April Wolfe

Every scene is visceral. Every note played tells a story.

With Mudbound, Rees proves the truest rule of all: That talent and vision make all lesser rules negotiable. This absorbing, incredibly accomplished film should win awards and be taught in history classes all over America.

Guadagnino adeptly captures not just the physicality of a burning love but also the emotional and intellectual components, and the film is all the more salient for that careful, realistic interpretation.

I will be very clear with you, dear readers, that this surrealist comic moral tale, about a poor man selling his soul to ascend in a golden elevator to the heights of a dubious corporation, is a balls-to-the-wall, tits-to-the-glass, spectacular orgy of fist-pumping, anti-capitalist, pro-labor ideas rolled into 105 minutes of gloriously unpredictable plot.

In other hands, this film could go kitsch, could all be a big joke, but Fargeat directs Lutz like no other Rambo-style action hero before her.

Mark Perez has written one of the tightest comedy scripts to make it to be the big screen in ages. Game Night, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, wastes not a single second of dialogue, gives killer lines to every member of its all-star ensemble, delivers genuinely tense action sequences, and even goes for broke with style.

In Aster’s story, as in life, the devil is in the details. As the film goes on, these details accumulate, coalesce, and then hang heavy over the characters.

Campillo’s focus on these charismatic characters, who bicker constantly but pick one another up the second they fall (sometimes literally), makes their present so thrilling that we don’t focus on what bleak future may await them.

A poignant, surprisingly hilarious depiction of death, grieving, and small-town life.

Certain Women is a kind, loving, and deeply moving portrait of bighearted small-town people.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House is the very best of gothic horror, that which needles at your insecure core and whispers in your ear what you already suspected: You will never be all right.

There are no loose ends or wasted time; everything builds to a rising crescendo that makes you feel like your heart is going to burst. The immense strength of this remarkable woman is on such powerful display that, twenty minutes into the film, tears welled from my eyes and did not stop, even after I left the theater.

This screen adaptation...is vital because it has the potential to reach marginalized communities. But it also stands as an aching, lyrical, performance-driven masterpiece in its own right, a film so intense and engrossing that movie houses really should screen it with an intermission.

Like another breakout independent film this year, “The Tale,” Tan’s documentary attempts to portray her own narrative with objectivity and distance, but she discovers along the way that such a thing may not be possible, that memories will wait years or decades to snag you in their truths.

What’s perhaps most fascinating about this documentary is how sure-footed Allred has been in picking her battles over the years.

What’s so grand about Ruben Brandt isn’t its story or the characters, which are both abstractions. It’s the animation—the detailed artwork, so dense that it warrants repeat viewings.

I’m happy to report that I have no idea what’s going on in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake, and that’s wonderful. The two Suspirias function more as companion pieces than as mirrored twins.

Equal parts spooky and cheeky, this film nails its black humor and finds a bizarre but satisfying conclusion to manage all the loose ends.

What’s most unnerving about this four-decade-old film is how little has changed in the time since. We are still learning the same lessons Coolidge was trying to impart so long ago — nothing is different.

A Fantastic Woman shows that the obvious insults a trans person may endure will, of course, weigh on the psyche, but the death by a thousand well-meaning cuts hurts as well.

[Winocour] elevates the action hero beyond his physical assets, drilling through his psyche to offer a rare and welcome lens into a type of man usually reduced to stoicism or sulking, hiding behind a rubber mask.

This documentary doesn’t just tell the ill-fated story of the failed Grenada utopia — which failed because of American intervention. The House on Coco Road is instead a sprawling tale of African-American migration, the search for peace, and America’s relentless sabotage of black escape.

Yes, this film is important for its insistence that we see these boys as capable of rehabilitation in the right environment. But it’s the movie’s daring structure and humanity that make it worthy of the Lear name.

Hockney is a little work of art of its own, even if it's so very nice and happy about everything.

The complexity of feminism for young girls today is displayed with rare hilarity and insight.

To fall in love with Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is to embrace its paradoxes and, to quote a song Lady Gaga sings in the film, go “off the deep end” and submerge oneself “far from the shallow.” My advice? Submit. Suspend yourself in the charms and romance of this melodrama.

Tale of Tales is the most faithful and creatively rendered fairytale onscreen to date, bizarrely satisfying and totally worth a patient, focused viewing.

Harald Zwart’s thrilling The 12th Man, based on the true story of a Norwegian soldier who escaped the Nazis in World War II, is a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart but also an unexpectedly tender adventure that is as celebratory as it is tense.

No matter how confounding the story gets, details and humor ground the narrative, and a simple guiding premise about the importance of human connection and artistic expression fills in the blanks.

Thornton delicately peels back all the layers of Aussie injustice in this film, but what’s most unnerving is that the story proves to be so universal.

It’s science fiction that’s complex, thoughtful and funny, like 12 Monkeys or Primer run through a Fargo filter.

Those expecting camp or catfights won’t find them in Gillespie’s movie, which instead offers thoughtful and somewhat objective critiques, plus much seriously dark humor that’ll elicit a lot of uncomfortable gasps of laughter — and invites you to ponder difficult truths.

One of the most sincere and funny portraits of family life to come along in a while.

Up until 1968, horror had been escapist. But Night of the Living Dead made horror serious business.

It’s only October, but Christmas has come early for horror fans.

Though Moonee’s story may not have a Hollywood happy ending when she’s grown and the world has been cruel, Baker has created an indomitable character who’s at least got a fighting chance.

The concepts Sweet Virginia explore through this setup — lives intersecting after a tragedy in a small town and a dangerous outsider tearing through a community — aren’t new for noir or westerns, but the understated, intense performances of Dagg’s cast make this slow burner a standout.

The director’s strength is in crafting fully drawn, sympathetic characters you root for — a big accomplishment when they have to compete for audience attention with a sex monster.

Kuso is an astounding feat of animation, humor, and practical effects.

My Friend Dahmer is both sensitive and fascinating, distinguished by a stellar, mouth-breathing performance of insecurity from Lynch.

Raw isn’t derivative — it’s fresh, funny, and grounded in reality. Underneath all the blood and guts, this is the story of a woman whose body demands love in extremity and the only person who’ll ever understand her fully: her sister.

Nowhere has Cohen's inner turmoil been better illuminated than in Tony Palmer's lost-and-found 1974 documentary Bird on a Wire.

Dina is a story about resilience and a woman’s indomitable will to seek out her best life.

Half the Picture is maddening and enlightening and, most of all, necessary, as much as I wish it weren’t.

Always Shine is a potent psychological thriller, all right. But it's also a powerful statement on the very industry that produced it.

When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?

There is truth in this story, even if the ending becomes unwieldy.

If there are any takeaways from Grodner’s film, it’s that we are all powerless to stop the passage of time, and, as Future Music owner Jack Waterson says, “Be truly loved or truly hated, man, cuz anything in the middle is garbage.” I think you’ll truly love or truly hate this film, but I’m firmly in the “love” camp for this remarkable Los Angeles time capsule.

Captain Marvel, the first Marvel adaptation both to star a woman and to be co-directed by a woman, is an obvious, crude, and transparent film. And it’s also quite enjoyable and evocative — most of the time.

It’s the little, almost imperceptible twists to the story that make Blockers a worthy entry into the teen sex comedy canon, most notably that girls and women are funny and can play more than the killjoy or the babe.

Every subject shares genuine enthusiasm after watching Guy-Blaché’s work, and as messy as “Be Natural” can be at times, with that frenetic pace of info delivery coming from all directions at once, it’s actually the natural tone and pace of a creator who’s excited by their subject matter.

It’s a relief to watch a commercial movie from a director who trusts you to figure out plot points along the way.

In Skate Kitchen, the kids come as they are, and they’re wildly fascinating.

Seeing the breadth of Didion’s work and its impact on the culture represented cumulatively delivers an unexpected shock to the system.

This is an intimate portrait of the artist in recent years as she returns to Jamaica, the country of her birth and childhood, for a family reunion.

What I feel compelled to say, which can get lost in the myriad interpretations we may have of the film’s story or meaning, is that for all its self-indulgences and excess and ghastly sights, I was quickly enamored with Mother! in a way I’ve not been with any other Aronofsky film.

By telling this story through the children’s eyes with a magical-realism element, López makes the tragically unthinkable somehow more palatable.

True to form, Caro seems unbound by her audience’s expectations of a WWII picture; she delivers a singular, thrilling portrait, filled with surprises and moving performances.

Key and Peele have a special kind of magic they’ve brought to their first feature, but it’s also a crazy-simple formula: Keep saving that damn cat.

More times than I could count I had no idea what the hell was happening, and also just didn’t care that I didn’t know. Let the Corpses Tan is that strange and beautiful.

Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept: Put a bunch of characters with opposing motivations in a room and see what happens.

Tense and at times downright frightening.

Where "Ida" takes a drearier, more realistic approach to the story, The Innocents, despite its dark focus on a group of women living in fear of getting repeatedly raped by their allies, actually has a mightier finish, something of a crescendo to cut through the quiet grief.

These people accept the consequences of living like there's no tomorrow. They stand awaiting their fate in a rain of fire. And now we can feel a little bit of that, too.

Simple and well acted, Unsane has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I've been watching horror films since I was three years old. They've never given me nightmares. Until now.

Walter is riding a tricky line, but it’s his mixing of fantasy and reality, making the edges between the two porous, that ultimately sells the film.

Russo-Young gives this teen parable the thriller treatment to ward off any cheese, and watching Deutch learn her lesson with that expressive face of hers is a singular, moving experience.

The Talley of before the election presents himself as a man who believes anything is possible if you swallow your anger, work hard enough, and sacrifice all — especially your chance at love — and the Talley of after seems to worry that much of that progress has proved an illusion.

A soul-crushingly dark examination of human nature amid an invisible and unnatural threat.

In Chad Hartigan's lighthearted drama Morris From America, there are a whopping two African-American characters. The difference between this film and most others, however, is that these two are fully yet subtly drawn. They interact in ways that feel genuine, the actors portraying a heartfelt father-son relationship and the director fighting the urge to get either too preachy or mushy.

It is the depth Close lends to Joan that kept me riveted — and angry.

Juliet, Naked has its charms, and they are named Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke.

This isn’t torture-porn dystopia; it’s a singular, honest, heartfelt portrait of sisterly devotion at the end of the world

The most exceptional element of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women might actually be its comforting, radical normalcy.

The art of physical comedy is alive and well with Saunders and Lumley, who precisely calculate each well-timed tumble.

It's both funny and enlightening, a nuanced yet strikingly bold look at how teens see themselves, not how adults would like to see them. Parents: Take note. Teens: Relax, you'll figure it out.

Despite the film’s needlessly fractured structure and a relentlessly grim story, Kidman and Kusama seem to be speaking the same language, in quieter moments illuminating not just the faults of the protagonist but also the faults of every tragic hard-boiled detective in cinematic history.

Simultaneously entertaining, overwhelming, compelling, and grating, Bodied raises its hand and talks until words mean nothing and everything.

I like this couple. And their songs aren’t bad! Not so the gender-binary Mars-Venus mumbo jumbo that dominates the resolution. Still, these are quibbles with an otherwise charming and honest marriage story.

McCary and Mooney ground this story in sincere emotion and mostly avoid straying into easy-laugh SNL shorts territory.

Filmed in black and white in the wintry countryside of Görlitz, Germany, Schwentke’s vision of a man who would be posthumously named the Executioner of Emsland is chilling and yet, at times, almost farcical.

Chastain seems at times to be both the lead and her own supporting actor in this story, as she oscillates between traditionally feminine and masculine modes of behavior, sometimes inhabiting both at once.

Swicord turns what could be a dark or one-note premise into a sometimes charming, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on a man’s loss of self after having set out to conquer the job, wife, house, and kids he thought would make him happy.

Maggie's Plan is a fun light comedy with memorable characters, from a writer-director who lives up to her lineage (Arthur Miller's her dad), but it relies heavily on Gerwig's predictable charm and sometimes seems more Woody Allen than Rebecca Miller.

Though To the Bone isn’t quite enjoyable to watch, it’s acted well and is, in its depiction of this all-too-pervasive disorder, essential.

Without the serious acting talent of its leads, this color-saturated gross-out horror could have devolved into a mess, but The Autopsy of Jane Doe proves imperfect fun even when it starts to play like CSI: Salem.

The sense of authenticity that marks The Light Between Oceans at its best has everything to do with the acting — and if all Cianfrance ever gives us is that, it's worth the price of his lagging third act.

Batra kills the mystery part of the story and instead pushes the adaptation toward that humanism, which renders a good chunk of the plot a wash. Good thing Batra’s really adept at the human portraits, though.

This film seems meant to be more a kind, sweet eulogy than an illumination.

I was transported by DuVernay’s adaptation to the mind-set of my girlhood — embarrassing insecurities and all. This is not a cynic’s film. It is, instead, unabashedly emotional.

Flower is messy and imperfect and above all else a star-making role for Deutch, who carries this film from funny to tragic and back again.

This isn’t a laugh-a-minute movie; it’s more a succession of snickers, punctuated by genuine emotion.

Even though it follows the map of every romcom before it, Holderman’s film still offers the too-rare chance to marvel at just how good these women are at their craft, how easily they inhabit the bodies and lives of other people.

It’s interesting that the most compelling parts of this film are the ones that convey how a taste of Hollywood can destroy a life, since this is yet another Hollywood film about that life.

Though nearly nothing happens in this movie besides a woman opening a shop and beginning a standoffish friendship with a reclusive man, I still found myself drawn in, just as I was drawn to Iain’s discreet disaster of a baked Alaska (please check it out if you haven’t seen this TGBBS episode); sometimes the quiet is enticing.

Even if his film's plot is predictable, the younger Scott is returning the ensemble thriller to its roots with something far more important than an airtight story: compelling, well-drawn characters and the talented actors to play them.

In Neil Berkeley’s documentary Gilbert, we’re gifted with intimate moments from the comedian’s life.