Siddhant Adlakha

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 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.

Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot film is his best and strangest yet.

A passionate, well-intentioned deviation in style, Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist doesn’t quite hit the mark with its meditations on nature. However, in its best moments, it’s another entrancing dramatic piece from the Japanese maestro, whose strengths lie less in observing natural environments, and more in observing people’s nature.

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

Poor Things is sex-comedy Frankenstein by way of Jules Verne, and one of the most imaginative comedies in years.

Part sci-fi satire, part futuristic dramedy, and almost entirely sterile, The Pod Generation seeks to make lofty comments about our world, and the politics of women’s and workers’ autonomy. However, it scarcely has anything to offer beyond the sleek technological designs it tries and fails to critique.

A full-tilt biopic unlike any before it, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is as stunning as it is terrifying.

Whatever lies in store for the future of Mission: Impossible, McQuarrie’s third outing as director proves that he still has an ingenious bag of tricks to pull from, having departed from the gloom and doom of Fallout to create an explosive yet self-reflexive action saga that leaves you wanting more.

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.

It’s one of Scorsese’s most brutal films, yet one of his most thoughtful and self-reflexive, as he crafts a subversive murder “mystery” that leaves no lingering questions save for one.

Despite its confused and overstuffed worldbuilding, “Elemental” has enough charming moments to get by, even if its meaning lies less in its ill-conceived immigrant saga, and more in the personal drama that lives a few layers beneath it.

It builds, in the process, to a stunning and genuinely moving crescendo.

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.

About Dry Grasses is among the most brilliantly off-putting works to be featured at Cannes in recent years, with so rotten a core that every hint of virtue or even normalcy in the camera’s peripheral vision becomes a tragedy unto itself, simply by way of being ignored.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny fails to recapture Spielberg’s magic. With uninspired action and conflicting themes and character motivations, it’s proof that some things should just be allowed to end.

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

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.

Where The Covenant most shines is in the riveting intensity of both its performances and its action.

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.

Whenever it dares to display hints of dreamlike abstraction, Carmen quickly returns to its rote formless-ness, as a heatless desert romance about a pair of non-characters on the run. Neither mysterious nor boisterous, it’s one of the most head-scratching musicals in years.

It’s the kind of movie worth recommending for its ambition alone, merely to witness the audacious result of anxious self-loathing writ large across the silver screen, without an ounce of restraint. That it’s also a remarkably well-crafted horror-comedy is a cherry on top.

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.

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.

Michael B. Jordan imbues this spinoff/threequel with a cinematic zest the series has never seen before, expanding the visual language of the Hollywood boxing movie in remarkable ways.

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.

Before Infinity Pool loses its way toward the end, it proves to be an enticing work of depravity that explores money and privilege through horrifying, violent excess.

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.