Summertime means one thing for movie lovers like me. It's the season of sequels. But this season feels depressing and monotonous to me.

Of course this film has jump scares and people dying, but it surprisingly doesn't have too much of that, because it remains focused on the psychological horror of grief and how that grief changes the members of this family.

I'm all for films that avoid predictability, try to do something different, and push the artistic boundaries of the medium. But it turns out a film that tries too hard to be an experiment in ideas or transcendence can be just as boring as an ordinary film trying to make some money.

The Mother follows in the footsteps of past Netflix releases The Grey Man from July of 2022 with Ryan Gosling (First Man, 2018) or Lou from September 2022 with Allison Janney (Bad Education, 2019) in that it's not very interesting, fresh, or exciting.

The production design is grandiose and out of this world, and the special effects makeup is mostly impeccable excluding the surplus of animal heads on upright human-like bodies. But all the good things about this film aren't enough to make it terrific.

Beau is Afraid is largely about difficult emotions and how those emotions stay with a person through different stages of life. It's a contemporary odyssey of what the world looks like through a lens of crippling anxiety, doubt, and panic.

Paint ends up being an example of what happens when you don't make enough decisions in a film's focus, its direction, and its identity. Maybe I just have the "wrong" sense of humor for this one.

With an all-star cast, a true story about real people, and lots of sports statistics, the new film Air seems to have it all to be a successful crowd pleaser. I learned many new things about Nike and Michael Jordan's parents throughout this film. Air just doesn't have enough heart or feeling to make it memorable.

Hive is the feature film debut from writer/director Blerta Basholli who presents a realistic, unglamorous, quiet view of her home country Kosovo and the societal effects of war. The narrative is patient and plain, but the emotions it explores are surprisingly complex.

Moments of thrills and moments of calm. The film just doesn't fulfill its possibilities of being a more nuanced or lively version to get more viewers to watch it.