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: Dec 25, 2020 & Jan. 1, 2021
Wide (United States)
News of the World
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Promising Young Woman
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Wonder Woman 1984
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
The Dissident
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: It all gels together perfectly for a fast-paced, poignant, and essential narrative despite being so densely packed with exposition and peripheral context.
2020 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Ammonite
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Assistant
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Beanpole
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Boys in the Band
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Boys State
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Croods: A New Age
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Emma.
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
First Cow
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Happiest Season
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Hillbilly Elegy
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Mank
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Martin Eden
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Midnight Sky
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Mulan
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Nomadland
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Over the Moon
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Palm Springs
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Personal History of David Copperfield
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Prom
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Soul
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Sound of Metal
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Tenet
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The Trial of the Chicago 7
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Wolf of Snow Hollow
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Archenemy
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Mortimer compensates by highlighting the delusional fallacy some hide behind to excuse the pain they inflict by overinflating the value of the protection they provide.
Archenemy
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: Makes for a loopy action-adventure film, filled with raw energy and a muddled story.
The Black Emperor of Broadway
Bev Questad @ It’s Just Movies
- Excerpt: Brilliantly written, brilliantly portrayed, brilliantly directed and perfectly timed, “Black Emperor of Broadway” is the film of the year. It combines the thoughts of the BLM movement, Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an AntiRacist” and Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” in a moving depiction of white privilege and arrogance that compromised the lives of black people in America through time.
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: So yes. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a documentary. Just because the reality and humanity it captures is heightened doesn’t make it any less pure.
Breach
Sandy Schaefer @ Comic Book Resources
- Excerpt: Breach isn’t scary or remotely original, but there are moments when it provides some amusingly cheesy sci-fi action/horror entertainment.
Concrete Plans
- Excerpt: Rural horror and class warfare make for happy bedfellows in Will Jewell’s accomplished thriller.
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: More than an exercise for today, Dick Johnson Is Dead becomes a time capsule for tomorrow.
Durgamati: The Myth
Kathy Gibson @ Access Bollywood
Education
- Excerpt: What the Small Axe anthology repeatedly tells us over the course of these five films is that looking for help from the powers that be is almost always a fruitless endeavor anyways; if you want to make real change, you have to fight for it yourself, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Falling
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
Farewell Amor
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Achieves that rare cinematic feat of being specific and universal at the same time. A lovely film, plaintive and poignant, with exquisite performances from a beguiling cast, and ultimately hopeful.
Fatale
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieRevews.com
- Excerpt: A densely plotted and devilishly twisted erotic fantasy of a noir
Greenland
Matt Oakes @ Silver Screen Riot
- Excerpt: A disaster-thriller that champions humanity over calamity, ‘Greenland’ is a welcome reminder of the oft-out-of-nowhere thrills that await us at the cineplexes.
Half Brothers
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Herself
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Herself
Chris Barsanti @ Slant Magazine
- Excerpt: Phyllida Lloyd’s film cannot escape its own somewhat mundane self-set contours.
Hunter Hunter
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Hunter Hunter is one of 2020’s biggest horror surprises
I’m Your Woman
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: It is gritty yet elegant, and takes film noir into it own genre, femme noir.
I’m Your Woman
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: That Hart and Horowitz can unravel a simple premise into this complex web of cyclical progressions and endearingly complicated lives is a testament to their talents.
The Infinite Race
- Excerpt: Director Bernando Ruiz focuses more on the Rarámuri culture, and individual members of the community, than he does on the annual race, so this is an unusual entry in ESPN’s 30 for 30 series. Not that I’m complaining—the film is fascinating and you can’t help but admire the traditional way of life the Rarámuri are endeavoring to preserve.
Let Them All Talk
Amir Siregar @ Amir at the Movies [Indonesian]
- Excerpt: Let Them All Talk’ is a slow-moving cruise but the acting is so comfortably genuine that it’s a really enjoyable, delightful ride.
Lingua Franca
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Lingua Franca’s power resides [in its depictions of] lost souls confronting impossible choices that pit their comfort against their humanity.
Luxor
Dennis Schwartz @ Dennis Schwartz Reviews
- Excerpt: A low-key film I dearly admired for its ability to have so much breath and to say so much by saying so little.
Max Cloud
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Max Cloud is a somewhat perfunctory, but pretty fun time. Its nostalgic indulgences prove to be rather charming, especially with Scott Adkins’ tongue-in-cheek performance.
Max Cloud
- Excerpt: There are moments when it springs to life as it goes hard on a fight scene (Fight Coordinator Dawid Szatarski of the Andy Long Stunt Team deserves a shoutout for some fun set pieces that incorporate the film’s video game inspirations), letting Adkins do his thing, or when it doubles down on its 16-bit roots. But there’s just not enough here to sustain a feature, unfortunately.
Minari
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: It has the peppery crunch of its eponymous Korean herb, but also the satisfying flavor
The New Mutants
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It’s a film that remains a bit half-baked, and that doesn’t convince either as a superhero film, or as a drama or horror film.
One Night in Miami
Derek Deskins @ Edge Media Network
- Excerpt: One Night in Miami still possesses all of the trappings necessary to reap armloads of awards, but underneath the preconceptions and headlines is an intimate story of four men. King creates a space where the characters are able to strip away their costumes of celebrity and delve into the far more human elements of life.
The Painter and the Thief
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Songbird
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: An appalling melange of insipid disaster drama and implausible romance with a bit of dystopian satire thrown in. This is a crass cash-in meant to prey on our pandemic anxieties, not grapple with them.
Sylvie’s Love
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Eugene Ashe has fashioned a sweeping, soapy old-fashioned romance dripping in old Hollywood style glamour, a milieu star Thompson takes to like a duck to water.
Sylvie’s Love
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Eugene Ashe breathes new life into the classical, old Hollywood romance. Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha have wonderful chemistry.
Sylvie’s Love
Time
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Texan Reviews
Unearth
- Excerpt: Deftly escalates nervous tension, then shifts into body horror most recently experienced in Color Out of Space.
We Can Be Heroes
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: I’d have lost my mind over it when I was ten.
The Wolf House
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: A fascinatingly nightmarish depiction of María’s psychology as PTSD crushes her hope and Stockholm syndrome erases her capacity to [differentiate] friend [from] foe.
The Wolf House
Wolfwalkers
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: A journey into another era allowing the viewer to bask in an ethereal mood. I rarely experience that in contemporary films.
World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: More akin to Hertzfeldt’s older, more irreverent shorts like Rejected than its predecessors in this franchise. But the result is no less memorable.
2019 Films
Finding Steve McQueen
Sebastian Zavala @ Ventana Indiscreta [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It favours scenes of funny interactions between characters, with funny one-liners […], and Travis Fimmel acting almost as “drunk” as in ‘Warcraft’.
