Siddhant Adlakha

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.

The movie delivers subtext aplenty, overflowing in ways that help overcome its reserved exterior and make for an unobtrusive comedy-drama that, on occasion, comes close to working.

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.

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.

Any romantic notions the film might have are swiftly undone when it starts to explain the disappointing method behind its sleight of hand — until this explanation becomes the magic trick itself.

The story soon gets away from Kandhari, leading to a film that enraptures and delights in its first hour but gets so locked in to a singular approach by its second that it’s practically consumed by its own style, rendering it unable to keep pace with the bold ideas at play.

The Lost City is a decent action-comedy that coasts on the presence of its stars.

A scattered but intimate drama about a queer immigrant left adrift, Marco Calvani’s High Tide boasts an impeccable leading performance that buoys the movie even at its weakest.

Anyone watching the film is likely to learn something, though whether its lessons will stick, or claw their way beneath one’s skin, is less likely.

A film with sights and sounds you’ve never seen or heard, it’s an intriguing watch with catchy, energetic numbers, even if it doesn’t always land emotionally.

The film is full of potent human drama (largely coming from Gourav’s performance), but as an examination of the world’s intersection with modern India, it usually lands on the wrong side of inauthentic.

Writer-director Elijah Bynum fills the screen with some impressive imagery, but it’s all in service of an ugliness that Magazine Dreams cops out on depicting.

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.

Clocking in at nearly two hours, Peter Strickland’s sound-and-food odyssey Flux Gourmet is only ever alluring when its made-up artform (“sonic catering”) is front and center during surreal vignettes. Otherwise, it falls back on rote observations and explanations about what compels its characters to create — a far less engaging experience than actually witnessing that creation.

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.

DC League of Super-Pets may have thoughtful filmmaking on its side, but what it doesn’t have is a voice cast that can lend life and personality to its characters.

Try as it might, its story of a good man caught in a bad situation is bogged down by empty reveals, and by a plot that tries to fool you without first earning your investment.

Wildcat is too tame in its portrayal of suffering to let its Catholic undertones sing or take powerful cinematic form, resulting in a work where paradoxes are half-baked dilemmas that seem too conveniently solved, and life itself is something that happens far off-screen.

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.

On one hand, there’s perhaps no more honest depiction of a relationship between a parent and their adult child having hit a wall, and a point of no return. On the other hand, pushing against this inevitability is a much more intriguing concept than simply presenting it as-is, over and over again, even when its specifics are disguised by a fable.

The film’s eye-popping, blood-soaked vistas are a marvelous sight, as are a number of its era-specific details, and its handful of striking moments of queer samurai imagery. However, for the most part, Kitano’s tale of ambition and beheadings — many, many beheadings — loses nearly all momentum in its second half, before settling into a rote, repetitive rhythm.

What’s especially strange about The Killer is that Fincher achieves almost everything he sets out to, but he sets that bar dispiritingly low.

Moonfall makes its big ideas feel small and unimportant.

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.

Its strengths also ensure that no matter how rote “We Bury the Dead” becomes, it remains at least watchable for most of its runtime, even as it ignores its most fascinating ideas in favor of safe, familiar ones.

It’s a rare misfire from director Sebastián Lelio, whose approach to his tale of a 19th century English nurse (Florence Pugh) investigating an Irish miracle is far too plain to be mysterious or stirring.

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.