Radheyan Simonpillai

It’s not like the premise isn’t intriguing. It’s just that the result is the kind of soulless response you’d expect from AI, should it be prompted to make a “screenlife” version of Minority Report, with some elements from Speed.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple doesn’t quite live up to the earlier film’s promise. At best, it’s an ambitious and compelling enough staging ground biding time, with cruel violence more stomach-turning than ever, as it sets up the already-in-the-works final chapter in a planned trilogy

Ella McCay, the movie, feels like we’re being bear hugged by a lovable, slightly boozy old grand-uncle who genuinely hopes to find common ground with a new generation, but also can’t help being a little patronizing.

That plot gets lost in these desaturated Wicked movies. They look less like The Wizard of Oz and more like Fruit Loops that had been left sitting in a bowl of milk for too long – those bright solid colours bleeding out and leaving nothing but a soggy mess.

Guadagnino’s film feels small and overwrought in comparison; satisfied to drag things out within the bubble of faux academia (and cinephilia, with a pointed nod in Woody Allen’s direction). But it does have its pleasures, specifically where the actors speak less and make us feel so much more in performance and action.

Kogonada fills the vacuousness in the script with knowing nods to all the performance and illusion we commit to when taking the leap – whether in love or (in its meta way) at the movies.

Elvis is of course a tailor-made subject for Luhrmann, the Moulin Rouge director’s trademark bombast and razzle-dazzle so in tune with the singer’s rattle and roll, which comes through in both his biopic and now EPiC.

The movie reduces Kelley’s psychiatric insights into soundbites, manages to whittle down the proceedings at the Nuremberg trials into the familiar tropes and cliches from classic courtroom movies, and even lets Crowe’s performance surrender its nuances to hammy villainy, all for the sake of reliable entertainment.

Hikari and company mostly skim over the tension in a movie seemingly built out of highlight reels and lacking connective tissue.

As the medley of violence continues, Stone’s mugging goes from giddily sinister to hammy and exhausting. Same goes for Nobody 2, and also the post-John Wick wave of action movies it’s part of.

It’s hard to stay mad at a movie for refusing to add things up, or resolve its mysteries in any traditionally satisfying ways, when getting lost with Qualley can be such a pleasure.

Fixed gets as much mileage as it can out of gags that largely centre on Bull’s gonads, with its entire narrative built around a wild night out when he discovers his owner’s plan to finally give him the snip. But that humour, and its shock value, wears thin in less time than it takes for Bull to satisfy his urges.

If Anderson fits like a glove in the new Naked Gun, it’s because her durability is as pleasantly unexpected as this franchise that’s refusing to heed the memo that reboots suck and studio comedy is dead.

The Fantastic Four is here for a proper reset – a buoyant and frequently dazzling one at that, which sort of makes up for the failed movie adaptations of Marvel’s first family from the past.

The problem is, while alluding to the depressing state of things, the gleeful fun Gunn insists on having, with his kitschy aesthetic and silly humour, can feel forced.

Boyle, who won the Best Director Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, has often let his sentimental side get the best of him. But here there’s a maturity, gracefulness and elegance to how he hits those notes, though they’re nearly undone by a goofy but admittedly fun coda setting up the series’ next installment.

The script, the gags and the action remain mostly intact. But this time around, real actors and sets become deadweight to a story that soared in larger-than-life animated form.

Where Bloodlines excels is in the clever and often diabolical storytelling craft and visuals. There’s a decadence in the film-making that isn’t at odds with the campy nature of Final Destination but instead realizing its full potential.

It helps that Quaid is so good at landing every punchline, if not punch. His Nathan may not have any sense of pain, but Quaid gives him a great sense of humour.

Thunderbolts can be messy, sure. Pugh is the kind of star who can thrive in such mess.

If Minecraft is the game where kids exercise their creativity by building new digital worlds full of tunnels and fortresses, A Minecraft Movie is where that creativity goes to die.

Things play out as sentimentally as expected, while scratching the surface at something deeper, exploring the relationship people have to music, and how that can either change or stay frozen in time.

Everyone’s stumbling along in a vaguely defined universe, which really only serves as a backdrop to catchy musical numbers that evolve from folk to pop rock.

The plot and most action sequences here are as cookie-cutter as the community homes Quan’s Gable is selling.

For all its gestures toward trending conversations about our warped relationship with technology, and the entitled boys weaned on it, Companion is ultimately just a fun genre mash-up that pales in comparison to the superior movies it tends to pay homage to but elevated by its cast.

As sincere and sentimental as his approach is, Whannell struggles to marry the emotional beats to the schlockey thrills the genre demands. Instead, these two competing modes tend to cancel each other out, but not so much as to disregard what the ambitious director is going for.

September 5 splices together its thoroughly researched dramatic recreations with the actual programming ABC aired, an initially nifty back and forth that quickly wears thin.

War of the Rohirrim is short on fiery floating eyeballs, wizards harnessing the power of the sun and ghost armies rising from caves – the kind of stuff you’d expect anime to go ham with, but perhaps not in director Kenji Kamiyama’s case.