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. 19, 2019
Wide (United States)
The Lion King
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Luz
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Luz is not going to be for every body, or even every horror fan, but it has a distinctive and striking vision that will appeal to some.
Luz
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Luz unfolds in a nightmare logic and pace, deliberate and methodical, never moving as expected. It feels unmoored, adrift in a singular world of Singer’s own creation, like an illusionists trick, both experimental and gripping.
Luz
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It’s a sensory masterpiece of nightmarish mood that doesn’t demand a more robust plot to supply it purpose beyond the experiential.
2019 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Apollo 11
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Dark Phoenix
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Greta
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Hotel Mumbai
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Late Night
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Non-Fiction
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Spider-Man: Far from Home
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Stuber
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Toy Story 4
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Wild Nights with Emily
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Wild Rose
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Absurd Accident
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Absurd Accident pulls from various recognizable influences, but writer/director, Li Yuhe, forms it into an entertaining dark comedy that feels wholly its own.
Amazing Grace
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: There’s no story arc, no build to a boffo climax. It’s the Queen of Soul, singing her soul out with amazing grace and unearthly talent.
Armstrong
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: It’s amazing to think that there can still be so much previously unseen footage from the biggest television event in history, and yet here we are at the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with a bus-load of new documentaries claiming new takes, new interviews and, yes, new footage.
Armstrong
The Art of Self-Defense
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: holds up a funhouse mirror to a culture that spits on kindness and worships the alpha male.
The Art of Self-Defense
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Art of Self-Defense is wickedly funny and undeniably relevant.
The Art of Self-Defense
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [Stearns] isn’t trying to prop one form of masculinity above another. He’s dismantling the concept altogether.
The Art of Self-Defense
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: The Art of Self-Defense may not be striving to detail some solution to the way toxicity can override goodwill, but it’s disturbingly funny in a good way.
The Art of Self-Defense
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
- Excerpt: In a cinematic season that’s typically filled with mindless spectacle, Riley Stearns strikes a blow for summer movies with a brain.
The Art of Self-Defense
Asako I and II
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Hamaguchi himself refers to the divide as the Everyday versus the Unexpected, but his his literal symbolism of Ryôhei as harbor after an earthquake versus Baku’s fireworks more aptly translates to safety and solidity versus danger and excitement.
Ask Dr. Ruth
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: A documentary is only as good as its subject, and in Dr. Ruth Westheimer, director Ryan White (The Keepers) has a live one: a 4-foot, 7-inch bundle of irrepressible joy wrapped around a core of impenetrable sadness.
Astronaut
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Just because these are saccharine sentiments inside a generically dramatic trajectory doesn’t discount their inherent worth.
Astronaut
Scott Phillips @ The Movie Isle
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: If you’re a movie buff, this is one of the most exciting movies you’ll see this year. And it should do its part to ensure that Alice Guy-Blaché is, in the words of the current New York Times revisionist obituary series, overlooked no more.
Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: This is an entertaining look at one of the most prominent sports figures of our time, and it’s packed with breathtaking surfing footage.
Birds of Passage
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: Birds of Passage is packed with tropes of the classic Mafia drama. There are imposing godfathers, ambitious up-and-comers, gun-happy loose cannons, psychotics, and gorgeous molls. There are blood feuds, dead bodies, lines drawn and crossed.
Crawl
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Crawl is a refreshingly tight and efficient horror film that delivers exactly what it promises with plenty of style and thrills to spare.
Crawl
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Crawl is never going to be added to the Criterion Collection. The movie is, however, exploitation fare of the highest order.
Crawl
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Crawl is a teeth-gnashing, bone-crunching, white-knuckle thriller.
Crawl
- Excerpt: Creepily engaging and fixating. The bouncy bloodshed in Crawl should inspire those to run rather than walk to a helping of old-fashioned horror-induced hedonism at its celebrated naughtiness.
The Deeper You Dig
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: It’s super slick for such a DIY production, making the most of what it has—off-kilter premise, isolated setting, inherent strangeness—and takes less obvious paths available when you don’t have a ton of external oversight.
Diane
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: Diane is like a brooch discovered in an attic trunk. It’s dusty and a little old-fashioned, but it gives off a glow.
DreadOut
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: When are teens going to learn not to go into haunted abandoned buildings where cult murders took place?
Echo In the Canyon
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a roller coaster of emotion that ultimately proves how incomparable those originals are. So while today’s artists honoring them reinforces this truth, it’s perhaps not in the way they intended.
The Farewell
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: One of the finest family comedy-dramas to come along in some time.
The Farewell
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: Drawing from a deeply personal story, director Lulu Wang’s sophomore feature film shines comedy into drama on a culturally unique situation of gallows humor.
First to the Moon
Glenn Dunks @ The Film Experience
- Excerpt: It’s amazing to think that there can still be so much previously unseen footage from the biggest television event in history, and yet here we are at the 50th anniversary of the moon landing with a bus-load of new documentaries claiming new takes, new interviews and, yes, new footage.
Framing John DeLorean
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: The title appears designed to convey several meanings: the “framing” of DeLorean by the FBI entrapment scheme, the framing of the issue of this enigma of a man, and the framing of a portrait of an American original. Perhaps the ultimate irony of this movie about a man who defies being captured in a movie is this: His most enduring legacy may be in a movie, Back to the Future, which immortalizes his DeLorean DMC car as a time machine.
The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Polished and glossy, it moves along with an easy, rapid momentum, myriad action beats, and another top-tier performance from Ma Dong-seok as a businessman brawler who provides a thoughtful sharpness to this fun, if familiar, crime thriller.
Halston
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: It’s a tale worthy of a classic Greek tragedy. A small-town boy makes good, acquires enormous fame, wealth, and power, and then — through a combination of hubris, miscalculation, tragic flaw, and the cruel hand of fate — crashes to Earth and is destroyed.
Happy Cleaners
- Excerpt: …an indelible and intimate film that captures the wavering spirit of a particular family’s nucleus. Fittingly, Happy Cleaners rinses and dries its revealing American immigrant messaging with candid absorption.
Holy Trinity
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: If, like me, you’re the kind of person who relishes the opportunity to tell casual acquaintances ‘I saw this movie about a paint-huffing dominatrix who talks to the dead the other night,’ you’ll want to prioritize this one.
The Hummingbird Project
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: Imagine drilling — let’s say boring — a tunnel from the Kansas Electronic Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange. Now imagine watching a movie about it — yes, it’s just about that exciting.
I Am Mother
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Radu Jude’s pitch black satire is an uncompromising – if occasionally draggy – look at the necessity for a nation to interrogate its past.
I Feel Good
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Delépine and Kervern have packed their screenplay with so many gags, the movie is enjoyable just for its surface pleasures, but by the film’s musical conclusion they have also proven the joys of a simpler way of life.
Into the Ashes
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Into The Ashes dives into familiar territory in the revenge genre, but the story is gripping, and it features a more moody and contemplative atmosphere that sets itself apart.
Into the Ashes
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: It contains most of my favorite cinematic things—Frank Grillo, violence, a grim revenge tale—but other issues bog down the film and, it brings me no pleasure to report, it simply isn’t very good.
Into the Ashes
Don Shanahan @ Every Movie Has a Lesson
- Excerpt: Like its title, Into the Ashes resides in the crackling smolder instead of the bright flames. There is plenty of heat to burn and brand from that calmer temperature of cinematic coals.
Joy
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A grim portrait of migrant Nigerian prostitutes exploited in Austria.
Master Z: Ip Man Legacy
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Inventive and thrilling, it runs the gamut from incredibly technical martial arts acumen to high-flying wire artistry that calls to mind his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Papi Chulo
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A sensitive portrait of urban loneliness.
Phil
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Dramedy about a depressed middle-ager who tries to unravel the mysteries of life.
Point Blank
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s hardly groundbreaking, but as a throwback to 80s buddy action movies, the leads are solid, the action beats are fun, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Point Blank
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Who cares if the ending of this fast-paced action thriller seems a bit cheesy? It’s the exciting journey that counts.
Porno
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: If you lament the lack of graphic genital torture or exploded testicles in modern horror cinema, you’re in luck. First time director Keola Racela’s Porno has the cure for what ails you.
The Proposal
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: Jill Magid’s extraordinary art project, the genesis and execution of which unfold in this strange, almost dreamlike documentary, is like a story devised by Edgar Allen Poe, or perhaps Edward Gorey.
Ramen Shop
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: It’s a sentimental journey, but the cast plays it beautifully, and the many cooking scenes create a delicious highlight reel along the way.
Ray & Liz
Kent Turner @ Film-Forward.com
Sadako
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Sadako, maintains the standard creepy, atmospheric vibe at the same time it updates the franchise mythology for a YouTube, anything-for-clicks generation. I mean, it’s hard to make a killer VHS tape scary in a day and age when no one even has a VCR, right?
Serial (Bad) Weddings 2
George Zervopoulos @ Movies Ltd [Greek]
- Excerpt: This does not seem so inventive in the jokes of his script, as it describes a simply vivid picture of modern French reality, that does not correspond to the truth.
She’s Just a Shadow
Gregory J. Smalley @ 366 Weird Movies
- Excerpt: Director Adam Sherman has clearly absorbed a Sion Sono and Takashi Miike flick or two, and while the acting is bland and the dialogue may elicit some chuckles, the wild and colorful visuals are up to his influences, and he goes all out to give the audience what they crave, with little filter on the stylish sleaze and depravity.
Sides of a Horn
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A powerful short film that explains the conflict between poachers and rangers over rhinos in Africa.
The Silence of Others
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: The revelations of Franco-era horrors, including some chilling footage of actual mass executions, are stunning.
Skin in the Game
Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A sobering portrait of human trafficking for sex in suburban United States.
South Mountain
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: A powerful female-centered drama that is a meditation on loss and healing.
Sword of Trust
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: aron’s performance as Mel is wonderful, delicate and dirty, and it elevates the film in every way, feeling like something only Maron could deliver. In its ridiculous premise, “Sword of Trust” draws you in and then floors you with its surprising depth and subtle witty humor.
Sword of Trust
- Excerpt: …a spry, absurdist tease below the Mason-Dixon Line that fabulously registers its outlandish lampooning of southern pride and promise in a deadpan ditty that stings with sharpened wit.
Tokyo Drifter
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: The banality of dialogue and incomprehensibility of plot can wear a little thin, but Suzuki keeps things so visually lively that it’s hard to hold the movie’s deficiencies against it.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: The appeal of this stirring documentary is the pleasure it affords in spending of a couple of hours in the world of the great Toni Morrison, her friends, and her literary legacy.
Trespassers
- Excerpt: …is competent enough to embrace its thrill-seeking mediocrity to the point of stimulating, corrosive curiosity. Trespassers is inspired by its high-wire handy-work of invasion horror
Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation
Jonathan Richards @ santafenewmexican.com
- Excerpt: Filmmakers Barak Goodman and Jamila Ephron have done a heroic job of marshaling archival footage from that extraordinary weekend 50 years ago and of documenting the recollections of festivalgoers, voices cracked with age, as they remember the days that shaped their lives and their generation.
2018 Films
Border
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Mandy
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Three Identical Strangers
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Assassination Nation
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
I Think We’re Alone Now
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
Summer of ’84
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis [Spanish]
2017 Films
Marrowbone
Federico Furzan @ Cinelipsis (2017) [Spanish]
