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: Apr. 29, 2022
Wide (United States)
Memory
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Hatching
Gregory Carlson @ southpawfilmworks.net
Hatching
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Writer Ilja Rautsi wittily associates such things as bulimia with a mother bird’s regurgitation of food for its young while offering a monstrous version of motherhood as good, protective example compared to the reality on display here.
2022 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Alice
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Ambulance
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Bad Guys
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Deep Water
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Dual
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Everything Everywhere All at Once
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Lost City
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Marry Me
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Moonfall
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Northman
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
X
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Anchor
- Excerpt: Despite the somewhat obvious story (particularly for fans of crime movies) “The Anchor” emerges as a rather entertaining and interesting movie, that juggles its comments and its thriller premises excellently, highlighting in the process Jung’s direction and the great performances.
Bad Roads
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: …often shocking in its brutality, especially considering it is depicting Ukraine five years before Putin’s full scale invasion… a stark reminder of how quickly our humanity can disappear during war.
The Cellar
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Muldowney tragically treats [his characters] more like integers in an equation than people. It all adds up, but I sadly felt nothing.
Choose or Die
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I might have preferred a film that was much more sure of itself, one in which the screenwriter scaled things back and made them more accessible. Trying to get into a room, let’s just say, and not get killed over and over and over. Let’s start there.
The Contractor
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: From its performances, to the action sequences, and its economical storytelling, it moves really well, and it puts in the effort to make good on everything it needs to in the time that it has, while also offering a little bit of food for thought in the process.
The Contractor
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: But the film is forgiven because of its excellent acting, thought-provoking questions and revelations related to business, power and money.
Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I didn’t enter into the Netflix three-part docu-series Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes with a lot of enthusiasm for it’s subject. I was here because I admire the work of Joe Berlinger.
Cow
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: [Its objectivity] renders the film a litmus test more than anything else since its portrait of imprisoned souls is projected upon by its audience rather than projecting an agenda of its own onto them.
Cow
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: But as I gaze at the mother cow’s face in Arnold’s film, there seems to be something else, some bond I feel with universal life, where I can’t help but feel compassion and responsibility.
Cracked
- Excerpt: “Cracked” does not exactly reinvent the genre, and one could say that the cliches here are rather many. However, the combination of all the elements present and the visuals of the movie result in a horror that is definitely bound to satisfy fans of the category.
The Duke
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: This is a great story, beautifully told, combining a do-gooder with a heart of gold with the only theft in the history of the National Gallery.
The Duke
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: You almost have to wonder how a story this crazy needed sixty years to finally get a big screen adaptation, but I’m glad it did since I don’t think anyone could have filled Bunton’s shoes quite like the affable Broadbent.
Father
The Girl and the Spider
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s that dreamlike quality that makes the Zürchers’ work so memorable and resonant because it allows the performances to shine above plot—the just left of center reality allowing the actors to exist inside their heads as much as out.
Guantanamo Diary Revisited
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: It is a documentary of uncommon depth that compels deep thought about American decision-making both in the military and at the highest levels of US government.
Kuthiraivaal
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: What should have been fun and/or intriguing is instead ponderous.
Love Nonetheless
- Excerpt: “Love Nonetheless” is a very interesting and entertaining film, and hopefully, a stepping stone for the pinku industry to adapt to current times and become relevant once more.
Marvelous and the Black Hole
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Tsang does a wonderful job keeping the emotions authentically raw along the way, never shying from the pain Sammy is experiencing as her flipped-upside-down life is seemingly being turned right-side-up by everyone but her.
Marvelous and the Black Hole
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: Marvelous and the Black Hole is the most harmless movie that I’ve seen in a while. I was in a good mood watching it, and maybe that helped. Were I in a sour mood, it’s cuteness might have been galling.
My Little One
Bev Questad @ itsjustmovies.com
- Excerpt: Together, their characters cross-stitch into an outstanding ensemble of exceptional art, founded in a belief that we actually do have the freedom to create the life we want – to a certain extent.
The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: Unheard Tapes
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: Is there anything new to be learned here? The answer is: Not really.
Navalny
Christopher Reed @ Film Festival Today
- Excerpt: Not to put too fine a point on it, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a murderous psychopath and vile dictator. A former KGB man (albeit but a minor player when he was in the service), he came to power at the end of a decade of misery for the once-proud citizens of the Soviet Union, a country which dissolved itself in 1991.
Noise
- Excerpt: Despite some of the regular faults of Japanese movies, “Noise” is an interesting, entertaining crime film that will satisfy all fans of the genre.
Paris, 13th District
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s that messiness and uncertainty that lends the whole a refreshing authenticity devoid of contrivance or manipulation. This trio is built as human beings above narrative.
Paris, 13th District
Sebastian Zavala @ Cinencuentro.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: The problem is that the film doesn’t seem to have anything new to say, and that many of its characters end up feeling really unsympathetic, because of how cynical, selfish and just plain unpleasant they can be.
Peace by Chocolate
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Jonathan Keijser makes his feature debut with a true story from his Native Nova Scotia which illustrates both the struggles and the triumphs, the foes and friends, of refugees forced to build a new life after losing everything.
Polar Bear
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Though Polar Bear lacks much in plot, awesome vistas is what it’s got. Plus, visual lessons that we need about the Earth’s dangers indeed!
Reroute
- Excerpt: “Reroute” is a movie addressed to people who want their exploitation with a pinch of art-house and drama, in a title that is definitely intriguing to take a look at.
Stanleyville
Allen Almachar @ The MacGuffin
- Excerpt: The more I think about [the film], the more I like it.
The Tale of King Crab
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: I like where this movie has its head. It is slow-going, but it is one of those movies in which you are completely and totally engrossed at every single moment.
Virus :32
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: The result is a series of thrilling action sequences shrouded in darkness. Add a memorable atmosphere of hazy dread augmented by a couple long-takes and the journey proves itself worthy.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Cobb takes the reins in her first feature performance. Whether she’s fooling her audience, fooling herself, or truly falling apart, she is commanding our attention and earning our empathy.
White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch
Jerry Roberts @ Armchair Cinema
- Excerpt: It was only after the turn of the millennium that several employees and former employees began to publicly cry foul by calling out that the company, headed by CEO Mike Jeffries, not only pressed their ads toward beautiful white people but deliberately set hiring practices that kept beautiful white employees up front for the peak shifts and minorities in the back room working night shifts – if they weren’t fired for how they looked.
¿ Y Como Es El?
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: Cleverly melds cringe comedy with emotional resonance.
The Yellow Wallpaper
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Stiflingly literal mounting of the classic feminist tale. Flat and stilted, with no cultural context and no visceral insight into its protagonist’s plight, and emptiness where there should be empathy.
2021 Films
Belfast
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Mauritanian
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Book of Love
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: In BOOK OF LOVE, Henry (played by actor Sam Clafin), has all of Hugh Grant’s mannerisms and Maria (played by lead actress Veronica Echegui) looks like Penelope Cruz. In fact, this film seems assembled from pieces of other films.
Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko
- Excerpt: “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko” is another great title by Studio 4ºC and Ayumu Watanabe, which is bound to satisfy all fans of the modern style of mainstream anime movies, as it was formed by Studio Ghibli (some references actually appear in this film too, as in the featured image).
Munich–The Edge of War
Mark Leeper @ Mark Leeper’s Reviews
- Excerpt: MUNICH–THE EDGE OF WAR is not science fiction, but as a historical drama it veers toward alternate history.
Perhaps Love
- Excerpt: Cho Eun-ji seems to have hit the reef of the first time directors, who frequently try to do as much as possible in the feature debut. However, the result is rather entertaining for the most part while she seems to have many interesting social comments to make, which deem the film hopeful.
Rabid
- Excerpt: As is usually the case with omnibuses, the quality of the segments is not on the same level, with the first one being clearly on a higher level than the rest. Nevertheless, the combination of brief durations, horror and black comedy aesthetics, and intense social commentary work excellently for the omnibus, essentially carrying it from beginning to end.
