Richard Lawson

Though all three sections of the film have didactic bits when big ideas are plainly stated, the bulk of Monsters and Men renders huge issues with a fluid understatement. But that disarming pensiveness and interiority doesn’t forget the anger and sadness of the story—instead, it somehow heightens it, affording these characters a grounded texture that casts their struggles in a piercingly humane light.

Watching The Way of Water, one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. One stretches and shifts in their seat before accepting, with a resigned and happy plop, that they could watch yet another hour of Cameron’s preservationist epic. Lucky for us—lucky even for the culture, maybe—that at least a few more of those are on their way.

Blair keeps the strange comedy coming, but he also lets the film dip into moments of contemplative thought, into hardscrabble philosophy. The Shitheads simply becomes a far more interesting film — a suspenseful one, too.

The Idea of You is glossy and smart, a cut above the slop so often served to its intended audience. It may force a neat ending, it may strain logic, it may leave some intriguing avenues unexplored, but The Idea of You is otherwise transporting, a fairy tale worthy of a big screen.

The Last Duel is a surprising jumble, a motley assemblage of tones that often work in perverse harmony.

Hawke and Byrne have a nice chemistry, handling an offbeat and initially epistolary romance with wary sweetness. Juliet, Naked is surprising in its emotional contours, hitting familiar beats from different angles or, occasionally, taking the story in wholly unexpected directions.

Fresh is instead a grim slice of visceral entertainment, occasionally dressed up as something weightier. When the script indicates toward its intent—especially in the final climax, when a couple of clunky, theme-driven lines threaten to derail the whole thing—the cool flint of what’s come before loses a bit of its edge.

It’s a lot of nervy construction built around very little substance. Driver and Cotillard are admirably committed, and the film does occasionally soar to giddily surreal, big-burst musical highs. Not near often enough, though.

Chappaquiddick isn’t a harangue against Kennedy, but it does take a hard look at a man who was a revered stalwart of the Democratic party for decades. The film works best as a character study, a profile of moral crisis, rather than any sort of true-crime exposé.