September 5 is effective because it doesn’t claim to say anything original about the perils of reporting and consuming breaking news. It’s simply—and bluntly—showing how easily those familiar perils can be overlooked.

Williams has always thrived on the audience’s sympathy as much as their admiration, and Better Man finds a wonderfully goofy way to represent that with its charming, if unevolved, simian star.

The highest compliment I can bestow on it is that Corbet’s drive has paid dividends, leaving much for me to puzzle through.

The director’s meticulousness overtakes some scenes, crowding out any real sense of dread; occasionally his characters seemed to be drowning in the gorgeous, complex sets they were moving through. Eggers always manages to freak me out, though, despite the occasional lapses into tedium—he knows just how to evoke the simple fear of the unknown.

The film is, as a result, a portrait of how Rasoulof perceives the systematic oppression within his home country, from which he is now exiled. The government’s rejection of its citizens’ efforts for change is personal to him—as devastating and painful, the film suggests, as having a father turn against his own flesh and blood.

The resulting adaptation satisfyingly combines the grandiosity of a musical and the intimacy of filmmaking.

For all the fun it’s having, Gladiator II does require a working knowledge of its predecessor’s story to understand the stakes, which also means it magnifies the original film’s flaws.

Conclave also adds a few too many contrived twists in its quest for narrative drama, but the movie moves nimbly enough to avoid a collapse into pure fantasy.

The Apprentice could have delved into the Trump persona or explored how it calcified. But by trying to avoid how Trump’s past reflects his current approach to politics—his zero-sum relationship to power, his pettiness and egotism—while simultaneously winking at viewers’ knowledge of him, the film lands itself in a trap.

What [Coppola] ultimately created isn’t the realization of his aspirations; it’s an unfinished work, waiting for our reality to catch up to his fantasy.

A generic and plodding revenge thriller that’s nowhere near bold enough to justify the franchise’s resurrection.

Blink Twice is not about eating the rich or satirizing the one percent. It’s instead a stylish, if tonally uneven, exploration of how being in the orbit of powerful people can produce an insidious sense of powerlessness that easily curdles into self-deception.

Good One shows that growing up can begin with a single conversation that illuminates, for someone like Sam, how far she has left to go.

Dìdi exudes a special kind of empathy and warmth toward the kids who grew up in the age of Myspace, as well as their families. Many coming-of-age stories examine a child’s relationship with themselves and their parents, but Dìdi also tracks how those shifts were made more jarring and strange in the early days of social media.

Horizon might not be “watchable” in the most traditional sense of the word, but it’s audacious enough that I’ll be heading back for more in August, in anticipation of what might happen when all of these tales hopefully, eventually, collide.

MaXXXine has a bitchin’ soundtrack; lots of sultry, De Palma–inspired long shots; and a very engaging and salty performance from Goth at its center. It’s fun, but it’s unavoidably a bit of a style exercise, albeit a very good one.

Feige’s mainstream instincts are easy to detect here. The prior Deadpool films were scuzzy and cobbled together, even as the budget grew; the cameos from other Marvel characters felt half-hearted and perfunctory, inclusions for Deadpool to roll his eyes at, not for fans to cheer over. Deadpool & Wolverine, on the other hand, has that bland MCU sheen that makes all of its movies look expensive but nonthreatening, happily accepting of mediocrity rather than attempting something artsy or daring.

With so many details pulled directly from history, along with scenes shot inside an intake prison that had housed the RTA alumni featured in Sing Sing, the film often plays like a documentary.

If you can see the film in IMAX, or in one of those 4DX theaters that jostles your seat around and sprays water in your face, I recommend it. Chung has a nice grasp of his supporting characters, and he takes pains to dwell on the aftermath of every horrible storm, but in Twisters, the action is the juice, and the bigger and louder your viewing experience, the better.

The film doesn’t offer much wisdom about how we should deal with our growing unreality, but it is a charming diversion. In a way, its very shallowness is the point: Sometimes, the film posits, what we want to see matters more than what we actually do.

Though Longlegs has plenty of atmospheric scares, it never descends into total surreality, instead charting a path right between vibes and rules.

I enjoyed plenty of its nearly three-hour run time, suffered through other parts, and was practically praying for the credits by the end. Most of all, I salute Lanthimos for getting back to his freaky roots, only this time on American soil.

What impressed me most about Janet Planet is what a work of cinema it is, visually alive and inventive even with a small budget and fairly languid plotting pace.

Although it’s often charming and relatable, it’s a letdown when you consider the heights such a project could reach.

The Watchers is carefully paced, character-focused, and quite sincerely emotional, interested less in the manner of the scares and more in how they’re affecting the ensemble gathered in the woods.

There are no quick cuts here, no goofy ways of hiding gore from the audience: Nash wants the viewer to engage with the pure terror of what’s going on just as much as he wants them to sit in the tedium of it.

It’s also just a sexy, fun movie for grown-ups that believes in its story rather than empty spectacle. . . this is a rare romantic comedy to see with a roaring crowd.

Challengers is a great example of how a director can temper his preoccupations just a little in order to reach beyond the art-house crowd.