It Follows is a stunning, thought-provoking smash that gets more devastatingly profound the more times I watch it. Anchored by a performance from Monroe that’s one of the year’s absolute best, this is a stunning motion picture that’s only going to grow in stature and import with each passing year. As I’ve already stated, see it at once.

Ex Machina is a mesmerizing mind-bender of a science fiction drama that asks some pretty big questions letting the audience figure out as many of the answers for themselves as they can. It gets better with each viewing, Garland crafting a spectacular directorial debut worthy of multiple looks.

But when the balance does work the results are sublime, the filmmaker hitting it out of the park with a crackerjack final 20 minutes that had me sitting on the edge of my seat in white-knuckled joy, my eyes popping out of my head in glee. More, as outlandish and over the top as things become the story itself fearlessly remains emotionally grounded, keeping the grieving parents front and center while never forgetting what the house needs and wants for a single solitary second.

The big problem? The film is boring. As technically proficient as it might be, as nicely staged as a few signature moments are, overall there’s a humdrum banality to the supernatural happenings that’s just not particularly noteworthy, everything building to a supercilious silly twist of a finale that’s nothing close to original.

The best thing about David Thorpe’s documentary of self-exploration Do I Sound Gay? is the deeply personal realization it comes to. At the end of the day, what this rather slight film ends up being about is acceptance. Yet, not on a broad scale, but on a deeply personal one, instead. What Thorpe comes to realize is that, in the end, he can’t expect others to fully accept him, more to the point to love him, if he in turn cannot learn to accept himself.

The Minions, much like the acorn-chasing Scrat from the Ice Age franchise, work best in short, controlled bursts of mayhem, so designing an entire feature around them probably wasn’t a terrific idea right from the start.

But there are cracks in the façade, and at a certain point no amount of directorial embellishment can mask them. David and Alex Pastor’s (The Last Days, Carriers) script gets sillier and sillier as it moves along, building to bursts of outright stupidity that are almost laughable in their outlandish lunacy.

That’s not hyperbole, either. Kidman nearly elevates this film to something essential almost entirely on her own. This is a magnetic, impossibly complex star turn that comes close to being one of the Oscar-winner’s best, and truly the only reason I’m talking about [Strangerland] at all is entirely thanks to her.

” I really want people to understand, you cannot call these people stupid who are muddying these debates. They’re not stupid. They’re very, very smart, and that’s why they can get away with telling all of these falsehoods and outright lies.”