The tonal mismatch I feared could have turned one giant movie into a bit of a slog turns out to be among its greatest strengths. The reflective second half recontextualizes the first, and the progression of colorful action fantasia to quiet existential reckoning is overwhelming.
Because it’s darker and a bit more intense, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a slight improvement over the first film, which seemed to mistake family-friendly restraint for abject lifelessness.
Wicked: For Good is shorter than the first film and, while it might be a step back in terms of spectacle, it’s a leap forward in (go ahead, laugh) subtlety and emotion. My audience was audibly sobbing by the end.
The pieces are in place — detestable villain, likable cast — but Now You Don’t can’t muster up the energy or the wit to make us care one lick about what’s happening onscreen.
At its best, the film gives us a sincere look at the creative process and reveals it to be a sad, scary, at times uncontrollable and destructive thing. Just for that alone, it’s worth seeing.
There’s a perfectly good melodrama to be made from the plot of Regretting You, which on its surface isn’t so much a twisty-turny soap opera as it is a multicharacter wallow in uncontrolled emotions. It’s how this specific movie presents all the wallowing that made me feel like I was hallucinating.
It Was Just an Accident plays like an ideal melding of the filmmaker Panahi was and the filmmaker he’s been forced to become. It’s an endlessly fascinating and extraordinarily powerful work.
You might go nuts trying to figure out exactly how anything works in this movie. But in the right hands, this can be a strength too. It certainly enhances the overall sense of dread, since we’re now in a world whose rules haven’t been clearly defined.
