Siddhant Adlakha

The film seldom wavers from its singular idea and feeling; tonally, it’s a stroll across a plateau by design, but it teeters constantly over that plateau’s edge.

The film depends too greatly on its sense of academia to unearth its story, and it struggles to fully engage with the explosive topic at hand for its first hour. However, in the final stretch of its 85-minute runtime, this approach proves foundational for chilling revelations and quiet, cinematically self-evident questions about the way we remember history.

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.

On paper, the result is one of the more meaningful departures from convention that Disney has seen in recent years. In execution, though, it falls ever so slightly short, though not for lack of originality.

While this movie may feel like a Simpsons-esque case of a series failing to recapture lost grandeur, the result is still mile-a-minute fun if you can keep past expectations out of sight and out of mind. Or… you could just watch the first film again.

Gunn is much better suited to the material than either David Ayer or the trailer house that re-cut the previous film, though while the end result is gorier, funnier and occasionally more heartfelt, it doesn’t quite coalesce into something totally fun, or totally meaningful.

Mulligan’s raw portrayal of a woman trapped by invisible walls is certainly powerful — she keeps the film afloat even when it falters — and the way Fennell gives human form to those walls imbues the film with a simmering rage. However, these handful of strengths are hardly enough to render its other failings moot.

Megadoc is a mood piece and a process piece, shot up close with lo-fi video equipment, but it’s never allowed to probe deeply enough.

The unfolding action is never farcical enough to make the film satirical or outright funny, but it’s also never imbued with enough historical gravity to truly matter.

Although it eventually loses staying power, Lynne Ramsay’s ferocious relationship drama Die, My Love quickly seeps beneath your skin, practically holding you hostage in its initial half.

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.

The film itself is mostly fine, with breathtaking visuals broken up by a less captivating story that often drags its feet (despite several great performances). But its place within Western traditions—both real and imagined—is strange, unsavory, and fascinating.

All five stories in V/H/S/94 feature a cult-like element, but only one of them feels like a true work of madness.

An otherwise plain film about an unlikely friendship between a returned soldier and a mechanic, Causeway is worth watching for Jennifer Lawrence’s best performance in years.

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.

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

Although it eventually leans into traditional genre hallmarks, its introductory musings are novel, taking the form of a one-woman performance showcase that makes ingenious use of visual and auditory negative space.

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.

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.

Riz Ahmed makes for a vigorous lead in Aneil Karia’s contemporary British-Indian Hamlet, which loses its emotional clarity beneath an intriguing exterior. Its use of silence and intimacy grants it a fascinating texture, but the film never challenges or re-invigorates Shakespeare’s greatest work, ensuring that it ends up somewhere in the middle of a lengthy pile of adaptations.

While it’s hard not to be moved by footage of Robert Downey’s final days, the film is more informative than emotional. It contains hints of an intimate story, but mostly flattens a strange and exotic career into a series of light observations.

Spy x Family Code: White is far more chuckle-worthy than laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s an innocent, adolescent charm to even its jokes that miss the mark.

Thankfully, its surreal allure — buoyed by a sense of tragic longing — is powerful enough to echo throughout its runtime.

Leave the World Behind has a worthwhile cast, but its paranoid thrills quickly fizzle out en route to a baffling final scene.

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.

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.

Real-life tragic romance Spoiler Alert is kneecapped by the plainness of its storytelling, and only marginally saved by its performances.

More distancing than disgusting, Crimes of the Future strings together great body horror ideas but does little with them.