Alistair Ryder

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.