Natalia Keogan

Overlong and undersexed, Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights betrays her audience of edgelords and perverts. Even stranger, those who have fostered a distaste for the filmmaker’s sensibility will similarly find themselves disappointed. It’s one thing to make art that can be read as indulgent, ill-conceived, and tasteless—it’s another to turn around and make something that’s just boring in comparison.

Without a tangible connection to the material—most notably to Iraq and its people—Gates’ viewpoint feels unguided, doomed to be influenced by the same pervasive prejudices that Atropia ostensibly attempts to combat.

Lacking distinctive social commentary, meaningful character development, or a salient environmental angle, the update feels all but incapable of speaking to the moment.

One could argue that the fairly straightforward biographical approach is meant to act as a primer for those have never once tuned into Turner Classic Movies; on the other hand, rapid-fire references to Godard’s contemporaries, including petty feuds and clashing reputations, are calibrated so that cinephilic savants can pat themselves on the back for getting the reference.

As the final moments of Him unfold, there’s an attempt to drastically course-correct. . . But it’s a desperate Hail Mary after a poorly played game, without a hope of bailing out the team behind it.

Void of righteousness, indignation, or even straight-up nihilism, Sacrifice won’t cause even the most malleable of worldviews to waver.

Summer Of 69 doesn’t flesh out its characters, themes, or jokes with enough finesse to even rank within the storied teen sex comedy canon.

Magic Farm muddles the self-probing spirit of its predecessor, developing a reliance on cringe-inducing ketamine jokes and Brooklynite strawmen in lieu of engaging with the political misdeeds it casually refers to.

Though it’s clear that Bloat is riffing on the digital ghosts of Ringu and Pulse, this approach doesn’t mesh with the mythology it attempts to flesh out for itself. But it’s unfair to say that the film is completely devoid of commentary.

The film is replete with striking visual flourishes, yet its storyline suffers from the inclusion of an unnecessary air of surrealism.

Messy and muddled in its presentation and messaging, Kiss Of The Spider Woman needs more than just compelling performances to raise this project to the level of esteem granted to its predecessors from 30 and 40-odd years ago.

While the performances are rooted in comedic tact, the film’s thematic interests are completely scattershot, leading to an overwhelmingly uneven tone.

Though its thematic threads are never woven into salient social commentary, there is a perverse pleasure to be had with Emilia Pérez, even if its positions on gender, sexuality, and broader Mexican society lack proper nuance.

While Nightbitch certainly achieves relatability, it also presents a generic treatise on womanhood that reinforces more gendered conventions than it refutes.

For all of the horror subgenres crammed into Hold Your Breath, it never conjures sufficient scares.

Musings on motherhood, performance, and power are never fully articulated, leaving a flurry of concepts up in the air without resolve.

If this Speak No Evil remake possesses any merit whatsoever, it is entirely owed to the thespian talent involved. McAvoy is perfectly cast, his uneasy grin akin to a mangy dog baring its teeth to signify its alpha status.

The End’s major downfall, aside from being overlong and ideologically tepid, is that its musical numbers are dull and discordant.

Making such an insubstantial film about one of our era’s greatest technological shifts isn’t just annoying. It feels downright irresponsible.

While incredible practical gore effects and stunning set pieces make Álvarez’s installment well worth watching, it’s as void of meaning as space itself. There are no answers, not even questions, merely what we manage to project onto vast emptiness.

This approach fundamentally misunderstands Eno’s entire creative ethos, which relies on technology to elevate—not replace—the unique human ability to create art, a quality that is sorely remiss here.

The strength of the cast alone can’t elevate Sing Sing to the realm of truly socially conscious cinema.

The film’s confounding tonal discordance, salvaged only in spurts by a commendable performance from Julia Louis-Dreyfus, makes its observations far more embarrassing than existential.

The 70-year-old Neeson lacks both the physical stamina and charisma to pull off the Marlowe character; his fight and action sequences are sluggish and incredulous, and there’s zero chemistry between Marlowe and Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger), the beautiful blond who hires him to investigate the sudden disappearance of her former lover Nico Peterson.

Though it does hint at the toxicity and conspiratorial nature of a powerful institution, it never finds root in overt observations. It handles too many threads—childhood tragedy, murder cover-ups, clandestine spiritual rites—without the dexterity to effectively weave them together.

Even with intense performances from Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) and Linus Roache (Law & Order) guiding the action, the film would be far more effective as a taut short than a filled-out feature.

Despite Fraser donning anywhere between 50 and 300 pounds of prosthetic fat for his role, Charlie lacks a fleshed-out interiority that, unfortunately, reflects Hunter’s original material.

Clerks III is far from a perfect film. Absolutely drenched in masturbatory nostalgia and teeming with timely Marvel references, it milks the last drop of creative potential these nearly 30-year-old characters are capable of providing. Yet, somehow, these marked setbacks don’t completely bog the film down.