Check out the slew of new movie reviews from your friendly neighborhood Kansas City Film Critics. Today, we’ll organize by critic so you can get to know us!

Katey Stoetzel, TheYoungFolks.com

Movie: Censor

Director Prano Bailey-Bond creates an ode to the 1980s and horror films of the era with Censor. Fans of the video nasties, as they were called, will certainly love the visual references and call outs of the genre. However, the film struggles to find its footing between the story of Enid (Niamh Algar) and the descent into the genre itself. 

Enid is a film censor, someone who monitors horror films for excessive gore, rape, and murder. Bailey-Bond, in her debut feature film,

READ KATEY’S FULL REVIEW: CENSOR

Simonie Wilson, Courier Tribune

Movie: The Little Things

When you see the cast of a cop thriller includes Denzel Washington (“Training Day,” “Fences”), Jared Leto (“Suicide Squad,” “Blade Runner 2049”) and Rami Malek (“Night at the Museum,” “24”), it makes you wonder who will be playing the bad guy in “The Little Things.”

Right from the beginning, we learn Denzel and Rami are the cops; the question of who the good guys actually are is the central theme of the film to the end.

In addition, with John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side,” “Saving Mr. Banks”) on board as both writer and director, this star-studded event…

READ SIMONIE’S FULL REVIEW: THE LITTLE THINGS

Nathan Swank, Flix66

Movie: Promising Young Woman

There is something strangely bright and cheerful about this very dark and disturbing… Drama? Horror? Comedy? Well, it’s a revenge thriller at heart. But PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN has all these wonderful layers that overlap so many incredible genres.

Writer and director Emerald Fennell crafts a wickedly perfect, on point and thoroughly entertaining movie about male’s privileged predatory acts towards women without consequences. Without consequences as long as you don’t run into Cassandra.

READ NATHAN’S FULL REVIEW: PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

Dan Lybarger, Arkansas Democratic Gazette

Movie: Supernova

“Supernova” is deeply affecting but its bombastic title is a misdirection.

This is Harry Macqueen’s second feature film as a director, but there is a dearth of loud “Oscar Clip” moments. With Actors as good as Oscar-winner Colin Firth and Oscar-nominee Stanley Tucci, Macqueen can make a film that concentrates on small, even mundan moments and make them engrossing. Watching either of them fumbling with sheets of paper is more involving than hearing a lot of performers bellow soliloquies.

READ DAN’S FULL REVIEW: SUPERNOVA

Alan Rapp, Razorfine.com

Movie: Vast of Night

Presented as something very similar to an episode from the original Twilight Zone, The Vast of Night offers a glimpse into a non-descript small town on a night when almost all are gathered for a high school basketball game and only a scattered few become aware of odd goings on in the night sky. The small town, set in the 1950s, focused on radio and reel-to-reel recordings…

READ ALANS FULL REVIEW: VAST OF NIGHT

Movie: Nomadland

Nomadland is a quiet, contemplative film not unlike Into the Wild or Wild in which a character leaves behind the conventions of society in search of something their former life can no longer offer. In the case of writer/director Chloé Zhao‘s tale, adapted from the book by Jessica Bruder, our character is an older widow who has lost nearly everything in the Great Recession including the home she made with her late husband when the town completely collapsed.

READ ALAN’S FULL REVIEW: NOMADLAND