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. 

A brutally candid exploration of lust, obsession, and grief, deliberately blurring the line between romantic drama and psychological horror.

Fennell, whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur comes from a pair of hotly disputed previous films, Promising Young Woman, and Saltburn, seems to be setting up a kind of punishment for our expectations: If we were imagining one of world’s most endearing tragedies about passion being turned into a sexually frank and explicit drama, Fennell suggests strongly we think again. That more or less holds true for the rest of the film. As much as the trailer suggests an unhinged, psycho-sexual bacchanalia, the actual event is far more tame  —  at least, graphically  —  than what we might have imagined. 

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. 

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.

Asteroid City is as flat and unremarkable as its surrounding landscape.

Downton Abbey: A New Era is sappier than a forest full of maples.

Licorice Pizza establishes the careers of two young actors in their debuts as it slices up its teen romantic comedy into smaller hit-or-miss pieces.

Its meaty film noir elements and drenching atmosphere nearly carry the film on their own.

Woos Austen fans and other moviegoers alike with its mix of comedy, romance and miscommunication