The story, alas, is colorless and flat: a terribly earnest picture of two sad people looking for somebody or something to jump-start their battery.

The narrative is too flat, too drily filmed by César-nominated cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (8 Women) to induce much emotion or debate about Anne’s hypocrisy and abuse of power.

Perkins’ greatest and most stomach-churning achievement is in a slow shift of perspective, leading the audience from the bleak and eerie serial killer thriller of Harker’s world to the fiendish reality of Longlegs, and an enigmatic denouement that will be puzzled over and studied. Hell truly awaits.

The destination may seem inevitable, but the twists, turns, and merciless bloodshed make Kill a trip well worth taking.

The pleasures are in watching Maxine navigate through the bloodshed to the denouement she deserves, and watching West cut into the seductive allure of cinema.

The script by Mike White (who may have been locked in the writer’s room by Illumination Studios after working on the superior Migration) and series co-creator Ken Daurio feels like a stack of B-plots stapled together rather than a full story.

Despite being marketed as a story about empowered women playing sports, the film doesn't show all too much camaraderie or empowerment.

There’s an insufferable longwindedness to Kinds of Kindness, each installment dragging on beyond the point of patience. Watching becomes a chore, made heavier by Robbie Ryan’s often flat cinematography and the pacing created by Lanthimos’ longtime editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis.

The seated dance between Johnson and Penn is witty, earnest, honest, and overflowing with kindness, making Daddio a remarkable story of two strangers opening up to each other.

If you grew up in the 1990s post-hippie Massachusetts performance arts scene (as Baker did), Janet Planet may tug on your nostalgia, but you may not feel otherwise drawn to its ethereal qualities.

While some filmmakers fade into obscurity during their time away from the screen, The Bikeriders is a welcome reminder that Nichols’ thoughtful explorations of economic tension and toxic masculinity are more relevant now than ever.

Squibb’s charm, her gutsiness, and her sharp, subtle humor fill the movie with warmth and veracity.

O’Sullivan’s script is also a remarkable document of community theatre: again, often a place for cheap laughs about hams and backstage romances, but it’s never played for comedy at the character’s expense.

Ultimately, and as is to be expected, In Our Day is not revelatory or revolutionary. It’s a film about being comfortable from a filmmaker who is comfortable with who he is.

It leaves a lot of room for interpretation – depending on how you come to it, you could read Dog and Robot’s relationship as platonic or romantic, straight or queer – but the takeaway is all tenderness.

It’s such a simple story but told with such grace, tenderness, compassion, and wonder, that all its strangeness seems familiar and welcome.

This is Michael Bay for the John Wick generation: bombastic filmmaking at its finest with complex, multi-level action sequences that give the stunts room to breathe.

For neophytes, there’s still much to enjoy – cinematographer Steve Cosen’s painterly framing, exuberant scenery chewing (Linney makes a meal out of one vignette’s rotted teeth) – but the thematic resonance between story and storyteller gets a little lost when you’re only working off the reenactments’ CliffsNotes.

Director Scott Glosserman began his film as a found footage mockumentary before flipping into a conventional slasher for the final act as a deliberate, subversive plot point. Nash keeps his deliberate pacing to emphasize the grisliness.

It’s not that it’s unfunny or completely without charm: it’s that the script feels like an abandoned The Secret Life of Pets sequel into which Garfield has been crowbarred.

You think you’re watching a breezy-seeming comedy, then you’re seduced by two expert flirts, and then suddenly you’re genuinely stirred by a carpe diem monologue on the malleability of identity. I mean, what even is this? An absolute gas.

If you’re just along for the spectacular ride, then Furiosa is Miller at his nitro-fueled, chrome-covered, overblown best. But if you’re trying to make any sense of this, you’ll find it increasingly stalled out.

In a drama that depends on its organic structure, the constructed nature is a little too visible under the skin.

Taking its title from her second and final critically-acclaimed blockbuster album, music biopic Back to Black gives you all those details you’ll recognize – but not much beyond that.

Generous and warm and howling funny, there is such a light touch to Babes, you might not even clock the depth of its observations – its inspections – of body and heart both.

I Saw the TV Glow presents a potent rumination on identity, repression, and self-acceptance.

To its credit, the film never feels like a patchwork, but rather a cohesive whole. Or to be more specific: a haunting and meditative yet often hilarious cohesive whole.

Propper’s greatest success is that she doesn’t overdramatize tragedy and trauma. Awful things do occur, but in an organic way, so that the inevitable reaction is a sense of stunned shock. That’s why there’s no sense of judgement: Instead, there is just Propper’s overwhelming sense of empathy for what it is to be young right now.