David Rooney

His eighth feature is so meta that you watch in excruciating weariness as it disappears up its own ass and then realize to your dismay that there’s another eardrum-shattering hour left to endure.

The masterstroke of Yamazaki’s direction is the skill with which he ensures that the human drama remains no less compelling than the monster faceoffs.

In the end, we care about Julia mostly because Infiniti shows a living, breathing humanity that the unsatisfying film lacks.

Oakley and Reid lean so heavily into Elinor and Marianne’s crushing disappointments and the forces holding them back in a period of vast gender inequity, that their sorrows shove the characters’ more captivating qualities to the side.

No matter how accomplished the cast, the self-conscious movie only really starts half-working once it gets out of its own way.

The result is another ersatz Pitch Perfect, a thrown-together grab bag of familiar ideas both painfully unfunny and narratively anemic, relying primarily on charm-deficient pop nostalgia for any appeal it can muster.

Even if the movie gets a bit crazy in an apocalyptic epilogue, its picture of bourgeois smugness due for a takedown is delicious.

Nelson took 12 years to get the project made, and that labor-of-love aspect shows in the soulfulness and meticulous care the writer-director brings to this unsettling story of violence begetting violence, based on actual events.

While devout Miike-heads might feel sated by the one or two amped-up set pieces and the characteristic strain of dark humor, this is by far the weakest of the three Bad Lieutenants.

Poetry and beauty color their appreciation of the wine’s complex balance, its bright fruit notes, vibrant acidity and earthy mineral undertones. The doc gives the impression of being granted access to an exclusive milieu, though it’s less about snobbery than artistry.