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. 9, 2021
Wide (United States)
Black Widow
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Dachra
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: a strong debut, artful and eerie.
Dachra
Summertime
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While the individual spoken word poets, rappers and singer/songwriters all have unique voices…Estrada has made the whole work beautifully…If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, neither did it mine and yet it is all kinds of wonderful…
2021 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
The Boss Baby: Family Business
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Gaia
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
In the Heights
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Luca
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Les Nôtres
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Summer of Soul
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Werewolves Within
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Zola
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Asia
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Pribar may set our expectations certain ways, once even making me dread the path she had chosen, but her film isn’t the usual mother/daughter movie, upending cliché time and time again in moving and intimate scenes.
A Choice of Weapons: Inspired by Gordon Parks
- Excerpt: John Maggio’s documentary is workmanlike in presentation but scintillating in its content.
Dynasty Warriors
Sebastian Zavala @ MasGamers.com [Spanish]
- Excerpt: It takes itself very seriously AND presents incredibly ridiculous situations at the same time, resulting in a final product with a very serious identity problem.
False Positive
- Excerpt: False Positive threads classic horror-film tropes with a woozy, partially comic sensibility but doesn’t fully commit to this approach.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: Too many scenes too dark to see. Decoding them is misery.
First Date
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Know that you’ll need to embrace [its nightmarish] descent to enjoy it because things can begin to feel laborious if you aren’t in the right headspace.
The Forever Purge
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: A shame The Forever Purge is another bump in the path of modern social commentary as viewed through a horror lens.
The Ice Road
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Liam Neeson battling the natural elements is exciting. The subplot about evil businessmen is not.
The Lost Leonardo
My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Cuartas explores issues of family, morality, and sexuality through a vampiric lens, depicting three siblings connected by blood in far more than just the sense of their family bloodline as they grapple with the prospect of losing each other.
No Sudden Move
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Relying on a twisty plot that shifts around perspectives and affords Soderbergh the chance to mess with the audience through visual choices, I had a blast with this film.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Admirably, Neville has produced no hagiography here, his complex subject coming across warts and all, his ego notable, the man’s manic temperament which contributed to his suicide part and parcel of what made him tick.
Scales
- Excerpt: While Scales is hauntingly beautiful and contains a powerful thread of feminist anger, the story is sparse to a fault, barely summoning enough narrative to fill its already brief running time. Nonetheless, the film’s unique vision announces Ameen as a rising filmmaker to watch.
Scales
Shelagh Rowan-Legg @ ScreenAnarchy
Scenes from an Empty Church
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Leave it to Tukel to take a cynical interpretation of organized religion, wrap it around a moment mired in a crisis of faith, and find a way to embrace the humor and hope.
Silat Warriors: Deed of Death
Brent McKnight @ The Last Thing I See
- Excerpt: Hardcore fans of martial arts cinema should give Silat Warrior: Deed of Death a chance. Outside of that demographic, however, it’s a hard sell.
Sisters on Track
Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: [Answering how Bell pushes these sisters through a broken system] is the film’s strength because it presents a blueprint reaching beyond them alone.
Sweat
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Nuanced, sensitive peek into the world of a social-media influencer, with a beautiful central performance. Uncynical and pragmatic about the seachange human society has endured in the 21st century.
Till Death
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Till Death might not provide the most complicated or nuanced story, but it’s a thoroughly engaging cat-and-mouse thriller that relies on the lead using their wits to survive, and Megan Fox carries you through the twists and turns effortlessly.
Till Death
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While I can easily recommend giving Till Death a shot, it’s difficult not to notice how often it misses its opportunities to fight above its weight class.
Till Death
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: The film tackles trauma in a compelling way through Fox’s protagonist and the harrowing journey she must undertake to be free of her husband’s figurative, and literal, shackles.
The Tomorrow War
Sarah Marrs @ LaineyGossip.com
- Excerpt: The Tomorrow War desperately wants to be Independence Day but it misses the point of that film.
The Tomorrow War
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: The Tomorrow War is a great big Frankenstein’s monster of a movie. It’s cobbled together from pieces of other science-fiction films.
The Tomorrow War
Aaron Neuwirth @ We Live Entertainment
- Excerpt: Many will have a closer encounter with their screen to watch it than what could have been, but this alien invasion flick is a solid summer watch.
2020 Films
Midway
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
2019 Films
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street is an extraordinary, long overdue documentary that attempts to examine the initially negative reception towards A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and how that ultimately affected Patton as an at the time closeted gay man, as well as how it affected his career.
