Alistair Ryder

The question remains whether a "Mortal Kombat" movie could ever be expected to be better than this, considering the limitations of the source material. That this sequel translates the simple beat-em-up thrills of the video game into something narratively functional is about as triumphant as it could possibly get for this franchise.

If we're not poking fun at the inherent silliness of this, like a good "Scream" movie should, then all we're left with is a slasher too afraid to twist the knife.

As an existential sci-fi, Project Hail Mary doesn’t live up to the mid-2010s blockbusters it’s attempting to emulate, but it does eventually soar when it allows the hangout buddy comedy to take center stage. It’s a gorgeous feat of practical effects on a gargantuan scale, but its biggest pleasures lie in the most intimate character moments.

If Pixar is now just as formulaic as its Hollywood animation peers, then director Daniel Chong's film is a reminder that a stereotypical crowd-pleaser from this studio is made with enough emotional sincerity and visual inspiration to never feel like cheap product fallen off the factory line.

Yellow Letters‘ heart is ultimately in the right place, but good intentions alone can’t make for the rousing call-to-arms against creeping authoritarianism that Çatak and his co-writers hope. It feels effective in the moment, but becomes more hollow in retrospect for the lack of specificity in what it’s standing firmly against.

Director Renny Harlin does his best to maintain the same level of slow-burning dread as he pulled off in the prior film, but it ends up feeling like a mundane, fly on the wall account of the average day at the office for the two surviving killers.

It’s neither as funny as it needs to be nor as gross and gory as you’d hope Raimi’s first R-rated feature in more than two decades would prove, while still clearly salvaged by a talented filmmaker and two exceptional performers doing their best to elevate one-note, thinly sketched material.

It's perfectly serviceable, never less than watchable, but lacking in anything special that could live up to its twisty potential.

Yes, Gen Z absolutely deserves better than People We Meet on Vacation as their equivalent to When Harry Met Sally — but until a worthy successor comes along, this will make for a charming substitute.

The armies of visual effects teams at James Cameron's disposal struggle to hide the fact he's now on autopilot, expanding the world of Pandora without offering anything that feels particularly fresh. Even the set pieces failed to arouse much excitement.

Running at a slim 92 minutes, 100 Nights of Hero was clearly never intending to match the sprawling scale of its literary inspiration––but that doesn’t absolve it of inefficiencies, modernizing its source in a way that’ll make you glad we still have the classics to hold onto.

That "Zootopia 2" has anything that will linger in the imagination long after viewing already puts it a league above Disney's other cash-grab sequels, but it effortlessly clears that lowest of bars. It's not perfect, but even the parents dragged along by their kids will be happy to see a third movie — and by modern Disney standards, that is nothing short of miraculous.

The most spectacular sequences here are when [Wright] allows himself to let loose, working towards his instincts rather than against them.

. The fact it all adds up to an enjoyable romp, albeit one that never feels as bold as its parts, is likely an encouraging sign that Dan Trachtenberg has attained a similar status to Phil Lord and Chris Miller a decade ago, taking pitches that sound disastrous and turning them into non-compromised crowd-pleasers against all the odds.

Director Shih-Ching Tsou’s solo debut Left-Handed Girl is a simple but striking drama about growing up in a family living paycheck-to-paycheck.

It speeds through the plot beats so fast, in fact, that it never properly allows you to take part in the murder mystery guessing game for yourself, barely developing its characters beyond the one note they're introduced on, so the question of a motive becomes an irrelevance to anybody watching.

Transcending its gimmick status within its opening stretch and only growing more resonant from there, it becomes that rare horror film you could recommend to people who hate the genre — the set pieces are well constructed, but their impact pales next to a haunting, moving story about a dog and his owner. 

While it doesn't offer anything you haven't seen in a slasher movie before, the pivot to survival thriller mode feels like a breath of fresh air after a tiresome prior installment with no unique ideas, and no suggestion of any impending change to the worn out formula.

Lawrence and screenwriter J.T. Mollner's take on "The Long Walk" is a reminder of why King's stories have historically been well-suited for the screen, replicating the blend of melancholy, coming-of-age character study, and fatalistic horror that defined the very best adaptations of his work.

There’s much to like here, but I never felt I was seeing a fully-realized vision.

The film doesn’t work as a thriller for this reason, stretching credulity in how it finds new ways to keep Matthew returning to the fold, and doesn’t succeed particularly well in critiquing the vapidness of modern fame.

This is the only genre where you can paper over the flaws with a handful of well-staged set pieces, and thanks to Timo Tjahjanto, it manages to upstage the original on that front.

It’s an entertaining film, but not a particularly resonant one considering the charged subject matter; it’s structured like a parlor trick, keeping one at a deliberate remove until working out how its constituent pieces fit together rather than caring about the people within them.

The vastly overqualified cast stubbornly refuses to phone it in, with their high-wattage charisma acting as the ultimate special effect; their banter is entertaining enough to help distract from just how cheap everything else onscreen looks.

Gareth Edwards does occasionally lean into the full-blooded horror potential of this material.

If you've found the previous live-action Predator movies (including Trachtenberg's own franchise-reviving "Prey") to be too heavy on plot at the expense of the carnage, then the brevity of this spin-off is exactly what you'll have been wanting, stripping down the formula to its barest essentials across three brief stories.

When Karate Kid: Legends is allowed to be its own, stand-alone adventure, it's by far the most charming since the 1984 original.

For a director whose recent work output suggests he moves straight onto the next project the second he calls cut on the last, it's surprising how much of Fountain of Youth feels reshot in post.

The wildly ambitious sophomore effort Bring Her Back gradually reveals itself to be a direct statement on the cheap exploitation of grief, channeling the existential nihilism of French New Extremity works like Martyrs to explore just how unhealthy it is to process death at such a surface level. That it’s also one of the most distressing, anxiety-inducing horror films of recent memory when taken at face value is just a bonus.

It aims to be a nostalgic send-off, but the execution is muddled, forgetting that nobody ever came to these movies for the plot so much as the spectacle its amateur stuntman star provided in droves.

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein have managed to avoid the various clichés we’ve come to expect from a reboot-sequel hybrid. Their movie is a delight because they understand Final Destination isn’t a cinematic universe anybody needs to hold in high regard; it’s a silly, bloody rollercoaster that reminded me why this series was such stupid fun in the first place.

If you watched any of the set pieces in Havoc entirely divorced from their wider context, you might find them thrilling, if a little derivative. Within the film, however, they do very little to raise the blood pressure back up after extended detours in a generic crime conspiracy difficult to get invested in. He's still a talented action director, but this plays a little too safe for my liking.

The film might not be set within the current moment, but Langlois always remains attuned to it, with his story about parasocial fandoms and the pressure they put on artists effortlessly transcending its period setting. You’ll have the songs stuck in your head for weeks, too.

Coogler doesn’t reinvent the vampire movie with Sinners, but in a current era of American cinema where messages are force-fed, a thoughtful social satire which gives viewers time to dissect––and never lets its loftier thematic aims get in the way of its junky thrills––is a breath of fresh air. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun, nor felt so reinvigorated by, a major studio genre movie.

I can’t pretend I’m a scholar on Maria Schneider’s life and work, but even I can sense this is sorely lacking.

The Electric State is a soulless exercise in the same vein as a "Borderlands" or an "Argylle," a joyless affair that feels cobbled together by studio executives who are trying so desperately hard to manufacture a crowd-pleasing success by replicating formulaic genre beats and characterizations, that they never once stop to ask why anybody would care about the story they're trying to tell.

The co-writer-slash-director's proximity to its real-life subjects means he can't put too much of an over-the-top Hollywood twist on the tale, but any intent to do justice to the reality of the story just left me wondering why he would want to tell it again if he weren't going to lean into the gloriously preposterous traits one would expect from the classic disaster movie.

It's the weakest of his three English language efforts due to it feeling like he's watering down his satirical approach, spoon-feeding exposition to his audience alongside each joke under the worry that the parody might go over their heads.

Nobody comes to a "Bridget Jones" movie for realism, but Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy understands what its predecessors struggled to, recognizing that even the most far-fetched of genre tropes becomes more palatable when pitched as cathartic to its protagonist, and the audience more generally.

The film seems at least partially aware of the ridiculousness of this story but never threads the needle further, blissfully unwilling to acknowledge or even comprehend the way any viewer would perceive the non-existent “problem” of having a famous parent.

Grief is a messy experience, and Saada’s film never manages to grapple with how much of an impact it can still have that late in life. It’s too neat a portrayal of an emotionally turbulent moment––a Rose I wish had more thorns.

I was surprised to find Emmanuelle lingered in the memory a lot more than any story about the brief rush of desire should.

If this is a project defined by life in a warzone, that very fact offers some solace for the future––at November’s London Palestine Film Festival, one of the film’s producers remarked that all credited directors are still alive. There will hopefully be one day soon where we can see what their boundless creativity might achieve when not constrained by appalling circumstances.

After years of soulless retreads from Disney, this proves you can go some way to recapturing the magic of the originals by hiring a filmmaker who wants to expand upon those earlier stories, rather than lazily revisiting them.

Whereas parents and kids alike will have been charmed by the first, Moana 2 will be overshadowed for anybody other than the youngest kids watching. It will likely make a billion dollars regardless.

When approached as the big, dumb spectacle its much-trumpeted lack of historical accuracy had long teased, Gladiator II proves easier to embrace.

On first viewing, it feels like a big step down, with frequent glimmers of a much more satisfying family adventure throughout.

If Smile 2 feels just as good as the first in the moment, then it's entirely thanks to Scott, who helps anchor a story that could crack under the weight of its endless twist reveals.

Rather than spoon-feeding the audience with sentimentality about the pair being destined for each other, it leaves one to decide whether it’s all worth it, even as it doesn’t shy from the allure of a secret romantic entanglement.

As a blockbuster adventure, Blitz has far more historical texture and a significantly less-romantic outlook than you’d expect from an unashamedly mainstream British drama. Even without that romanticism, it’s the most hopeful movie he’s made; Blitz is also the one most lacking for greater depth.

Yes, it's still rare for a horror film to be longer than two hours, but it's especially rare for a horror film of that length to feel rushed. Terrifier 3 progresses to its climactic living nightmare too fast to be properly processed; this is likely to mirror Sienna's mental state in that moment, but it is still in dire need of an extra couple of beats to build tension before all hell breaks loose.

The more this origin story refrains from winking and nodding at the future direction of this characters, the better it is. That it can't entirely keep itself away from this impulse is why it isn't the smooth introduction for a new generation of potential fans it could have been.

Regardless of whether you’re approaching it as a satirical examination of true-crime fandoms or as a dark subversion of the typical serial-killer thriller, Red Rooms is an unsettling, uncompromising accomplishment.

It will likely prove divisive, but Blink Twice mostly succeeds due to its scathing nature, taking off the kid gloves that most recent eat-the-rich films have tackled the 1% with. It's not a flawless debut, but it's a convincing sign that Kravitz has an even more exciting career waiting for her behind the camera.

The film may not hold together cohesively, but it’s still quite mystifying why it so spectacularly failed to resonate when its greatest sequences are beautiful evocations of the director’s childhood, both real and imagined, even if it is forever destined to live in the shadow of his previous semi-autobiographical work.

Considering how the story sounds on paper, it’s all the more impressive that it becomes moving without ever once turning to the kind of pandering weepie I feared from the outset.

Twisters is far from perfect, but Lee Isaac Chung manages to defy odds by sticking the landing in his leap to blockbuster cinema. The film impresses in set pieces, but it’s his brand of delicate, character-driven drama woven in-between that makes this feel fresher than anything currently at the multiplex. 

For me, the only unsettling surprise was the discovery that a movie featuring a diabolically unrestrained Nicolas Cage performance could be so unengaging.

Despite being a considerable step down from the Scorsese-approved psychodrama Pearl, there’s an awful lot of fun to be had, from the gruesome kills to the delightfully over-the-top performances.

It looks beautiful, and there are no weak links within the stacked ensemble, but it winds up feeling alarmingly empty.

It’s far from perfect, but as an introduction to a brand-new voice it’s never less than compelling.

It's a movie about the boundless imagination of children that could only have been made by a cynical adult mind, careful to restrict itself from attempting anything bold so it can algorithmically copy everything that has worked throughout decades of Amblin classics, albeit devoid of genuine heart or charm.

In trying to reinvent the lazy feline for modern kids, the filmmakers have lost track of the comedic tone that has helped these simple, gag-driven stories endure for decades.

It’s the ideal third act for a Planet of the Apes movie––whether you want to sit through an extensive, near-90 minute journey that represents everything wrong with dystopian world-building in contemporary blockbusters to get there, however, is up to you.

The biggest surprise with her directorial debut Humane might be just how comfortably this could sit alongside Blumhouse and Screen Gems shlock at your local multiplex: a well-engineered, single-location thriller that prioritizes bloody, gut-punch twists and turns over the more thoughtful introspection that typically accompanies this in a Cronenberg effort.

Although the filmmakers say that Winehouse’s family didn’t interfere with the creative process, this watered-down interpretation of her troubles feels written with the intention of ruffling as few feathers as possible, pulling its punches when dramatizing the more harrowing moments in her life.

While the third act delivers the inevitable campy melodrama that’s the chief selling point, it’s the film leading up to it that proves most remarkable: a sincere throwback to a deeply uncool cinema seemingly unconcerned with the ridicule it’ll likely receive.

The freewheeling nature with which she veers between heightened, comic-adjacent antics and looser improv-stylings that are grounded exclusively within the audience’s frame of reference shouldn’t work, yet it’s the source of much of the film’s charm. Drew doesn’t aim to disguise the low-budget nature of the production, and rather than hope viewers suspend disbelief, she asks you to indulge in how she plays around with the genre’s artificiality.

The suddenness with which it races to a disappointingly conventional resolution is the only misstep among a bold, remarkably assured debut feature.

Gyllenhaal manages to hold this tonally inconsistent film together, but he’s the only person involved who has some clear handle on how this story should be told from beginning to end.

What I find damning about the film––its refusal to sit with or explore the consequences of the country’s gradual transition to democracy––may be worthy of praise by national audiences, but makes it harder to truly embrace from an outsider’s perspective.

20 Days in Mariupol is both essential and far from perfect. It can’t be fully, objectively judged when much of the footage within is as urgent as this; it needs to be seen, if only for the vague hope it can help hold the perpetrators’ feet to the fire.

It doesn’t pull any punches in its uncompromising portrayal of rising authoritarianism; it lands with greater impact than a more stereotypically crowd-pleasing disaster film.

The end result is one of the best-looking blockbusters of recent memory, easy to hold attention while straining and failing to emotionally engage. It’s a forced attempt to recreate Paddington‘s magic without properly grappling with what makes the best Roald Dahl stories work––a film too immaculately crafted to be considered a true disaster, even if the end result is disappointment all the same.

Its portrayal of a childhood under these turbulent circumstances is unnerving, Zahednia delivering one of the most revelatory child performances of recent memory––almost entirely through silently terrified reaction shots.

When unashamedly embracing a slasher persona, it proves far better than it has any right to be––what a shame these simple genre thrills are tangled in a more confused attempt at horror-comedy.

Once Samuel stops trying to modernize the genre with layers of music-video style and comedic irony, his film becomes surprisingly effective––it just takes a little while to get there.

The biggest takeaway from Daaaaaali!, as with all of Dupieux’s recent work, might be that he doesn’t expect us to ponder too much the questions he proposes. He’s a very funny filmmaker––funny-ha-ha, not arthouse funny––and I suspect he doesn’t want to distract more than necessary from his delightfully silly simple pleasures.

There may be a subtle melancholy to the three overlapping character studies in Kiyohara’s film, but watching it was one of the more soothing cinematic experiences I’ve had this year precisely from its sense of place, examining how this location proves surprisingly fruitful in providing life’s simplest pleasures to those who live there.

It does a disservice to what should be an intriguing story, but unfortunately Amerikatsi contorts itself too hard to fit the mold of a stereotypical crowd-pleaser to satisfy as a historical drama.

Hello Dankness ultimately feels like a lockdown project; an in-joke between friends, assembled when there was nothing better to do in the world, and now an irrelevancy.

Piaffe is an enrapturing, ultimately inconsistent work where two halves that challenge in different ways don’t entirely add to an effective whole. Yet the journey itself more than compensates for where it eventually lands.

Carpet Cowboys would ultimately be a much stronger film if it was entirely focused on James and those in his direct orbit; his struggles and eventual attempts to relocate speak more to the state of the industry and the American Dream in a recession-ravaged nation than MacKenzie and Collier could have ever predicted.

Above all else, Le Bon’s debut showcases a playful spirit behind the camera: one eager to blend opposing genres, to find something authentically heartfelt beneath the tropes and gothic artifice. It’s a small Lake that I hope makes a big splash.

Neang doesn’t widen his focus beyond the characters; they’re at risk of displacement from the city they’ve always known, but this critique of gentrification largely remains implicit, visible only allegorically through their daily struggles.

I can’t fault Földes in his ambition, but where other filmmakers have found even deeper veins of emotion in Murakami’s rich prose, he doesn’t read further between the lines, reinventing them only on the surface.

Ultimately, Winter Boy becomes too much of a broad, all-encompassing exploration of grief within a coming-of-age tale, ringing trite while it should be personal. It’s undeniably heartfelt, but the most moving moments are rooted within Lucas’ home life; in straying from this it feels uncomfortably generic.

If nothing else, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves made me relieved that Peter Jackson got to make his Lord of the Rings trilogy long before the Marvel era, when seemingly all franchises have to slyly poke fun at themselves in order to be greenlit.

Rodeo is caught between arthouse character study and stylish heist thriller, the two genres never making for easy bedfellows. For all its merits, not even a commanding lead performance can thread these two disparate tones.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is the latest in a long line of diminishing returns for Ritchie, made mildly diverting through the strength of its performances even as a central spy mystery struggles to give reason why it’s worth investing in.

It’s a deeply transfixing sophomore feature that, beneath genre artifice, tells a much more direct tale of familial bonds than her debut. Overlook the mysterious time-traveling conceit and you’ll find an irresistibly prickly drama about family and generational trauma.

The low-budget nature of the production does help emphasize Ryder’s ability to create elusive, attention-grabbing visuals on a shoestring, but everything stands at such a remove it’s hard to want to get lost in the frame. Inland ultimately struggles to convince he can offer anything more than replicating another filmmaker’s well-worn style.

My Father’s Dragon is another beautifully animated effort from Cartoon Saloon, but the story fails to hit the heights of their previous work—a familiar children’s fable that hasn’t been given the necessary modern makeover.

Ticket to Paradise represents the genre at its laziest, coasting by on the natural chemistry between its two beloved lead stars, who eventually struggle to mine any humor from a script that quickly prioritizes unearned sentimentality over genuine laughs.

The twin issues of climate change and Delhi’s ensuing air pollution remain largely unspoken factors in Sen’s film, which in its best moments constructs elaborate tracking shots detailing the full scale of devastation caused by extreme weather conditions.

Finch is inconsistent, but ultimately charming, even as it will likely be a footnote next to the Hanks star vehicles it’s desperately trying to emulate.

There is nothing that ever feels particularly inspired; even when operating at its best, Ron’s Gone Wrong still cribs far too closely from other films to ever stand on its own two feet.

Ultimately, The Phantom of the Open is one of this year’s most charming films––a broad crowdpleaser that stands a good chance of winning over even the most cynical audiences.