The Royal Hotel (2023)

The original Mothra is a fun monster movie that has way stronger lore, music, and special effects than most of its contemporaries.

The Roses is a wickedly sharp marital warfare comedy that transforms domestic dysfunction into high art. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch deliver powerhouse performances as a couple whose fairy-tale romance implodes when his architectural career collapses just as her culinary empire takes off. What makes Jay Roach's remake so devastatingly effective is its refusal to pick sides—both spouses are equally sympathetic and monstrous, wielding Tony McNamara's razor-sharp dialogue like weapons forged from shared intimacies. It's a film that dares you to laugh at relationship wreckage while forcing you to confront the uncomfortable truth that the line between passionate love and mutual destruction is terrifyingly thin.

The plot could’ve really been interesting if the elements of lycanthropy was integrated with perhaps the struggle of identity of being LGBTQ+. It's an experience for so many that as they’re starting to realizing their true selves, they feel like a monster, especially if they come from unsupportive homes or communities. Instead, the horror and transformation elements seem thrown in without contemplation of how this could deepen the narrative.

“I’m always interested in exploring female fantasy, and the sexy witch is a loaded archetype that is simultaneously about men’s fears and fantasies about women, and women’s feelings of empowerment and agency. So whereas we are used to seeing the sexy witch or the femme fatale from the outside, I wanted to explore her from the inside.” - Anna Biller, on why she made The Love Witch

Zombie apocalypses have been metaphors for late-stage predatory capitalism, but never a system disrupter that brings about freedom.

The film does not add anything to its own conversation or genre, and falls flat once it’s about to end and must declare some sort of conclusion.