Alison Willmore

Pictures of Ghosts is so lovely and alive that, if anything, it only reassures you that movies aren’t going anywhere.

Rye Lane asks you to fall in love with Dom and Yas, but failing that, it will have you hopelessly smitten with its South London setting and with that feeling of having the day open and nothing to do but wander and see what may happen. With the city spread before you, you never know who you might meet.

A family drama as masterfully propulsive as a horror movie.

The delight of the exuberantly bittersweet closing sequence comes from the way it fulfills a promise the audience doesn’t realize, until that point, has been made.

A Complete Unknown doesn’t attempt to offer up a solution to the enigma that is Bob Dylan. It does something more achievable — shows us what it’s like to bob around the wake of greatness.

The turtles’ unceasing, rapid-fire banter is all affectionate dunks on one another and pop-culture quips, and the look of the film is never less than entrancing, with computer animation that creates the feel of something handmade.

It’s the little comedic cul-de-sacs that make the movie work as well as it does, sustaining it as much as the growing tension between Craig and Austin.

There’s a sealed-off quality to The Souvenir Part II that the first installment doesn’t have, a sense of surrendering to the idea that it’s possible to authentically portray only oneself — which may be true and may be a creative dead end. But even that turns out to be by design, something both the film and its protagonist can acknowledge and then escape.

The film is about the power of storytelling, and not in the cornball, self-congratulatory sense in which that phrase is normally deployed.

Chung is a patient filmmaker who works in small sequences that accrue imperceptibly into something grander.

Lorenz is the kind of role that Hawke thrives in — a big talker and a self-mythologizer who everyone can’t help but like, despite being aware that he’s mostly full of shit. He wisely approaches the character like he’s giving a performance of a performance, his Lorenz committing himself as thoroughly as he can to acting like someone who’s happy and having a good time despite everything in his life crumbling away.

The rage at the heart of The Menu is directed at the impossible melding of art and commerce, at the way we’re taught that success at the former requires the support of the latter, even if it means making crushing compromises that drain the joy out of, in this case, the expressly straightforward pleasure of food.

There’s an elegance to the way that Kawamura incorporates his theme into a very straightward premise, making the movie feel like it’s building on the essence of its source material rather than being trapped by so many mobius passageways.

The Creator may be an effective interrogation of American imperiousness and imperialism, but it also has a tender, anguished heart.

For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.

If Gazer doesn’t pick up the momentum needed to match Frankie’s increasingly dire situation, it’s nevertheless a pleasure to watch — a project that feels, like its heroine, unstuck in time, reminiscent of a whole other, more vibrant era of American independent cinema when the films themselves were the point and not just calling cards for a bigger commercial opportunity.

Kimi threads its increasingly tense interactions with a modern melancholy.

Christy, which was directed by Animal Kingdom’s David Michôd from a script he wrote with his partner, Mirrah Foulkes, isn’t rote Oscar bait, and Sweeney isn’t doing the sort of studied showboating that so often comes with the territory.

While a little sentimentality never hurt anyone, what stands out when revisiting CODA outside the festival bubble are the parts that feel unguided by formula, all of which have to do with the dynamics of the Rossi family.

Oppenheimer is a movie so sprawling it’s difficult to contend with. It’s rich, uncompromising, and borderline unwieldy, but more than anything, it’s a tragedy of operatic grandeur despite so many of its scenes consisting of men talking in rooms.

Eileen may ultimately be a little thin, but it’s a bracing watch, powered not just by its two main performances but also by Ireland in that small but powerful role as a wretched enabler.

You can’t stop art, motherfuckers, and whether it’s in Grand Theft Auto Online or during a global pandemic, the show must go on.

McBaine and Moss are the team behind 2014’s The Overnighters, a wrenching film about the North Dakota oil boom, and they’re interested in something beyond the contrast of adolescent faces and grown-up topics — or, for that matter, serving up simple optimism about Gen Z when taking in these young men at the cusps of their political lives.

If Possessor ultimately feels more like a testament to its director’s excellent taste in influences than a film that entirely gels in itself, it’s still a thoroughly troubling watch.

It overflows with intriguing ideas, even if they aren’t all fully explored.

A deliciously absorbing documentary.

The Two Popes may be a fantasy about a closed institution flinging its doors open, but it’s also a compelling actor’s showcase. The combination is surprisingly potent.

It’s a romp, full of touches that go by almost too quickly to pick up on — I was partial to the strongman who plays a small but key role — but the lingering mood is unmistakably sad.