One imagines screenwriter Shay Hatten (Rebel Moon) spinning a big Wheel of Weapons that would land on “hand grenades” or “flame-thrower” or “dishware,” leading him to craft novel ways for de Armas to implement these deadly items. The fight scenes are all Ballerina has going for it, but they’re frequent, varied, and clever enough to make watching the film a worthy summer pastime.

The Phoenician Scheme sees Anderson indulging in all of his usual design fetishes (we don’t just get precisely-lettered labels on ornate boxes, we also get the yellowing cellophane tape affixed to those labels) without seeming to get around to a story or characters or themes.

Unfolding with faint whiffs of film noir, Meeting with Pol Pot boasts powerful performances from its cast, with Irène Jacob (Double Life of Veronique) and Cyril Gueï playing journalists whose professional demeanour unravels rapidly as they contend with the consequences of the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities.

Is Karate Kid: Legends corny and predictable? You bet your obi. But this too-familiar tale is told with such winning spirit and brio that it works all the same. It’s merely a building block in an IP renovation, but it’s remarkably sturdy.

This remake doesn’t desecrate the memory of that modern classic, but neither does it ever transcend it.

Boasting a barnstorming performance from Yuumi Kawai (Plan 75), Desert of Namibia takes a seemingly banal love-triangle premise and runs with it in the most surprising, gripping and anarchic fashion possible.

For those of us who come to these movies wondering what Tom Cruise will be climbing, clinging onto, or falling off of, this sequel delivers the goods.

Bloodlines reminds us of why these hilarious horrors have been such crowd-pleasers, and why their creators might never call it quits.

If you find yourself revolted by the low-budget slasher movies made by such recently-released-from-copyright characters as Winnie the Pooh, Popeye, and Mickey Mouse, apply some of that distaste to Juliet & Romeo, which turns Shakespeare’s work into quite the horror show.

That Thunderbolts* (and yes, the movie explains that asterisk) emerges as one of the MCU’s most successful team-up movies is its own victory, considering that the team in question is made up of a collection of sidekicks, oddballs, and losers, mostly culled from lesser-known Marvel movies and even TV shows.

What we need is for the voice of the Yanomami and other groups fighting for their survival to be heard in the world. The filmmakers are achieving it with this documentary.

It is a smart and warm-hearted documentary that never tries to separate the superstar at its center from the political and cultural context, or to split John from the woman he loved and admired — and never deliberately cast shade on. It is also one of the finest portraits of these artists on film.

As with so many of the ideas on display here, Snow White can’t have it both ways or even decide which way it wants.

Even with De Niro (and De Niro) in the leads, this is mob-movie cosplay, a hollow shadow of previous triumphs. As a mob lawyer might bellow, “Nothing to see here.”

At nearly every juncture, the filmmakers display a lack of nerve, exercising restraint precisely when restraint is anathema to their goals. They’re cautious rather than crazed.

Black Bag is a not-quite-quotidian spy movie. The stakes are the fate of a relationship, not the fate of the world, and all the pieces come together to make human drama even more interesting than potential apocalypse.

Last Breath was made by someone who clearly connects with this material, but somewhere between the non-fiction and fiction versions, the emotional impact has been rendered unfathomable.

As did King before him, Wilson revels in whimsy without drowning in it, and he finds the franchise’s sweet spot of cleverness, poignancy, elaborate physical comedy, witty wordplay, goofy musicality, and just the right amount of sentiment.

The lockdown across cities the world over was quite the inescapable slog; there’s no good reason for a film to replicate its worst feature.

The MCU train is back up and running, but this latest entry sees it jerking in fits and starts as it leaves the station.

The barely-crafted romance between Marvin and Rose — for all the individual charisma of Quan and DeBose, there’s no sense that these two have ever experienced affection for the other — relies upon the screenplay telling us (via clumsy internal monologues) that they love each other rather than showing it, which is just one element of the bad writing on display here.

He makes his way to the big screen with silliness (and a love of tennis balls) intact, but Dog Man deserves a frenetic pace to match its barrage of absurd jokes and plot twists.

The brilliant camera work and editing (both by Soderbergh, under his usual pseudonyms) and Koepp’s tersely insightful writing ratchet up the tension, as the audience and, eventually, the characters figure out just what’s going on in this seemingly ideal house.

Even if it starts better than it ends, Wolf Man merits a look, not only for the craft on display but also for the powerful performances from Abbott and Garner, not to mention Jaeger and Firth in smaller roles. A cast this strong deserves a script with more to tear into.

Leni Riefenstahl and her controversial legacy are examined in fascinating depth in the new German doc 'Riefenstahl' by Andres Veiel.

To bring up an issue that arose when Joaquin Phoenix flaked on Todd Haynes’ latest project — is this any way to spend two years of an artist’s prime period?

Out-pacing most of 2024’s comedies on the laughs-per-minute scale — albeit unintentionally — Kraven the Hunter offers the spectacle of talented individuals on both sides of the camera trying to make chicken salad out of a nonsensical script.

And while it’s always commendable when a disaster movie establishes early on that any member of the cast can die at any moment, the film makes a fatal error in killing off the funniest of its teen characters, with only a bunch of earnest Breakfast Clubbers in their place.