Mehnificent

When the curtain rises (or, more accurately, the CGI Alps blink awake) on Nick Hamm’s William Tell, we brace for that hot prickle of cultural muscle, the promise of rebellion, the ice-pure Swiss myth being cracked open and gutted on the grand stage of the epic. Instead, we find ourselves wading ankle-deep through a fog of déjà vu, draped in armor already rusted and patched, the cinematic equivalent of a Renaissance fair where nobody can remember why they’re there.

Oh dear, it’s always a little heartbreaking to watch a film trundle out its aspirations with confetti and sashes, only to trip over its own parade float and land face-first in the mud. Founders Day wants so much to be a cheeky contribution to the crowded boudoir of holiday slashers, a genre already thick with gore-soaked in-jokes and severed limbs of irony, but the result is the sort of limp, confounding spectacle which leaves you dazed at the exit, wondering whether you’ve seen a movie at all or simply sat through a particularly aggressive PTA meeting with unfortunate casualties.

There are movies that wear their ambitions like borrowed suits a size too large, and then there is The Prosecutor, a film that struts into the courtroom with the swagger of Donnie Yen and leaves you wondering if it’s about to deliver an impassioned plea or break into a roundhouse kick. Donnie Yen, Hong Kong’s tireless apologist for action set-pieces, both acts and co-produces here, and makes his usual promise—a punch with a side of principle. Yet what we get is a genre hybrid so muddled it feels like it’s been shaken, not stirred, and then poorly strained by legal censorship.

You sit down to Cold Wallet expecting slick Netflix-bait, a digital-age caper that promises to surf the froth and confusion of the cryptocurrency world—and you get exactly that, for better or worse. It’s a thriller with a gamified conscience, a morality tale dressed up in meme-charged adrenaline, hustling for attention like a day-trader chasing the next meme coin. Cutter Hodierne’s direction thrusts us into a jittery, claustrophobic world where Redditors become bumbling revolutionaries overnight, and the real drama isn’t wealth lost or gained, but the feeble, ever-shifting ground on which contemporary ethics stand. The irony? The lesson is larger—infinitely larger—than the story.

There are experiments and then there are detonations. Takeshi Kitano’s “Broken Rage” doesn’t so much break the mold as lob a cherry bomb into its center and giggle at the splatter. This is the Kitano some of us grin for—a filmmaker who looks trouble straight in the eye, shrugs, and lights a fuse anyway. But “Broken Rage,” his latest genre daredevil act, is also proof that sometimes the fuse runs to a soggy pile of confusion instead of a cathartic bang.

There’s a peculiar ache that settles in when a franchise that used to blitz your nerve endings with every punch decides—politely, apologetically—not to hit you at all. “The Roundup: Punishment” is that strange aftertaste: the fourth swing from a series that once left you reeling, but now feels like watching a once-great bar brawler retire into paperwork and Pilates.