Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024). The latest from M. Night Shyamalan is stupendously stupid in its concept and oafishly clumsy in its execution. Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), out to a concert of Rodrigoan proportions. He seems like a kind, gracious fellow, but the especially robust contingent of armed officers moving through the crowd and occasionally escorting middle-aged dads out of the arena sure has him edgy. By now, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the high-concept gimmick Shyamalan builds the narrative sets a new, dauntingly unreachable benchmark for implausibility. The sheer number of nonsense plot turns is still remarkable. Shyamalan casts his daughter Saleka as the pop diva who sold all those tickets to unsuspecting music fans, and you have to go all the way back to The Godfather Part III to find the last of instance of a major director being so blinded to his offspring’s acting limitations that he lets her embarrass herself so thoroughly onscreen. At least he had the good taste to Alison Pill as Cooper’s wife. She shows up a for a couple scenes, acts her tail off, and is the only person able to leave with her dignity intact when the closing credits run.

Heretic (Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, 2024). Mormon missionaries Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are having a typically disheartening day going residence to residence trying to spread their faith. At the end of their shift, as a storm rumbles in, they finally come to the home of Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant). Skirting protocol, they accept his invitation to step inside. Not long after, the mind games begin. Heretic is great when it sticks largely to psychological thrills, playing out as a three-hander between a cunning manipulator and two young intellectual opponents with distinctly different levels of skepticism and savvy. When the mayhem invariably escalates in the second half, the film is far less satisfying, in part because the story is more reliant on unlikely turns and seer-like strategic thinking on the part of the villainous host. Co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (they also wrote the screenplay together) bring some nice visual style to film, but it’s not quite enough to glide the viewer past the bits that don’t work. Dandy as Grant is as the master menace, I think the film’s best performance belongs to East. She has to carry her character the furthest distance, from sweet naïveté and true belief through escalating terror and on to a hard-earned mental toughness.

Anora (Sean Baker, 2024). Writer-director Sean Baker’s Anora is rambunctious, emotionally potent, and masterful in every way. Mikey Madison plays the title character, who really prefers to go by Ani. She works as an exotic dancer in a Brooklyn club, at least until her facility with the Russian language brings her into the careening orbit of Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the reckless, perpetually partying scion of a wealthy family with a dubious approach to basic decency. The relation between Ani and Vanya, as they say, escalates quickly, leading to consternation among those charged with looking after the wild child while he’s in the U.S. For much of its runtime, the film is like a screwball comedy that’s been fully modernized for a more bleakly cynical and dangerous age. Baker’s timing is impeccable throughout, especially in an extended centerpiece scene that involves Ani forcibly bucking against the heavy hands of henchman who have been dispatched to shut down the relationship. Madison is astounding in the lead role, bringing a feisty brightness to the character even as it grows ever more likely that her optimistic determination is going to be no match for dirty money–fueled power structure she’s up against. Among the strong supporting cast, Yura Borisov and Karren Karagulian are standouts.