Luca Guadagnino’s mind is a wonderful, slightly terrifying place.

To think that the Italian director has made films as disparate and idiosyncratic as Suspiria, Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and now Challengers is as intoxicatingly exciting as it is fascinating. And he’s not showing any signs of slowing down either, taking on a slew of new projects for the foreseeable future, including a Mexico City-set historical romantic drama film with Daniel Craig that’s expected to premiere in the festival circuit as early as this Fall.

It’s equally thrilling that Challengers is Justin Kuritzkes’ first feature film screenplay. His wife, Celine Song, also made her writing and directing debut in Challengers‘ more introspective and sincere threesome sibling, 2023’s Past Lives.

Challengers is an absolute triumph, marked by what is arguably the best work to date by everyone involved, from Guadagnino and Kuritzkes to casting director Francine Maisler and score composers Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography, Merissa Lombardo’s production design, and J. W. Anderson’s costume design add the final touches to a salacious, rambunctious, and decadently stylish movie for the ages.

The package of the film (the way it looks and plays out on screen) is glossy, intense, and sexy, keeping you tuned into every move just by virtue of its leading trio’s chemistry and the way Guadagnino captures it on camera. But what makes Challengers a Grand Slam is the meat, the filling. Kuritzkes’s character work in the duplicitous Tashi (Zendaya), the submissive Art (Mike Faist), and the unreliable Patrick (Josh O’Connor) is an infinite well of possibilities, allowing for a multitude of interpretations and dissections of these three people’s motivations, aspirations, self-sabotaging tendencies, and clashing egos. It’s intoxicating.

The film develops along two parallel timelines: In the present, Art and Patrick prepare to face off in a Challenger Tour tournament final as Tashi watches on from the stands, a visible scar on her knee from a career-ending injury peeking through her baby blue dress. Then Guadagnino takes us 12 years into the past to begin to lay out the knotty, sweaty events that have led the trio to that highly charged moment in New Rochelle.

Young best friends Art and Patrick are attending a junior tournament when they meet teen protegé, Tashi Duncan, who is already being marketed as tennis’ next big star. The two are instantly enamored by her ferociousness on the court and sensuality on the dance floor. Considering the object of their desires is Zendaya, it’s insanely easy to bite into their transfixion. The boys invite her over to their bedroom and the three almost engage in a three-way tryst, interrupted only by Tashi after she successfully proves her point about Art and Patrick’s latent interest in one another. It’s the beginning of a complicated, manipulative, lustful, and emotionally tumultuous decade-spanning love triangle, cleverly translated by Guadagnino into the evolution of that initial/final confrontation.

The way the form of Challengers (its acts, its dialogues, and even its camera movements) mimics a tennis match is nothing short of delicious. Guadagnino’s vision for Kuritzkes’s remarkably rich characters and the dynamics that they share is as clear as it is inspired — he was the only man for this job.

Challengers is a movie about sex and power, and there’s so much power in the way Guadagnino frames his cast’s innate sexuality without showing a single sex scene in the entirety of the film’s runtime. The sexiest scenes are often those where the characters barely touch — it’s the tension created from their desperate necessity and desire to touch that actually drives the film’s erotic charge. It’s masterful.

Tennis, in truth, is a metaphor for human relationships. As Tashi describes early on, a tennis match requires that the two players be completely engaged with one another, blocking out the rest of the world, and focusing solely on their opponent. There’s an obsession with and attraction to your court partner that is intrinsic to the game of tennis and which functions as the key to the entire film. Each decision made by Tashi, Art, and Patrick is essentially a shot in a match, and as each of the men attempts to gradually win each game, and then each set, it all builds up to a closely contested final match point that Guadagnino crafts into one of the most memorable third acts in 21st-century moviemaking — and that is true for both the tennis itself and all the sex, betrayal, and heartbreak it signifies.

Challengers‘ biggest victory, however, is the way it involves each of the three players proportionally in the unfolding of its story. The heterosexual love triangle has been absolutely exhausted in the past, but, as you’d expect, Guadagnino brings a queer sensitivity to his threesome that transforms a tired trope into an electric, alive thing that could evolve any which way at any point. While an even bigger step in that direction would have possibly made Challengers perfect, the fact that the possibility is there alone increases its agitation and complexity tenfold. Art, Tashi, and Patrick dance with and around each other through the years as they sink into an increasingly toxic and self-harmful entanglement that is both killing them and keeping them afloat.

There is so much duplicity, ambiguity, secrecy, and manipulation at the center of Art, Tashi, and Patrick’s relationship from the very first moment the boys lay eyes on their muse, that it becomes virtually impossible to decipher their choices, but all the more fun to try. On the surface, they’re all one thing, but as the film and the tennis match of life evolve, they each reveal small clues about their personalities that could fuel a thousand theories. It’s like catnip for overreaders.

This sophistication of character, we assume, was not an easy task for the leading trio, but they handled it like pros. Zendaya was perfectly cast as the irresistible Tashi, bringing a disarming superficial innocence to an otherwise cunning and calculated woman. She toys around with the two men that she holds in the palm of her hand, yet you never can turn against her, because their obsession and lack of shame are often too pathetic to feel defensive over, especially because Art and Patrick do their fair share of manipulation, too. O’Connor’s Patrick and Faist’s Art play so well off of Zendaya’s Tashi, but better yet off of one another — a scene they share in a fittingly steamy sauna is a highlight in the film, and their chemistry is sizzling enough to travel across an entire tennis court.

It’s truly never been more fun to watch three people be absolutely despicable to one another than in Luca Guadagnino’s tennis court love story. Challengers is a 2024 must-watch, and possibly the year’s sleekest, most vibrant film. Now, excuse me while I go drive my neighbors insane by blasting Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score at full volume on my speakers.

Knuckles has the difficult task of proving that Sonic the Hedgehog is viable as a cinematic universe. Fortunately for fans of anthropomorphic primary-colored video game icons, it succeeds beyond my wildest expectations.

Knuckles will inevitably be judged compared to the movies that came before. Sonic the Hedgehog became a box office hit by taking the Blue Speedster on a road trip filled with silly jokes and corny messages about found family. The movie has its fair share of high-octane action set pieces in which Sonic uses his super speed to take down the villainous Dr. Robotnik. Still, even then, Sonic the Hedgehog plays as a family-friendly comedy.

While Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was still a commercial success, the movie had more difficulty balancing that act. The sequel introduces world-destroying threats that can no longer be treated as a joke, making it harder to land the right tone. Furthermore, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 sets up the universe’s lore in favor of building solid bases for the future.

There were too many things squeezed into a single film, and Sonic 2 hinted at the limits of the franchise just as Paramount announced their expansion of the Sonic cinematic universe, with a threequel and Knuckles being put in simultaneous production.

Studios pushing too many projects for profit will likely hurt an IP, meaning the odds were not in Knuckles’ favor. However, the spinoff is an excellent addition to the franchise and a fine standalone story. Knuckles ultimately surpasses the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, perfecting their formula and wearing the franchise’s nonsensical nature as a badge of honor.

Set after Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Knuckles (Idris Elba) sends its titular character on a road trip to figure out his place in the world. The similarities with the first Sonic movie don’t end there, as a human partner, the clumsy cop Wade Whipple (Adam Pally), accompanies him. Wade needs someone to train him to become a bowling champion, while Knuckles wants a disciple who can learn the warrior ways of the Echidna clan.

While each character’s motivation is unique, Knuckles is about an alien and a human hitting the road together and learning more about themselves and each other. So, from the pilot episode alone, it feels like the series is only rehashing Sonic the Hedgehog‘s script. That’s a fair first impression, but it doesn’t reflect the surreal places Knuckles takes fans.

If Knuckles was only more of the same, it could still be a success for Paramount Plus. After all, it features a lovable cast of characters and has the same animation quality as the theatrical releases. The latter is a more-than-welcome surprise since TV has a tradition of downgrading special effects due to budget constraints.

The creative team behind the series knows that Knuckles’ story is simple and could become forgettable if told straightforwardly. So, they are constantly finding new ways to explore the primary themes of the spinoff. As episodes go by, Knuckles keeps experimenting with new editing and storytelling tools in a spectacle of color, sound, and goofy jokes that will keep a smile on your face the entire time. The fact the series never takes itself too seriously gives writers and directors the breathing space they need to include every wild idea that crosses their minds, from musical numbers to training montages inspired by sports films. Because of that, Knuckles is a testament to how a talented and passionate team can turn the most basic story beat into something unique and incredibly entertaining.

Knuckles also allows its characters to grow and explore their inner universe. Despite all the funny moments and the show’s lighthearted tone, the spinoff manages to keep the emotional stakes high by forcing the duo of leads to face their past trauma and reshape their understanding of family and home. It’s hard not to think of 2004’s Dodgeball, which takes a secondary sport and gives it a life-or-death intensity, both for comedic purposes and to create a relatable human journey. That’s precisely what Knuckles does with bowling, a feat the spinoff pulls effortlessly.

On top of that, Knuckles gives us a glimpse at a world without Dr. Robotnik, proving that the cinematic universe can survive even if Carrey retires. On that note, Rory McCann delivers a terrifying performance as The Buyer, an evil genius whose presence dominates each scene he shows up. Cary Elwes and Julian Barratt should also be outed for their performances as Pistol Pete and Jack Sinclair, respectively, as they contribute to improving every episode they appear in. Talking about these characters and their motivations would spoil part of the fun, so it suffices to say they are part of the eccentric cast Knuckles and Wade will cross during their trip, who become more than comic reliefs thanks to the actor’s commitment to their roles.

Knuckles also deserves all the credit for understanding the television format – something other big franchises, such as the MCU, still struggle with. The spinoff is not a movie split into six parts but an actual TV show, where each episode has a hook that gets resolved before the credits roll. Knuckles even uses cliffhangers appropriately, ending each story chapter with a new twist that teases the next one. It’s a shame Paramount Plus is dropping the whole season in the streaming service at once, as Knuckles would have worked beautifully as a weekly release.

Of course, as is usual with TV shows, some episodes of Knuckles are better than others. Episode 4, in particular, is a television gem that shows how a story can be heartfelt and deranged at once. Finally, while Knuckles is part of a franchise, the series does serve as a perfect introduction to Paramount’s cinematic universe. Thanks to Sonic’s status as a s pop culture icon, no one needs more than a quick recap to understand what’s happening in the world, something that Knuckles offers in its first episode. From then on, anyone can enjoy this weird, wacky, over-the-top road trip.

All six episodes of Knuckles come to Paramount+ on April 26, 2024.

When part one of Rebel Moon, A Child of Fire, introduced us all to Zack Snyder‘s new sci-fi franchise, there was one thing that became absolutely clear; it is not possible to discern whether this man has fully bought in to the narrative surrounding him, or if he’s starkly oblivious to it. The narrative, of course, being that he’s an acolyte of the “rule of cool,” with both the genre fiction eagerness and storytelling ability of a small child.

That question has only become more impossible with Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, boasting the exact same, unprecedently amateurish makings of its predecessor and doubling down on them in the least effective way possible. It’s a film that is so impossibly committed to its own helpless emptiness, that engaging with it at all is something of a chore, and while the actors generally hold up their end up the deal performance-wise, the sheer dearth of competency in the rest of The Scargiver actually results in that working against the film. In a sentence, what’s become absolutely clear this time around is that it is not possible, at this point in time, to critique anything in the Rebel Moon franchise without constantly being in danger of redundancy; that’s right, The Scargiver is, quite literally, contagiously uninspired.

The film sees Sofia Boutella reprise her role as protagonist Kora, who’s returned to her adopted home planet with the band of warriors she recruited in A Child of Fire, and prepares for the defense of her village against the tyrannical Motherworld. Noble (Ed Skrein), meanwhile, plots a more personal assault on Kora herself as retribution for the scar she gave him.

Yes, that last part is why the film is called The Scargiver, and there is literally a scene in this movie where Noble monologues about how he’s going to show off the scar to the whole of the Senate to symbolize his victory over “the Scargiver” when he defeats Kora. Nothing quite epitomizes the depths of a script’s weakness than a villain telling you why his big moment is going to be cool, even if that big moment never happens.

Indeed, it’s one thing to have a messy plot or ridiculous dialogue, both of which can be easily remedied by enthusiasm from the cast (the Fast & Furious films have this down to a T), but The Scargiver has none of these things. The plot isn’t messy so much as it’s non-existent, with the overwhelming majority of the runtime consisting of useless exposition, fighting, and far more slow-motion farming than any film, much less a space opera, should have. The dialogue isn’t ridiculous so much as it’s blankly encyclopedic, hardly ever serving as anything more than a descriptive audio equivalent and/or connective tissue for its swath of unearned emotional beats. The cast isn’t enthusiastic so much as they’re trapped by a script that more or less forces them to approach to their characters as straight as possible, and while the main cast sell that approach with all their might (particularly Boutella, Skrein, and Djimon Hounsou), they’re entirely powerless against the script from Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten, and whatever tabletop RPG textbook-writing AI software that they might as well have fed a Star Wars-themed prompt to.

To the point of character, Snyder doesn’t seem to understand that having a whole bunch of cool lore for everyone in his own head does not automatically make them interesting to other people; characterization does, in fact, need to occur. Going into The Scargiver, all we effectively know about Kora’s band of rebels is that they’re really good at fighting; a point that’s verbally repeated on more than one occasion throughout the film, just in case we forget. By the end of The Scargiver, all we know about Kora’s band of rebels is that they’re really good at fighting, and that their lives were all torn apart by the Motherworld in some way, shape, or form; we learn this because Titus literally gathers them all so he can tell them to share their backstories with each other. This universal characterization failure all comes to a front with one major character death; one that gets played like a devastating gut-punch despite the fact that most of the film’s extras had been given roughly the same development, and could have been rotated into the death scene to similar effect.

It’s not just we the audience that suffer from watching these exposition-spewing nothing-burgers go about their farming and insurgencies. Whether it’s the out-of-the-blue romance between Kora and Gunnar (a romance almost entirely summed up—across two movies—with an evening of off-screen love-making followed by Kora telling us part of her backstory once they finish) or the single, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it attempt at inter-squad banter (again, across two movies) that highlights the film’s disdain for characterization more than anything, it is well and truly painful—even embarrassing—watching them try and have any interpersonal rapport with each other whatsoever.

And sure, maybe the visual effects are fine, maybe the score is well-crafted, and maybe the combat is marginally diverting, but the problem with The Scargiver is that it has no identity for any of this stuff to even attach itself to, so it just winds up as noise for the sake of noise, unable to be enjoyed in the wake of such foundationally insulting filmmaking. Creating art is important, and Snyder, like anyone, should feel no shame about his art in the context of his experience. But to occupy this sort of professional, lucrative creative space while putting out something like The Scargiver, is a whole other ballpark/context that can — and should — be subject to shame. And with Snyder having promised even more extreme sex and violence in the inevitable director’s cuts of the Rebel Moon films rather than any actual creative improvements, he seems to be entirely convinced that The Scargiver and its ilk are ready to be produced at the caliber that they are, and that is 100% an open invitation to be labeled as a hack.

All in all, it’s time for Snyder to pull the plug on Rebel Moon, bring it back to the factory, and either reassess the approach or, ideally, commit to a Rebel Moon tabletop RPG as the primary pivot point for this IP; the latter would probably be the less laborious of the two given that both films are, textually, more similar to a game than a movie. It’s clear that the universe Snyder has in his head is sprawling, and there’s absolutely a world where Rebel Moon manifests as the best version of itself, but with The Scargiver having given us more of the same that A Child of Fire introduced us to, Rebel Moon, as it is now, is clearly operating as the worst version of itself, and it is abhorrently stressful to think that that operation is set to continue.

And if by some chance Snyder himself happens upon this, I only hope he knows that the words “The Scargiver sucks, you should know it sucks, you need to do better” come in equal measure from a place of wanting all art to be as great as it possibly can, and utter despondency with which I and many others have had to watch Rebel Moon unfold the way it has so far.

After making horror history by breathing new life into the Scream franchise, creative collective Radio Silence is back in theaters with Abigail. Unfortunately, despite how good Abigail might be, the movie is sabotaged by a misguided marketing campaign.

Starring a phenomenal cast that includes final girl Melissa Barrera and the young and gifted Alisha Weir (Netflix’s Matilda the Musical), Abigail follows a group of criminals tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy man. Taking a note from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the team uses fake names and hides personal details to ensure everyone’s safety in case things go south and one of them gets caught by the police. The secrecy surrounding the job is so great that no one knows their target except Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), the mastermind who ordered the hit. Their goal is to snatch Abigail (Weir), take her to a secluded mansion, and hold her for 24 hours until a $50 million ransom gets paid. However, dangerous and inexplicable things start to happen in the mansion.

That’s it. That’s the movie. Or at least, that’s all the audience should have known about Abigail before going to theaters. Unfortunately, every trailer, image, and interview released as part of Abigail’s marketing campaign ruins the movie’s twist and reveals *spoiler alert* that the titular character is a vampire.

Abigail begins as a heist movie, slowly introducing all the players involved in the daring abduction. Since each crew member has a specific job and quirky personality, forced confinement doesn’t take long to become a source of hostility among them. These are all strangers, bound by a common goal but comfortable enough with the underworld to turn against each other. When rumors about their target’s identity emerge, they are ready to point fingers – and guns. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett masterfully use the movie’s introduction to enthrall the audience with a perfect balance of tension and comedy. That’s why it’s a shame people won’t enjoy the first arc of Abigail for what it is, as everyone will be impatiently waiting for Weir to show her fangs and begin the hunt.

While Radio Silence’s last original movie, Ready or Not, also deals with a twist spoiled by the trailer, the change of pace comes early in the film. Because of that, it doesn’t get in the way of the story the directors are trying to tell. With Abigail, though, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett want to trick horror fans into buying a house invasion thriller and getting a vampire slaughter-fest. It takes Abigail over 40 minutes to introduce her authentic self in a moment that should flip a button and cleverly tie all the clues the story subtly left behind. If Abigail existed in a marketing vacuum, the bloody reveal at the end of the first arc would be nothing short of genius. Instead, because everyone knows what’s coming, it feels too much like a long wait.

For the rest of Abigail’s runtime, Radio Silence delivers gruesome deaths in a blood-soaked battle for survival as the vampire toys with her prey. That gives the directors the excuse to showcase their best work yet regarding gore. The death and mutilation in Abigail is incredible because Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are committed to practical effects, knowing all too well that horror looks better when it doesn’t rely too much on CGI. So, for horror fiends who rejoice in well-cooked brutality – this writer included – Abigail is a delicious feast.

Story-wise, Abigail has many similarities with Ready or Not, which are easy to understand when we realize Guy Busick co-wrote both scripts. The two movies deal with a group of people pitted against a resourceful killer inside a fabulous mansion, leading to creative deaths and a non-ending cat-and-mouse game. Abigail, however, inverts Ready or Not logic by turning the killer into an antagonist instead of the final girl. Nevertheless, things will more or less evolve similarly until the third arc, when Abigail tries to subvert the movie’s logic again, to mixed results.

Abigail is also similar to Ready or Not when mixing ghastly violence with comedic moments. Not every joke lands, and some moments of Abigail feel uneven, while Ready or Not is a nearly perfect masterpiece. Nevertheless, Radio Silence’s vampire tale is highly entertaining, a popcorn story tailored to become an easy choice in a movie night with friends. Still, after the credits roll, we can’t help but wish Abigail had not traded substance for style, as this might be the least memorable entry in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s filmography.

In their previous films, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett showed an exquisite talent for crafting popular horror stories that still had something human to say. Both SCREAM and Scream VI are brilliant deconstructions of contemporary horror tropes. At the same time, Ready or Not takes down the final girl archetype to turn Samara Weaving into a liberating female character. Abigail tries to find an emotional core through the backstories of Barrera’s Joey and Weir’s vampire. Unfortunately, the supposed character growth of both characters is too sudden and superficial to hit the mark. It also doesn’t help that Abigail’s most significant attempt to anchor the script into grounded human connections comes too late, in the middle of a messy third arc that keeps adding new twists for shock value alone.

All of that said, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are true horror aficionados. They understand all the tropes and clichés associated with vampires, using the audience’s knowledge against them every chance they can. The script by Busick and Stephen Shields has a lot of wiggling room to test all the traditional weapons against vampires or to delve into the different rituals of vampiric transformation. That’s an extra treat for horror fans, who can discover the truth about Abigail’s blood-sucking creatures and the cast of criminals.

Finally, something has to be said about Weir and Barrera. The young actress is having the time of her life playing a savage monster. It’s also delightful to see Weir dancing around covered in blood after cute musical acts for Netflix’s Matilda. Despite her young age, Weir has already proved her brilliance, and we can only hope she gets more diverse and exciting roles in the future. As for Barrera, her exit from the Scream franchise raised some questions about her career, but Abigail proves she doesn’t need Ghostface to shine as a scream queen. Watching the two together is a spectacle on its own and enough reason to give Abigail a chance.

Abigail is currently available in theaters.

One of the greatest stories of the recent cinema-news circuit concerns the plight of The People’s Joker, a crowd-sourced, coming-of-age, parody passion project from one Vera Drew, whose fight against “an unnamed media conglomerate” over her (perfectly legal) use of DC Comics characters wound up boosting publicity, thus ensuring that ticket sales were just around the corner.

The People’s Joker coming out on top this way is something to admire; with pure heart and dogged grit, Drew and company went to bat against an entertainment culture with little interest in bringing trans stories to the forefront, and far too much interest in mechanically milking intellectual property with the straightest possible face; one that The People’s Joker happily turns inside out, spins around, and upon which it paints a bright red smile.

With all of that said — and I say this with an equal measure of emphasis as a trans woman, and as a media critic —The People’s Joker, as a finished film, is excruciatingly less impressive than the journey it’s been on. Vera Drew — who in addition to directing, also edited, co-wrote, and stars in the film — has proven herself more than worthy of taking a crack at a project with a proper budget, but this first foray amounts to little more than an external success story, with sprinklings of great artistry doing little against its distressingly nuclear, self-indulgent whole.

The film stars Drew as an unnamed protagonist who grows up enamored with a television sketch comedy program titled UCB Live. After moving out from under the roof of an emotionally abusive mother who puts them on Smylex — a drug prescribed by one Dr. Crane that effectively forces you to be happy — they finally move to Gotham City to begin their career in comedy. But upon facing a world in which comedy has been outlawed by the totalitarian fascist Batman, they take the stage name of “Joker the Harlequin,” and join forces with a ragtag group of “anti-comedians” while navigating such hurdles as self-acceptance, love, forgiveness, and gender identity.

The average viewer will be quick to write off The People’s Joker for its visual effects alone, which consist of such aspects as cardboard cities, uncanny animation workarounds, and heavy facial distortions and filter effects. This is not a valid criticism in and of itself; The People’s Joker is under no illusion that it’s going to fool anybody with its visuals, and to focus on the obvious unrealism of it all would be insincere.

What can and should be questioned, however, is why so much effort was put into building up aspects of the film that were never going to be anywhere close to good, rather than strengthening those aspects over which Drew and company did have control. Indeed, visual effects — especially for most comic book movies — almost always need major financial backing to be worthwhile, but all you need to come up with a tip-top script is a wickedly creative mind, a generous amount of free time, and some like-minded folks to workshop with, if you’re lucky. The People’s Joker‘s script, in case my point isn’t clear, is very much not tip-top; the occasional chuckle-worthy line largely outnumbered by far too many comedic misfires, clumsy/inorganic handling of its themes and characters, and a jarringly disjointed flow of story beats.

This particular set dressing shines a light on The People’s Joker‘s chief raison d’être; it’s a heavily-stylized, semi-autobiographical film based on Drew’s experience — and that resulting singularity, despite being what I assume is one of Drew’s greatest strengths, is actually one of the film’s biggest weaknesses. In a world where the verbose Joker/Arkham/DC aesthetic had been entirely stripped away, it’s hard to imagine this character’s journey — if you can call it that — amounting to anything more than a quick filler segment in a documentary about how we experience life as trans people. This in no way should downplay Drew’s personal experience, but nevertheless it must be said that it’s simply not interesting as a story for a movie; one can’t help but think that maybe the job of the film’s comic book shell is to convince everyone — itself included — that the story is more special than it actually is.

Once again, I say all of that as a trans woman, myself. And as someone who’s been in these shoes for years now, I can’t help but sigh as The People’s Joker — a film that opens with the protagonist’s monologue about how sick they are of how we, as trans people, are treated in media — doubles down on a multitude of trans-adjacent cliches, seemingly unaware of the fact that in doing so, it made itself a target of its own critique. Indeed, it rails against a system that more or less demands that we be placed in nice, convenient, sanitized boxes, but doesn’t seem to realize that it’s putting itself in an equally-restrictive box of its own making

I don’t wish to be too editorial on this point of these boxes, but I’ve no other idea how to communicate my exhaustion with my demographic being constantly associated with flashy/niche internet culture, riotous anarchy (true, the mere fact of trans existence does challenge a swath of social institutions and interpersonal ideologies, but The People’s Joker isn’t terribly interested in that dynamic), and a reckless/tongue-in-cheek attitude towards our unique medical struggles. That last detail (captured in an anything-but-subtle midpoint sequence) is, of course, not at all the point of The People’s Joker, and its irresponsible framing is hardly the guiltiest party in the whole of the conversation on trans healthcare. But we all have our part to play if we’re going to risk engaging with such a volatile dialogue right now, and The People’s Joker chose an entirely unhelpful, if not harmful, contribution to said conversation.

Credit must be given where it’s due, however; The People’s Joker draws a parallel between our curious, ever-shifting attitudes towards comedy, and the ins and outs of the world that trans people walk in, and this insight is nothing short of brilliant. Unfortunately, it’s an idea that drowns fairly severely in the film’s haphazardly stentorian mortal essence, but the fact that Drew identified that parallel at all is an impressive creative feat all its own, and there’s no reason to believe that she won’t emerge as a profoundly, genuinely engaging storyteller after a bit of personal chiseling.

The People’s Joker, however, is no such emergence, and while the nuances of the film’s journey and existence are undeniably sensational and cheerworthy, it would be no great favor to anyone to judge The People’s Joker based on what it’s been through, instead of what it is. And what it is, dear reader, is just not that great of a movie.

You could almost hear the mischievous chuckles of Alex Garland and the Civil War marketing team (who no doubt were also responsible for such a deceptively generic title) when that final trailer aired a mere day before the film’s wide release, promising bombastic, paradigm-shifting cinematic combat when, on the other side of those theater doors, a far more necessary film awaited.

Full disclosure; I’m not here to talk about Civil War‘s thunderously evocative gunplay (that aforementioned trailer wasn’t a total misdirect), nor do I intend to spend very long telling you why the cast, particularly Kirsten Dunst in what’s among her most profoundly devastating performances, deserves to be lauded not only for bringing this material to life, but for signing on to this project in the first place. No, the reason you (and everyone else) needs to see Civil War is because, insofar as a movie is capable of convincing us to take a good, hard look at ourselves and the violence that we enable, there may be no more important piece of cinema for the foreseeable future (and that’s assuming the future is something we will, in fact, get to see).

The film stars Dunst as Lee Smith, a war photojournalist suffering from PTSD who, along with her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), endeavors to drive from New York City to Washington, D.C. to get an interview with the President of the United States, which is currently engulfed in an unthinkably violent and wide-spanning civil war between the U.S. Armed Forces and insurrectionists led by Texas and California, collectively known as the Western Forces. Joining the duo is veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and the ambitious but unexperienced photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), and the foursome travel across America, hoping to make it to the White House before the Western Forces can deliver their summary execution to the country’s dictator/would be-interviewee.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to tell exactly how deep Civil War intended to go, because if one were to peel back the layers with unending gumption, you could conclude that Civil War, simply by way of that which it’s critiquing, is about insecurity. Whether or not this was the exact thread that Garland wanted us to pull on is anyone’s guess, but what can be said irrefutably is that Civil War serves as an indispensable stepping stone, one that leads to the conversations that each and every one of us have a responsibility to engage in.

But let’s start from the top. Civil War is a film about journalism; not the job, but the act, the duty, and the severity with which that act and duty has been so thoughtlessly bastardized and hijacked by a world that, at large, is all but ready to pulverize you if your response to atrocity, no matter how big or small, is anything other than apathy, however animated it is.

And Civil War is positively littered with atrocities, whether it’s Jesse Plemons’ unnamed militia soldier who unceremoniously puts a bullet through the heart of anyone who isn’t American, to the nauseating, real-life war footage that gives some idea of what Lee has been through. Of all the bits and pieces to parse in Garland’s latest, it doesn’t take much in the way of media literacy to figure out the film’s stance on war and violence, and frankly, the easiest answer to that question is all that needs to be.

Just as well, because in all seriousness, Civil War is a proponent of easy answers to the many divisions plaguing our world right now. That’s not an insult to Civil War‘s thinking, either, because those aforementioned answers absolutely, positively exist in reality, it’s just that too few of us are willing to do our part in bringing that answer to life.

We, the audience, don’t actually learn what everybody’s fighting about; we just know that the Western Forces are trying to kill the President (who, in this world, has dissolved the FBI, is serving a third term, and has used air strikes against American civilians; in other words, he stands as a none-too-subtle composite of those who wish for us to keep fighting each other while they pull the strings of this heinously violent and dehumanizing system), and that if they succeed in doing so, they win. The Western Forces, I presume, understand the nuances of that win condition about as well as we do. That is yet another of the film’s unchanced details.

Another important detail is Joel’s mask of spectacle-lusting apathy, which hides worlds of pain, fear, and vulnerability that drive so many of us to put a similar face on ourselves. Another still is the President’s opening monologue, in which he commends the victory (spoiler alert: it’s a lie) of the U.S. military over the Western Forces, evoking the exact culture of oppositional domination that gets baked deeper and deeper into the geo- and sociopolitical subconscious with every passing day. Indeed, every scene is another detail in this abominable state of affairs that Civil War is forcing us to stare at.

Because from the heightened non-reality of social media all the way up to ground zero of Earth’s latest genocide, we are all impossibly desperate to convince ourselves that we’re better than the other person. That in no way equates the abhorrence factor of a Twitter war with an actual war, but it all starts at the same place; “I am fundamentally insecure over the possibility that my experience isn’t the correct one, and rather than explore why that is within myself (because that’s far too frightening), I have to make sure that no other possibilities exist, or that they’re otherwise invalidated.” Following that is the lies and manipulation that somehow manage to paint both sides (two, because there’s no room for anyone else) as opposing, all-or-nothing nuclear solutions to the problem at hand, and after that is usually the six-to-seven digit body count preceding the declaration of a winner, and the prize is getting to call their God by the name they prefer, among other myopic spoils.

In closing, go watch Civil War, because the war starts at home, and I’m not talking about the United States.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson says that Back to Black is not a biopic, but a love story. I would argue that it’s neither.

Despite its brilliant, singular moments, Taylor-Johnson’s latest seems unsure of what, exactly, it does want to be. Sure, the love story between Amy Winehouse (played here by a spirited Marisa Abela) and Blake Fielder-Civil (Skins‘ Jack O’Connell) is central to the film, just as it was to Amy’s life, but it’s never explored in any meaningful way.

At the same time, the chapters of Winehouse’s life singled out for filmic inclusion by Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh seem somewhat disorganized and arbitrary. The fact that this is not a complete and detailed retelling of Amy’s life isn’t inherently negative, it’s just that the criteria for what the filmmakers chose to include are foggy at best.

What ultimately saves Back to Black from its disheveled self are its genuine attempts at getting intimate with Amy Winehouse, in the best possible way. Hers was infamously a life of tumult, excess, darkness, and exploitation, which — ethical discussions aside — undeniably provides rich material for a powerful, dramatic, and provocative story. The internet preemptively assumed that that’s the tack Back to Black was going to take; that it would exploit Amy’s trauma and death to create the most sensationalist film possible, and attract the attention of audiences by way of morbid curiosity. It was a pleasant surprise, then, that morbid exploitation is not among the film’s issues.

There’s so much sympathy for Amy in Back to Black, which is extended, in turn — and some would argue unjustifiably — to her ex-husband, and to her father, Mitch Winehouse (Eddie Marsan). There are no villains and no victims in Taylor-Johnson’s film, and there is a nobility in that choice. On the other side of the coin, in its reluctance to judge its characters, Back to Black fails to make any substantial statement about the questionable choices made by both men, as well as Amy’s management, at a time when she was at her most vulnerable. Because of her untimely death, history has painted Amy Winehouse as a hopeless victim, and while there’s some truth to that perspective of the story, it’s also dishonest to believe that that encompasses the full scope of her life, her work, or her legacy. We obviously can’t and wouldn’t speak for Amy, but our best bet is that she wouldn’t accept that depiction, either.

Back to Black begins with a teenage Amy sorting through a box of memories with her grandmother and “everything icon,” Cynthia (Lesley Manville). Amy swoons over her grandma’s pictures and compliments her style, which she would later emulate, and daydreams about the older woman’s past life singing at Ronnie Scott’s, the famous Soho jazz club. Cynthia assures her granddaughter that with a voice like hers, there is no chance she won’t become a star in her own right one day, too. Later, one of the movie’s most memorable scenes unfolds at that same jazz club.

Back to Black never stirs too far from this grounded approach; it wisely avoids big performance set pieces that don’t serve the story, or generic retellings of the artist’s rise to fame. Instead, it builds on this closely-observed dynamic of granddaughter/grandmother, mentee/mentor, with lovely scenes between Abela and Manville throughout. As with all grandmas, Cynthia takes it easy on Amy, extending to her the most uncomplicated, no-strings-attached kind of love. So when Cynthia dies from lung cancer, Amy’s solid emotional ground crumbles beneath her and she must scramble for comfort, finding it in music, and Blake, and more tragically, in alcohol/substance abuse and bulimia.

Abela’s portrayal — like Back to Black as a whole — captures Amy as an irreverent fantasist with her head in the clouds, who nonetheless knew exactly who she was, and who she wanted to be. It’s this fertile soil of fantasy from which Amy’s slight unawareness of the constraints and obstacles of the real world stemmed, and which allowed her to strive for no less than what she and her talent deserved. Unfortunately, however, Amy’s no longer her own top priority from the moment Blake enters her life. She transfers the take-no-prisoners approach she used to go to bat for her career, and applies it to becoming Blake’s ultimate defender, often oblivious to his nefarious influence.

Either for the sake of wider public appeal, or to err on the side of caution after the backlash generated by on-set photos leaked during filming, Back to Black feels rather clean and glossy. It lacks rock-and-roll edge, and Abela’s version of Amy is significantly less scandalous than the real deal. However, this dearth of punch in the film is compensated for by a number of really successful emotional beats during which, for a minute, you feel you’re allowed a window into this character’s soul. I say “character,” because no one except Amy and those closest to her can ever really know what she was feeling in these critical moments. Nevertheless, Taylor-Johnson treats her subject as a fleshed-out human being; Back to Black’s Amy isn’t a soulless representation-of-a-representation-of-a-representation that so often plagues these mega-celebrity biopics.

It’s when she delivers an intimate performance for a handful of people, walks around New York City, converses with grandma, or takes a moment to reflect after making Grammy history, that you find yourself truly pondering the tragic loss of Amy Winehouse; not just her once-in-a-generation talent, but also her very brief, very special life.

The film’s human, approachable quality is further amplified by the decision to shoot in the real London locations frequented by Amy; her favorite Camden pubs, tattoo parlors, and Soho Jazz clubs bring Back to Black closer to the life it wishes to capture.

Beyond aesthetics and tone, where the film most struggles is with pacing, with several whiplash-inducing time jumps breaking up the rhythm and flow. As previously mentioned, there is also no real through-line connecting the moments that Taylor-Johson and Greenhalgh deemed important enough to include, which becomes particularly noticeable in the end stretch. The last scene in the film enjoys a lot of its best qualities (namely, the intimacy with Amy), yet it feels unnervingly sudden. Upon further reflection, however, it could be read as the filmmaker’s attempt to translate the same kind of feelings the young singer’s death elicited from all of us on July 23, 2011.

The picking and choosing of which facts to mention and which to overlook also results in what has been the biggest criticism wielded against Back to Black; its friendly portrayals of both Mitch Winehouse, and Blake Fielder-Civil. Their lowest moments, some of which are known to the public, are nowhere to be seen — such as Mitch bringing a camera crew to a holiday that was meant to take Amy away from the British tabloids, or commenting on her breast implants on a morning show, or even any of Blake’s darker and more toxic behaviors in their relationship (there is an emphasis, however, on Amy physically attacking him, so it’s easy to find that imbalance odd, to say the least).

The film really sells Amy and Blake’s romance, aided by Abela and O’Connell’s scintillating chemistry, and frames their divorce as the latter’s attempt to be the bigger person after realizing the harm they brought to each other’s lives. But regardless of Taylor-Johnson’s best intentions, to omit the very nefarious things they did together, and that Blake specifically did to Amy, and opt instead for simply vaguely mentioning them, serves to whitewash his role in her demise.

Some narrative weaknesses, and a few with its structure, are palpable enough. Yet almost paradoxically, Back to Black shines in the integrity and compassion of its portrayal of Amy herself as a stand-alone character — so long as you manage to ignore the dubious characterization of the other components that played a part in her fate.

Mixing Nicolas Cage‘s unique talent for weird horror movies and a post-apocalyptic family drama, Arcadian wisely forgoes wasting screen time explaining how humanity collapsed. Instead, a powerful opening scene sets a tone of paranoia by immersing us in a neighborhood’s spreading mood of mistrust as a mysterious threat emerges. Then the action jumps into the future, with proud father Paul (Nic Cage) doing his best to raise teenage twins Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) in the isolated countryside, as the trio spends their days gathering resources and reinforcing their defenses against any monstrous beings who might come knocking on their doors in the middle of the night.

Deciding to skip the exposition and go straight to the characters allows Arcadian to build a solid first arc, while leaving some threads untied allows the audience’s imagination to seek the link between nasty bugs, environmental pollution, and alien creatures. Horror thrives on the unknown, and by holding back answers, Arcadian hopes the audience will make up their own terrifying version of the apocalypse.

Furthermore, giving the family time to explore their complicated relationships anchors the story despite its twisted paths; regardless of the imaginary perils lurking in Acadian’s shadows, it’s easy to relate to the family’s daily emotional challenges. Paul wants to prepare his children to survive in a hostile world, knowing that he won’t always be around to protect them. For their part, the twins try to forge their own identity, an arduous journey even when societal structures haven’t fallen.

Thomas seeks to understand the world by inventing new ways to survive; Joseph, however, is an explorer with close ties to a nearby farm where his crush lives. So, despite the grim context of their raising, these are still teenagers trying to find their place in the world, and their constant bickering reflect the love and conflict that only siblings can have. Martell and Jenkins do a terrific job turning their characters into layered people, making it worth it to follow their journey even as Arcadian’s plot holes pile up.

While Cage’s star power is prominent in Arcadian’s marketing campaign, it is worth underlining that the movie’ plot takes Cage out of the spotlight, focusing primarily on the twins, a welcome decision given the undeniable synergy of the two young stars. Cage taking the second plane also contributes to Arcadian’s underlying message, which is that a parent’s job is to prepare the younger generation to replace them. However, that does get in the way of Cage unleashing the beast, a spectacle always worth watching. From Renfield to Willy’s Wonderland, there’s something mesmerizing about covering Cage in fake blood and giving him the space he needs to channel his primal self – the devastating mourning breakdown Cage performs in Mandy is still one of the best scenes in his brilliant career.

Cage’s presence, as fabulous as it is, reveals Arcadian main problem, which is its tone. After a solid first arc focused on character dynamics, the creatures that serve as main antagonists start to creep onto the screen. These monsters are wild, born from a macabre blend of animal and human features that only improve as we see them hunting their prey. Sadly, Arcadian doesn’t know how to balance the bonkers concept of its creatures with the small-scaled, slow-burn drama it’s trying to build. As a result, the movie unsuccessfully intercalates scenes where all hell breaks loose with heartfelt speeches that are unearned at best, and blatantly fake at worst. Fortunately, the movie’s unique creature design makes up for every plot mistake. It’s an entertaining mess, for sure, but a mess nevertheless.

Thanks to successful productions such as A Quiet Place, The Walking Dead, and The Last of Us, apocalyptic dramas focused on human relationships have been quite popular in recent years. As such, Arcadian is not the first to try to bank on this profitable trend, nor will it be the last. Sadly, this is not the most successful attempt to recreate the formula, mainly because it feels like Arcadian hasn’t decided what kind of movie it wants to be. It intends to show Nic Cage fighting monsters in action-infused set pieces that defy suspended disbelief. All the while, it wants its core characters to have credible and grounded journeys. In the end, it does neither. 

The battles against the creatures never fulfill their full potential – although we have to applaud their creative approach, Critters nod included. At the same time, the twins’ story is often undermined by questionable developments that serve only to justify the action scenes. As such, Arcadian is never scary, thrilling, or moving enough, with all these goals clashing instead of completing each other. In short, sometimes it feels that Arcadian is trying to build an entire movie just to showcase its unique creatures – to be fair, those creatures deserve their time on the big screen.

It’s hard to figure out Arcadian, because each element shines independently. The movie boasts excellent performances, believable relationships, and over-the-top creatures that steal the show every time they appear. However, the way everything is put together doesn’t quite work, resulting in a fun movie that’s not more forgettable due only to its villains. Then again, who are we trying to trick? As horror fans, we are all suckers for good creature design – a domain in which the movie excels. So, for those of us satisfied with a cool monster to look at, Arcadian is a huge hit.

Arcadian comes to theaters on Friday, April 12, 2024. The movie will be later available for streaming on Shudder.

Resuscitating a 50-year-old horror franchise that never managed to replicate the success of the original movie sounds like a bad idea. Yet, The First Omen manages to breathe new life into a tired formula by trumping The Omen in ways we weren’t expecting.

In 1968, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby became a critic and box office hit, leading Hollywood in a wild chase for the next Antichrist story they could profit from. 1976’s The Omen is one of the few movies released at this moment that endured the test of time. By shifting the focus away from the birth of Satan’s child to the spine-chilling vision of an innocent child ushering in the Apocalypse, The Omen offered something fresh for horror fiends to obsess about, which helps to explain the original movie’s cult following.

The Omen received three sequels and a remake — all failed to leave a lasting impression. One would think that the franchise had already scrapped the bottom of the barrel, and it may be best to let Damien rest. However, The First Omen finds a surprising new angle to explore the franchise.

Set in the weeks preceding the baby exchange that set the events of the original movie into motion, The First Omen explains exactly how Damien came into the world. That’s not a question anyone needed to answer, as the first movie’s wackiest elements tease a satanic plot beyond human comprehension. Fortunately, The First Omen is aware that the only way to make exploring the original movie’s loose threads worthwhile is to give the most insane possible answers. In doing so, the prequel changes the meaning of some of the original’s critical scenes without spoiling the cult classic’s experience. 

The First Omen introduces a new character, Margarett (Nell Tiger Free), a young novice sent to work at an orphanage in Rome, where she hopes to give herself to Christ and become a nun. In Rome, Margarett creates an unlikely bond with the dark and mysterious teenager Carlita (Nicole Sorace). There’s something creepy happening at the orphanage, and Carlita seems to be at the center of it. So, while there’s a clear and direct connection to the original movie, the prequel also tries to tell its own story. The goal is to add to The Omen’s mythology without feeling derivative and even develop new plotlines that future movies can potentially explore.

Regarding scares, The First Omen strives to create an oppressive atmosphere where deception and secrecy contribute to making the audience uneasy. The prequel doesn’t always manage to do that, and the first arc, in particular, moves too slowly for its own sake. Nevertheless, The First Omen thrives in other horror staples, conjuring gruesome scenes that make you squirm. These scenes are more present in the movie’s final stretch when it perfectly balances what to show and hide to make you uncomfortable on a scale only a good horror movie can manage.

On that note, it’s essential to underline that The First Omen goes all in to make your skin crawl. Regardless of your mileage with horror movies, some scenes are incredibly unsettling, especially those dealing with heavy subjects such as obstetric violence. Still, it’s not just a matter of shock for shock’s sake, as The First Omen leans into the critical analysis of the orthodox Christian belief that women are created to serve and procreate, nothing else. As a result, women’s bodies are things to surveil, contain, and even desecrate to make sure they fulfill their supposedly God-given purpose. That perspective is what makes some moments of The First Omen utterly disgusting because, beyond the fake blood and exposed viscera, there is the very real pain of losing control of your own body due to archaic moral notions.

While the gore is not for everyone’s taste, the effort to use an established franchise to explore a new idea is commendable. The prequel shines the brightest when it questions the danger of giving a religious institution complete control over your life.

Margarett’s journey in The First Omen is one of self-discovery. Her devotion to God is tested, and she realizes she has a desiring body that should be hers to control. At times, the film will use this quest as an excuse to create titillating scenes, only to unveil the terrors that can emerge from the same sources. Unfortunately, that’s a fascinating thematic tapestry that doesn’t get the depth it deserves.

The biggest issue with The First Omen is how it’s trying to overlap two very distinct movies. On the one hand, it tells the story of Margarett, a woman who is suddenly confronted with a whole world of experiences that exist beyond the limits of Christianity. On the other hand, The First Omen is a prequel that is self-constrained by its reverence for the original. While there’s nothing wrong with the movie positioning itself as a faithful prequel, it can be tiresome to see it echo all the significant deaths of the 1976 classic. The situation is only sadder because The First Omen shows a lot of creativity when it allows itself to steer away from the original movie.

The First Omen is trying to bank on people’s love for The Omen. The prequel reuses soundtrack beats, and the image is covered with a yellow glow that mimics the heat printed in analog film in 1970s productions. But if we are being honest, The Omen is not so crucial that you cannot reinvent it and make it your own. That’s the mark of the best legacy sequels, such as 2021’s Candyman, 2018’s Halloween, and 2022’s Scream. So, while The First Omen is a good horror movie for old fans and newcomers alike, we feel it would be better if it embraced what’s unique and worried less about replicating the original film.

With all that said, The First Omen is all the more impressive when we consider this is the feature directorial debut of Arkasha Stevenson. It’s no easy feat to tackle a well-established franchise, and the pressure is even more significant when you are a newcomer to filmmaking. Still, Stevenson proves she is more than up for the task — we’ll be watching her horror career with great interest.

Dev Patel is a man of action, and that can be applied to at least two different dimensions when it comes to his directorial debut and passion project Monkey Man.

The film was born out of Patel’s desire to tell this story, and when his first choice of director — Neill Blomkamp, who directed him in 2015’s Chappie — turned down the project due to the cultural knowledge and understanding the script demanded, the Oscar-nominated actor took a leap of faith and took on the role himself. By Patel’s own account, production was chaotic. The pandemic’s border restrictions meant losing a good portion of the team and swapping the Indian setting for an Indonesian island, but there were also financing problems, broken cameras replaced by Patel’s phone, broken bones, and even the death of a gaffer from a heart attack. Nothing, however, could stop Patel from finishing the film.

Patel is not just a man of action, though ⏤ he’s also a fan of it. Monkey Man is an ode to the actor’s favorite action films, from South Korean revenge thrillers like Oldboy and The Man from Nowhere to Bollywood movies, Indonesia’s cult classic The Raid to Hong Kong’s martial arts heroes like Bruce Lee and Sammo Hung, and of course John Wick, which even gets its own cheeky mention in the film. It’s clear that the person behind the film not only appreciates the action genre, but celebrates it and strives to elevate it. That’s also the merit Jordan Peele saw in it when he decided to buy it from Netflix through his production company, Monkeypaw Productions, and take it to Universal for distribution.

In Monkey Man, Patel takes the archetypal action film to new heights by infusing it with a rich cultural history, background, and motivation. The film follows Kid (Patel), a fighter in an underground ring who gets paid to lose and whose mother Neela (played by Adithi Kalkunte) was killed by a policeman (Sikandar Kher’s Rana) when he was a child. His whole life, he’s been planning a way to get to this man and avenge her death, but through that journey and the people he meets along the way, he acquires a much deeper incentive that turns his personal quest for vengeance into a war for social justice.

The concept is laudable, visionary, and ambitious — perhaps too much so. The first hour of Monkey Man is as firm and punchy as its leading man, but the more elements that are added and the more its entropy increases, the more Patel struggles to keep his steady grip on the story, and more specifically, its tone.

There’s a rich tapestry of characters that come together to paint a vivid picture of India’s caste system, represented visually and literally in the form of the elevator that takes Kid from the steamy, packed, and closed-off kitchen of the luxury brothel his nemesis frequents to the spacious and floor-to-ceiling window-covered penthouse that’s only accessible to the madam (Queenie, played by Ashwini Kalsekar) and her most esteemed guests. The structure of the hero’s journey in the film, throughout which Kid takes down every rank to get to the “final boss,” lends itself perfectly to the caste system. This parallelism in Patel’s underdog story is fascinating to watch, even if he bites off more than he can chew (almost literally at times, because there’s quite a lot of biting in this film).

After Kid’s first failed attempt to take out the corrupt policeman who killed his mother, he’s rescued and taken in by a group of Hijra (South Asia’s third gender community), whose guru guides him to a newer, wider purpose. This is the moment where his initial plan transitions into something much deeper, and Kid goes on, no longer fighting just for his trauma, but for everyone else’s, too. This change happens in tandem with the reveal of further, more significant details about Neela’s killing, which in turn also re-calibrates the viewer toward a new, much more preserved enemy that had been behind Rana’s actions all along. Corrupt police are a frequent enemy of the people in life and film, but this new target adds a much more complex and sinister layer to the story that Monkey Man never really manages to fully grasp, despite its best and most honest attempts.

Faith ultimately holds the biggest weight out of Monkey Man‘s many elements. It inspires not only Kid’s fighting ring persona, but also the film’s title and the direction the narrative ultimately takes. It opens with Neela telling a young Kid about the legend of Hanuman, the half-monkey, half-human Hindu god who mistook the sun for fruit and tried to eat it as a child, consequently receiving punishment from the gods. The deity features frequently throughout the film, often as part of Kid’s own spiritual awakenings, but also as a cultural parallel for his timeless plight as an underdog squaring up against those who exploit and abuse him and his class peers. Still, a deeper knowledge of Hanuman’s folklore is needed to understand all the symbolism Patel inserted into the protagonist and his journey. As a result, although conceptually and visually captivating, this element of the story could prove difficult to grasp for a wider, Western audience (which, although worthy of notice, is not problematic in itself, and could generate a lot of post-viewing research and theorizing that could extend Monkey Man‘s longevity).

It’s clear and admirable what Patel is trying to accomplish here, but these many elements are hard to successfully combine and see through even for the most experienced of filmmakers, so it’s only natural that the first-time director can’t quite carry Monkey Man through to the finish line. Aspects of the varying themes are either overly complex or over-simplified to serve the central revenge plot, and some cliché moments come close to spoiling the gravitas that otherwise defines the film.

Regardless, Monkey Man is chock-full of memorable sequences and showstopping gasp-for-air moments emphasized by inventive fight choreography, directing, photography, and editing. There’s evident flair and exciting style in Patel’s filmmaking vision, and his charisma both behind and in front of the camera is undeniable — after all, there aren’t many eyes in the business as expressive as his. The multi-hyphenate actor-writer-director showcases a thorough syntony with the story and its message, yet lacks the language to fully translate it to the screen. Still, we can easily discern what it was that he wanted to do with this film, and his attempt is earnest and fierce enough to conceal some of its most obvious flaws.

If anything, Monkey Man is definitive proof of why Patel has built a career as a leading man straight off of Skins and shown no signs of slowing down since. It’s also a positive sign that he might take that energy and put it into building an equally thrilling career as a director.

Ever since the wider world caught wind of it, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire never made any secret of where its interests laid; to be a big, flashy, over-the-top brawl involving, among others, the two undisputed heavyweights of monster movie history — this generation’s All Monsters Attack, if you will.

The fearlessness with which the film owns that distinction has delighted some and turned off others, and neither of those responses are invalid. On the one hand, there’s no more important item on a film’s checklist than figuring out your identity and sticking by it, whether or not that identity has much merit, and let’s face it; giant monster fights are some of the most carnal, undiluted fun you can have in genre fiction.

On the other hand, it’s hard to disagree that a Titan-stuffed slugfest seems like a massive downgrade from Godzilla and King Kong’s thematically cerebral roots; that is, Godzilla as a nuclear allegory, and for Kong, the dangers of natural spectacle, and the utilitarian side of love. Indeed, even if blasting these two monsters with the current iteration of the Hollywood franchise ray didn’t outrightly ruin them, The New Empire should have never been a film truly worthy of any score higher than, in this case, three and a half out of five stars.

Read that again; it should have never. On paper, this movie had no right to challenge the ceiling that its monster genre identity placed upon it. And yet, somehow, someway, a brilliant, granular glimmer shone in The New Empire’s eye, and despite not taking enough advantage of it (hence why it’s still pressing against said ceiling rather than smashing through it), this glimmer should earn a tip of the hat from even the film’s most rancid doubters.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first; The New Empire is about a bunch of monsters fighting each other good-and-evil style, and the scenes where a bunch of monsters are fighting each other good-and-evil style are the meat of the triumph here. Each earthshaking confrontation boasts at least one of three winning elements; dazzling evocation, bombastically entertaining choreography, and peculiarly effective humor, and more often than not, there are at least two of these aspects involved. The undisputable highlight of the film is a zero-gravity battle between Team Godzilla-Kong and Team Skar King-Shimo (plus a few extra faces on either side), which takes those first two elements and utilizes them to supremely crackling effect.

That being said, there are a few exchanges of punches and energy beams that could have been played to much better effect, with Kong’s difficult recruitment of Godzilla being the prime example. For context, at one point in the film, Kong returns to the surface world to bring Godzilla back to Hollow Earth so he can help Kong fight Skar King and his army, but Godzilla rolls up swinging, no doubt hoping for a salty runback. After trading a few blows with Godzilla to the beat of a stentorian background symphony, Kong becomes fed up with Godzilla’s nonsense, and eventually incapacitates the reptilian Titan before dragging him to the Hollow Earth portal. Godzilla regains consciousness, however, and aims a blast of his newly-acquired pink atomic energy at Kong, ultimately prolonging the fight.

Now, the film frequently and quite deliberately plays itself for laughs, but this fight wasted a massive opportunity to play with convention. By treating this bout as a somewhat epic battle courtesy of the orchestral soundtrack, the film deprives it of the chance to really express itself in the way that its textual presentation suggests it wants to; namely, Kong and Godzilla humorously and unceremoniously slapping each other around a bit before Kong basically goes “Listen bud, I don’t like you either, but you’re coming with me whether you like it or not, and we’re gonna solve this new problem, so behave,” before flippantly dragging Godzilla to wherever Kong needs him to be. Furthermore, concluding the fight at that point would have allowed for a much bigger, more exciting reveal of Godzilla’s new powers by saving them until the final confrontation.

The human characters in The New Empire serve an important purpose, make no mistake; to lay the expositional and logistical groundwork to set up all of these giant monster fights. That said, the film both knows this all too well, and forgets this a bit too often.

When the likes of Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, and Dan Stevens serve monologues on Titan history, upgrading Kong, or explaining why if A happens, then B will happen, The New Empire is on its strongest footing. It’s when the film tries to involve us in a vague impression of a mother-daughter emotional core, or when Henry’s Bernie Hayes stretches his role as comic relief (in name alone), that The New Empire proves it needed a bit more time in the oven. To truly become its best self, a movie should demand excellence from what it excels at; but in its family drama, and awkward, spoken zingers (the film’s comedy is only ever truly effective when it comes by way of the monsters), The New Empire falls far short of excellence.

Given this context, the human characters being in service of the monsters and their antics is an absolute necessity, and it’s that mostly-incomplete-but-nevertheless-present intention that gives The New Empire the potential to be a genuinely fantastic movie. Godzilla and King Kong have long since outgrown the constraints of their more erudite origins, especially as characters of The New Empire, and exist exactly as unchained, intelligent, top-of-the-food-chain beasts would; as animals with a commitment to nature, be that their own, their kin, or the natural world, itself.

A human watching classic King Kong films might be concerned with how King Kong, as an abstraction, represents love and spectacle. King Kong himself isn’t concerned, though, nor does Godzilla spare even a shadow of a thought of how he parallels atomic devastation; they’re instead thinking “This is bad and dangerous, I need to fight it,” as any animals would. And what is The New Empire if not a bunch of monstrous animals fighting what they’re sensing as bad and dangerous? Thus, by placing its human characters almost entirely in service of this monster-centric story, The New Empire restores Kong and Godzilla not as one-off cinematic case studies, but as infinitely more mythological, wild beings who are beyond human control and comprehension; indeed, we humans with our media literacy and academia are no longer in control of these two – they’ve stepped into a much more independent truth befitting of all-powerful forces of nature.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is a fun, brisk popcorn movie, despite not using all the tools at its disposal, and not always having the right idea about which tool to use. Nevertheless, it’s beyond proficient with the tool it needs the most, and works from a blueprint for something pretty incredible. Worst case scenario, you’ll dislike the film despite knowing exactly what you’re getting into, at which point it’s your fault for watching it in the first place. Best case scenario, you walk away satisfied, potentially hyped, and even surprised at what it managed to be.

What follows is a cynical, marginally cathartic, passionately dispassionate, and regrettably scathing takedown of alleged film Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and the parameters that allowed it to get made, brought to you by about a half-hour-long, somewhat existential rumination, an empty-handed grasp for positives, and a series of far more deep breaths than I care to admit.

Let’s face it, there is no one on this planet who will walk into this movie expecting anything more than by-the-numbers franchise fare; this is a movie for people who have either made Ghostbusters a part of their personality, are looking to waste (not spend, not kill; waste) about two hours, or — and this is the demographic I predict will make up the majority of this film’s box office — groups of friends and families that are so hopelessly entrenched in the plastic, consumerist hell that we’re all navigating, that they’ll gravitate towards whatever neuron-neutering piece of content is offered up to them in a tragically desperate attempt to have a good time. And make no mistake, many will believe they did have a good time because they have to believe that at this point.

That is precisely the ceiling that Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire set for itself, and the only thing more infuriating about it being okay with its goalposts is the sheer anti-inspiration that fueled its inability to even touch that ceiling.

Now, the word “Ghostbusters” tells you all you need to know about the spine of the plot; the Afterlife gang is all back together, and they need to bust some ghosts before the world ends. And to be honest, I’m not even sure what else there is to say about the plot; textually, Frozen Empire is such an inconsequential nothing-burger that I struggle to even call it a story. It’s not even that it’s a bad plot, because that would require some indication that it’s trying to have a plot in the first place; it’s not, and that’s much, much worse.

Instead, Frozen Empire puts on a blindfold and proceeds to try and stitch together a series of incoherent, quarter-baked ideas with several heaping tablespoons of nostalgia courtesy of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Slimer, and even footage from the original Ghostbusters movies; therein lies Exhibit A of the creative no-man’s-land that is the state of this franchise.

Exhibit B would have to be the fact that Frozen Empire seems to have made a life mission out of insulting the audience whenever possible. There is no quicker way to lose a viewer’s respect than to have Paul Rudd say “Hey! That was pretty funny!” after Phoebe tells a cringey joke, or to have Kumail Nanjiani say “That was awesome!” after telekinetically redirecting the course of a proton pack beam (don’t ask). But Frozen Empire also plays the long game of losing one’s respect by approaching every plot beat with such a shallow, childish pseudo-confidence, that hardly any line of dialogue has any hope of being more than an additional, sanitized, milquetoast nail in the coffin of a film that would probably get an absolute kick out of me having begun this paragraph with “Exhibit B would have to to be…” Get it? Because I made the “B” sound twice in quick succession? Get it? Do you get it?

Furthermore, despite a supremely stacked cast of tried-and-true practitioners of comedic timing, there are maybe five lines in the entire film that are worthy of even a light chuckle. Even then, Frozen Empire is so impossibly committed to drowning itself in its relentless abhorrence for creativity, that even smiling at those lines feels like grasping a sharp rock in the ocean; it’s a completely meaningless interaction, but at least that meaninglessness can be interacted with, even if it wounds you in the long run.

Speaking of said practitioners, someone please get these poor, poor actors better projects after this one. My presumption is that Rudd and company were under no illusion that they were working with some of the worst material out there, and what else can you do at that point other than blindly phone it in and hope that the result at least makes sense in the context of the movie?

The problem there, however, is that the film can’t really claim to have a context of its own, because it exists solely for people who will mindlessly (and that’s key here) flock to anything with “Ghostbusters” in the title, and when a movie exists for any entity before it exists for itself, it’s already committed one of the worst possible sins of the medium by forfeiting its potential identity and, by extension, its ambitions.

And in saying that, I’m quite honestly not even sure if I’m critiquing Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire or if I’m critiquing the specific Hollywood machine that churned out this soulless glut, because they might as well be one in the same. By coating itself in sugary nostalgia, Frozen Empire allows fans the illusion of being seen; “There’s that character I like! I recognize that ghost! I feel like I’m part of something!” And the fact that our current social landscape has left us so grossly detached from one another and ourselves, that someone out there will gladly rely on such shoddily-crafted hyperproducts like Frozen Empire to access even a fraction of an endorphin, is indicative of an entirely evil cycle that the entertainment industry continues to be complicit in with movies like this.

Again, no one expected much from Frozen Empire, and it really didn’t need to do much. It would have also been completely okay if it wanted to try something different from its predecessors; in fact, that’s pretty much the entire point of serialized storytelling in film in the first place. But with Frozen Empire, not only did it barely attempt to reach an effectively rock-bottom ceiling, it couldn’t even be bothered to try the same thing as its predecessors; if doing nothing is a lack of action, then whatever Frozen Empire did is somehow the opposite of action, which is less than doing nothing, and I don’t even know if a word for that exists.

In closing, there’s no real way to talk about Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire without getting caught in a dreary circle of why this dreadful aspect led to that dreadful aspect, and how it all loops back to that first dreadful aspect, until you’re just vaguely reiterating how bad it is. And the thing is, that makes perfect sense, because the film is at once a cyclical product of non-inspiration, and simultaneously the fuel and the excrement of Hollywood’s role in this unsightly consumption cycle that weighs on us day after day. And that distinction, my friends, is the single biggest standout of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire; that should, on some level, make you angry.