It’s certainly easy to look at aspects of Bong Joon-ho’s filmography and conclude that he’s nihilistic. He’s clear-eyed about the evils of our world and the uphill battles that humanity have in defeating it. AndRead Full Review

If boxing is cinema’s most beloved sport, then director Emily Sheskin utilizes that fact to her advantage in Jesszilla, a new documentary about childhood boxer Jesselyn Silva. Sheskin has been collecting footage with Silva since atRead Full Review

Taking place “somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg”, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language is a piercing, absurdist comedy in the tradition of Roy Andersson by way of Abbas Kiarostami. The Winnipeg of the film is filled with beige, Twentieth Century architecture,Read Full Review

As the ending credits roll on the perfectly mediocre You’re Cordially Invited, various members of the cast, stretching from the main stars to the one-scene cameos, are filmed singing a song in the kind of HollywoodRead Full Review

Companion is the best of what a B movie should be: consistently entertaining, free of pretension, and possessing good performances from talented actors you anticipate will get more acclaim in “better” movies. Of course, whenRead Full Review

Steven Soderbergh’s defiance of his own stature is a tension that makes all his films fascinating. His elder statesman status within the 90’s Video Generation means that he had the jump on the likes of PaulRead Full Review

It’s been twelve years since we’ve seen a Walter Salles film. The Brazilian director’s last film, On The Road, was a surprisingly muted adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic novel. It’s logical that his return is I’m StillRead Full Review

Between this movie, Megalopolis, and Sofia Coppola schilling mass-produced stationery as a fashion accessory, 2024 wasn’t exactly a banner year for the Coppola brand, in terms of quality. The Last Showgirl did all the work it neededRead Full Review

The rise of Robert Eggers is not merely the ascent of another popular horror filmmaker. There are plenty of those to go around these days. Along with his spiritual filmmaking sibling, Ari Aster, Eggers makesRead Full Review

This isn’t the first film about Bob Dylan but it’s probably the biggest. In documentaries like DA Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back or Martin Scorsese’s No Direction Home, we get the illusion of candor, glimpses of real life, imagesRead Full Review

Twenty-five years ago, Nicole Kidman starred in a sex drama where she played a married woman requesting a more fulfilling sexual experience from her husband. The movie had the distinction of taking place during ChristmasRead Full Review

In The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet is attempting to craft an epic on par with the Great American Novels of the Twentieth Century. Like many epic tales, we are given a hero, and his life isRead Full Review

Last year, Pedro Almodóvar released his first ever film in English: a short film called Strange Way of Life, a queer-tinged western starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as cowboys in the old West. Because it’sRead Full Review

The orneriest members of the online film elite have made their feelings known about Wicked‘s lighting – or particularly, it’s backlighting. Never before have I seen a group of irony-pilled aesthetes get so hung up on theRead Full Review

Pablo Larraín makes remarkably interesting and unambiguously political films in his native Chile, but he’s most famous in the US for his now three biopics on Twentieth Century Women in Trouble. 2016’s Jackie explored Jacqueline KennedyRead Full Review

Not since Terrence Mallick’s The Tree of Life have I come across a film like Nickel Boys – a movie that is so unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before while taking the care and patience toRead Full Review

After the first election of Donald Trump, I found myself shocked by the sudden rise of fascists and neo-Nazis freely speaking their tirades of racism and hate without fear of derision. That was eight yearsRead Full Review

If the last three films of Paul Schrader have been defined by his Travis Bickle-like protagonists – scribbling furiously in their notebooks while voiceover expresses their philosophical and existential crises – then Oh, Canada is him going MishimaRead Full Review

Writer-director Mike Leigh hasn’t been too shy to talk about about how difficult it has become for him to make movies these days. He mentions it in nearly any interview he gives, even during pressRead Full Review

Perhaps more than any other director working right now, Luca Guadagnino understands that fucking is one of humanity’s greatest motivators, dictating nearly every aspect of our lives, it’s consequences rippling forever through our relationships, ourRead Full Review

What are the foundations of an oppressive regime? Paranoia, complicity, fear. Whether you’re on the side of the oppressor or the oppressed, those three factors are always present. Mohammad Rasoulof’s latest film, The Seed of theRead Full Review

There are legacy sequels and then there is Gladiator II. Ridley Scott returns as director, as do several clips from the Best Picture winner of 2000, in case you were wondering about the connection. Scott’s ownRead Full Review

In the latest stage of Denzel Washington’s career, canonizing the work of August Wilson appears to be of great importance. Washington himself directed and starred in the 2016 adaptation of Fences, while drafting stage director GeorgeRead Full Review

They just gave Richard Curtis an honorary Oscar last weekend, and if he had directed Blitz, it would be the best movie that he ever made. But he didn’t make Blitz, Steve McQueen did, and there liesRead Full Review

Mati Diop’s Dahomey is a visually arresting and intellectually heady documentary about twenty-six pieces of art being returned to Africa. The items were seized by French soldiers in 1892 from what was then the nation ofRead Full Review

In the urban streets of Mumbai, people cram together in search of the life that modernity promises. But what if that promise is false? All We Imagine As Light is a tenderly told story about twoRead Full Review

The good thing about French artists across all mediums is that they attack projects with an intellectual rigor that instills in them a confidence that they can tackle any subject matter. This is also oneRead Full Review

What is the pain referenced in the title of A Real Pain? Our main characters are depressive, though they show it in completely different ways. They’re visiting Poland to partake in a days-long tour of Holocaust rememberence.Read Full Review

Claire Keegan’s fiction is riddled with silences pregnant with foreboding. The rural Irish settings of her books contain characters weathered into submission, accepting the things they cannot change, which is almost everything. In Small Things LikeRead Full Review

Three years between film projects feels like an eternity for Clint Eastwood. His prolific output both in front and behind the camera ran steady for sixty years up until 2021’s Cry Macho. At that point, ClintRead Full Review

I don’t think of this as a spoiler, but be aware: Near the end of No Other Land, there’s a title card that gives the audience a desperate, sinking feeling. At this point you’ve already watched ninety minutesRead Full Review

In the realms of “they just don’t make ’em like this anymore”, Conclave stands proud. A deeply engrossing and profoundly silly suspense film set in the Sistine Chapel, director Edward Berger shifts from the vast andRead Full Review

If Sean Baker wasn’t such an exceptional filmmaker, his interest in sex work as the narrative catalyst of his films would feel like an uncomfortable fetish. Since 2012’s Starlet, all of his films have dealt with sexRead Full Review

There were rumblings last year when darling indie distributor A24 put out into the trades that they were beginning to look into more mainstream, commercial projects. In a little over a decade, they’ve put out someRead Full Review

At just 30 years old, Saoirse Ronan has already established a sterling reputation as an actor who can “do anything”. Nominated as an adolescent for her precocious performance in Atonement, she’s only capitalized on her potential inRead Full Review

This year marks fifty years of Saturday Night Live on NBC, a live sketch comedy show that has survived dynastic political and cultural shifts, wild fluctuation in performance talent, and endless accusations of being “not funnyRead Full Review

It’s kind of a miracle that a film like A Different Man – an elliptical, analytical film the persistently prods it’s audience with moral and ethical questions – can also be such a compelling drama. OurRead Full Review

Will & Harper is a film going for a broad audience and delivering mass messaging. Its cause is righteous and its motivations pure. The movie’s premise is simple: two longtime friends, one of which hasRead Full Review