Jesse Hassenger

Hedda is DaCosta’s most direct and purposeful adaptation yet, but like her other films, it’s missing some ineffable push past its beginnings into more expressive territory. The process of adaptation feels more confident than the conclusion.

The promise of more music keeps the movie on life support when its drama threatens to flatline. When these sequences gradually recede from the movie, it feels as if someone should call an ambulance, but it’s also too late. What’s left are shadows of what might have been Saldaña and Gomez’s best on-screen performances, or Gascón’s breakthrough.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice practically warns the audience against taking it too seriously, even while talking out the other side of its mouth about its own heartfelt themes.

Though director Nicholas Hytner does his best to enliven the material, Bennett very much comes across as a dull man’s Charlie Kaufman, even more so when the movie ends with flat, unearned whimsicality. Good as she is here, Smith must cede this round to Dench.

Here is the problem with making four movies about a middle-schooler who only ages a little and learns sitcom-ready lessons: After a while, it all starts to feel as repetitive and uninspired as any number of more ambitious franchises. The Long Haul has a chance to reimagine the series and only comes up with Vacation Junior.

Paramount+ should have thrown this movie a theatrical run; it may more or less amount to an 86-minute pilot episode for the new series that’s coming soon, but it’s also one of the funniest movies of the year.

Late Night is admirably eager to address the messy problems of the comedy world, but it ultimately can’t stop cleaning up after itself.

Despite a few nasty bits of violence, Cat’s Eye almost plays like an intro to King for younger viewers ready for some shocks but not yet prepared for full-on nightmares.

Men is a horror film operating largely under nightmare logic and allegorical rumbling, and in a broad sense can’t offer many true surprises.

The Current War employs actors capable of their own eccentric stylizations, and gives them very little leeway to make the material their own. Gomez-Rejon keeps snatching it back with every offbeat composition idea he can muster.

So many romantic comedies revel in formula, turning a genre into an embarrassing mating ritual soundtracked by the rustle of screenplay pages and bad scene-transition pop. If nothing else, The Threesome understands a greater range of emotional, physical, and logistical possibilities – so acutely, in fact, that it sometimes wanders away from the “com” part of the rom-com altogether.

A paranoid thriller that sneaks in its character study so stealthily that it takes a while to realize who is actually being studied.

Here is a film that manages to be observant without being especially insightful—without deepening thematically beyond the observation that inner city life can still be really, really lousy for everyone involved.

A relatively straightforward comic love story/environmental parable, it’s a sharper bit of whimsy than CJ7 and less weighed down with mythology than Journey To The West.

God’s Creatures doesn’t have quite the same enchanting, unnerving mystery of The Fits, where a girls’ dance troupe begins to suffer unexplained seizures. The hardscrabble working-class details here inevitably feel a bit more familiar, whether from American kitchen-sink indies or Irish plays.

It’s telling that the filmmaker captures one of Gallagher’s best moments in a long and relatively uneventful take situated at a breakfast table; this movie may wander, but Akhavan’s attention to perfect little moments is unwavering.

As tedious as Rocketman is when it’s going through the biographical motions, it’s equally delightful when it launches into something most rock movies pointedly avoid: full-on musical numbers.

Most of the time, though, How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action craft fails to match the equivalent in its animated counterpart, even with original filmmaker Dean DeBlois on hand for his live-action feature debut.

Like a lot of Coen movies, it’s not exactly an outright spoof, but it takes place in its own little stylized pocket universe. Unlike a lot of Coen movies, Honey Don’t! doesn’t quite come together as a mystery.

The comedy Blockers, which is not written, produced, or directed by Apatow but feels descended from some of his work, sets for itself a more ambitious challenge, daring itself to give each member of its ensemble a coming-of-age arc, and to pull off two different high-concept comedies at once in the process.

Reijn and DeLappe don’t seem interested in preying on real fears so much as laughingly confirming any suspicions that yes, your friends secretly talk smack about you. Bodies Bodies Bodies is a fun ride through those well-founded anxieties, but as the end credits roll, some viewers may still be waiting for more of a punch — or a better punchline.

Moore and Jenkins are obviously aiming higher than a self-aware noir pastiche, or at least something off to the side of one. Yet those elements of the movie are a lot more enjoyable than sort-of-dream sequences featuring yet another guy in clown makeup.

Even if this Into The Woods lacks the exhilaration of the best movie musicals, it does capture the show’s emotional intimacy—no small task in a field that favors razzle dazzle.

In another self-reflexive move, Far From Home transfers the real dilemma back to the filmmakers: The character comedy is great fun, and the action spectacle often feels like their responsible burden.

There are times when the slight, small Sparrows Dance pushes too hard, both visually and narratively: a blinking red light outside Ireland’s window provides overly fussy on-off lighting during two long scenes, and the movie’s flairs of serious conflict are less deft than its offhand moments of connection. There are enough of said moments, though, to sustain its sweetly hesitant romance.

By the end, what seemed like a lovely rumination starts to sound more like poetry refashioned as prose.

With its crisply likable leads mixing it up with pleasingly chewy gangster stereotypes, it has the consistency of a good candy bar.

By displacing some familiar gang-movie dynamics into an environment less often glimpsed on film, Abbasi stays true to the offbeat heart of his influences. The strength of his work here indicates an even more distinct voice might yet emerge.