Movie reviews of Hope Madden

What they create together is harrowing, but it’s also a brilliant piece of filmmaking that needs to be seen. Review

Driven by a smart script, excellent supporting work (both Amy Rutledge and Kathleen Brady are wonderful), and an unerring lead turn, Rent-A-Pal delivers an alarming kind of origin story. Review

The way the story resolves itself is a puzzle, and not an especially satisfying one. With Entwined, Nikolakakis boasts some impressive storytelling instincts, but there’s still room for growth. Review

The fight choreography is wonderous, as are the gorgeous vistas. Review

The film—almost exclusively talking head footage of interviews with the seven refugees—remains strangely captivating throughout. Because of the music, the dance, the poetry and the candor, a deeply human and powerfully universal story emerges. Review

Immortal is essentially an anthology of short films, and in fact, the pieces do not intersect, nor do they clarify much. Instead, they offer four slices of life—well, slices of not death—and an intriguing look at what death means to us. Review

New Mutants is a film trying too hard to cash in on proven youth market formulas, but the concoction fizzles. It doesn’t really work as an angsty romance, misses the mark as a horror movie and never for a minute feels like a superhero flick. Review

This David Copperfield has its own lunatic charm to burn. Gone are the laugh out loud moments as well as the bitter aftertaste of Iannucci’s best work, but in their place is a lovely time. Review

The horror is light, the comedy raucous, the fun explosive. Get Duked! may not change you, but it will brighten your mood. Review

There’s a lonesome transience to the story, a feeling of impermanence that’s frightening, sad and just slightly freeing. Lingua Franca tells a lovely, sad story that’s very much worth hearing. Review

There are about a dozen too many nightmare sequences and the end is simply nonsense, but for horror fans, it’s not a bad time. Review

By enlisting a female character to behave so erratically in service of a weak story, Pretorious seems to be intentionally pointing out the idiotic leaps in logic audiences are willing to make. Review

Does the leap from Salem to Western ghost town make sense? It does not. But for a witchtastic Western, is it fun? Edgar Allen Poe couldn’t have made it any more fun. Review

It’s a mainly competent but frequently lazy flick with gore to spare and some fun animations, but it could have been a lot more. Review

His film plays with your preconceptions but never substitutes clever gimmick for story. The result is a sly, entirely satisfying journey into love, loneliness and how little we understand each other. Review

Bechelder’s footage never glamorizes its leads. Their candor, idealism and even their missteps and shortcomings as politicians are on display, giving the film a transparency and authenticity. Review

Part Venom, part Alien and all manner of Russian, the film pulls in images and ideas that feel familiar—sometimes too familiar—but the execution maintains your interest. Review

The film is absolutely a mash note to rock’s most rebellious rag. Review

The circular logic isn’t as tight as Young may think it is, but again, Limbo provides serviceable fun. No scares and not a ton of laughs—indeed, where Young is hoping to land on the horror-comedy spectrum is a bit muddy—but thanks mainly to a game cast, Limbo is still a pretty good time. Review

Out Stealing Horses can’t quite make the current-day footage ache or resonate quite so clearly. The events adult Trond deals with feel artificial, a forced structure. But that doesn’t rob the film of its magic. Review

Though the execution lacks polish, Spinster makes up for most of that with Peretti’s cynical charm and its own quiet determination to subvert its chosen genre. Review

You Never Had It will not entertain everyone equally, but it will thrill a handful of people and you know who you are. Review

From beginning to end, the film transmits a quiet, creeping dread. Seimetz can’t entirely capitalize on the intoxicating world she’s created, but hers is a unique voice and beguiling vision. Review

Bustamante’s film is a slow boil as interested in those who’ve tacitly accepted evil as it is in those who’ve committed it. What goes unsaid weighs as heavily as what happens in front of us. Impressively, this is also the first horror film in decades to make truly effective use of a dream sequence. Review