4 Best Movies to Watch by Michael Beach

Warm and nourishing as the film's cuisine, Soul Food is a celebration of the modern African-American family, represented here by the Josephs. The Chicagoan family has a longstanding tradition of making dinner together every Sunday—a ritual, we’re told, that's lasted for at least 40 years. However, when the matriarch Big Mama Joe gets hospitalized, the simmering tension between her daughters boils over and threatens to break them apart. Many of the struggles they go through are familiar but not cliché, as writer-director George Tillman Jr. draws from his own experiences in a close-knit, extended family. So even if some plot lines feel unresolved, the film is well-paced, soulfully scored, and evenly balanced between the three sisters. Like the food cooked on-screen, this movie will still leave you hungering for more.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Brandon Hammond, Gina Ravera, Irma P. Hall, Jeffrey D. Sams, John M. Watson Sr., Marcia Wright, Mekhi Phifer, Mel Jackson, Michael Beach, Nia Long, Vanessa Williams, Vivica A. Fox

Director: George Tillman Jr.

Rating: R

For its first half-hour or so, Saw X really doesn't feel like an entry in the long-running horror series commonly described by detractors as "torture porn." It's quiet and steadily paced and does a better job than many horror sequels and reboots of recent years in making its primary antagonist a sympathetic human being. The way the character of John Kramer (AKA Jigsaw) has been written here—elevated by Tobin Bell's performance—gives even the film's later, more extreme segments a hint of soulfulness, since we're made to feel exactly what drives his self-appointed mission to exact justice on other terrible people.

But this new, dramatic spin on Saw doesn't last for very long, and this tenth film eventually slides back into its trademark cheesy elements that won't make any new converts to the series. Overly aggressive editing and music, hammy performances from the supporting cast, and death traps that grow increasingly unimaginative all dull the greater impact that Saw X could have had. The batch of victims we get this time around are somewhat compelling given their connections they have to each other and to Kramer himself, but they're still ultimately more of the same—just cannon fodder waiting for execution.

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Actor: Costas Mandylor, Craig Hurley, Donagh Gordon, Jorge Briseño, Joshua Okamoto, Katie Barberi, Kerry Ardra, Lucía Gómez-Robledo, Michael Beach, Natasha Goss, Octavio Hinojosa Martínez, Paulette Hernández, Renata Vaca, Shawnee Smith, Steven Brand, Synnøve Macody Lund, Tobin Bell

Director: Kevin Greutert

Rating: R