The director is so eager to make a spectacle out of this scenario that Good News begins to feel as self-insistent as its characters.

Mr. K succeeds as both an homage to Kafka’s fascination with the absurdity of life, and especially with the socio-bureaucratic systems we humans have wrought upon ourselves, and as a sumptuous and surreal feast for the eyes. It poses many questions, leaving them for the audience to ponder for themselves after the screen fades to black.

Though often lethargic and listless, Is This Thing On? does stir up a vivid portrait of the New York City underground comedy milieu, even when New York City as a character feels more like the afterthought it isn’t supposed to be.

It might seem a bit showy and cheesy in its final moments, but that kind of over-the-top shock is missing from most of the rest of the film. It’s a thriller missing the thrills, and we’ll take them where we can get them.

While five-plus hours of mostly hanging out in strangers’ apartments might seem like an increasingly tedious invitation, Loktev ends up justifying the running time as her “undesirable friends” soon become ours as well. Smartly structured so that different “foreign agents” take centerstage from episode to episode, we’re forever kept on our toes (right through to a finale that hints at a part two, currently in the works).

[Martel] makes the case that the Chuschas put up a hard-won, long-won, impossible battle that already began centuries before, coming at the material with a visceral filmmaking point of view that never overshadows the material.

Homebound is a resounding triumph.

Ultimately, The French Italian has far more to say about navigating the mundanities of a stable and pleasant relationship in your thirties than about theatre, revenge, or noisy neighbors.

Anyone who lives, breathes, and bleeds “Rocky Horror” will find comfort in “Strange Journey” and its celebration of the musical’s enduring legacy. Anybody else won’t find much to grab onto.

Leto’s performance works because he’s so utterly believable as a soulless ghoul that it’s easy to buy into the happy-to-be-here warmth of his emergent humanity.

Most of the shorts here try to use holiday goofiness as a gateway to serious terror, but unsurprisingly struggle to make it across that hell-mouth intact; meanwhile, the sole episode that keeps a straight face and taps into some of the real fears that accompany trick-or-treating manages to become the franchise’s most genuinely upsetting short in years.

Some movies suffer because of bad timing. Shell wouldn’t be a very good movie under any circumstances, but it fares especially poorly against Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, a better and more outrageous film that deals in very similar subject matter.

Every scene is relaxedly suffused with the tension between the limits of perspective and the empathy of storytelling, until the act of seeing becomes as problematized as the refusal to look, and the boundaries between reality and fiction grow as blurred as those between the various genres that Gavagai swirls into an unclassifiable sludge.

The understated performances and coolly detached, shivery hypnotic vibes of this film won’t be for anyone looking for a story, but The Ice Tower casts a creepy spell that lingers and even deepens in the mind long after it’s over. As only the best spells do.

Fundamentally, Shenk and Cohen are trying to argue for a particular solution here, and it might be promising indeed, but it’s also presented as a little too much of a silver-bullet for the issues they’ve identified.

Obsession should keep everyone awake long after they get home from seeing it.

While this isn’t quite the stuff of vintage Black, it’s close enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing him crank another one out every two years for the next decade.

This is a dense, unforgiving movie in the classic sense, an adults-only drama that doesn’t placate despite its stylistic overreaches. It’s disappointing that in its final moments, the movie has come so far off its own hinges, so deconstructed its own rivets, that it can’t put them back together again. But everything that’s come before is so rich that you’re ready to forgive it.

Nadia Fall’s Brides plugs in some quite unexpected elements to the ol’ road trip formula, with startling — and ultimately heartbreaking — results.

The action is taut, the stakes are clear, and Kirk never misses a chance to remind us that all of these are just regular people who’ve crossed paths in a dark place.

A complaint that’s also common to contemporary horror films nags at The Black Phone 2, in that all of the best things about this movie come from other movies, whether they be the creative team’s previous efforts or iconic titles from decades past.

The gags are fun, but like everything else they feel unfinished — the seed of a full joke that will leave you wanting more. There are laughs aplenty, and Singh is completely at ease in a starring role, selling the material even in its weaker moments.

Him asks its characters ad nauseam how far they would go to be great, but this dreadfully compromised movie never even risks enough to be good.

The Last Viking elegantly juxtaposes the ludicrousness of the situation (one of the funniest side plots is Werner’s avid Beatle fandom and his apparently sincere belief that this makeshift band is going to deliver high quality covers) with the trauma that underscores the ridiculousness events.

Maddie’s Secret renewed my hope that this corner of the industry can go to new places, outside of what is edgy or trendy. It is an extremely accomplished debut and one of the boldest American movies I have seen in years.

There are a few laughs to be found in the film, little moments of wit or weirdness, but the film is otherwise a mirthless drag rescued only by its bright leads. Maybe let them make the movie next time.

One Battle After Another might be among the sillier films that Anderson has ever made, but there’s no mistaking the sincerity of its horrors, or how lucidly it diagnoses the smallness of the men inflecting them upon the innocent and the vulnerable.

A waste of a talented cast, including Brian Cox, who pulls double duty as director.