Alistair Ryder

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.