Brianna Zigler

Heel wants to have its cake and eat it too, to present this darkly comic absurdity while dipping back into reality only when it suits the film.

Father Mother Sister Brother depicts with earnest melancholy the things taken for granted in life that don’t become real until after death, but its stiffness keeps it from being a work of true emotional significance.

Sentimental Value successfully synthesizes metaphor and nuanced character drama to convey the way suffering ripples outward—even if it’s hard to shake the feeling that, like its protagonist, it should let us in a little deeper.

Byrne excels at evoking pain and exhaustion, but also selfish ambivalence, and the kind of frazzled mother character she played in the Insidious franchise is put to far better use by Bronstein.

Eenie Meanie largely coasts on clichés, every brief high point deflated by its worldview.

The profound depth of feeling generated by Brie and Franco in the midst of this genre film, one perhaps unattainable if they weren’t also married in real life, gives Together a real shot as the greatest romance of the year.

Though Offerman buoys the film with terrifying aplomb, Sovereign is a missed opportunity to examine the cascading fallout from living in a country that fails its people and breeds violence.

The central conceit quickly feels like window dressing for a film that wants to be in a particular genre but hasn’t put in any real effort to fit there.

Everything’s Going To Be Great tries to tackle ideas related to perceptions of success, acceptance, family, religion, love, homosexuality, and probably some other things thrown in there too. But there is no commitment to any of them.

There is a better film somewhere in Bring Her Back, but it has instead been formatted into an unrewarding and unrelenting exercise in unpleasantness.