Adam Nayman

What we do in the shadows: André Øvredal’s pulpy, sea-set Dracula adaptation says much about the place of vampires in our cinematic imagination

Back to life: Evil Dead Rise, more than other reboots of the franchise, gets closer to squeezing real feelings out of the scenario without ever going soft on the gory trappings

Drink it in: James Cameron’s much-hyped, space-whale opus seeds the franchise with a militant environmentalism that sets the film apart from similar feats of entertainment engineering

Against interpretation: with its maze-like narrative and nightmare-inducing imagery, David Lynch’s epic Inland Empire is so much more than a puzzle to be solved

Up in smoke: Justin Kurzel’s drama about the man behind a real-life mass shooting is restrained to a fault

I’m looking through you: The common denominator in Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is an acceptance of transience in all things

Disappearing act: with its deceptively spare mise-en-scene and tamped-down performances, Andreas Fontana’s Dirty War thriller is a superlatively muted debut

Straight from the heart: Michael Koresky's new book is a stirring ode to movies, memories, and mothers

Julius Onah’s film is compelling when it hunkers down with its characters and their complications

(Andrzej Wajda, Poland, Film Movement, Opens May 19)

(Bruno Dumont, France, Kino Lorber, Opens April 21)