Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is opens like a revenge movie and slowly reveals itself to be something thornier, sadder, stranger, and ultimately far more profound. On paper, the film sounds almost gleefully pulp: twin sisters set out across America to murder the father who burned their family alive years earlier. But Harris’ astonishing debut feature is not interested in the clean catharsis of revenge cinema so much as the rot that necessitates it in the first place. What begins as a...

For a franchise built on spinal extractions, acid vomit, and the phrase “Finish Him,” the most surprising thing about Mortal Kombat II is how desperately it wants to entertain you. Not impress you. Not elevate itself above its origins. Not apologize for being based on a game where a four-armed monster punches ninjas into skeletons. Simon McQuoid’s sequel understands that the appeal of Mortal Kombat has always lived somewhere between adolescent power fantasy and grindhouse absurdity, and for...

There’s something inherently promising about a filmmaker who understands that a setting can do as much storytelling as any line of dialogue. Damian McCarthy, coming off the slow-burn unease of Caveat and Oddity, clearly gets that. With Hokum, he trades in those tighter, more controlled chambers of dread for something a bit grander, a creaky, half-forgotten Irish hotel that feels less like a location and more like a living accusation. For long stretches, it’s enough to carry the film on...