October 11, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Jason Reitman’s print-the-legend look behind the scenes of the birth of a legendary comedy TV fixture succeeds on its breathless “let’s put on a show” energy.
October 4, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This platitude-heavy infomercial for kindness benefits from strong performances and handsome production design.
September 26, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Former ‘Baywatch’ star Pamela Anderson tests her indie art-house credentials in Gia Coppola’s ‘The Last Showgirl’, a slight but engaging portrait of an ageing Las Vegas dancer facing the existential terror of midlife redundancy.
September 24, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Actor turned director Johnny Depp pays indulgent tribute to bohemian artist Amedeo Modigliani, and to himself, in the badly misjudged and barely coherent biopic ‘Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness’.
September 22, 2024
Deborah Young
An imaginatively engrossing essay on feminism and motherhood, Paula Ortiz’s taken-from-history ‘The Red Virgin’ features an unforgettable Najwa Nimri as a stage mother out of hell, who sees her brilliant 16-year-old daughter as a sculpture she has created to change the world in 1930’s Spain.
September 21, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Doomed lovers fight for their right to party in the melodramatic but visually impressive romantic thriller ‘Bound in Heaven’, a strong debut feature from Chinese writer-director Huo Xin.
September 13, 2024
Alonso Duralde
An action-comedy that contains neither, this generic exercise will remain forgotten as Dave Bautista’s star continues to rise.
September 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Lore-crazed fans will devour this animated prequel that is, at the very least, slightly more intentionally funny than the Michael Bay live-action franchise.
September 9, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Animator Chris Sanders concocts a sweet fable about love, parenting, and finding your own path.
September 4, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Joaquin Phoenix and director Todd Phillips return to their billion-dollar killer-clown origin story with the music-stuffed, lavishly staged but dramatically flawed sequel ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’.
September 1, 2024
Alonso Duralde
It takes the combined power of George Clooney and Brad Pitt to maintain interest in this paper-thin farce about rival crime-scene cleaners.
August 31, 2024
Alonso Duralde
White-supremacist violence in the US is an evergreen subject, but this docudrama about an FBI takedown of a racist cell plays like countless other feds-versus-terrorists thrillers.
August 30, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Nicole Kidman delivers another emotionally and physically fearless performance in Halina Reijn’s provocative, kink-themed coming-out story.
August 29, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Pablo Larraín’s third portrait of the private pain of a public woman exists most effectively as a platform for Angelina Jolie’s diva-as-diva performance.
August 28, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Tim Burton’s energetically grotesque sequel proves you can go home again, even when that home is haunted.
August 22, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Zoë Kravitz makes an impressive directorial debut with a twisty, topical thriller in the Jordan Peele/Ira Levin vein.
August 16, 2024
TFV Staff
The Film Verdict (TFV) launches the industry’s first trade audio film reviews with THE FILM VERDICT ON POINT (TFV On Point), a new podcast series that will turn TFV film reviews into audio broadcasts, hosted by Sarah Vianney.
August 14, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Fede Alvarez returns to the well of the original 1979 Ridley Scott hit while adding a few space-screams of his own.
August 8, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This Alpine resort has everything: mood, creepiness, mood… and… well, that’s about it.
August 2, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Too few surprises and too many endings makes for a tension-free thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, despite Josh Hartnett’s best efforts.
July 26, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Ryan Reynolds fires off quips and bullets with equal precision, but both the meta-comedy and the exaggerated violence wear thin before the film’s denouement.
July 16, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This 28-years-later sequel delivers the weather-porn thrills of its predecessor, while managing to be the tiniest bit less silly when the actors open their mouths.
July 7, 2024
TFV Staff
The space race is back in the peppy, bouncy ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, but a sparky face-off between NASA launch director Channing Tatum and marketing wizard Scarlett Johansson can’t disguise an outdated feeling.
July 2, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Even die-hard Minions fans may come away disappointed from this half-hearted fourquel.
June 27, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Not much here that the earlier two films didn’t already establish more effectively; its only depth comes from Lupita Nyong’o’s intuitive lead performance.
June 21, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Writer-director Jeff Nichols relies more on mood than narrative to capture the rebellious spirit of 1960s biker gangs.
June 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This Pixar sequel brings its protagonist into puberty and examines, with humor and poignancy, the complicated process of building an identity.
June 4, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence radiate real “I’d rather be playing golf” energy in this fourth entry of a played-out franchise.
May 30, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This biopic of the first woman to swim the English Channel is total Disney corn, but it goes down easy.
May 27, 2024
TFV Staff
Women’s films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema’s elder statesmen fell out of favor.
May 23, 2024
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
In ‘Beating Hearts’, Gilles Lellouche has produced a gorgeous film that is an epic rumination on love, revenge, class, and the inescapable pull of a certain kind of romance.
May 19, 2024
TFV Staff
AL-TAKDIR is the first bilingual global source of Arab film and entertainment news and film reviews for both the region and international industry.
May 16, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Fails to meet the impossible task of matching, let alone surpassing, its legendary predecessor, but George Miller’s action sequences still pack a punch, even when they reek of déjà vu.
May 8, 2024
Alonso Duralde
If there’s a valid reason to return to this simian franchise, this latest entry never finds it, despite the craftsmanship on display.
May 1, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This valentine to action-packed moviemaking works best when it ignores the plot and focuses on stunt craft and the explosive rom-com banter between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt.
April 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Luca Guadagnino’s twisty, sexy, adult tennis saga entwines three players who understand each other (and themselves) on the court but have a harder time working outside the lines.
April 12, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Alex Garland can mount a battle sequence as well as any filmmaker working today, but the lack of political context and specificity undermines this ambitious film.
April 5, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Dev Patel makes a dazzling directorial debut that mixes stylish ultra-violence with a provocative political point of view.
March 28, 2024
Alonso Duralde
One of the better American Godzilla movies delivers the giant-monster-fighting goods, even if waiting for the grand finale occasionally feels like a chore.
March 20, 2024
Alonso Duralde
A franchise once built on comedy with some creepy ghosts on the side now feels more committed to nostalgic brand-building, sprinkled with forgettable scares and half-hearted attempts at humor.
March 6, 2024
TFV Staff
Brisk, exciting and genuinely funny, ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ is the highlight of this
long-running franchise, furthering the hero’s journey to enlightenment, working wonders
with its ensemble cast, and embracing the philosophical spirit of kung fu.
February 21, 2024
Alonso Duralde
The second chapter of Denis Villeneuve’s epic adaptation delivers on the visual grandeur and political intrigue, even if the characters tend to be reduced to their plot function.
February 19, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Mischievous writer-director Bruno Dumont combines visually dazzling ‘Star Wars’ parody with small-town French farce in his admirably ambitious but muddled space opera ‘The Empire’.
February 17, 2024
Jay Weissberg
Olivier Assayas’s semi-autobiographical reverie ‘Suspended Time’ on his stay in the family home during lockdown, is likely his weakest work, playing like a parody of an intellectualized director’s banal ruminations.
February 17, 2024
Deborah Young
Corporate scientists use memory technology to bring back the dead for a brief reunion with their loved ones (played by Gael Garcia Bernal and Bérénice Bejo), in Piero Messina’s clever but often perplexing ‘Another End’, whose futuristic love story beyond the grave is a mighty challenge to unravel.
February 16, 2024
Deborah Young
A small jewel of an Iranian romantic comedy, ‘My Favourite Cake’ pits an older woman determined to find a measure of happiness against the restrictions of the Islamic regime and the loneliness of aging, while the film’s creators Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling to Berlin.
February 13, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Despite a tangled narrative web, this arachnid superhero saga makes a far better would-be tentpole in Sony’s Spider-verse than ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2’ or ‘Morbius,’ thanks mainly to Dakota Johnson.
February 7, 2024
Alonso Duralde
This female-gaze take on 1980s teen movies must have looked great on paper, but it never comes to life on screen.
February 3, 2024
Stephen Dalton
Rotterdam Film Festival’s 53rd edition balanced an uneven competition program full of sombre three-hour dramas with more adventurous sidebars, essay films, experimental video art and pop superstar guests.
January 31, 2024
Alonso Duralde
Yet another star-packed, high-gloss caper lacking in wit, stakes, charm, or a reason to exist.
