The Keeping Room

Suspenseful and tedious in equal measure, The Keeping Room is not the badass feminist western I wanted it to be. Its central premise is compelling, but a ponderously slow build-up and a thematically confused ending ultimately undercut its effectiveness.

The Keeping Room
Director: Daniel Barber
Starring: Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, Muna Otaru, Sam Worthington

Sicario

Suspenseful, ruthless, and hopelessly bleak, Sicario is director Denis Villeneuve's latest masterclass in tension. He keeps the audience on edge by demonstrating how bursts of violence can come at any time, from a daring opening raid on an Arizona drug den all the way to the film's fatalistic finale, all while questioning the moral consequences of the American intelligence community's shady alliances. Those searching for a typical badass action movie should look elsewhere, because while there are some scenes that match that description, the film is equally interested in posing ethical quandaries as it is depicting brutal scenes of bloodshed.

Sicario
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin

Everest

Snowflakes whip horizontally so fast you can hardly see them, and over a crevasse on the world's tallest mountain, a climber grips for his life, dangling above disappearing blackness. This is Everest, the newest film from Baltasar Kormakur (Contraband, 2 Guns), and while the director excels at creating suspenseful set-pieces, the script sometimes fails its human characters in favor of putting the spotlight on the mountain itself. Framing the peak in all its grandeur (and perilousness) is to be expected — it's freaking Everest, after all — but I wish that didn't mean doing its human co-stars such a comparative disservice. There are some heart-pounding moments on display here, and overall it's a mostly enjoyable ride, but the movie doesn't quite ascend to the pantheon of great disaster films to which it seems to aspire.

Everest
Director: Baltasar Kormakur
Starring: Jason Clarke, John Hawkes, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, Keira Knightley

Fantastic Four

Heading into theaters with a target on its back, Fantastic Four has been a whipping boy for fans since it cast a black man as The Human Torch (for some, it committed the unforgivable sin of going against the depiction of the character in the comics) and it's been the subject of tons of rumors about troubled behavior on the set, none of which I'll repeat here because I have no idea if they're valid or not. I went into this movie hoping that all of that negative talk wouldn't actually apply to the movie itself, and frankly, I didn't see any major issues with it from a directing standpoint. The cast does a decent job with what they're given, but as is so often the case, Fantastic Four's biggest problem lies in its script.

Fantastic Four
Director: Josh Trank
Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell