Ahn provide a glimpse at mankind’s penchant for false saviors preaching hate instead of understanding. For once Satan is the hero, the final bastion for individuality in a “pious” world killing to conform.
Memoir of War
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
- Excerpt: The Miseducation of Cameron Post explores insidious acts of cruelty with incredible compassion (and a spiky sense of humour).
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
- Excerpt: Akhavan isn’t trying to supply answers—just present the hypocrisy to let us find our own. Sometimes the institutions we lean on most are irrevocably flawed.
The Night Eats the World
Luiz Santiago @ Plano Crítico [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: The morning after a party, a young man wakes up to find Paris invaded by zombies.
Ocean’s 8
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Ocean’s 8
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Papillon
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite good work from star Charlie Hunnam, it can’t escape the shadow of the original Steve McQueen version.
The Party
Alex Brannan @ CineFiles Reviews
- Excerpt: The Party is quite clearly an actor’s movie, and its cast does not disappoint. The black-box play that is the drama has a current of electricity that sparks from each member of the small ensemble.
Peppermint
Alex Brannan @ CineFiles Reviews
- Excerpt: Peppermint is lifeless, and not merely because of its excessive depiction of loss of life.
Peppermint
Courtney Howard @ FreshFiction.tv
- Excerpt: Not only is this fear-mongering rhetoric at its laziest, but it’s also a poorly-constructed action film that does no one any favors
Peppermint
Charlie Juhl @ Citizen Charlie
- Excerpt: Jennifer Garner does Death Wish better than Bruce Willis, but Peppermint offers nothing new to the genre other than a gender switch.
Peppermint
- Excerpt: Nevertheless, Peppermint is woefully suspect in its flimsy feminine fireworks beyond the stereotypical gimmickry of a scorned housewife eradicating the bothersome brown menace.
Pick of the Litter
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: An uplifting doggie film.
Proud Mary
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Proud Mary is a movie that promises an action funfest that it refuses to deliver.
Puzzle
Ron Wilkinson @ Its Just Movies
- Excerpt: Finally, a coming of age story for adults.
Red Sparrow
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: What starts out as a potentially good espionage story soon collapses into tedium, done in by its own pretentiousness.
Revenge
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Fargeat’s feminine perspective allows the audience to see this exploitative sub-genre from the POV of a woman, wholly. Instead of focusing on physical degradation, Revenge hammers home all the many ways in which women are degraded by men, wrapped up in a story involving a rape and, of course, the revenge.
Skyscraper
frank ochieng @ The Critical Movie Critics
- Excerpt: As convincingly engaging and impish as Johnson can be in his many repetitive action-oriented thrillers (and comedies), he deserves a nasty piledriver (or perhaps a “people’s elbow”) for participating in this tensionless-filled slog of a popcorn movie. Indeed, the lumbering and lethargic Skyscraper needs its building inspection permit revoked.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Vadim Grigoriev @ kinoblog.com [Ukrainian]
Sorry To Bother You
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Stree
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Support the Girls
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Support the Girls
Karl Delossantos @ Smash Cut Reviews
- Excerpt: Support the Girls is a charming and emotional day-in-the-life dramedy with another magnificent performance by Regina Hall.
Support the Girls
Aramide Tinubu @ Shadow and Act
- Excerpt: Support the Girls works well, not just because of Hall who helps bring dignity to what could very well be a very degrading world and job, but also because of the humor and heart sprinkled throughout the narrative.
Tel Aviv On Fire
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: Zoabi uses farcical comedy as his warm-hearted messenger, presenting his argument with a disarming hug and a surprising dash of romance.
Three Identical Strangers
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: Three Identical Strangers is in turns fascinating, amusing, shocking, infuriating and ultimately sad yet thoroughly engrossing.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
Emmanuel Báez @ Cinéfiloz [Spanish]
Tully
Joao Pinto @ Portal Cinema [Portuguese]
Unsane
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: In terms of story, writers Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer’s screenplay explores a timely subject concerning one of society’s core, debilitating issues: our inability to believe victims, in specific women.
Upgrade
Emmanuel Báez @ Cinéfiloz [Spanish]
Upgrade
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Leigh Whannell’s second feature is a highly original slice of genre love. Aside from that, Whannell opens up an important conversation about humanity in regards to our relationship to technology.
Where Hands Touch
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Asante refuses to erase the complexity of the situation at-hand. This film is about identity above all and that goes for those looking down the barrel and those holding the gun.
The Wife
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Glenn Close masterfully conveys the nuance of a character that both loves and resents her companion in equal measure.
The Wild Boys
Josh Brunsting @ The CriterionCast
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
- Excerpt: I aspire now to be a Healer not a Hurter, thanks to Mr. Rogers.
You Were Never Really Here
Roderick Heath @ Film Freedonia
- Excerpt: Ramsay has so completely coalesced (her) influences, as well as the familiar touchstones of a thriller plot (…) into her own peculiar sensibility that the whole deal emerges not as a compulsive work of suspense and catharsis but as a bad dream from which both the heroes and the viewer are trying to wake.
You Were Never Really Here
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Phoenix’s performance isn’t in the words, rather in the soft looks he flashes to himself in the mirror, the confused anger in his eyes when dealing with violence, the sad memories rolling across his face when he’s alone. The movie examines how someone who’s come from brutal abuse can either sink or swim in their own violence later.
Yuva
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: In the moments when Yeksan’s film is good, it is truly stunning.
2017 Films
Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A poignant documentary revealing how the lives of these two iconic showbiz stars were so tenderly intertwined.
Cold SKin
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Gens sabia disso, pelo que construiu a narrativa em torno dos humanos, explorando questões como o isolamento, as adaptações ao meio e aquilo que se considerava humanidade. Se tivesse lugar noutro planeta seria um território fértil para ficção-científica que aqui se disfarça de ouros géneros.
Coleville
Mark Harris @ Black Horror Movies
Fake Blood
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Com uma frescura que o terror não costuma ter, o filme prima por levantar questões. A demanda por respostas fracassa, pelo que cada um terá de chegar às suas próprias conclusões.
The Guardians
Peter Nellhaus @ Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee
Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Desde cobras e esventramentos a delírios alucinogénios, para não referir o pior, “Hagazussa” vai chocar muito. Se for visto depois do almoço, pode causar um profundo desconforto estomacal que obriga a abandonar a sala.
The Ticket
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Dan Stevens shows off his terrific acting chops here, but too many important questions are left unanswered at the film’s end.
Veronica
Nuno Reis @ SciFiWorld Portugal [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Tal como vimos em “Genesis”, este realizador sabe homenagear os clássicos de forma honesta e aqui temos uma aura de época com reflexos do cinema de então, mas tecnologia muito superior. Uma flexilidade de câmara que serve a arte, em vez de a usar.
Wolves
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Despite excellent performances, “Wolves” leaves us unsatisfied because of its predictability and strange last scene.
2016 Films
Brimstone
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
Dancer
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Dancer shows how hard it can be when you are a star before twenty-three who has to give up all other things for ballet dancing and the fame it brings.
Fathers and Daughters
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Excellent cinematography and background music add to this film’s emotional pull, and — other than too many time bounces — Gabriele Muccino’s caring direction impressed me.
Goldstone
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog VI [Croatian]
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: The Great Gilly Hopkins pulls no punches. It is not a sickly sweet movie — but hope and humanity shine through.
The Handmaiden
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A spellbinding tale of love, betrayal and revenge.
Hello My Name Is Doris
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A warm, heart-tugging drama laced with amusing situations that Sally Field and Max Greenfield play to the hilt.
La La Land
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A bittersweet treat for the eyes, the ears and the heart.
