Justin Chang

After tapping into the horrors lurking beneath the surface of American life in Get Out and Us, writer-director Peele ventures into alien sci-fi territory with his new thriller, Nope.

Gosling plays an assassin being chased by other assassins. That sounds exciting, but it isn't; it's a pileup of self-admiring one-liners and insanely violent but weirdly inconsequential action scenes.

Both Sides Now is a jolt of a movie, full of hot-blooded sensuality one moment but then oddly cool and studied the next, almost as if it were deconstructing itself as it went along.