Movies

If there is one thing the Netflix machine does better than most of the Hollywood conglomerates that blunder through genre as if they’re bobbing for apples in a vat of clichés, it’s churning out the kind of shredded comfort food that coaxes out your half-remembered adolescent idiot grin. Night Teeth is exactly the sort of movie you suspect you’ll find yourself loathing on principle—supermodel vampires, neon-L.A. nightlife, and a plot straining to be both “gritty urban” and “Instagram ready”—but, half an hour in, you’ve stopped counting the script’s shortcuts and started absent-mindedly tapping your foot to a bass-bloated, mortifying soundtrack. So: maybe you feel a little ashamed to admit how much you’re enjoying it. I wouldn’t blame you.

Nobody 2 is what happens when you order “one more round” at a bar that’s already run out of top-shelf liquor. This is a film that wears its predecessor’s bathrobe, parading out the same bundle of ultra-violence and dad-joke stoicism that made the first Nobody a minor miracle, and then proceeds to recite the formula with the half-drowsy confidence of someone who’s only half-listening. You can hardly blame Bob Odenkirk’s Hutch for needing a vacation—after a few minutes watching this sequel, I felt like I needed one too.

Jordan Peele remains the elusive showman of modern American cinema, and with Nope he pulls off his boldest hat trick yet—a genre spectacle that is as enthralling as it is unnerving, as self-consciously mythic as it is eerily ambiguous. At a time when every new alien movie tries to out-gloom its predecessors, Peele has the audacity to make the unknown not just frightening, but beautiful and indecently entertaining.

Has there ever been a fantasy quite as potent for the audience of action movies as the one where an ordinary schlub gets to uncork the bottled-up rage of his humdrum existence, smashing open ennui’s skull with a roll of nickels? “Nobody,” directed by Ilya Naishuller, starts as a sneaky parody of that everyman’s power fantasy but quickly escalates into its apotheosis — a well-lubricated, pyrotechnic hoot that leaves the faint whiff of gunpowder and absurdity drifting over the popcorn aisles.

There’s a delicious, fizzy pleasure to an action comedy that knows it’s a cocktail—equal parts sweet, sour, and shamelessly silly. “Novocaine,” directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, arrives in our cinematic bloodstream like a jolt of—well, you know—something that deadens all but our delight. This is the rare studio product in which the soundtrack isn’t just wallpaper but a running vein, from the beautifully melancholic “Everybody Hurts” (R.E.M., that old-wound anthem for generation after generation of walking wounded) to the glitzy throb of “I Believe in a Thing Called Love.” It’s musical nostalgia used as time machine and emotional shortcut—and it works, sometimes earning more feeling than the plot does.

If you’ve ever felt the jolt of electricity that comes with the first few minutes of a genuinely promising crime film—where the air thickens with possibility and dread—you’ll know something of the elation I felt plunging into Yoon Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time. Here is a movie steeped in all the genre trappings: the smoky taverns and smoke-filled back rooms of Busan in the ‘80s and ‘90s, corruption so foul you can almost taste it, men in sharp suits who wield their loyalty like a battering ram—except this time, refreshingly, nothing comes at you in the simple, blunt-force trauma of a cheap triad flick.

Let’s step into the flickering half-light—the one cast not just by moonlit castle windows, but by nearly a century of cinematic shadow—the legacy of Murnau’s original “Nosferatu” looming long, thin, and predatory across the wall. Robert Eggers’ 2024 reimagining doesn’t so much resurrect the silent classic as it exhumes it, dusts it off with reverence, and then sinks its own sharp teeth into the mythos, drawing fresh blood for a new era. The old Count is back—and he’s hungry.

You drag yourself into Nosferatu expecting to be chloroformed by reverence, sipping the historical significance like bitter medicine—and then, in a mild shock, you’re there, clinging to the edge of your armchair, rationing your interest, waiting for the monster to hurry up and pounce. Yes, I wanted to hate this film, as a preemptive strike against a curriculum of “milestones” that, more often than not, turn out to be sacred cows—bloated, unkillable, and astonishingly inert. But there’s a persistent magic here, of the slow, mossy, ghost-infested variety: Nosferatu defeated my silent-movie prejudice not by winning the argument, but by gnawing at my resistance until I had to surrender.

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...

Let’s be honest: some film critics will spend pages decrying the “worst film ever made” as if to purge themselves of the memory. But to really atone for our moviegoing sins? We must watch Night of Horror (1981)—the cinematic equivalent of receiving a broccoli-flavored ice cream cone at your own birthday party. And as punishments go, this is less “walk of shame” than “forced march of mirth.” Yes, dear reader, I lost a bet, and this scraggly, haunted little opus was my penance. Was it agony? A little. Did I enjoy myself anyway? More than I care to admit.