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: May 20, 2022
Wide (United States)
Downton Abbey: A New Era
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Men
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Cane Fire
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The whole possesses a pretty consistent narrative timeline as each new step builds off the last with more invasive measures keeping colonialists’ descendants fat and happy.
Emergency
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Carey Williams and K.D. Dávila combine a blackly comedic buddy comedy adventure a la 1990’s “House Party” with the hot topic, if long systemic, predicament of young men of color being viewed as guilty by their very appearance.
Hold Your Fire
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a gripping account of a landmark police confrontation with armed hostage takers…But while one can appreciate Forbes trusting his audience to parse conflicting testimony, one also wishes more facts were provided to answer some obvious questions.
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Forbes is] presenting the facts that surrounded this landmark crime. [He’s] peeling back the layers of manipulation to ultimately reveal a truth we all know too well: America is a white supremacist nation built upon violence.
Mondocane
- Excerpt: Yet despite a keen sense of style and some great performances from the young cast, Mondocane fails to truly capture the imagination in the way so many other dystopian thrillers have done before.
2022 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Happening
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Innocents
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Master
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Moonfall
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All My Puny Sorrows
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Despite Johnny Mandel and Michael Altman’s legendary theme to MASH, suicide is anything but painless. It does bring on many changes, but with it come heartbreak, confusion and years and years of searching for a punctuation, an end-mark, an answer.
All the Old Knives
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Amazon Prime, what are you doing? 2002 nostalgia? Is that what this is? All the Old Knives employs all the old post-9/11 hack-fried government paranoia and disorientation. A little “24” here, a little Bourne Identity there, fused with the kinds of clip-editing, ominous music and who-do-you trust aesthetics that have padded Liam Neeson’s post-Taken career. How does one approach it now? 20 years on, what is the point of re-hashing this stuff?
Firestarter
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: From bleeding eyes to self-inflicted wounds to balls of fire, there’s no shortage of chilling acts performed strictly by characters’ minds.
Firestarter
- Excerpt: Firestarter feels like the pilot episode of a series that wasn’t picked up, and maybe a miniseries is where this reboot should have gone. The story is short and bland and fizzles out by the end.
Firestarter
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: It’s one of the worst movies ever made from a Stephen King novel.
Firestarter
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Teems has stripped things so far that this Firestarter feels like a sizzle reel selling promise rather than a consumable work: patting itself on the back for pulling an era-specific work into the present while forgetting everything else.
The House
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: THE HOUSE is three stories about a peculiar house, in the past, present, and future, though the stories are not really consistent with each other.
Montana Story
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Montana Story is a film of uncommon depth and meaning.
Montana Story
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The climax lives up to the expectations. Teague and Richardson had spent almost ninety minutes internalizing their reactions to not give the other an inch and suddenly the filter is removed.
My So-Called Selfish Life
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Dismantles myths about motherhood and misconceptions about child-free women with brisk, cheeky humor and intersectionality, and begins to build the cultural scripts we need for paths without kids.
Operation Mincemeat
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A competent World War II espionage drama supported by a talented ensemble.
Our Father
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The manipulative filmmaking undercuts what is being told, making the doc more about the beast than the people.
Pleasure
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: That the porn industry is ruled by the patriarchy and women are objectified and abused is really all “Pleasure” has to offer, its ‘theme’ represented by a score contrasting male rap with ethereal female chorales.
Pleasure
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While Thyberg’s unrelenting vision puts its truth into the public forum, it’s Kappel’s performance that gives it purpose. Not every dream is a fairy tale.
Senior Year
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A million humorous possibilities exist in the premise, but the film finds none of them.
Senior Year
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: An overcaffeinated 12-year-old could have written this.
Senior Year
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This is Rebel Wilson’s best movie. Like Buster Keaton, she left me exhausted at the end of the show.
Top Gun: Maverick
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …isn’t only better than the original, it is the quintessential Tom Cruise movie, the best we can expect from a movie preordained to be a summer blockbuster. Is it perfect? No.
Torn Hearts
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Torn Hearts fits perfectly alongside 12 Hour Shift and Lucky in that it allows [Grant] to have fun with the material without losing the effective weight of its inherent character-driven drama.
2021 Films
Nightmare Alley
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Tragedy of Macbeth
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Encounter
Mark Leeper @ Mark leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: ENCOUNTER starts out with hints of an alien invasion, but this is more a story of a mentally disturbed father kidnapping his sons.
