Siddhant Adlakha

A boring, weightless revenge experiment that quickly goes awry, Silent Night features none of the charm or visual panache that made John Woo one of Hong Kong and Hollywood’s foremost action stylists.

It’s filled with powerful ideas about the many ways that violence—of the body, of the state and of the soul—manifests in men, and the generational ripple effects therein, even if it doesn’t cohere enough to be consistently engaging.

You know exactly what brand of “weird” to expect from Nicolas Cage and Sion Sono, but what you might not expect is how much the film feels like a death dream about movies.

A deeply misguided act of worship, it starts out as a hilariously bizarre showreel of strange visual effects, before devolving into a distant, disconnected retelling of the highlights of Dion’s life.

Despite a stellar performance from Willem Dafoe as a contemplative art thief, Inside lacks the smarts and visual panache to make good use of its single location.

Tyranny of tone and language aren’t the movie’s only problems. Its story is similarly half-baked, with allusions galore to overcoming demons and finding inner strength that are only ever lip-service, rather than being dramatically or even comedically expressed.

Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck, is a sci-fi thriller by Robert Rodriguez with few hints of sci-fi, thrills, or Robert Rodriguez.

While both its lampooning of U.S. militarism and its central character drama lack follow-through, the film contains bright comedic sparks in its keen observations about American media.

Malcolm & Marie is a well-acted but frustrating exploration of art and bad romance.

After five great seasons, Luther’s feature film adaptation proves to be a major let down, robbing the title character and his loyal fans of the little delights that made the series work.

The movie often brushes past what might have been its most intriguing moments in favor of an unobtrusive hagiography. It approaches dramatic rigor and visual intrigue in only the briefest of scenes, often far too late into its runtime.

Parthenope is a film that rumbles with the hum of nostalgia, recapturing the feeling of youthful, summer freedom while refusing to shy away from the uncertainties of young adulthood. But it’s no mere coming-of-age story; rather, it’s a film about coming-to-oneself.

As much as its focus is technological, it’s an emotional exploration too – a wry and thoughtful magnification of what life feels like when you lose and re-discover your purpose, or you learn to see yourself through someone else’s eyes.

It takes Death on the Nile far longer than it should to reach its most impactful moments, but actor-director Kenneth Branagh cares deeply enough about Detective Poirot to make it work.

Unfortunately, the piece ends up laid low by a climax that peters out by taking itself too seriously, but the film’s totality is still made worthwhile by its central performances.

Magic Mike’s Last Dance is measured and mature, which makes it less of a crowd-pleaser than the first two movies, but it allows Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek to bask in their incredible romantic chemistry.

A tale of miserable spouses plotting each other’s demise, it doesn’t always work, but its action comedy stylings are enough to keep it entertaining even when it swerves into ugly excess or extraneous subplots.

With a stunningly honest performance from the director’s son — Jojo Rabbit star Roman Griffin Davis — Silent Night balances the eccentricities of a Christmas get-together with nihilistic acceptance of certain doom, making for a film that’s both bleak and dryly funny.

The star-studded After the Hunt has a lot on its mind about human complexities, but largely expresses these notions in didactic form and through dramatic conflict that all but resolves itself halfway through the movie’s languid 2 hours and 18 minutes.

80 for Brady is a surprisingly sweet and sentimental comedy led by four stellar performances — especially by Lily Tomlin, who’s never been more radiant.

Less of a movie and more of a series of non sequiturs, Despicable Me 4 is a Minions showcase interrupted by Gru and his family.

John David Washington falls short of the story’s emotional demands, but he brings a desperate physicality as a man on the run, which makes the film just about worth watching.

Based on the scrappy Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead, Michel Hazanavicius’ Final Cut is a more polished version — for better and for worse — but it’s just as fun and self-reflexive, while also leaning into its remake status for a few added laughs.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is yet another music biopic that feels like a checklist of events rather than riveting drama.

Death of a Unicorn features fun fantasy ideas, but suffers from repetitive execution.

The result is a tale made up of numerous endpoints and thematic conclusions, whose dots don’t feel meaningfully connected, and whose situational oddities rarely yield excitement or intrigue.

Pretty Lethal is a wonderfully original idea, but its execution falls flat.

Malignant is rarely scary, but its outlandish bits likely didn’t happen by accident — not when it culminates in scenes so ludicrously over the top that they invite both fist-pumping cheers and wheeze-inducing laughter.

While there’s a more streamlined and thus more effective version of “The Cut” in there somewhere, what remains on screen is plenty harrowing as it is, and allows Bloom to finally cement himself as a truly great performer — not for the lengths he’s willing to go, but for the spellbinding end result.

The twists of its premise soon end up souring it conceptually, resulting in rapidly-diminishing returns, with derivative formal flourishes that largely recall other, better films. It is, by the time its credits roll, completely exhausting.

The best Disney live-action remake in a decade (not that that’s a particularly high bar to clear), Snow White adapts the broad strokes of the 1937 original, while fleshing out its themes of kindness. Rachel Zegler crafts a remarkable, melodic version of the classic princess who leads with her heart, even if her CGI co-stars are difficult on the eyes.

It Lives Inside feels desperate to project specific cultural experiences, but it has neither the tact nor the aesthetic flair to weave a competent horror movie around them.

It’s a film that fits perfectly within the confines of a romantic comedy even while it swaps out every familiar element and explores brand-new dimensions in the process.

A dreamlike fictional biopic about Marilyn Monroe, Blonde features a stunning, volatile performance from Ana de Armas, whose daring vulnerability is matched by director Andrew Dominik’s equally daring formal approach, which keeps Marilyn in constant conversation with her iconic photographs, with the camera, and with the public at large.

An impression of much better action films, spy thriller The Gray Man (directed by Joe & Anthony Russo) wastes its all-star cast by giving them little to work with beyond quips. While it eventually becomes watchable, it spends most of its runtime being visually and emotionally indecipherable.

The movie is largely entertaining, despite being pulled constantly in two directions: as a predecessor to an iconic work and as a distinct beast, with its own gripes against patriarchal norms.

At nearly four hours in length, it surpasses even its gargantuan predecessor “Youth (Spring),” but it also uses that film as a platform for deeper exploration.

The first chapter in Kevin Costner's epic western series is a meandering, regressive snooze.

The Protégé is so bad that it feels like it has to be on purpose.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives it his all in The Thing with Feathers, but the horror movie lives up to neither his performance, nor its own heavy-handed metaphor of a bullying crow-creature representing grief.

Nothing comes of anything either man says. It’s all noise — all passionless anger going in circles, captured by a camera that seems averse to lingering on the tremendous talents of Hopkins and Goode, who try their best to rescue Freud’s Last Session from itself.

Its all-star cast performs admirably, in a film that takes its time to get going, reveals and confronts little once it does, and uses none of its story swerves to build on its dramatic themes, or its one-note humor.

As ugly as it is amusing, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy takes the kind of tonal swings you rarely see from a Hollywood studio.

It looks drab and feels like it was made by people who want to leave its magical premise behind, even though the series refuses to have anything resembling grown-up politics or perspectives.

Harmony Korine’s infrared assassin movie Aggro Dr1ft is a video-game-inspired experiment that’ll have you in a trance.

Corner Office is a just-okay office satire saved by Jon Hamm playing the anti-Jon Hamm.

It’s visual soup where nothing pops or stands out. Almost nothing anyone does or says feels rooted in recognizable character traits, and despite Marsden’s most sincere efforts, he finds himself once again unable to meet Sonic’s eye-line (a production kerfuffle that would be funny, were it not also another reminder of VFX crunch).

It can’t decide whether it wants to tell the real-life story of respected mob boss Frank Costello and his comrade-turned-scheming-enemy Vito Genovese, or if it wants to skewer the entire genre of films they helped inspire. However, with Robert De Niro in both leading roles, there’s always something interesting to watch, even if it’s buried by mountains of repetitive dialogue.

Sweet Girl is front-loaded with fun action, and it has a great performance by Jason Momoa as a widower seeking vengeance against a pharma CEO. But its story slowly loses steam, before being replaced by an entirely different movie with much sillier political messaging.

The worst thing about Joker: Folie à Deux is its unfulfilled potential. It begins with the promise of a novel approach to the Joker and Harley Quinn, placing them in a world where the opposite of cruelty is musical romance. Unfortunately, the DC sequel gets bogged down by a lengthy courtroom saga, which not only keeps the dazzling Lady Gaga away from the spotlight, but centers the movie entirely around its own predecessor, without doing or saying anything new.

Neither polished enough to be engaging drama, nor campy or exploitative enough to be effective horror, They/Them is a plodding, tensionless, and ultimately cowardly movie. Even if it had something worthwhile to say, it would have no idea how to say it.

Sylvester Stallone doesn’t seem thrilled to be playing a superhero in Samaritan, a hodgepodge of non-ideas borrowed from better movies.

The film often does too much, reaching for too many different sources for its attempted thrills and chills, which results in a mostly scattered experience. However, it has a couple of notable strengths. The first is its handful of tense moments.

Despite the caliber of its cast, “The Fabulous Four” never shakes the feeling that its on-screen talent is being severely misused.

Everything that unfolds in The Crooked Man does so with exceptional dullness, including various psychic visions experienced by the characters, which feel more obligatory than inspired.

Minions: The Rise of Gru is more Minion compilation than Gru prequel. It wastes its fun ideas and comedic setups in favor of disconnected slapstick gags, which may delight the diaper-wearing crowd, but will end up a chore to anyone forced to comprehend its inert dramatic scenes and ’70s pop culture references.

The psychological thriller-horror film Antebellum mishandles its sensitive & painful subject matter on multiple levels.

Where The Crawdads Sing is only mildly interesting if you look up the accusations against its author.

To some extent, each shot is a little more neatly composed. But they’re all strung together with the barest visual and narrative connective tissue, resulting in a baffling film that feels strange not only for a modern blockbuster, but for a Transformers movie as well.

Moonfall makes its big ideas feel small and unimportant.

Rife with great performances and disturbing imagery, The Carpenter’s Son transcends its trappings as a mere horror take on Christ and verges on challenging.

A sequel that hopes to court Saw fans and mainstream audiences alike, Spiral: From the Book of Saw is likely to alienate them both. It’s a hollow imitation of the series, unable to meet its most basic visual and narrative expectations. It’s also a bad film in general, which tries to tell a socially relevant story that it can’t seem to handle.

It’s a fun watch, to be sure; as a home invasion movie of sorts, it has a number of thrilling moments, and lead actors Freida Pinto and Logan Marshall-Green each do a stellar job with what they’re given. However, the final product also exudes trepidation about its most intriguing aesthetic and narrative elements — ideas which may have only enhanced its genre sensibilities, had the filmmakers further pursued them.

A one-angle drama spanning centuries, Robert Zemeckis' comic adaptation Here is experimental in appearance, but highly conventional in approach.

Michael, or Bohemian Jacksody, is a film of listlessness and inhumanity that can’t help but suck the energy out of the room. No matter where you come down on Jackson as a person, this film is entirely the opposite of what he was, both as an iconic performer and a controversial tabloid figure. Who would have thought that such a carefully controlled, estate-permitted biopic might actually do more damage to an artist’s legacy by making him so uninteresting?

Justin Tipping’s flimsy football horror movie Him is papered over with colorful lighting but underscored by bland ideas. Despite Marlon Wayans’ bravura performance, it makes very little visceral impact while en route to one of the most confounding third acts of any horror movie this year.

With little tension or humor to speak of, there’s nothing keeping Jurassic World: Dominion afloat, beyond the naïve hope that recognizing the familiar will be enough for some viewers. Maybe it will be, but it’s proof positive that we’re in one of the dullest, most artless periods of Hollywood blockbusters yet — “Top Gun: Maverick” notwithstanding — and we could be stuck here for some time.

Both as drama and as science fiction, In the Blink of an Eye doesn’t probe these questions, but rather, drops definitive answers like anvils, leaving little room to ruminate, wrestle, or consider.

Demonic promises a fun and fascinating premise, but its scattered pieces barely coalesce.

The filmmaking works in and of itself, but that Lakewood feels so emotionally in tune with its lead actress is a feat all on its own.

Nothing in the movie seems to matter, from its internal lore to the extraneous sequel setups that appear out of nowhere to the characters’ own ethoses. Audiences have not cared much about Sony’s non-Spider-Man Spider-world movies. That’s no surprise when the filmmakers seem to be this indifferent as well.

A headache-inducing screenlife film that straps Chris Pratt to a chair and holds its audience hostage too, Mercy squanders its potential as a sci-fi thriller about the dangers of entwining justice and artificial intelligence. The result plays less like the tongue-in-cheek mystery-thriller director Timur Bekmambetov seems to be aiming for, and more like an advertisement to tech investors, making the movie chilling in unintended ways.

Ranbir Kapoor is deeply committed to his brash and ugly protagonist, but in spite of the movie’s explosive action, director Sandeep Reddy Vanga seems more preoccupied with provoking outrage than with telling a coherent story.

A movie that’ll just about keep young viewers’ attention, Smurfs is part Rihanna jukebox musical, and part flimsy attempt to give the little blue critters an identity that’ll stick.

It’s only 100 minutes long, but upward of 99 of those minutes are likely to be spent in silent boredom, if not irritated disbelief at being subjected to such guileless, artless nonsense.

The Mark Wahlberg–starrer reveals just how stuck Hollywood sci-fi is in 1999, when The Matrix cemented ideas of digital consciousness in the Western mainstream (with a bent of pan-Asian spirituality).

Directors Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil offer ideas of subversion that feel both long-outdated in concept and completely dull in execution, to the point that merely describing the film feels irresponsible, lest its premise accidentally lure curious viewers to the cinema.

Gehraiyaan seldom earns its melodramatic turns. However, the buildup to them proves to be dynamic enough, emotionally charged enough, and above all, honest enough in its approach to infidelity and flawed human relationships that the film remains worthwhile.

More Jackass is never a bad thing, so Jackass Forever follow-up Jackass 4.5 is fun despite being a scattered collection of interviews and deleted scenes. Like its predecessors, it’s bonus content for a Jackass movie delivered at feature length, which makes it catnip for long-time fans.

At 174 minutes long, with nested flashbacks overflowing with exposition, the movie has lengthy stretches that can feel like a chore. However, each extraneous segment eventually converges in some of the most exhilarating and cathartic on-screen violence Indian cinema has to offer.

The film draws its various techniques from far better and more accomplished documentaries, resulting in a multifaceted, mixed-bag approach that never clicks, thanks in large part to how the movie chooses to reveal information.

Malformed comedy and character beats keep the movie feeling like a rough first draft.

It’s a strange-looking, odd-feeling film that gestures toward mystery and larger conspiracy, but it seldom pulls on these threads. Instead, it ends up an anodyne political drama that says little of note.

Beyond all the legal and even medical specifics resides a sense of communal understanding, and — at the risk of sounding mawkish — a deep and abiding love for one’s fellow human beings, which Feder taps into with aplomb.

Elena Oxman’s Outerlands is a film of great cinematic sleight of hand.

Bollywood gangster saga Dhurandhar walks a fine line between raucous entertainment and hateful propaganda. With more blood and guts than a slaughterhouse, it’s one of the most viciously enthralling films this year, following a fictitious undercover operative influencing real historical events, like Forrest Gump with a Kalashnikov.