Through no real fault of his own, Michael Fassbender’s past decade hasn’t exactly been stellar. His standout performances in Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011) and 12 Years a Slave (2013) came close to making him a household name. That is, until he was unable to save a trilogy of lackluster misses in 2016 with X-Men: Apocalypse, The Snowman and the video-game adaptation no one asked for, Assassin’s Creed.

It’s enough to make anyone to step away from the limelight, become a Formula One racer, return for an abysmal X-Men sequel in 2019 before finally driving a Porsche into the sunset. So what could possibly bring Fassbender back into the cinematic fold? A lack of championships — and maybe a lead role in David Fincher’s most cerebral film yet, The Killer.

Fassbender plays a high-dollar hitman with a set of aliases for every country. He’s got his routine down to a science, but still, killin’ ain’t easy. After a rare botch in Paris, the assassin books it back to his secluded mansion in the Dominican Republic. He finds his girlfriend near death, the victim of a beating intended for him. Telling himself it’s strictly business, the killer goes on an international spree hunting down everyone involved — including his employer.

The Killer doesn’t quite reach the heights of Fincher’s best work (Seven, Zodiac), but that’s hardly a slight. Though the cold-blooded protagonist isn’t terribly relatable, his on-the-job frustrations scratch close to the same itch as Office Space’s first act. Weirdly, however, the revenge plot does little to endear the character. Of course, that’s not vital, but it raises some emotional hurdles that the film never really dodges.

Even so, fans of the opening scene from Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive will appreciate this feature-length equivalent. Plus, the would-be insufferable voiceover narration shines thanks to a clever, intimate and misanthropic monologue. And where there’s Fincher, there’s masterful sound editing. Capping off the nihilistic voyage is an ideal score from the filmmaker’s frequent collaborators Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross — with a welcome sprinkling of The Smiths for good measure.

The film also excels with a rawness that escapes most blockbuster action choreography. It only has one fistfight, but it captures a visceral, desperate exchange where every blow clearly weighs on Fassbender’s character. It takes the house fight in the second season of HBO’s Barry up a few notches, without protecting the protagonist with some unrealistic invulnerability. He can’t shed the scars, and the hitman bears the bruises of the encounter until the credits roll.

The sum of The Killer’s parts doesn’t equal its whole, but it still mostly satisfies where it counts. No, you won’t find a relatable lead or a very satisfying conclusion. But if you’re in it for gunplay, beautiful brutality and sociopathic musings, this flick finds its target. —Daniel Bokemper

Although they share a smattering of DNA, estranged half-brothers Guillaume and Armand could not be more different. Guillaume (Arieh Worthalter, 2016’s The Take), Dad’s favorite, is a police detective; Armand (Achille Reggiani, Miss Impossible), Dad’s ignored bastard son, is homeless. When their father dies, you can guess which one gets nothing.

Inheriting the titular bowling alley, Guillaume offers his little brother a peace offering: a job to run it and a place to live above it. Armand happily accepts, on the condition Guillaume stay away. And that sets into motion an inadvertent cycle of codependence that marks their largest point of contrast: One devotes his nights putting women he picks up at the alley into the ground; the other, devoting his days to investigating who put them there.

This French-language film operates in the lane of crime thriller I’m drawn to most: intelligent and intentionally paced, like a novel that comfortably straddles the literary and the popular. As with many of those books, a formula sits directly beneath the fancy window dressing, meaning when particular elements kick in at particular points of the story, you instantly know the function each is set up to serve. With Saturn Bowling, when Guillaume gains a girlfriend in an animal rights activist (newcomer Y-Lan Lucas), any alarm of predictability isn’t falsely triggered.

That’s not nearly enough for disappointment to overthrow enjoyment; part of such plotting machinations are comfort food. I’m less enthused with the weighty hunter/prey analogy running through the third act — too much symbolism is a thing — but overall, Thick Skinned director Patricia Mazuy, writing with frequent collaborator Yves Thomas, knows what she’s doing. The little film that results is a solid, flawed gem. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Dubiously, Trauma Therapy: Psychosis bills itself as “the very final film for the late Tom Sizemore.” Yet at press time, IMDb shows he has 28 forthcoming titles in various stages of production, an alarming number of which co-star Bai Ling. But please don’t take any of that as a reason to watch this wretched sequel, easily one of 2023’s worst movies.

“Wait, sequel?” you say. I get it; I never heard of the original Trauma Therapy, either, but IMDb confirms its existence since 2019. Prior viewing is unnecessary, in part because Trauma Therapy: Psychosis appears to be templated: same scenario, different setting.

A few losers are chosen to attend an advanced-treatment retreat of The Vance Institute. It’s named for Tobin Vance, the world-leading self-help guru, so Zig Ziglar can go fuck himself. Many harboring unresolved Daddy/Mummy issues, the participants are yelled at by a scowling Vance (Tom Malloy, The Alphabet Killer) to face their fears in order to be the person they want to be. It’s basically like every episode of Oprah, if Oprah were a histrionic dude-bro in a hoodie.

The anti-Hippocratic challenges Vance puts his patients through involve hallucinogenic drugs and hungry leeches before escalating to being poisoned and forced to chase a rabbit with antidote-infused blood. If you haven’t already guessed, yes, Vance’s “therapy” methods play for keeps.

Trauma Therapy: Psychosis feels it exists because co-writers Malloy and David Josh Lawrence (who plays an undercover Vance Institute enforcer) caught Squid Game on Netflix and got really jelly: “We can afford half a dozen matching track suits, too, right?”

Flat, unoriginal and so listlessly paced it often appears actors are either waiting for their cues or counting to 10 between lines, Psychosis has some interesting imagery, but dreadful execution — perhaps the most botched since Mary, Queen of Scots. Speaking of bad head, in spliced-in interview segments, Sizemore’s talk-show host sports a Mohawk by way of Travis Bickle. You deserved better, Tom.

We all do. —Rod Lott

Think about all the things that would be difficult to do if you no longer had sight: Run. Climb. Avoid barbed wire.

All these are encountered by the protagonist of Sam Curtain’s Beaten to Death, a jarring Australian film that packs 48 hours of hell into a tight 92 minutes. Prepare to feel pummeled.

Barely surviving an assault his wife does not, the horrifically injured Jack (Thomas Roach of Curtain’s Blood Hunt) seeks help in rural Tasmania. The first person he comes across, Ned (newcomer David Tracy), an imposing side of beef, drives Jack back to retrieve his dead spouse. There, Ned sees the man Jack was forced to kill in self-defense: Ned’s brother. Awkward!

To say Ned hungers for vengeance — and gets it — is an understatement, as Jack spends much of the time blindfolded, bloodied and muddied. While Beaten to Death isn’t a case of wall-to-wall violence, its many sequences of brutality certainly knock those walls down. If any piece of Curtain’s movie will live in infamy, it’s going to be the most immersive ocular-trauma shot the screen has witnessed. Prepare to wince and cringe.

Reliance on the sparse outdoors gives the film a mythic quality. In fact, remove the smartphones, cars and other minor bits of set dressing and it’s not hard to imagine this tale taking place in the Old West, whether in a spaghetti Western or from the pages of Jonah Hex. To his credit, Curtain chops up the timeline so certain aspects of the story aren’t revealed right away. We don’t need to immediately see this cat-and-mouse survival thriller’s ignition point to get caught in its considerably tangled net. —Rod Lott

Opens in theaters Friday, Sept. 1.

Seeking human connection, the balding, bullied Neal finds it in the hands of Perla, a sex worker. She plies her trade at the kind of massage parlor one speaks of with air quotes.

It’s also the kind of place that attracts gang robberies. During just that, Neal, dressed only in his tighty-whities, shifts into White Knight mode, rescuing Perla not just from the scene of the crime, but her dead-end career tugging at strangers’ junk. Circumstances force them to flee town with their lives and little else.

As the unlikely couple of Rub’s sympathetic but tragic heart, unknowns Micah Spayer and Jennifer Figuereo are terrific. Neither embody the movies’ idea of conventional leads, which is honestly half the film’s appeal. Pretty Woman, this ain’t.

While Spayer has the showier role as an incel with an uncontrollable temper, Figuereo’s is, I’d argue, the more difficult to pull off: making us believe she has feelings for Neal that go beyond convenience. I wish the supporting cast members operated at their skill level. Neal’s ruthless co-workers act like they’re in a comedy, and poorly.

Rub isn’t a joke, although the tagline of “Not all endings are happy” sure has a winking tastelessness not present in Christopher Fox’s first feature. Its initial half works well, but once Neal and Perla hit the road with no place to go, the movie doesn’t seem to have a destination locked down either. A dinner scene among a table of wayward souls breaking bread in particular grates with fabricated emotion; Rub does its best trafficking in the dark, like employing psychedelic animation to convey the drug-induced panic on Neal’s face. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.