Where a better Spike Lee film would consistently swing hard for audacious set pieces, Highest 2 Lowest teases us with glimpses of the Kurosawa adaptation that could have been, settling for a bland remake of a once-thrilling crime plot and moral dilemma that severely flattens whatever tension remains.
Matt Shakman’s vision of the The Fantastic Four: First Steps may gesture towards greatness in its retro-futurist production design, but ultimately retreats into hollow grandeur, leaving behind a world rich in style for a superficial simulation that never dares to challenge its own utopian ideals.
Jacques Audiard is no hack, and there is some merit to the outlandish ambition of this pulpy, musical melodrama about a cartel kingpin’s transition, yet its constant misfires keep Emilia Pérez from ever settling on a coherent direction.
Francis Ford Coppola’s conceptual fusion of Ancient Rome and modern America into an epic Shakespearean fable is promising in Megalopolis, though the precision and focus that once defined his storytelling is completely absent here, tangled up in its inability to carry a single line of thought through to completion.
The greatest development that Deadpool and Wolverine has to offer is a surprisingly sincere examination of Logan’s legacy, and yet it is far too caught up in Marvel’s IP to escape its own fourth wall breaking cynicism, jumping between half-baked ideas with all the awkwardness of its disjointed multiverse.
