Movie reviews

The Naked Gun functions less as a reboot than a continuation built by tracing the original films’ comic formula point for point. That fidelity will feel derivative to anyone who never cared for the series and reassuring to viewers who did. The filmmakers understand the rhythm, density and straight-faced stupidity required, then reproduce it with real competence rather than trying to modernize the premise beyond recognition. If you liked the originals, this gives you another one. That is both the entire strategy and a perfectly legitimate recommendation.

Andaaz 2 feels assembled from two attractive young models taught a handful of dance moves, an available Bollywood actress installed as the villain, and an AI-generated package of songs and screenplay. Aakaisha and Natasha Fernandez are beautiful, and the production keeps moving energetically enough that boredom never fully arrives. Thought, originality and human specificity do not fare as well. This is cheesy formula executed with adequate surface appeal and almost no evidence that anyone asked why these particular characters should exist.

Son of Sardaar 2 benefited from the very low expectations created by nearly everyone else disliking it. The plot is needlessly convoluted and its happy resolution requires a heroic suspension of disbelief, but the main cast is likable, the songs are fun and the movie remains cheerful enough to function as an evening’s diversion. This is not high cinema and does not pretend to be. Take your elders, enjoy the music and allow plausibility to wait outside the theater.

Shoshana uses a romance between a Zionist woman and a British officer to enter the volatile politics of Mandatory Palestine and the hunt for militant Avraham Stern. The period detail, cinematography and bursts of political violence create real tension, while Irina Starshenbaum and Douglas Booth keep the history emotionally accessible. Its clarity is also selective: Arab Muslim and Christian perspectives are largely absent, disparate Zionist factions need more depth and Stern remains underwritten. This is a visually striking, well-acted drama worth seeing for the history and love story, but its narrow frame prevents a good film from becoming a great one.

Everything has a pace, and Cloud chooses the speed of a slow-burning fuse attached to nothing. It burns, burns some more and finally fizzles without the release that might justify all that patience. I struggled to understand anyone’s motivation beyond the protagonist’s business interests, repeatedly checked the time and began nodding off while waiting for the acclaim to explain itself. The surviving characters almost seem positioned for a more interesting movie that will never exist. See it and decide for yourself; I found setup without destination.

She Rides Shotgun gives the fugitive thriller a strong father-daughter engine, with Taron Egerton’s newly released ex-con fleeing corrupt law enforcement and a criminal organization alongside the eleven-year-old child he barely knows. Their developing bond supplies emotional weight, while gritty cinematography and a tense setup keep the danger credible. At two hours, the pace drags, supporting characters remain thin and several turns arrive exactly where expected, keeping the film from landing with full force. This is a solid one-time action movie with a distinctive relationship at its center, not one I feel compelled to revisit.

Omniscient Reader: The Prophecy did not bore me, which is the faintest available defense. I remained actively engaged because I was actively disliking it, following each new choice closely enough to resent the next one. Hatred might have produced the clarity of walking out; this stayed just above that threshold and kept me present for the entire failure. Some bad movies disappear while you watch them. This one made its unpleasantness participatory.

Kingdom follows an impulsive police constable into an undercover mission in Sri Lanka, where government duty becomes entangled with his search for a long-lost brother. The first half builds an excellent infiltration thriller, the images and action are consistently impressive and the 150-minute runtime moves with surprising confidence. Character themes remain shallow and the second half loses some of the premise’s precision before recovering for a cathartic, bloody climax. An unnecessary cliffhanger weakens the landing, but the journey remains clear, engaging and easy to recommend to anyone wanting a visually muscular action thriller.

Together takes a couple’s move to the country and turns it into a haunting body-horror threat to their relationship, bodies and sense of separateness. Dave Franco and Alison Brie make the central partnership believable enough that the increasingly strange force acting on them carries emotional as well as physical stakes. The pace stays tight across 102 minutes, the effects remain convincing and several turns genuinely surprised me, especially where the story ultimately goes. I normally resist body horror; this won me over by balancing unsettling imagery with recognizable human attachment rather than treating disgust as the whole attraction.

Maareesan feels like two satisfying movies sharing the same ticket. It begins as a funny, unexpectedly tender road story about a young criminal attempting to exploit an older man with Alzheimer’s, building a relationship messy enough to make both men worth rooting for. Then it changes gears into a much darker revenge tale driven by quiet, methodical justice. The tonal break will challenge some viewers, but each half works on its own terms and the contrast gave me more rather than less. Heart, humor and ruthless payback make an unlikely but effective combination.

The Home may be attempting a literal metaphor about boomers draining the life from younger generations. If so, the concept is more interesting than the movie built around it. My Screen Unseen showing produced neither deeper thoughts nor any desire to investigate what the filmmakers meant beyond that generational image. I disliked the experience completely. Whatever social point is hiding inside, it is not worth the time required to excavate it.

Tanvi the Great finds real charm in watching a young autistic woman discover how much she can achieve when people finally give her room to learn. That uplifting journey sits inside what sometimes resembles an advertisement for the Indian military—even though the institution is also the obvious barrier standing between Tanvi and the dream everyone except her understands may be impossible. The contradiction is strange: resolutely positive and pro-military while showing the military as the central obstacle. I enjoyed her growth and the warmth surrounding it, but not enough to revisit the campaign.

Junior spends its first half coasting on Kireeti’s smile, dancing and natural charisma, then abruptly asks that charm to carry a more traditional family drama about an independent son accepting responsibility for his sister and long-suffering father. By the time the serious material arrived, I found myself appreciating the earlier singing and dancing more than the attempted emotional weight. The strands come together effectively at the end, and the songs are decent, but the tonal shift makes two incomplete movies compete for the same protagonist. Kireeti’s dancing is the one element that never loses confidence.

Saiyaara is an emotionally effective romance that earned the reaction a movie like this is designed to produce. I did not tear up at the end; the theater simply contained an extraordinary and highly localized concentration of dust. Any moisture observed was therefore environmental rather than evidence that the story, music and performances worked on me. That is my position. Honestly, this was really good.

Smurfs is nowhere near the disaster suggested by its reviews. It is a mildly diverting children’s movie—bright, busy and serviceable enough to occupy its intended audience without requiring adults to pretend they are witnessing an animated classic. More importantly, Natasha Lyonne plays a character named Mama Poot. Whatever the larger film’s limitations, hearing that casting choice become real is almost worth the ticket by itself.

I Know What You Did Last Summer completely misunderstands the assignment of reviving a ’90s slasher. It is not wild, sexy or cool; it is not funny enough to become camp or frightening enough to work as horror. A charisma-starved cast moves through poor writing without generating the reckless energy that should make this material pleasurable. The post-credit scene is the most entertaining part, which means the movie improves only after it has officially ended. So bad. Like, so bad.

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight approaches the fall of Rhodesia and rise of ZANU-PF through a young white girl’s limited perspective, which may be faithful to memoir but leaves the adults around her superficial and the politics almost entirely unexplained. We learn little about what Black or white communities believed, how the conflict operated or what roles these people played within it. I wanted this unfamiliar viewpoint to illuminate history; instead, the child irritated me and the narrowness drained a momentous transition of urgency. Fidelity to a child’s understanding may explain the omissions, but it does not make them dramatically interesting.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s still works when you surrender to Audrey Hepburn’s extraordinary charm and let her carry you through elements that have aged far less gracefully. Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi cannot be defended, but those offensive minutes do not erase two hours filled with iconic images, romantic melancholy and Hepburn singing “Moon River.” Loving an old movie does not require pretending its harshest anachronisms are harmless. It requires seeing them clearly while understanding why the rest continues to enchant. For me, Hepburn’s performance keeps winning that argument.

Maalik came close to receiving no stars at all, but the pre-intermission half was not quite as awful as everything that followed, and two genuinely good songs deserve acknowledgment. The late spectacle of its supposed protagonist losing control and becoming an apparently bulletproof rage monster also supplies the kind of ridiculous commitment the rest of the film lacks. Those fragments earn half a star. They do not make the movie good; they merely prevent its failure from being mathematically complete.

The Old Guard is an engaging action movie that establishes its immortal warriors, history and rules with enough confidence to support an entire cinematic universe if the sequels justify one. I somehow ignored it until the second film arrived, only to discover how much straightforward fun I had missed. Charlize Theron is entirely convincing as a protagonist carrying centuries of experience, giving the familiar physical authority of an action star the weariness of a genuinely old soul. The mythology creates possibilities; her presence makes this first chapter work.

Oh, Hi! attempts to evolve from romantic comedy into exaggerated farce, but a current of genuine creepiness runs beneath the jokes from the beginning. I kept wondering how quickly the audience’s laughter would die if the characters’ genders were reversed, which makes the comedy’s moral balance difficult to ignore. The two leads give strong, committed performances and I still enjoyed the movie considerably despite that discomfort. As a Screen Unseen selection, it became my second consecutive win—even if the unease may prove more durable than the laughs.

Gattaca is one of my favorite movies of all time. That judgment comes from the complete experience rather than a single performance, twist or scene I can isolate without reducing it. Its world, ideas and emotional precision have remained with me far beyond the screening and survived every return. Some films invite a review explaining what worked; the rare ones become part of the standard by which everything after them is measured. This is one of those.

Parandhu Po surrounds decent cinematography with bad parenting, an unbearable child, weak music and writing that treats dangerous behavior as adorable self-expression. The child repeatedly acts out in ways that could get him or his parents killed, and the adults refuse meaningful consequences because he might respond with another tantrum. The movie apparently expects this family dynamic to seem healthy or amusing. I found it irresponsible, irritating and profoundly boring. Pretty images cannot turn dysfunction without insight into comedy.

The Queen of My Dreams comes alive in its 1960s passages, where the period, family history and sheer pleasure of the filmmaking make the past delightful to inhabit. Every return to the present slows that energy into a heavier struggle with the protagonist’s identity and her mother’s religious constraints. I understand why both timelines are necessary and doubt there is an inherently more entertaining way to dramatize the contemporary material. Understanding the design did not change the experience: I kept longing for the movie in the past whenever the present took over.