It sounds like the set-up to a comedy, and to be sure, writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (himself, the cause of controversy, given his recent admission to dating a teenager when he was a decade older than she), plays a lot of this material for uneasy laughs. The wedding scene itself, at the end, is a sort of culmination of everyone’s bad choices in the most public of spectacles (Charlie makes an absolutely ghastly wedding speech resulting, in part, by him getting his nose broken by an angry guest), with various turns of the screw. 

The traditional Dracula is, of course, known for draining his victims of blood and life-force. Not a great guy, but still not one you necessarily expect to command you to “suck” his “cock,” especially from numerous horrific A.I. interpretations of the character. As the literal opening line in Radu Jude’s riotous vampiric polemic, the irascible director is giving you a heads-up on what to expect for the rest of the film’s nearly three-hour runtime. 

Working from a fusty script by writing duo Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who wrote a previous installment of the Friday the 13th series, Raimi goes deep in his bag of tricks  —  comic fish-eye perspectives; extreme close-ups; POV cameras hurtling through jungle terrain; extreme and ludicrous gore  —  to keep things going, but the indecisive screenplay simply won’t allow for the full Raimi experience. 

A similar scheme is hatched in Paul Feig’s film, although I have to be extremely vague about the details so as not to ruin the carefully plotted set-up. Suffice it to say, there’s a good chance you will utterly loathe the film as I did for almost the entire first two acts before the reward comes your way. 

For this film, a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, the shots vary between languid and almost thunderously violent, from the lilting trills in Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack, to abrasively coarse auditory punch-outs. At times, it’s like the effect of flipping through random channels on your TV, the sudden change of tone and timbre shocking you with their contrast.  

So, does this reboot fly? Only through turbulence.

If the beauty of the classic Western at least partially lies in its dependably simplistic morality  —  a villain doing wrong; and a hero stopping them cold  — the modern “neo-western” as Ari Aster’s satirically topical film has often been classified, becomes almost the literal opposite: A film where morality shifts and scuttles about, before getting bludgeoned, shot, blown up, and, eventually paved over and turned into a high-tech office building. 

The film has more coherence and gravity than the recent offerings the MCU has been able to muster over the last few years.

Bong Joon Ho is like an avant garde chef who’s opened a pop up kitchen in some strange part of the city you don’t know very well. You don’t know what to expect, but when you try the food, it’s a brilliant combination of disparate ingredients you never would have thought to put together

Sean Baker’s pronounced humanism is one of his strongest superpowers as a director. Whether they are trans sex workers (Tangerine), young children living in a motel (The Florida Project), or con artists new to town (Red Rocket), his generosity with his characters always shines.

Inside Out 2 is a schizophrenic jumble with everyone spread way too thin.

Barbie is akin to Joe Camel espousing the virtues of a healthy lifestyle.