If the overall project of the Craig pictures was to domesticate 007, No Time to Die accomplishes its mission. But it was a bit of a slog to get there.

It becomes more interesting as it goes along (and gets slightly darker), even if it never entirely works as a cohesive project.

In the lead, Mbatha-Raw delivers a shaken, exposed performance that hints at the more familiar stories of domestic trauma (drug use, suicide, having to give up a child) that this otherwise super story might stand in for.

You can feel the ungainly attempts to force that material into tidy little narratives.

It’s at once deeply formulaic and—in terms of the faces and places we usually see on movie screens in the West—refreshingly unfamiliar.

Black Widow certainly suffers from MCU bloat—dutiful references to other installments in the franchise, an overly convoluted plot leading to a two-hour-plus runtime, an endlessly explosive action finale that takes place mostly in front of green screens—yet a strong cast and emphasis on character ultimately overcome much of those grievances.

If not a cohesive whole, then, Evil Does Not Exist still has its captivating moments as a modestly scaled eco-parable.

The possession scenes are the calling card for the Philippous as filmmakers, whose 360-degree camera captures both the unsettling otherworldliness of the ritual and the giddy naivete of the teens.

As things go very, very dark in the last third, the tone control starts to slip, eventually sliding away in the final moments, when what had been a sly critique of toxic masculinity turns preachy.

Medicine for Melancholy is one of those feature debuts that equally hints at the filmmaker’s influences and the idiosyncratic direction they will eventually head on their own.

Like Hereditary, Midsommar functions as an outlandish imagining of the effects of personal trauma, especially for someone who already struggles with an unsteady mind. Yet the psychology and the horror aren’t quite as holistically handled this time around.

The meta irony is that even as Scream 2022 is telling certain fans to back off and calm down, it’s also wooing a new generation. Luckily the film is clever enough to earn such … well, let’s call it appreciation, rather than allegiance. It’s just a movie, after all.

Murphy is committed, bringing back the same low-key charm he showcased in the original, while also undercutting Akeem by showing how he has come to represent the repressive Zamundan traditions he once rebelled against.

With a more streamlined narrative, it would have been stunning. As is, the movie certainly marks Diallo as promising.

You have a literally commanding Duvall at the center of it, wearing that uniform like a second skin. He’s more than willing to play Meechum as a monster of a father, while also giving hints, in small moments, that this is a man who has had tenderness of any kind ground out of him by a macho, mercenary system.

At its best, the movie is a destabilizing look at family as a big con. Yet the chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood never sings, which becomes a problem as the movie shifts to focus more on their relationship.

Blue Moon is a portrait of a man on the precipice of an artistic and personal cliff (we learn in the opening sequence that Hart would die within the year, at the age of 48). Mostly, though, the movie is about Hawke talking.

Rustin is a dutiful history-lesson movie of the type that usually fails to stir me, yet in recent years I’ve come to put more value on such efforts. If any acknowledgment of the difficult, “inconvenient” periods of America’s past are going to be banned from libraries and schools, then let art do what it can to fill in the gaps.

The style is arresting and the leads are strong, but the story runs out of steam.

Wendy, director Benh Zeitlin’s follow-up film, works too—but just barely.

Cat People is a lot talkier and less evocative than its reputation would suggest, yet it’s still a startling, psychosexual horror picture – especially for its time.

Gazer owes an enormous debt to a few obvious influences, but the movie has just enough vision and atmosphere of its own for the makings of an unnerving, lo-fi, neo-noir.

The clarity and imagination of the world-building carried me through, as well as the fountain of charm that is Paul Rudd.

It’s a welcome return to Luhrmann maximalism, if you’re a fan of his style. And it’s anchored by a wild, possessed performance by Austin Butler, who gets Presley’s singing voice and—more importantly—gyrations exactly right.

At its best, Eric LaRue interrogates the rush to healing and forgiveness that can sometimes follow tragedy in Christian communities.

Unlike Daze and those other predecessors, Selah and the Spades never convincingly establishes its own stylized universe, resting somewhat uncomfortably between the real world and a fully realized, believably hermetic place.

Writer-director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) does more veering that navigating, but stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson (the latter nominated for Best Actress) connect on such a genuinely exhilarating level in the music scenes (especially the early ones, where they’re refining their act) that you end up rooting for them and, by default, their movie.

We’re largely left with an arresting return to the sort of wild work Cronenberg delivered in the 1980s and 1990s, if one where the shock is ironically missing.