I’ve worried that I don’t possess the kind of patience a viewer may need to sit through a Kelly Reichardt film. It’s not that her films are bad or even boring. They always contain aRead Full Review

A film like Aquarius – a patient, thoughtful film that takes on a wide variety of themes including gentrification, mortality and gender – is something to be cherished. Is it perhaps too long? Definitely. Kleber MendoncaRead Full Review

Paula Hawkins’ novel The Girl on the Train is the kind of not-very-good pulp fiction that is capable of making a very good movie. The book was packaged as a sort of further reading suggestion forRead Full Review

Nat Turner is a historical figure that too little has been made of. Actor Nate Parker has decided to give him the biopic treatment. In The Birth of a Nation, Parker is taking a manRead Full Review

Director Mick Jackson has produced a lot of work for television, and that makes a lot of sense when you watch a film like Denial. I don’t mean to denigrate television – lord knows weRead Full Review

Other People is the kind of Sundance-y tragicomedy that has the capacity to really produce a heavy duty eye-roll from me, but Chris Kelly (a comedy writer for Saturday Night Live and Broad City) does deliver someRead Full Review

One cannot make the claim that Elizabeth Wood’s White Girl puts on any airs. Even its direct title puts an image in the audience’s mind of a certain kind of person. Leah, the film’s protagonist playedRead Full Review

Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans is probably too long. It’s probably too dependent on overwrought emotion, manipulating its audience with tight close-ups of its beautiful cast crying with forlorn pain. But the film reached me.Read Full Review

The emergence of the prestige horror film this decade has allowed very strong filmmakers to work within a genre that’s cheap, prolific and comes with a guaranteed audience. Sam Raimi gave Uruguayan director his commercialRead Full Review

It never really seems like Morris From America has enough story to fill out its 91 minutes. It’s a unique take on the coming-of-age tale, but it never really puts itself into any unique territory. NewcomerRead Full Review

Taylor Sheridan’s screenplay for Hell or High Water is amongst the most masterful depictions of a specific, decaying American culture I’ve seen in a while. It’s right up there with No Country for Old Men and TheRead Full Review

If Pixar has stood out amongst animation studios for its unmatched critical and commercial success, than Laika has also stood out, for its dogged dedication to the labor-intensive art of stop-motion animation. Travis Knight hasRead Full Review

Ira Sachs’ last two films are such a beautiful distillation of everyday life, a peep into the domestic sides of New York City living that is both poignant and direct. 2014’s Love is Strange was aRead Full Review

The Bourne franchise isn’t nearly as intelligent as it thinks it is. It’s suggestion of commentary on our political climate is shallow at best, but that’s okay. The original Bourne trilogy was the perfect action seriesRead Full Review

Mike Birbiglia’s transformation from cult favorite stand-up comic to filmmaker makes a little bit more sense than Louis CK’s. Birbiglia’s comedy was always more story-oriented, more of a one-man show than a traditional comedy set.Read Full Review

Woody Allen has finally achieved a complete separation between his films and reality, and his films now only exist in that ulterior universe. To the degree that Woody Allen movies are bad, they’re usually badRead Full Review

Grounded in the shockingly politicized release of Paul Feig’s remake of Ghostbusters is this cold truth: we didn’t need a remake ofGhostbusters. That said, we also didn’t need a remake of Point Break, Annie and we CERTAINLYRead Full Review

The most foolish aspect of the early-decade McConaissance (which inexplicably ended with the Academy giving him an Oscar for the vapid, polarizing Dallas Buyers Club), was that everything we were drooling over – the earthyRead Full Review

The literature of John le Carré has long been a favorite of film studios. His stories of espionage and betrayal are always ripe with character and complex plotlines that weave together brilliantly, almost too conveniently,Read Full Review

The first thirty minutes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film, The Neon Demon, really is marvelous. It presents a haunting but colorful universe, filled with beautiful but sinister people. Even the manager at the runRead Full Review

Movies as delightful and unique as Hunt for the Wilderpeople are rarer than you might think. It may seem so simple: a young man comes of age while surviving in the woods with a crotchety oldRead Full Review

This is the Todd Solondz we know so well. Where the return of Welcome to the Dollhouse‘s Dawn Wiener would come packaged haphazardly within an aimless anthology film titled Wiener-Dog. The film is four stories,Read Full Review

Roland Emmerich has destroyed the world on so many occasions, and in such a wide scope of ways, that it’s hard to remember just how groundbreaking his 1996 film Independence Day really was. Hollywood had beenRead Full Review

Jin Mo-young’s My Love, Don’t Cross That River is heartbreaking weepy of a documentary, a film about the final moments of a 76-year marriage. It’s testament to the power of love, and the endurance of love,Read Full Review

Pixar’s masterful run through the Aughts began with Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo, which managed to capture the pitch-perfect blend of wit and heart of the first two Toy Story films but put it on a muchRead Full Review

There are few screenwriter success stories that are passed around more than the tale of Shane Black. The man who wrote Lethal Weapon and gained himself a reputation as one of the most dependable scribes ofRead Full Review

“Facts are such horrid things!” cries Lady Susan, the main focus of Whit Stillman’s latest film, Love & Friendship, and it’s a statement that captures so truly the obtuse, ridiculous nature of this woman. TheRead Full Review

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most unique storytellers in cinema. His films are tense, funny alternative realities, with sarcastic views of human torment. His 2009 film Dogtooth is one of the most upsettingRead Full Review

Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino doesn’t mind embracing stereotypes of Italian sensuality, embracing themes of sex and passion with a no-holds-barred approach, and casting actors who are sure to be up to the task of stripping downRead Full Review

What a wonderful film The Meddler is. A bittersweet comedy about love, grief and the type of agonizing familial relationships that fill you with guilt and dread. Susan Sarandon stars as Marnie, a Brooklynite widow livingRead Full Review

If you were lucky enough to see Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin in 2014, then you had the pleasure to catch one of the more captivating thrillers of that year; a film that had a refreshing, directRead Full Review

Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier has already shown that he’s an unmatched talent in film right now. His third feature, Louder Than Bombs, is his first one in English. A plot description might suggest a limpRead Full Review

After Dallas Buyers Club and Wild, director Jean-Marc Vallée completes his trilogy of lost souls with his latest film, Demolition. Much like Wild, the film is a histrionic meditation on grief through the point-of-view of someoneRead Full Review

When’s the last time an American filmmaker had as strong a debut film as Trey Edward Shults’ Krisha? The movie is so confident, so breathtakingly beautiful, so vulnerable with its feelings and situations. Shults madeRead Full Review

Midnight Special is Jeff Nichols’ fourth feature. To this point, all of his films are deconstructions of the American South; part commentary, part appreciation. He dissects the region’s virtues and prejudices, its insanities and its mythologies.Read Full Review

What a wonderfully sweet snack of a movie Hello, My Name is Doris turned out to be. Michael Showalter, of Wet Hot American Summer fame, gets behind the camera and directs only his second feature film, butRead Full Review

There’s so much to like in Knight of Cups. It’s got a great assortment of beautiful actors, caught up in another swirling cinematic ballet from Terrence Malick. Since his fifth film, The Tree of Life (aRead Full Review

Calling Zootopia a film for children is not inaccurate, but it skips a very important piece of information: the substance in this film’s screenplay (written by co-director Jared Bush and Phil Johnston) is made forRead Full Review

Robert Eggers’ feature film debut is a brooding, fierce little film that takes pains to tell us that its setting, story and dialogue are based on actual accounts from the time. I’m not sure The WitchRead Full Review

Race is a movie that means well. It has its heart in the right place, the same way that Brian Helgeland’s 2013 film 42 did when it attempted to make a biopic about Jackie Robinson. The problem withRead Full Review

The Coen Brothers are the San Antonio Spurs of contemporary Hollywood. They do their work intelligently and efficiently. They get great work out of talent you wouldn’t expect. Very quietly, they have a resume thatRead Full Review

I have little doubt that Deadpool is the movie that its biggest fans want it to be. It’s crude and infantile, deafeningly obnoxious and horribly violent. There is a charm to this film, its complete acceptanceRead Full Review

Jennifer Lawrence is doing incredible work in Joy but to what end? The film is an unconscionable mess, and works best if you try to think about it as a solid acting reel for the youngRead Full Review

Previous to The Big Short, Michael Lewis books had been the basis of only half of a good movie: the terrible The Blind Side and the Sorkin baseball movie that wasn’t really about baseball, Moneyball. I’llRead Full Review

There’s an aspect of The Revenant that is really beautiful. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu collaborated here with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who’s already one of the greatest DP’s in history. This is their second time working togetherRead Full Review