‘The Purge’ but for sex.
‘One Night Only’
In an alternate-universe New York, where sex between unmarried people is only legal for 12 hours, Allie (Monica Barbaro) and Owen (Callum Turner) meet cute in this Will Gluck rom-com.
From our review:
“One Night Only” lays no claim to logic. It traffics instead in charisma, and the combined likability of the leads is the putative solution to a premise that’s all flashy surface and no deeper inquiry. With nothing to say about sex or society, the repression plot mostly gets in the way of a movie that would prefer to be a routine romance.
In theaters. Read the full review.
‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’
An auteur director (Hannah Einbinder) charged with rebooting a slasher franchise enters a psychosexual entanglement with the star of the first film (Gillian Anderson) in this meta horror movie directed by Jane Schoenbrun.
From our review:
“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” feels like it’s constantly teetering on the edge of heavy-handedness — the killer in the series, with a ceiling vent for a head, is pointedly called “Little Death” — but Schoenbrun has a delightful handle on tone, looping between melodrama, cartoonishly bloody homage and full-on fantasia.
In theaters. Read the full review.
‘Late Fame’
Idolized by a new generation of New York City literary types, Ed (Willem Dafoe), a retired poet, rediscovers his passion in this dramedy directed by Kent Jones.
From our review:
The style matches the story; you can imagine a youthful Ed, and his young friends two generations later, crowding into a small theater to watch movies just like this one. “Late Fame” is a story of a certain sort of wistful foolishness, affectionately told.
In theaters. Read the full review.
‘Tony’
Dominic Sessa stars as a young Anthony Bourdain in this biopic directed by Matt Johnson.
From our review:
The story is slight, but by concentrating on this crucial sliver of a teeming life, Johnson gets at something deeper and more universal than a wider focus might have allowed. In the end, this captivating movie may be less about the birth of a chef than about the making of a man.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Trapped by its own premise.
‘The Last House’
A pleasant family discovers they’ve been sealed in their suburban home by mysterious forces.
From our review:
“The Last House,” written by Matthew Robinson (“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”) and directed by Louis Leterrier (who helped inaugurate the “Transporter” franchise), splits the difference between willful fuzziness and unsatisfying explanations. Obvious issues raised by the premise are barely addressed.
Watch on Netflix. Read the full review.
‘Ice Cream Man’
The latest from the director Eli Roth features an evil ice cream man whose sweet treats turn kids into killers.
From our review:
Roth has said that when he and his “Ice Cream Man” co-writer Noah Belson get together, “we’re basically 12-year-olds.” It shows. Tonally, this film is the cinematic equivalent of a tween’s DQ Blizzard order: a frenzied mix of puerile comedy and stomach-churning jolts that leaves behind a scary-movie sugar rush and little else. That’s not necessarily an aspersion; summer horror runs on empty calories.
In theaters. Read the full review.
‘Olmo’
This coming-of-age film directed by Fernando Eimbcke centers on a Mexican American family living in New Mexico in 1979.
From our review:
Eimbcke and his fellow writer, Vanesa Garnica, locate the stakes in ordinary life, embracing its indignities and intimacies until the film, wonderfully anchored by clever scoring, becomes something like a song itself.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A marriage of love and tragedy.
‘Julian’
Based on a true story, this drama directed by Cato Kusters follows the artist Fleur Pierets and her wife, Julian Boom, whose plan of marrying in every country where it’s legal for them is tragically cut short.
From our review:
Kusters and her fellow writer, Angelo Tijssens, deftly maneuver the fragmentation of time and the looping memories that accompany grief. Working on her lecture, Fleur watches videos that she and Julian took during their travels. Their love lives in the movie’s present, but also its past tense in ways that resists closure. As it marks ends and beginnings, “Julian” honors a love abridged and enduring.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Compiled by Kellina Moore.
