The pulsating ferocity of Her Smell comes on right off the bat. From the moment the film begins, we are sent on a journey through turmoil, through one person’s vices and insecurities. Its rock star protagonistRead Full Review

Examining what it means to be human is a staple of more serious science fiction, but like most things that Claire Denis does, High Life‘s examination is slightly askew, purposely off-putting. This space drama has itRead Full Review

It’s refreshing to see a studio like Laika – a major Hollywood entity with corporate support that has a dogged commitment to creating unique entertainment. Challenging the other animation studios (**ahem** Disney) seems like aRead Full Review

A film as wondrously joyous as The Beach Bum should not be taken lightly. Its unhinged enthusiasm and complete embrace of its absurd premise helps you to tolerate its overindulgence. Though it’s probably more accurate toRead Full Review

The ideas that Jordan Peele has brought to the screen in his first two features could be comedies, if they were twisted that way. Anyway, you can see how the man who created them wasRead Full Review

Violence and romance pulse throughout Ash is Purest White, the latest from A Touch of Sin director Jia Zhangke. Zhao Tao plays Qiao, a young woman in love with a gangster named Bin (Liao Fan). Bin, an intenseRead Full Review

Waiting this long to reveal a character as powerful as Carol Danvers could be seen as shrewd. Plenty of people have been clamoring for a woman-led superhero movie since as long as I can remember,Read Full Review

All four of J.C. Chandor’s feature films have come this decade, and they’re a kaleidoscopic display of a young filmmaker’s talents. Margin Call was a stripped-down talkathon about the financial crisis, while All is Lost is aRead Full Review

As far as remakes go, Gloria Bell is amongst the best that I’ve seen in a long while. It helps to have Julianna Moore – perhaps the best screen actor of her generation – and itRead Full Review

The last three films from Christian Petzold have examined the existential crisis of Germany in different forms. In Barbara, Nina Hoss plays a physician trapped behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. In Phoenix, Hoss plays aRead Full Review

You’d think the well had dried when it came to making unique films about the dangerous Latin American drug trade, but then you see a film like Birds of Passage, and it’s revealed how the realRead Full Review

  The story of Germany’s Twentieth Century is impossible to encompass in a single film, but Never Look Away certainly does try. Through the prism of art and the purity of expression, the latest film fromRead Full Review

Chief among the charms of Steven Soderbergh is that it is never explicitly clear what even he wants from his career. He eschewed indie darling status (sex, lies and videotape) for Oscar-winning prestige (Traffic, Erin Brockovich),Read Full Review

Velvet Buzzsaw is the kind of Los Angeles satire that has several of its characters die excruciating deaths, but the most emotionally devastating part is another character having to pack her bags and move backRead Full Review

A film as harsh and hectic as Capernaum almost needs a child at its center, to remind the audience that there is still the possibility of innocence in a world that can be so filled withRead Full Review

There are many tragic versions of the events within Free Solo. The documentary mentions a number of them. The term “free solo” refers to mountain climbing without the protection of ropes, and this is the preferred hobbyRead Full Review

The hook of Destroyer – taking one of our best, most beautiful movie stars and dirtying her up – is an old one. We’ve seen it often, and awards have been won by actors both more and lessRead Full Review

The lumbering frame of Dick Cheney has always been a mercurial figure in the annals of contemporary Republican nastiness and wrongdoing. The buffoonery of figures like Trump and George W. Bush are easier to target, moreRead Full Review

We don’t need a new Spider-Man movie. I’m not sure we ever have. The reason Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse works so well is that it seems to understand that. The film – which is produced byRead Full Review

The stark, black & white world of Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War belies an incredible tenderness, a passionate love that perseveres over years and across countries on both sides of the Berlin Wall. This is not aRead Full Review

The ideas are aplenty in Vox Lux, as are the choices, very specific choices made by writer-director Brady Corbet and star Natalie Portman. The film – a histrionic take on the poisonous aspects of fame andRead Full Review

The merging of Barry Jenkins and James Baldwin is as serendipitous as it is joyous, a wondrous meeting of historical talents. The Oscar-winning Jenkins could have made anything he wished after his second film, Moonlight tookRead Full Review

Alfonso Cuarón is one of maybe half a dozen filmmakers considered by many to be amongst the best living directors on the planet. He is the foremost figure in the trifecta of major Mexican directors,Read Full Review

Surpassed by its sister company, Pixar Animation, in terms of prestige and trophies, the standard-bearing Walt Disney Animation studio has climbed back into equal footing over the last few years. Starting with 2010’s Tangled and culminatingRead Full Review

What does one make of Green Book? The film has won major prizes from the National Board of Review and at the Toronto Film Festival, but feels like a certified crowd-pleaser straight out of 1967. In thatRead Full Review

Yorgos Lanthimos is always aiming to unsettle. It’s impossible to guard against the ways in which he reflects the horrors of humanity upon the audience, and it speaks to his strength as a storyteller that you needRead Full Review

I’ll admit to confusion when I learned that Steve McQueen – a filmmaker whose choices in projects lean more toward the conceptual and abstract – was going to make Widows, an obvious genre piece. That confusionRead Full Review

Creed II retreads on familiar Rocky mythology in ways that Creed rewrote it. This sequel is an act of simple reconstruction, as opposed to the first film’s deconstruction. Not only do Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed and SylvesterRead Full Review

It’s fascinating to me that a director as distinct as Julian Schnabel always finds himself making biopics, one of cinemas most traditional genres. With At Eternity’s Gate, Schnabel tells the story of Vincent van Gogh, withRead Full Review

The tales within The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are collectively somber, though some certainly more than others. That the film comes from the Coen Brothers will always, on its own, make it more interesting, but toRead Full Review

Winning the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival earlier in 2018 seemed like a crowning moment for internationally-renowned film director Hirokazu Kore-eda. His latest film, Shoplifters, won the top prize at the festival, but unlikeRead Full Review

The protagonist of Boy Erased leads an incredibly normal life. His father runs a Ford dealership in their Arkansas town, while his mother is a hairdresser. He succeeds in high school, plays on the basketball team,Read Full Review

I think one day we will get a documentary about the making Bohemian Rhapsody, a film that took nearly a decade to get made, went through a carousel of leading men and directors, was constantly pushedRead Full Review

I’d imagine that most people who get around to The Other Side of the Wind – which is now available on Netflix – will wonder if this is a mess of a film, only hailed asRead Full Review

The piercing of eyes of Frederick Wiseman take a look at a small town in America’s heartland in Monrovia, Indiana. As usual, Wiseman’s film has no talking heads, no narration, no guiding voice outside of Wiseman’sRead Full Review

Literature is littered with novels about white people betrayed by the post-war society. At a time when the American government was doing more than they ever had to invest in its people, lots of minorities fellRead Full Review

Why is it that we do not appreciate the talent of wonderful comedic performers until they’ve proven themselves of equal measure in dramatic roles? Why is funny seen as cheaper than morose or sentimental? IRead Full Review

The less you know about Burning is probably the better. The film is based on a Haruki Murakami short story, and the adaptation from Lee Chang-dong goes from a complicated love triangle to a boilerplate mysteryRead Full Review

The memoirs of David and Nic Sheff are the source material for the script of Beautiful Boy, a dreamy addiction narrative told from perspective of the addict and the addict’s father simultaneously. Director Felix Von GroeningenRead Full Review

Neil Armstrong is a name so ingrained into American history that it distracts from the fact that he willingly avoided any opportunity to show an ounce of personality or charisma. He was an incredibly private,Read Full Review

Robert Redford has been so famous and so great for so long that any movie that he makes these days is about the mythology of his stardom. The reason David Lowery’s latest film, The Old Man &Read Full Review

There’s a very specific kind of Hollywood epic melodrama that A Star is Born is conjuring, one that used to dominate theaters with its starpower and saccharine plot construction. It is, of course, the fourth versionRead Full Review

The families in Private Life – the first film from Tamara Jenkins since The Savages in 2007 – are disgruntled and argumentative, worn down by the familiarity of partnership. They have their reasons. In the case ofRead Full Review

The three tales in Monsters and Men – the debut feature from up-and-coming filmmaker Reinaldo Marcus Green – weave into each other seamlessly, without mention or pause, without title cards to announce the shift. All threeRead Full Review

The twisting plot of A Simple Favor is meant, I presume, to remind audiences of film noir. The severity of the characters and the fates that they meet certainly meet the criteria. But of course, thisRead Full Review

Whatever movie Lizzie wants to be, I’m not sure it really succeeds. It’s a murder mystery without much mystery, it’s a psychological thriller without an ounce of suspense. The film is based on the true storyRead Full Review

Ethan Hawke’s perseverance in Hollywood is in debt to his talent but also to his passion. The actor has maintained a career over multiple decades, taking on a variety of roles, always imbuing his charactersRead Full Review