Movie reviews of Alex Brannan

For what it’s worth, the film’s washed out gray aesthetic works well for this more dramatic final tone. And the three young actors — who are asked to carry the film from start to finish — provide fairly strong, emotional performances. Review

Me and My Victim wants to be about the messiness of modern relationships. Instead, it is a messy film, where the potentially potent questions are actively suppressed by the filmmaker. Review

The imbalances make the watching experience of House of Sayuri a strange one, but the film certainly has its strong suits. Review

Thälker should be praised for their striking performance, which is the highlight and the centerpiece of the picture. Review

In any case, The Soul Eater is not nearly as bad as The Deep House or Leatherface, but it also doesn’t impress as a mostly run-of-the-mill crime film. Review

These are minor visual treats in what is otherwise a tedious experience of senseless action-comedy spectacle. The film has the energy but not the substance. Review

The long and short of it is that Cuckoo nails the setup and bombs the punchline. Review

The Beast Within never sets out to take a light approach to these tropes. Still, the conflation of something disturbingly true to life and something outlandishly fantastical results in a muddy exploration that never goes further than skin deep. Review

From My Cold Dead Hands is adding fleetingly little to the conversation. Review

My issue with the film is not visual. It is with the story. Everything in the script is just slightly overwritten. Review

In certain theatrical moments, it feels like silent cinema, yet it is also strikingly contemporary in its concerns and approach to genre. As some of the best films are, it is difficult to categorize. This elusiveness plays to the film’s strengths. Review

T’s morbidly fascinating, so long as you can sit through a first act where two guys call each other “dude” and bicker at each other. Review

Kill is a film of excess, but it is also a film which calls into question the gratuitousness of its own violence while simultaneously relishing in the extremity. In doing this, it manages to come off as refreshingly new while doing things that are quite familiar. Review

The film relies heavily on its mysterious plot to carry the load. It’s simply too much weight for that mystery to hold. Review

I was initially rapt by the presentation of In a Violent Nature. The simple re-alignment of POV, in which the audience is often positioned one step behind the killer, staring at the back of his head as he clomps slowly through the woods, is effective. As a genre exercise, though, I think the film misses the mark. Review

Furiosa doesn’t require a direct comparison to its predecessor. It stands on its own feet so sturdily that one doesn’t need to have seen Mad Max: Fury Road to settle into the wacky savagery that is the Wasteland. Review

Lundy-Paine deserves some form of “revelation” title, as their performance reveals so much, and in such dramatic fashion, without ever losing sight of the character’s human characteristics. Review

IF is so concerned with making you feel (anything at all, but mostly melancholy and sad) that it forgets to be fun. The few moments that are dedicated to being joyful and full of life are at such a disconnect from the maudlin attempts to pull at the heartstrings that the whole thing feels off-putting. Review

The cast is all game and give delightful performances across the board. Straddled with the most straight-laced character, Barrera has the least to do. But Kathryn Newton, Dan Stevens, Angus Cloud, and Kevin Durand are perfectly ham-fisted. Review

Individual scenes don’t work enough at establishing a foundation for a new period of Apes films. There is no Caeser here to ground a lengthy epic yarn on, nor a Charlton Heston figure to provide magnetic personality to this environment. Review

Crisp camera movements and a few minorly inventive blocking ideas make for diverse and dynamic sequences that keep the film lively and enjoyable to watch. Review

Guy Ritchie is entirely capable of composing quality action sequences. Some of the ones in here are entertaining on that shut-off-the-brain level. But the spectacle sours into tedium as the fascinating real-life story is consistently replaced with monotonous violence. Review

Late Night with the Devil is a bit of light horror entertainment (it’s less scary and more spooky). What it lacks in narrative, thematic, and emotional depth it makes up for in clever spectacle. Review

What makes it easy to forgive these minor issues is the film’s cast. Zendaya, Faist, and O’Connor give the best performances I’ve seen this year to date. Review