The wonderfully weird but not entirely successful Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter begins with the title character, played by Rinko Kikuchi, finding an abandoned VHS copy of the Coen Brothers’ classic Fargo buried in the sand on a beach. Curious, she takes the tape back to her apartment and studies the film with quiet intensity, taking scrupulous notes and even taking sketch paper to the screen to complete a drawing. Kumiko takes the “true story” disclaimer at the beginning of the film seriously and treats it like a documentary, although the entirety of Fargo is completely fictional and the note was intended as a small bit of stylistic satire from the Coens.

This is lost on the troubled and lonesome Kumiko, who increasingly grows weary of her meaningless desk job and the impending pangs of adulthood. When she sees Steve Buscemi’s character bury a satchel of money in the middle of a snowy Fargo field, she almost can’t believe her good fortune. After relinquishing her adorable bunny companion Bunzo, Kumiko journeys from Tokyo to Minnesota with only a stolen company credit card and a hand stitched map that she believes will lead her to the unclaimed treasure.

To make matters more confusing, Kumiko is itself based partially on the real events surrounding Takako Konishi, whose story is told in depth in the film This Is a True Story. What director David Zellner and his brother Nathan have done is taken the elements of truth and fiction from all of these idiosyncratic narrative strands and created a sort of off-kilter urban legend of their own. Fittingly, they create an unusual tone throughout the story, with a mix of introspective character studyand  fish-out-of-water comedy that’s sure to throw audiences off.

Despite this, the film’s most obvious flaw is that the Zellners really have no idea how we should perceive Kumiko. She’s our heroine and we want to see her succeed but ultimately, we know that she’s running a fool’s errand. How hard can we root for someone who travels across the world expecting a stolen credit card to provide ample funding for her trip? Even the gracious strangers that she meets on the way who try to aid her in her quest are eventually jettisoned by Kumiko. By the end, my sympathy and patience was running thin for her, which is a problem for a movie that focuses so solely on its main character.

Don’t get me wrong: I would much rather the Zellners go this route instead of trying to make Kumiko a “quirky” and “lovable” stereotype who is set up to be the butt of the movie’s jokes. Despite the main character’s struggles, Kumiko is never a mean-spirited work but instead, it is a much more thoughtful film with a peculiar edge and a memorably bizarre setup. Unfortunately, the journey ultimately does not pay off.

It Follows is a refreshing and engrossing new entry into the modern horror genre, centering around scenes that patiently built up dread as opposed to going for easy, knee-jerk scares. It has an intentional and almost disorienting throwback sensibility to it, recalling the chills of genre classics like Jaws and Halloween while still blazing a unique stylistic path of its own. Frankly, I wouldn’t classify it as an especially “scary” movie in the traditional sense, but rather a supremely creepy film that takes a relatively simple conceit and wrings it dry for maximum suspense.

The story centers around a young girl named Jay (Maika Monroe, who also starred in last year’s The Guest) and a curse that she contracts after having sex with the mysterious new guy in town (Jake Weary). After their encounter, he explains that she will now be stalked on foot relentlessly by a shape-shifting entity that is only visible to her until she “passes it on” to her next sexual partner. With the help of her friends, including her long time childhood crush Paul (Keir Gilchrist), Jay must find a way to counter the unstoppable force as it pursues her at walking speed with a zombie-like level of persistence.

David Robert Mitchell, who previously wrote and directed the sweetly nostalgic Myth of the American Sleepover, recontextualizes his earlier film’s themes of sexual anxiety and adolescent metamorphosis within the framework of a chilling campfire tale. Once again, he proves that he has a knack for writing believable dialogue for teenagers and also displays an uncommon level of empathy for his characters, which is crucial for any horror movie to be a true success. These kids are thankfully much smarter than they’re typically allowed to be in movies like this, which allows us to root for them instead of shouting at them on the screen.

Mitchell, along with cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, also inject It Follows with visual flare that is subtle but incredibly effective. The camerawork often mirrors the patient efforts of the film’s antagonist, using slow and measured movements to sneak up on characters or draw our attention to apparitions that may or may not be lurking in the distance. I was particularly fond of a scene where the gang goes to a high school and instead of the following them each step, the camera stops at a center point and slowly rotates fully around multiple times to give us brief glimpses of the entity (or is it?) in the background.

Another huge asset to the film’s success is the memorable score by Rich Vreeland, which nicely amplifies the tension with its jolting synthesizer stabs that favorably recall Bernard Herrmann’s work on Psycho. Somehow, this movie is even able to include passages from  T.S. Eliot and Dostoyevsky in a way that’s not nearly as pretentious as it could have been. Bold choices and details like these make It Follows one of the most richly inspired and downright fun horror movies that’s come out it quite a while.

Set in the brutal winter of 1981 in New York City, the terrific new film A Most Violent Year covers a troubled time in the city’s history which saw record numbers for murders and violent crimes citywide. Fittingly, it maintains a chillingly tense atmosphere where the threat of violence is always high and the sense of desperation and danger is overwhelming. In his third and best effort as a director, J.C. Chandor uses this setting to tell a gripping morality tale about hardships of honest ambition and the overwhelming temptation to give into corruption.

In yet another impressive leading role, Oscar Isaac plays Abel Morales, the struggling owner of a heating oil company on the verge of collapse due to his truck drivers routinely getting ambushed by an unknown band of assailants. In a last ditch effort to save the business, he attempts to secure a sought-after waterfront property through a 1.5 million dollar down payment but due to his company’s complicated legal history, he finds that there isn’t a bank in town who will loan the necessary funds. To add to Abel’s surmounting stress,  his wife Anna, played with ruthless vigor by Jessica Chastain, threatens to get her infamous mobster father involved with their affairs if Abel is unable to sort things out himself.

The chemistry between Isaac and Chastain is outstanding and gives the movie a tempestuous core on which the rest of the story hinges. Their power dynamic constants fluctuates but in small and subtle ways. Abel is an honorable businessman who knows how to fight fair but is woefully unprepared to retaliate against the criminals who threaten his well-being. Anna respects her husband but grows unwilling to tolerate his seeming lack of commitment to do all that is necessary to protect their way of life. Naturally, confrontations arise between the two and their struggle to simultaneously understand and push one another leads to dialogue that reveals depths of disparity between their characters.

Despite its title, A Most Violent Year is not an especially violent film but that aspect lends itself to part of its brilliance: it’s the constant, impending threat of violence around every corner that is much more captivating than endless shootouts or bloody showdowns. It doesn’t fetishize violence in the way that some action movies can but instead, it treats it as an inevitable force capable of reshaping the mindsets of even the most principled and respectable of men. Its corrupting presence looms over every frame and almost feels like a main character in the movie itself.

Cinematographer Bradford Young, who also shot the sublime Selma last year, contributes to this air of menace with wide shots of snowy landscapes that have characters frequently guarding themselves against the elements. The music by Alex Ebert also fills things out nicely as well, with ominous organ and synth tones that are reminiscent of Hans Zimmer’s Oscar-winning Interstellar score from last year. Everything comes together to make A Most Violent Year a most compelling tale of ambition and survival amongst the most strenuous of circumstances.

Based on the bestselling E.L. James novel that has somehow sold over 100 million (!) copies worldwide, Fifty Shades of Grey proves itself shockingly inept at being either a convincing romance tale or a tantalizing erotic thriller. It’s an oppressively dull and obnoxiously moody affair, one whose source material apparently originated as Twilight fan fiction and doesn’t seem to have improved much on the formula of its predecessor. I can’t speak for fans of the book, as I have not read it myself, but those who come into the movie uninitiated will no doubt leave the theater in confusion as to what the fuss was all about.

The story revolves around the chance meeting of journalism student Anastasia Steele, played by Dakota Johnson, and billionaire businessman Christian Grey, played by Jamie Dornan. The two have an instant and inexplicable connection, one that slowly leads to an obsessive sexual relationship revolving around bondage and sadomasochism. As their relationship progresses, Christian asks Ana to sign a non-disclosure agreement that negotiates the terms of their relationship as a romantic couple and as BDSM partners. The latter half of the film alternates between softcore, Cinemax-level sex scenes and Christian doting on Ana to sign the aforementioned contract.

If it sounds boring, that’s because it is. There are many problems with Fifty Shades as a movie but at the foundational level, this story simply does not work. It’s phony and unconvincing every step of the way, led by two main characters who are one-dimensional and altogether uncompelling. Any attempts that there are of character development are sophomoric at best and laughable at worst, especially when it involves any of the secondary or tertiary characters. It also doesn’t help that the dialogue is as stilted and implausible as the film’s central relationship, with lines like “I’m incapable of leaving you alone” that will no doubt inspire torrents of giggles theater-wide.

This puts Johnson and Dornan in an unfavorable position, to say the least, and it’s clear that they’re doing the best that they can with the material. Unfortunately, it’s still not good enough. Johnson does bring some grace and intelligence to her role but Dornan gives a performance that seems like the result of director Sam Taylor-Johnson whispering “dark and mysterious” into his ear over and over again. Whether he’s sullenly draped over a grand piano or glumly jogging through busy Seattle streets, his Christian Grey ultimately proves to be a colossal bore who lacks the charm or charisma necessary for any level of engagement.

The highlights are few and far between. I did enjoy a playful negotiation scene between Ana and Christian that incorporated much needed moments of levity and self-awareness to the otherwise stifling proceedings. The handsome, if one-note, production design is also first-rate, though its only true goal is to make audiences drool over wide shots of Grey’s luxury high-rise penthouse. It could be argued that the film’s exaltation of wealth is more pornographic than any of its sex scenes. Regardless, Fifty Shades of Grey is nothing more than a transparent tease of a film.