Clint Worthington

The performances are strong, and the film excels in isolated setpieces. It’s just a shame to see a neat idea largely go to waste.

If you’re a diehard fan of Cronenberg, you’ll still enjoy his latest, even if it doesn’t exactly break the mold of eXistenZ or his other fleshy experiments.

We waited literal years for a Bob’s Burgers movie to hit screens, and it’s here, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

Strip away the pitch-perfect atmosphere and the genuinely unsettling climax, and his ideas feel shallower than they’ve ever been.

The fundamental disconnect behind Massive Talent, besides its deliberately shaky tonal shifts, is that it feels like a career corrective for a man whose career shouldn’t need one.

Vibes can only take you so far, and Southern and Lovelace’s dreamlike approach keeps us from having a firm grip on the chronology of the times. It also feels like an incomplete chronicling of its subject, given its narrow focus on a few bands and the lack of participation of key figures.

On its own, it’s still an incredible achievement, amplifying a blood-soaked adventure epic in the haunting specters of witchcraft and folklore that will still challenge viewers without leaving them fully out in the cold. Odin willing, it can offer a window for folks to look into Eggers’ more Bergmanesque works, and inject a little more cinematic curiosity into a palate that’s often dulled by CGI sameness.

The unbridled mess that is Aline is just off-kilter enough to warrant a look, no matter how well you know Céline Dion.

The Bubble works in fits and spurts, especially in its first half. The cast is game, and even the respective branches of the Apatow family tree get plenty of chances to prod at the validity and privilege of Hollywood actors finally enduring a crumb of suffering. But it suffers from the same issues as most Apatow pictures; it’s too long and aimless, swimming around its critiques of Tinseltown without really nailing a concrete target for its satire.

Amid all the razor-thin editing, constantly shifting film stocks and styles, and purposefully opaque worldbuilding lies a curiously personal, universal story about the overwhelming noise of the world, and how impossible it is to deal with it.

But that’s the interesting thing about Under the Influence: What started out as a puff-piece doc about YouTube’s golden child was forced by circumstance to become a chronicle of the ways the platform facilitates abuse and drives both creator and audience alike to ruin. It’s a blessing that Neistat rises to the challenge.

Windfall has all the ingredients for an unusual crackerjack thriller: a game trio of actors putting in solid work (and, in Segel’s case, tapping into previously unseen layers of menace), some stylish direction, and a cheeky noir aesthetic from the credits to Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans’ brass-heavy score. But the whole thing never quite builds on its mercurial concept the way it ought to; the characters are meant to be mysterious, but instead come across as mere ciphers.

The result is sleepy and somewhat solipsistic, but that’s part of the charm of a Linklater joint, especially the personal ones. It truly feels like a filmmaker opening his mind to us and inviting us to share in his dreams.

Skating fans and Hawk aficionados will find a lot to like ... But it’s frustrating to see Jones’ approach fail to dig much deeper into the man than we’d already expect, opting instead to more broadly elaborate on the low-key death wish a lot of skaters seem to engage in.

Lyne’s return to the sweat-soaked stage trades bodice-ripping intrigue for repetitive boredom and psychosexual mind games with a straightforward descent into semi-madness.

It’s impressive what Jeunet is able to pull off with a shoestring budget, but the ideas and characters underpinning his visual imagination leave a lot to be desired.

Formally, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel ... But this straight-shooting approach mostly works, even if it doesn’t pin Davis down as concretely as some would like.

With its painterly, brutal beauty and folk-horror underpinnings, it’s tempting to dismiss Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone as “Terrence Malick’s The VVitch.” But it’s so much more than that, a devastating yet highly-attuned exploration of the brutality of the world, and our yearning for identity and connection to protect us from nature’s capriciousness.

There’s a lot to sink your teeth into with Emily the Criminal, between its strong Plaza turn and a pitch-black moral core that refreshingly commits to the bit. But outside of those devilish comforts, a lot of Ford’s debut is frustratingly thin, more concerned with giving Plaza plenty of opportunities to bore through the screen with her eyes in extreme close-up than in really breaking down her psychology and the perverse romance at its center.

The results are deliciously off-kilter, even if the sci-fi world Stearns has created is somewhat clumsily reverse-engineered to make his central premise possible.

There’s little to latch on here apart from its purpose as an actor’s showcase for Boyega, Beharie, and Williams, and its bittersweet status as a sendoff for the latter’s illustrious career.

The series moves forward with the succinctly-titled Scream, the first without Wes (this new film is dedicated to his passing), and one that goes full-tilt into horror movie metacommentary, perhaps to its detriment.

The biggest problem with McKay’s stuff is that he thinks he’s the next Paddy Chayefsky, bringing down untold wisdom from on high and proclaiming disdain at the blinkered, media-soaked vagaries of our world. Unfortunately, he’s bought too deeply into his hype as a vivid truth-teller of society’s ills, and that smugness has infected too much of his films’ fabric.

It may not have the sharp edges of a classic ’40s noir, but del Toro’s softer touch invites us in like one of Stan’s credulous marks.

By all means, watch it for Gaga doing The Most, or Leto pulling out the most eye-poppingly bad performance of the year with every falsetto lilt of his voice. But be ready for Gucci to try in vain to steady the ship and Get Serious about the all-consuming power of greed, and to yawn when those moments seem to linger too long. Believe me, I wish House of Gucci had a greater share of Lady Gaga death stares and pointed sips of espresso.

It’s undoubtedly one of the best films of the year, and of Anderson’s career.

While it’s probably got some of the best production value since the last theatrically-released entry in the series (1997’s Home Alone 3), and is replete with a cast of genuinely funny actors, there’s something rotten at the core of Home Sweet Home Alone that makes it harder to swallow than a pool ball to the kisser.

The Last Duel is a testament to male self-delusion and self-mythologizing, and the impact it has on the women around them.