As summer nears its end, our film scribes are taking a look back at some of the movies we missed over the past few months. These pictures — ranging from box-office smashes to festival darlings — might have slipped through the cracks of our film reviews, but they’re all worth a watch. And almost all of them are available to stream or still catch in theaters (with the rest coming soon to streaming).
She’s the He, now available to rent or purchase
A teen comedy with camp sensibilities and a heart of gold, She’s the He has a premise that might raise eyebrows at first: Two teens, Alex (Nico Carney) and Ethan (Misha Osherovich), try to shake rumors that they’re gay by posing as trans women. The twist is that both lead actors, along with filmmaker Siobhan McCarthy and much of the supporting cast, are trans — and the funniest possible thing happens when Ethan realizes she is too. It’s a clever, loving homage to self-discovery, and a thumbed nose toward conservative hand-wringing. It’s also a reminder of the real danger to women’s locker rooms: the Enes Kanter Freedoms of the world who make it weird for everyone else. ANNIE PARNELL
The Drama, now streaming on HBO Max
Following 2023’s deeply awkward-by-design Nicolas Cage-starring satire Dream Scenario, Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli returned this year with April’s The Drama. Powered by the megawatt star power of Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, the dark comedy gets in its jabs at millennial culture and the American wedding-industrial complex. But more than that, it presents the ultimate game of Would You Rather: Would you rather marry someone who was once a deeply troubled teen, rescued from her own unthinkable acts by violence intervention and positive socialization — or a narcissistic, elitist academic with no spine but great bone structure? D. PATRICK RODGERS
Obsession, now streaming on Peacock
Yes, we failed to review one of the biggest movies of the year during its wide release in May. You can’t win ’em all. But someone who just keeps winning is Obsession writer-director-editor Curry Barker, who at this time last year was best known for YouTube sketch comedy shorts. After $500 million at the box office, critical acclaim and a deal to direct the Texas Chain Saw Massacre reboot, Barker seems headed down the Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger sketch-comedy-to-horror-auteur path. This movie isn’t quite as buttoned-up as the debuts from those two filmmakers (Get Out and Barbarian, respectively). But the world-building and an all-timer breakthrough performance from Inde Navarrette make up for any seams that show. LOGAN BUTTS
Colony, now showing at Regal Hollywood and AMC Thoroughbred
The zombie genre has been so thoroughly exhausted throughout film and television that even various reimaginings of the idiom have grown tireso…
Colony — the latest from our finest modern zombie filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho — finds a fresh angle on the nearly exhausted subgenre. The director behind 2016’s excellent Train to Busan expands on that thrill ride’s confined action-horror set pieces with the gloopiest zombie movie since Braindead. Colony isn’t as tight as Train to Busan, and the characters aren’t as fully realized, but the film’s hivemind approach to fast zombies is innovative enough to keep you rapt throughout the familiar trapped-in-a-mall setting. LOGAN BUTTS
Is God Is, now streaming on Amazon Prime
One of the more criminally underlooked films of the past summer, Is God Is is a fresh directorial debut from Aleshea Harris. Adapted from her play of the same name, the movie follows scarred twin sisters Racine and Anaia, who seek revenge against their father at the behest of their mother on her deathbed. Harris embraces the pulp roots of her story with blood-soaked violence and incredible needle-drops, all buoyed by tremendous performances from Kara Young and Mallori Johnson. If you’re looking for a stylish twist on the revenge-thriller genre, check this one out. IAN MATTHEWS
Normal
Normal, now streaming on HBO Max
Bob Odenkirk continues to stake his claim in the unlikely-old-man action movie space with Normal. The film follows Ulysses, an interim sheriff in Normal, Minn., filling the role after the previous sheriff’s unexpected death. He just wants to keep his head down, but a run-in with a pair of bank robbers uncovers a conspiracy that forces Ulysses to question everything he knows about his quaint little town. Gunfights, explosions and Minnesotan accents abound in this quirky crime flick that delivers lots of bloody fun. IAN MATTHEWS
Maa Inti Bangaaram, now streaming on Hulu
Samantha Ruth Prabhu serves up one of the best lead action performances of the year in this Telugu-language epic from director B.V. Nandini Reddy, which follows the plucky Swarna as she infiltrates her husband’s family, the Rajus, to win them over, and also uses her skills as a former revolutionary commando to protect them from a whole lot of unfortunate and corrupt tendrils being drawn taut around them. Maa Inti Bangaaram was a massive international hit, and is also notable for being a female-led action film that was directed by a woman. The first two-and-a-half hours deliver comedy, action, intrigue and some great musical numbers. But in the end credits, there is a reference to an AI sequence, and that shifts the mood. I didn’t recognize it. But knowing this retroactively throws everything into disarray — and I worry this is just going to keep happening. JASON SHAWHAN
The Wrong Girls, now available to rent or purchase
The kind of scraggly, quotable stoner picaresque that usually only boys get to play in, this caper encompasses espionage, psychic cats, buffet antics, confronting the legacy of others’ expectations, and the majesty and mystery of the giant squid. Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat delight as unconventionally motivated women with strong senses of justice and liberation (I would totally watch the excellent Robin Byrd documentary with them, if invited), and the film (from writer-director Dylan Meyer) feels like a true-to-life hangout with good friends. Not every moment is eternal, but you keep the memories close and can’t wait to hang again. JASON SHAWHAN
Everybody to Kenmure Street, coming soon to streaming
Originally appearing on these shores in May (though it hasn’t screened around these parts yet), Felipe Bustos Sierra’s inspiring power-to-the-people documentary Everybody to Kenmure Street covers a 2021 incident in which a Glasgow neighborhood instinctively, immediately banded together to stop a U.K. Home Office immigration raid on two Sikh residents. Sierra rounds up first-person accounts as well as footage captured by spectators and news crews. Even executive producer Emma Thompson appears in a re-creation as “Van Guy,” the anonymous activist who set off the protest by sliding under the police van. With ICE planning to further embed themselves in Nashville, this film is an invigorating how-to guide for those looking to properly fight back. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez, coming soon to streaming
Chicano playwright, filmmaker and “social arsonist” Luis Valdez gets his long-overdue flowers in David Alvarado’s celebratory doc, which has been touring the country ever since it hit select theaters in July. (A screening is scheduled for Nov. 14 at Nashville’s Global Education Center.) Alvarado talks to Valdez and many of his collaborators and loved ones as he chronicles Valdez’s life and career, from his days doing guerrilla theater during Cesar Chavez’s grape strike protests to hitting Broadway with his Chicano salute Zoot Suit and helming La Bamba, the hit biopic on late Chicano rocker Ritchie Valens. CRAIG D. LINDSEY
Forbidden Fruits, now streaming on Shudder
Along with Backrooms, Forbidden Fruits might signal a mall-horror renaissance in the grand tradition of Chopping Mall and Dawn of the Dead. Set at a Free People stand-in called Free Eden in Texas, this B-movie follows a clique of gorgeous employees named after fruits who share a hobby of conducting arcane rituals in the dressing room after hours. When Pumpkin (Lola Tung) joins the coven, tensions begin to bubble up from under the surface — leading to a gory denouement, an intriguing perspective on femininity and nightmare-fuel applications of escalators and skywalks. ANNIE PARNELL
The Sheep Detectives, now streaming on Amazon Prime
Having a baaaaad day? The Sheep Detectives just might fix it. The hybrid animation/live-action dramedy plays like a PG Knives Out, suitable for the whole family but with plenty of appeal for the more weathered cinephile. When their shepherd is murdered, a flock of unassuming sheep resolve to solve his murder themselves, taking inspiration from the murder-mystery novels the shepherd read them each night. With a delightful ensemble cast including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nicholas Braun and Emma Thompson, this ovine whodunnit tackles grief and greed with wit and wisdom. HANNAH CRON
