Amazeballs

There are movies which, with all their gloss and calculated ambition, remain pieces of machinery, oiled and in motion, but never quite alive. The Accountant is not one of those. It rumbles, clicks, and suddenly roars as if its protagonist’s sharp edges were etched with lightning, each narrative gear turning inevitably toward violence and revelation. That familiar yet unexpected pleasure, the sensation of a genre movie actually delivering on its promises, finds a rare showcase here. For once, the machine’s hum is exhilarating.

Is there anything more liberating than watching a movie that understands—it really knows—that coherence is just another rule waiting to be elbowed aside for the sake of a good time? Shane Black’s “The Nice Guys” is not so much a film as a lark in polyester trousers, a two-hour tumble through the sun...

You find yourself at a “Terrifier” marathon the way you might wander into a crumbling, weed-choked funhouse: half-wary, half-eager, and maybe—against your better judgment—hoping to stumble out dazed, altered, or at least grinning through the scream. Damien Leone’s trilogy, born from a short so brash it barely counts as a calling card, is less a suite of movies than a dare. Sit through the whole grotesque pageant and you discover, under the shriek and squish, a saga that’s more about what horror can provoke than what it can explain.