Alex Harrison

The Brutalist is a colossal achievement, balancing intimacy and scale at every level of craft. At 3 hours, 35 minutes, it asks a lot from its viewers. Every second is well spent.

This film may want to scare us, but it also strives to make us as observant and inquisitive as its heroine. We become active viewers, learning and making connections that fill the gaps left open in the worldbuilidng.

Thankfully for us, though, a film is not a meal. We can watch The Taste of Things as many times as we'd like.

Flow makes us think and feel in equal measure.

It is a richly layered work of art.

This movie is made for a world that has us spending most of our time looking down, whether metaphorically, heads buried in our own work and struggles, or literally, absorbed by the phones that have overtaken our lives. As if watching the skies is too big an ask in that context, Spielberg instead uses all his directorial power to encourage us to look at each other. The result is another great film in a career filled with them. Structured like a thriller with a propulsiveness worthy of Indiana Jones, Disclosure Day is an attempt to meet this cynical, divided moment and treat it with empathy, as well as with a healthy dose of good, ol' fashioned entertainment.

Truly, all of Babygirl is fascinating to watch. There's such clear perspective in the filmmaking, and even though I've dwelt on Reijn's more thoughtful touches, the defining trait for many might be a wicked sense of humor. Laughter came easy and often for me and the audience I saw it with – sometimes with the characters, sometimes at them, but always with the movie. It's as if we're being reminded that, however serious the themes, this is supposed to be fun. And it is. But be prepared to find yourself grappling with a whole lot more.

As it tells a thrilling story, engineered with expert precision to keep you hanging on every turn, it embarks on a truly fascinating thought experiment about the nature of identity in relationships: who we are to other people, how easily that can change, and how disruptive it can be when it does. This film is rooted (to steal one of its laugh lines) in "double empathy," exploring when and why we condemn others without itself condemning any of its characters. It may be an entertaining conversation piece, but make no mistake, The Drama is also one of the best movies you'll see this year.

The movie is so interested in archeology (the credits dedicate it "to all archeologists, custodians of every end") that it becomes an analogue for the viewing experience. Rohrwacher asks us to interpret La Chimera the way archaeologists interpret fragments of the past.

It's a journey as much defined by tedium as tension, but to paraphrase the assassin, if you can't handle a little boredom, this might not be the film for you.

Problemista invokes the simplicity of myth without ever letting its characters become simplistic.

Aside from the raunchy or gross-out set pieces, which are hit-and-miss, the movie rides the same few jokes all the way to their natural conclusions, before then trying to tap into the "heart" at the center of its story and completely throwing off its tone. In the end, I think I spent less time laughing than I did waiting for the film to be over.

Tótem's camera is always studying the actors, exploratory and intrusive in the manner of a child's perceptive gaze.

Kurzel's film can be watched at face value, and anyone inclined to like this type of movie will enjoy it. But as it chugs along, it also shows us what hate can look like and what it can do. Like Husk's story, it is a warning, and it leaves us with the chilling sense that the events depicted haven't, or maybe can't, come to an end.

Wicked: For Good does stumble at various points. The much-touted new songs by returning songwriter Stephen Schwartz are superfluous, and there's a laughably regrettable decision near the end involving Jeff Goldblum that only avoids disaster by being very brief. But all the same magic that powered the first film is still at work in this one.

Beautiful, moving, and sporting a compelling metaphor for parenthood, Twomey's film is heartfelt in the way that Pixar and Ghibli films are, making it a worthy pick for a family movie night.

It's artful, atmospheric, and observant; a slice-of-life film told in a hushed tone. It's dedicated to recreating a specific time and place and dropping us into it. There's a gentle steadiness to the way it moves.

When I reviewed Enys Men for ScreenRant in 2023, I was awed by the use of form on display, but wished for more of a narrative backbone to hold all that atmosphere together. Rose of Nevada, Jenkin's latest film, supplies it. The haunted, slippery feeling of his movies is very effective when applied to a supernatural mystery, and that sense of full understanding being just out of reach becomes something pulling you further in, rather than pushing you out. For something so deliberately paced, I found it completely gripping.

It's as rewarding as it is challenging.

Viewers willing to give it the same, almost spellbound focus the protagonist gives this case will find it a compelling meditation on things as wide-ranging as racial otherness, fraught mother-daughter relationships, and the real-world slipperiness of concepts like truth and justice.

Wolfs isn't just funny, it's funny in all the different ways it needs to be.

One of Dreams' strengths is that its dramatic devices pair well with its interests.

If entertainment is all you're looking for, you'll find it, and you'll even have the fun of debating the accents and VFX as you leave the theater. But there's also a lot more to find beneath its surface pleasures, making it a worthy Christmas capstone for what has been a very good year for adults at the movies.

Late Night with the Devil is tremendously fun.

That exquisite balance of art and entertainment is exactly what makes each Bong Joon-ho film a gift to be savored – here's hoping his next one doesn't take quite so long to reach us.

The characters are animated with such clarity of expression, and the film is edited so expertly, that lines just aren't necessary.

Robinson's film is not without things to say, and the combination of a dialed-up Mendes and a dialed-in Hawke make receiving that message a fun, engrossing experience. It is, in other words, exactly what it set out to be, and with any luck, it'll be named alongside the titles it so admires on many a teen movie listicle to come.

Perhaps, Kaurismäki's movie suggests, disaffection is a valid response to this reality we live in. So, when these two people meet and sparks fly, it becomes all the more meaningful.