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: Jan. 14, 2022
Wide (United States)
Belle
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Scream
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2022 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
Don’t Look Up
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House of Gucci
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Licorice Pizza
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The Lost Daughter
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The Matrix Resurrections
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The 355
- Excerpt: The 355 checks all the boxes in terms of diversity and inclusion, but fails to deliver on anything else.
The 355
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Take The 355 at face value and enjoy the ride. Kruger and Nyong’o elevate the material to a level it probably doesn’t deserve with Chastain and Cruz following closely behind.
The 355
Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
The House
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: this three part stop motion animation featuring the same manse in three separate time periods is a stunning piece of craft and wild imagination verging from haunting fairy tale to creepy/weird/funny parable to hopeful cat puppet drama.
The Last Thing Mary Saw
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The acting is effective throughout and the period aesthetic stays true to a slow and quiet trajectory skewing more towards a menacing air than full-on suspense.
See for Me
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Debuting feature screenplay writers Adam Yorke and Tommy Gushue reshuffle a bunch of genre clichés so that their deck comes out just off kilter enough to keep us interested by defying expectations
The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
- Excerpt: The personal and the political are fully intertwined in filmmaker Pushpendra Singh’s fourth feature, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs, which begins a weeklong run at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on January 12. Adapted from a story by acclaimed Rajasthani author Vijaydan Detha—making it the second of Singh’s features to draw upon Detha’s work—the film mixes the magic of centuries-old folklore with the modern realities of human migration.
Sundown
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: This is a showcase for Roth to portray a lost soul too numb to feel anything beyond surface reality.
The Whaler Boy
2021 Films
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The result is funny. You must laugh because the only other option is crying [since] logic and grace are meaningless in the face of loudly boorish ignorance.
C’mon C’mon
Josh Taylor @ The Forgetful Film Critic
- Excerpt: If you’re looking for something, anything, to lift your spirits out of the sewer that is our current moment and forget for 108 precious minutes that there is a raging plague all around us, look no further than the best film of 2021, Mike Mills’s newest effort, C’mon C’mon.
Cryptozoo
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: It’s a straightforward test of compassion wherein utopia must burn for its builders to understand it was never a utopia in the first place.
Cyrano
A Hero
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: The pieces are worth a bit more than the whole simply because the lesson being taught isn’t necessarily one that needs to be constantly compounded by more examples of itself.
Poupelle of Chimney Town
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While the film is first and foremost about Lubicchi having someone to call his friend, it’s also a rather incisive critique on capitalism, misinformation, and totalitarianism.
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a great introduction to Hamaguchi…an original anthology that won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The film features an exceptional ensemble working with Hamaguchi’s playful yet insightful script
The Worst Person in the World
David “DC” Bolling @ DC’s Take
- Excerpt: Being unfamiliar with his work, this being my first blood from his filmography, this could’ve easily been your pretty traditional story of a protagonist learning how to grow up and understand who she is. Perhaps, but in the hands of someone like Trier, who can bring it all to life and connect on all levels, it’s possible.
