Siddhant Adlakha

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.

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.

A film of remarkable performance and subject matter, laid low by unremarkable filmmaking.

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

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.

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.

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.

he fatal flaw of “It’s Not Me” is that it looks backward rather than forward, embodying films that have already been made, rather than those yet to be dreamed.

Despite thoughtful visual artistry, and a great dramatic performance from Adam Sandler, Johan Renck’s Spaceman ends up too scattered, and too literal, to make its tale of a lonely astronaut feel remotely important.

The sequel to Bollywood’s biggest hit is bigger, longer, and just as vicious in its on-screen butchery, but has far less artistry and visceral allure. The continued spy-revenge saga runs a mind-numbing four hours, during which it sheds all semblance of human drama in favor of naked political propaganda that reveals the emperor has no clothes.

An artless retelling of major events, She Said chronicles the investigation into Harvey Weinstein in mechanical fashion, flattening its tale of victimhood, paranoia, and perseverance into a journalism movie checklist.