In a media landscape that is thoroughly saturated with postapocalyptic movies centering white families whose stories of survival are assumed to be relatable, cowriter / director R.T. Thorne's debut feature 40 Acres stands out as an inspired new entry in the genre's canon. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, the film plays things straight with its brutal exploration of what it takes for hope to take root in a world that seems doomed.

Set in a near future where the world has been ravaged by a global pandemic, widespread famine, and the outbreak of a new civil war in the United States, 40 Acres tells the tale of Hailey Freeman (Danielle …

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There's a refreshing idealism to Megalopolis. In a time overflowing with grim, nihilistic postapocalyptic stories, Francis Ford Coppola's latest film is a retrofuturistic parable about creating a better world through architecture, science, and dreams. Unfortunately, that sheen fades almost immediately. The film wants viewers to imagine an idealistic future. But its vision for that future is so vague as to be meaningless. For all of its good intentions, Megalopolis is a confusing, bloated disaster.

This shouldn't be too surprising, as the lead-up to the film's release has mostly been focused on one controversy after another. There's the long …

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In Rachel Yoder's novel Nightbitch, an unnamed woman's unfulfilling life playing homemaker becomes so all-consuming that she snaps. She's angry, horny, and hungry, which are all feelings she can understand. But she also suspects that she might be transforming into a dog, an idea that both terrifies and excites her.

All of these beats and plenty of Yoder's prose are present in writer / director Marielle Heller's new adaptation of the 2021 novel. But whereas the book was a deeply weird character study of a woman interrogating what it means to be a mother in a patriarchal society that demands unfaltering perfection, the movie is more of a chee …

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As much as studios love hyping up their latest scary movies as being so terrifying that they traumatize audiences, it is rare for features to live up to that kind of buzz. But The Substance writer / director Coralie Fargeat's new body horror is infinitely more disturbing (a feature, not a bug) than any of its early trailers have let on.

Films about the agony of living up to female beauty standards aren't new, but The Substance weaves them into an incisive feminist parable that feels jacked directly into the moment that has given us on-demand Ozempic and Brat. And what the film lacks in subtlety, it makes up for with an inspired - if stomac …

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