Zi feels like a return to form for Kogonada after last year’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, but it doesn’t quite have the charm of his debut Columbus (2017) or even the similarly sci-fi After Yang (2021). It feels more like an experiment than a film. Seven people flew to Hong Kong for a few weeks to shoot this project on a whim, and it very much feels like a film that was made on the fly. What’s admirable about this experiment is that Kogonada gave all seven of them equal equity in the film, so they’ll be splitting the profits equally. It will almost certainly be a polarizing film; I only wish it felt more like a story driven by passion and thoughtfulness than spontaneity and impulsivity.

Gore Verbinski's Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is so ambitious, audacious, and unconcerned with being accessible or appealing to mainstream audiences that I can't help but admire it, even if it ultimately collapses under the weight of its own ambitions. Matthew Robinson's screenplay attempts to do so much in a single film that the final product is more than a mixed bag, it's a piñata—but instead of just candy inside, occasionally you'll find random objects like a rubber duck, a paper clip, maybe some money scattered in there, and every once in a while you'll stumble upon a dead rat or two. It’s a chaotic, kooky, madcap adventure full of relevant social commentary.