Movie Reviews
Emmanuelle movie review: Noémie Merlant is wasted in stylish yet empty drama on female sexuality
Emmanuelle movie review
Cast: Noémie Merlant, Naomi Watts, Will Sharpe
Director: Audrey Diwan
Star rating: ★★
Expectations were sky-high for Audrey Diwan’s next feature after the urgent and powerful abortion drama, Happening, which claimed the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2021. None of that urgency has infused her latest offering, Emmanuelle, a shockingly empty update of the erotic French novel. (Also read: The White Lotus Season 3 review: A brutal finale caps off the show’s weakest season yet)
The premise
The film rests on Noémie Merlant, who stars as a luxury hotel inspector gathering information about the people and the place with quiet curiosity. She is keen to discover what happens behind the executive decisions made by the immaculately-suited manager Margot (Naomi Watts). There is an elusive visitor at the Rosefield Palace named Kei (Will Sharpe), who arrives, speaks illogical lines like he is “a Frequent International Traveler, a FIT,” and leaves.
For a film that wants to explore female sexuality and agency, Emmanuelle plays it too safe and pristine to warrant any interest in the journey of its lead heroine. Emmanuelle is presented without any backstory, her body framed from closeups, her face lit with a sort of puzzled expression. What is she thinking? What does she want? She does not know it herself, and neither does the viewer.
Merlant looks beautiful in the pixie cut and is styled glamorously, but the actor looks out of place and blanketed. Then there is Naomi Watts, who seems surprised to even exercise that British accent in a totally thankless role. Will Sharpe’s nod is unfit to be a FIT here, and the actor is wasted in a severely underwritten character.
Poor screenplay and dialogue
There’s a puzzling lack of depth in Diwan and co-screenwriter Rebecca Zlotowski’s screenplay, with almost no focus on building this titular character from her encounters and interactions. More interest seems to lie in the production design, with the luxurious hotel lobbies and suites- framed as if Diwan was also making a case for a hotel advertisement. The dialogues are strictly one-note and sometimes illogical at places, especially when they are rendered with such stubbornness amid the elite hotel setting.
Emmanuelle is a strange case of a film which is not aware of what it wants to be. Forget the need for female gaze, there is no gaze at all. Emmanuelle is self-aware of a certain subtext. Still, Diwan’s revisionist approach stops at giving the female protagonist a sense of autonomy without knowing what that truly means for her. It is just too many exquisite hotel shots, luxury food arrangement, and aimless talk to actually mean anything. She barely has an orgasm, and the sex scenes feel like they are shot in some kind of emotional vacuum- devoid of any psychological and emotional burden.
There is too much attention to rhythm, style and proportion in a film that warranted more of a free fall, a stirring anticipation for mess. Emmanuelle is aimless, dramatically inert and a little too safe to invest in.
Emmanuelle is available to stream on Lionsgate Play.
Movie Reviews
Super Duperr Movie Review: A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion
The Times of India
Apr 07, 2026, 3:24 PM IST
3.0
Super Duperr is a riot in all senses of the word. A wild ride filled with laughter and emotion it presents an unusual matchup of traditional and modern values.Rohit (Lalit Prabhakar) and Isha (Vidula Chougule) are a young couple trying to make their mark in the entertainment industry. They take their relationship to the next level and purchase a flat in Mumbai with their savings. It is here that they realise that they have fallen for a scam when the same house is sold to and currently occupied by a rural family. What follows is a series of clashes and learning moments that test the morality of both parties. The story is a fun take on a series of real world scams and as such has a very interesting premise. The Sameer Asha Patil film however chooses to take a detour in favour of certain stretched out gags and slow motion shots. What could have been a deep exploration of the two worlds colliding, ends up being a formulaic checklist of a wedding song, an action sequence and a few slapstick gags. These are passable of course, but the ho-hum nature of the story’s progression feels under utilized. Super Duperr does offer impactful emotional sequences, notably the equation between the parents (Shashank Shende and Nirmiti Sawant) and his eldest son (Hrishikesh Joshi). The music and cinematography are well executed and add abundantly to the viewing experience. Super Duperr set a rich tapestry only to ultimately doodle in a corner. While it could have benefitted from adding more inter-family interactions, it remains a good watch for this weekend.
Movie Reviews
Why Critics Despise The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (But Audiences Love It)
The verdict is in, and critics have widely panned The Super Mario Galaxy Movie while audiences have universally praised the family-friendly sequel. This follow-up to the fan-favorite The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been in theaters for about a week since its debut on April 1, and it has already had the best box office opening in 2026, earning more than $190 million over its 5-day domestic weekend. Worldwide, it has amassed $372 million, making it the fifth largest global opening ever for an animated film. Despite the movie being a massive box office hit, however, the review scores are terribly low for the video game adaptation, and there are several reasons why.
Fans vs. critics on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
As of April 6, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has a mediocre 42% Tomatometer score from a total of 175 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes while holding a fantastic 89% Popcornmeter score from over 5,000 verified user ratings. That’s a stark 47-point difference between critics and users.
A similarly wide disparity can be found on Metacritic as well, where the sequel has a “generally unfavorable” Metascore of a 37 based on 45 reviews, despite it earning a “generally favorable” user score of a 7.9 (basically, a 42-point difference).
This gulf between professional reviews and user reviews for this sequel likely isn’t too surprising by fans of the original 2023 Super Mario Bros. movie. That film earned a 59% Tomatometer but a 95% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes, and it has “mixed or average” 46 Metascore but a “universal acclaim” user score of 8.1.
To be fair, the range of critic scores for the film is vast on Metacritic, with about seven reviews above a 60 and fifteen reviews below a 40. ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim give it a “Good” 7 out of 10 rating, noting that “it doesn’t necessarily deepen the emotional or narrative complexity of the franchise, but it refines what worked before amplifies it on a grander scale.” However, many other reviews are far less kind, particularly the 0 out of 5 rating from The Times that calls the film “ugly, overbranded, lifeless digital marketing vomit” and a review from Vulture that says it’s like being “asphyxiated in a ball pit filled with candy.”
Meanwhile, multiple user reviews on Metacritic are shocked at the reviews. One called the low Metascore “absolutely ridiculous,” while another asked readers to ignore the critics altogether. A different user wrote, “It’s wild to see professional critics giving this a zero. It feels like they’ve never actually picked up a controller.” And to that person’s credit, we did find that a few critics who gave low scores admitting that the film wasn’t meant for them or that they had never played a Mario game before. Indeed, the movie is chock full of Nintendo references and easter eggs, something that Mario fans will appreciate far more than anyone who doesn’t know or care about the difference between a Super Mushroom and a Fire Flower.
More broadly speaking, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has more than several traits that critics tend to dislike but that audiences enjoy. The first is that it’s a quick-paced, action-packed film, which features a handful of battles with Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Princess Peach, Toad, Fox McCloud, Bowser, Bowser Jr., and Wart. Another is that it’s a comedic adventure with cartoonish gags that are age-appropriate for kids and humorous to Mario fans who are in on the joke. On top of that, the film is a family-friendly video game adaptation, a genre that doesn’t usually score well from critics. A Minecraft Movie, another box office smash that earned $960 million worldwide (and also starred Jack Black), was equally slammed by critics with a 47% Tomatometer but lauded by audiences with an 84% Popcornmeter.
Taken altogether, the movie was almost made in a lab for reviewers to despise and for audiences to praise as a nostalgic love letter to Nintendo. Regardless, despite how critics feel, they’ll need to brace themselves for more, since the Nintendo Cinematic Universe is looking like it will come sooner than later.
Movie Reviews
I Know Exactly How You Die – Review | Indie Slasher | Heaven of Horror
Watch I Know Exactly How I Die on VOD
The director of I Know Exactly How I Die is Alexandra Spieth, who ensures a tight pace and some gorgeous shots. She previously directed Stag and created and starred in the web-series [Blank] My Life. The screenplay comes from Mike Corey, and I do really like the plot and evolution of this story.
As already mentioned, the star Rushabh Patel is the executive producer. As a result, this movie is billed as “Rushabh Patel’s I Know Exactly How I Die“, which I am not a fan of. Unless Rushabh Patel is famous in ways I am not familiar with – nor is IMDb, as this is his first and so far only credit there.
This is like people wondering if Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is connected to Stranger Things, because the media keeps referring to it as a new show from The Duffer Brothers. Sure, they produced it, but Haley Z. Boston created the original story and wrote the screenplay. And she’s not even a newcomer.
Okay, rant over, but I just don’t understand the marketing and press decisions of it all.
Anyway, as already mentioned, the practical effects in I Know Exactly How I Die are gorgeous. Any slasher fan should enjoy the concept of the plot as well as those amazing practical effects. And yet, you will have to endure a little terrible CGI, but this is an indie production, so budget restraints come into play. Of course, so does choosing the best talent, and that did not happen for CGI here!
I Know Exactly How You Die is out on VOD from April 7, 2026. You can rent it on Digital HD from your preferred platform, including Prime Video and Fandango at Home. The film will also be available on DVD.
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