Independence Day: Resurgence ★

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

Finding Dory ★★★

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

The Nice Guys ★★★

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

Love & Friendship ★★★½

“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

The Lobster ★★★★

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

A Bigger Splash ★★½

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

The Meddler ★★★

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

Green Room ★★

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

Louder Than Bombs ★★★½

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

Demolition ★★

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

Krisha ★★★★

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 ★★★

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

Hello, My Name is Doris ★★★

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

Knight of Cups ★★½

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

Zootopia ★★★½

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

The Witch ★★★

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 ★★

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

Hail, Caesar! ★★★

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

Deadpool ★★

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

Joy ★★

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

The Big Short ★★★

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

The Revenant ★

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

Annomalisa

Charlie Kaufman’s view of the human experience can be so despairing, so bankrupt of cheer and spontaneity, that one must thank their lucky stars that he is incredibly funny, and also that he is anRead Full Review

45 Years

Domestic dramas are a dime a dozen, and while many can be histrionic amd verbose like Revolutionary Road (a good film in its own right) , there are times when you get something as subtly beautiful and stunningRead Full Review

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

In our latest podcast (shameless plug!), I had outed myself as a Star Wars agnostic. My appreciation for the films’ effect on the culture far outweighs any appreciation I have for the films themselves. Any childhood enthusiasm I’d cultivatedRead Full Review

Son of Saul

The glut of Holocaust films can lead some to wonder whether filmmakers have ever heard of a single other human tragedy. The evil behind it is so calculated, so diabolical, it still seems like humansRead Full Review

Chi-raq

What we see here with Chi-Raq is the Spike Lee of Bamboozled. That 2000 film was an extraordinarily bleak satire that seemed to epitomize Lee’s ultimate frustration with the use of black culture within the greater pop culture. Bamboozled isRead Full Review

Mustang

Before any of the action in Mustang starts, we see at least a dozen different international companies attached to its production, which is how a film by a Turkish filmmaker which takes place in Turkey and castRead Full Review

Youth

Consider the opening shot of Youth. It’s not incredibly complicated. It consists of a young woman singing into a microphone, in the middle of a circular stage. A band surrounds her, but we don’t get aRead Full Review

The Danish Girl

If you want to watch a prime example of how poor editing can really dismantle a film, I’d suggest watching Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, which spends two hours with a story that it can’t seemRead Full Review

Creed

The Rocky series is one of the few film franchises that I truly love. The original film is one of the great American classics, mostly because its screenplay (written by its star, Sylvester Stallone) is a masterpieceRead Full Review

The Good Dinosaur

The Good Dinosaur feels like such an odd child within the rest of the Pixar films. It seems like their most outright for children since 2003’s Finding Nemo, and yet, it feels particularly dark, tackling aspects ofRead Full Review

Legend

Legend contains such a brilliant fusion of the two personalities that Tom Hardy so often inhabits in his movies. On the one hand, there’s the brooding, but suave man behind Locke and Inception, but then there’s also the TomRead Full Review

Carol

Todd Haynes’ ballads of female domesticity are such a treasure to American independent film. His ability to tap into this world with such passion and ferocity, but also with tenderness, has produced what I wouldRead Full Review

Spectre

The James Bond franchise is one that I’m not totally familiar with, I will openly admit. Spectre clocks in as the fifth Bond film I’ve seen overall, along with Goldfinger, Goldeneye, Die Another Day and last year’s Skyfall. The allure of theRead Full Review

Brooklyn

The sincerity of a movie like Brooklyn is something to behold. It takes place in world that’s inherently cinematic, with a hard-felt belief in lasting romantic love and the unbreakable bond of family. It’s utter sweetness neverRead Full Review

Spotlight

A movie like Spotlight almost feels like a miracle. To find screenwriting so precise, an ensemble performance so sharp, in an understated film made for adults is truly rare. Films like this do indeed have an audience,Read Full Review

Suffragette

Suffragette is a purposefully-directed film with good intentions. It gets a performance out of Carey Mulligan that proves that she is one of the best young actors working right now. In a time where the reproductiveRead Full Review

Truth

Truth is based on the memoir of Mary Mapes, the CBS news reporter and 60 Minutes producer fired after the Dan Rather scandal. Whatever objectivity James Vanderbilt reflects upon Mapes and her journalistic integrity, Vanderbilt does not holdRead Full Review

Crimson Peak

Guillermo del Toro sure knows how to make a movie look good. The main set of Crimson Peak is a crumbling mansion in rural England built upon a vast landscape seeping with red clay. It’s seeping so much thatRead Full Review

Room

When Room surprised many by winning the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival – besting what many saw as the easy favorite, Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight – it was confirmed that it was more than just your garden varietyRead Full Review

Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg has been living in the past for quite a while now. Not since War of the Worlds has he made a film taking place in something resembling contemporary times, and in that film he destroyed theRead Full Review

Steve Jobs

It’s hard to conjure initial thoughts of Steve Jobs because it’s so rare to watch a film in which its plainly obvious just how un-fucked-with the screenplay is. If it wasn’t obvious just how much Aaron SorkinRead Full Review

The Martian

A story of space survival should not be as airy and fleeting as The Martian is. 2001: A Space Odyssey set the standard, and Gravity perfected it. Outer space is an unkind, asphyxiating experience; out of the control of your meticulouslyRead Full Review

Labyrinth of Lies

You could spend a lifetime watching films dealing with World War II, the Holocaust and the ripple effects it has had on Europe, America and nearly all advanced nations in the world. You could spendRead Full Review

Mississippi Grind

There’s an inherent dichotomy in most gambling movies in the vain of Mississippi Grind. They usually are very fatalistic about the consequences of gambling: lives ruined, families and friendships torn apart, broken trusts that are beyondRead Full Review

Black Mass

The idea of casting Johnny Depp as James “Whitey” Bulger is comical. I’ve seen Black Mass and I’ve seen how good Depp is in it, and I still think it’s comical. It’s brazen stunt casting, but thisRead Full Review

Sicario

Denis Villeneuve is a French-Canadian director, but his last three releases have been American films for American audiences (Enemy was shot in Canada, but it was a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal, so it obviously had aRead Full Review

Sleeping With Other People

The dynamic of a film like Sleeping With Other People is interesting. It’s very dependent on its cast for entertainment, and luckily for the film, it’s stars are Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis, two actors whose comedicRead Full Review