It’s not acknowledged enough how difficult it is to make a period piece that doesn’t feel staged or performative. Nichols genuinely captures the spirit of this particular era and keeps your attention even if you never gave a second thought to those packs of bike riders passing you on the highway.

Hit Man finds both comedy and refuge in the elusive nature of identity and acts as a balm in our confusingly performative, deeply unsexy times.

Although it is true that The Beast would greatly benefit from a gentle trimming in its first hour, it is easy to forgive the indulgence when the result is such a remarkable commentary on the looming threats of artificial intelligence and the dangers of glorified emotional numbness.

To call Aggro Dr1ft stupid or silly isn’t wrong, but it is missing the point. The dialogue is incredibly banal and hilariously repetitive, the story a thin assemblage of clichés. But the images!

Through subtle detail, a degree of convenient biopic irreality, and a pace that encourages viewers to think beyond first impressions, the film shows a relationship with elements of abuse that is much more complex than the label often suggests.

The movie is genuinely funny. The characters are well rounded. Giamatti inhabits Hunham so well he could crack zingers in his sleep. Randolph knows exactly what she’s doing and Sessa is just green enough to avoid the affected young actor syndrome.

David Fincher is rarely dull, and The Killer cannot take the director’s filmography in that direction, but it won’t push itself toward the top of his work, either. A competently realized crime thriller made by a technical team just as sharply attuned to details as the director at the ship’s helm, the Netflix production is entertaining but a little orthodox.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar grants Dahl’s work a pop-out book feel in its theatrical storytelling.

This is a swinging-for-the-fences with the bases-loaded type of movie. An irreverent monster of a film that leaves you buzzing. We’re talking “cinema,” baby.

Not only is the film’s portrayal of Felicia tainted by ethnically inappropriate casting, but her character itself is often reductive—she is but the modern wife of a modern man, coming forth with a loose agreement on fidelity that inched Leonard across the finish line of a lengthy road towards marriage.

Not only is Poor Things one of Lanthimos’ most refined philosophical musings, but it is his most accomplished visual work, too.

We’d be reminiscent to not admit this is the sort of movie that’s hard to shake. We haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Considering how rare that is, maybe that’s just as gracious a compliment as admitting to bawling while the credits roll.

Like style, one expects an endearing earnestness from a Mann film, and watching emotionally stunted men discuss love or beauty, like Enzo does during the motor discussion with his son, is always delightful. But all this beauty and sincerity gets undermined by strangely unfocused, dispassionate storytelling. And coming from a filmmaker like Mann, that’s a big surprise.

If in his previous films about the regime Larraín often opted for subtlety, in El Conde elusiveness is a foreign notion. It is thrilling to watch the director repeatedly hit the nail in the head without much desire—or care—to engage with subtext.

If this E6 portrait gets anything right it’s the chaotic creativity that seemed to burst out of many of its members like exploding sunlight their bodies could not handle as if something out of a kooky sci-fi film.

It’s a weird movie, to be sure, but never an off-putting one. It’s also one that sometimes feels like a chimera itself, pushing various genres and ideas together without fully synthesizing them. But it’s consistently beautiful, watchable, and a truly memorable debut for Oren.

Normally, ego married with naivety is a bummer. In “birth/rebirth,” it’s gut-chilling.

There’s too much to make it really work.

There are a few rushes in this movie’s incredibly calculated rendition of Mardenborough’s tale, thanks to Blomkamp. But Sony is transparent with this adaptation, which has no ambitions to make Gran Turismo any more challenging than gamer bait.

If anything, the murder is tertiary to the gossipy takes and fanciful camera work — this film is built around vibes, right down to its pulsating score by the electronic musician Koreless and its dancehall end credits.

Heart Of Stone purports to have characters made of sturdy, gritty, golden, unbreakable stuff, but that’s a tagline, not a movie or story; it’s really just flimsy work easily tossed off and broken as it tumbles into the ever-filling bin of barely-one-use Netflix movies.

In this movie’s wise deconstruction of its characters, “Mutant Mayhem” does the seemingly impossible and makes the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cool again.

Gladstone manages to sell every emotion, moving from despair to wonder as the journey continues.

They Cloned Tyrone is far from bad, but does require patience and the ability to shed those feelings of “I’ve seen this before” that pop up from time to time. Fortunately, the cast is here to help usher one along and maintain some sort of momentum before the film starts propelling forward on its own.

Only time will tell if The Beanie Bubble represents the final dying gasp or merely the end of first-wave product-driven narratives. But, like Beanie Babies themselves, one hopes that this bubble will burst sooner rather than later.

It’s hard to say if this is worth a view, as die-hard Cage fans might not see anything necessarily new, nor does the overall arc of the plotline break any new ground other than to offer a platform for Cage to again roll out his usual bag of acting tricks.

Cobweb might just fill you with the sadistic glee that you can only get from horror films that push the boundaries of the genre. It’s not perfect. Hell, it might not even be “good.” But Cobweb is an absolute delight and a blast to watch.

Hamm makes himself look bland, which is no small accomplishment. But he’s also smothering much of what makes him an exciting actor.