All the film reviews you may have missed in January

January is always a challenging month for moviegoing, and this January was particularly tough sledding, what with the impact of the actor’s and writer’s strikes taking a steep toll on an already-limited schedule of theatrical releases. Still, there were some hits scattered among the misses, including Mean Girls, which surprised at the box office, despite trying to convince audiences in trailers for the film that it wasn’t actually all that much of a musical. In the horror sector, Founders Day held up its end of the bargain for genre fans, while The Beekeeper proved that not even a lousy release date can’t stop Jason Statham. Here’s a quick look back at our reviews of the movies released during January, just in case there’s something you missed or something you’re still curious about.

I.S.S. review: Ariana DeBose’s sci-fi outing fails to achieve liftoff

Ever since Georges Méliès sent audiences out of orbit in 1902 with A Trip To The Moon, filmmakers have been busy crafting distinctly textured space-themed stories, ranging from tender to terrifying. It’s a setting that provides claustrophobic tension and awe-inducing wonder, as well as giving space (pun intended) for drama and characters to flourish. So it’s unfortunate that director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s I.S.S. fails to take full advantage of not just the location, but also its narrative function when building its stakes, smarts, and scares. Set aboard an international space station where six passengers engage in a war for control, the film neglects to include fresh, heady ideas after its interesting premise arises, denying us of any satisfying gravitational pull. Read More

Founders Day review: Gruesome fun for slasher devotees

There are lots of ways to tell when you’re in good hands while watching a movie. It might be the casting, or the lighting, or the clever dialogue in the script. It might be the way the film plays with genre, or the way it catches you off guard with smart plotting. For horror fans, all of these things can be true, but it’s often just as important. Read More

The Book Of Clarence review: An adventurous homage to biblical epics

In The Book Of Clarence, writer and director Jeymes Samuel (The Harder They Fall) imagines a 13th apostle who lies his way into being a disciple of Jesus. Set in Jerusalem in the year 33, the film follows a charming small-time crook talented in the art of hustling. He’s not a believer in God, but rather someone who sees an opportunity to ride Jesus’ popularity for his own benefit. The premise is a fun sendup of classic bible movies like Ben-Hur (1959) and The Tenth Commandment (1956), and the film straddles the line between entertaining anachronism—modern performances and soundtrack and tongue-in-cheek humor—and respect for the religious framework. But it never fully commits to either stance, thus ending up an odd, albeit entertaining, mismatch of tones and themes. Read More

The Beekeeper review: Predictable Jason Statham actioner lacks buzz

In The Beekeeper, Jason Statham plays, as you may well have surmised, a beekeeper. When we first meet him, this beekeeper is the stoic kind, unconcerned with the world beyond his hive. Even the woman who’s renting him a barn where he harvests his bees’ honey is kept at arm’s length. Soon, though, we learn this beekeeper used to also be, well, another kind of “beekeeper.” And if me saying the film’s title oh so many times in this intro has already irked you enough, worry: for David Ayer’s efficiently directed actioner utters it so many times and exhausts its bluntly delivered metaphor so often that just watching Statham punch and shoot his way out of any scene he’s in becomes an exercise in exhaustion. Read More

Mean Girls review: Fetch just can’t happen twice

What exactly are we meant to get from a remake of Mean Girls? This is, of course, the existential quandary of any remake: to find a purpose beyond simply being a brand regurgitation of something that was once successful and popular. But the 2024 version of Mean Girls is doubly cursed in this regard, functioning both as a retelling of the 2004 film and as a film adaptation of the Broadway musical inspired by the film. Is the introduction of musical numbers conceived for the stage enough of a reason to mine this material for the screen once more? Or is this a soulless retread that finds screenwriter Tina Fey revisiting her same story (itself adapted from the book Queen Bees And Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman) 20 years later without finding anything new to say? The answer to both, strangely enough, is yes. Read More

Night Swim review: The water’s not fine

The double-edged sword of horror films like Night Swim is that the audience has a version of the film in their head even before the projector lights up and the movie starts. If you’ve seen a trailer for Night Swim, you have a very clear idea of what this movie is, and that means two things for first-time director Bryce McGuire. First, it means that there are clear expectations for the kind of film he’s expected to make, and clear rhythms he’s expected to play with. Second, it means that if he’s clever and gutsy enough, he can manipulate those expectations and rhythms to great effect, playing with his audience in ways both creepy and amusing. Read More

Society Of The Snow review: Another take on a harrowing true-life plane crash

It’s shocking that the crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 has inspired such lackluster adaptations of the harrowing affair, in which a rugby team and their friends and family are stranded in the snow-covered Andes mountains for 71 days. Survive!, a low-budget Mexican production from 1976, played up the exploitative schlock value which was popular in disaster flicks of the era. 1993’s formidable yet faulty Alive, from director Frank Marshall, used an American-heartthrob-cast and leaned heavily into melodrama and sensationalism. The latest take on the tragedy, Spanish director/co-writer J.A. Bayona’s Society Of The Snow, seeks to restore honor to those brave men and women who battled insurmountable odds. Read More