Chase Hutchinson

Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is a joyous blast of a film about sex, desire, and death with a killer yet vulnerable performance by Hannah Einbinder.

A film whose quietly flooring opening frames of a vast landscape becoming home to a compassionate story of a Hungarian-Canadian family navigating an uncertain world together already signal it as a major work, writer/director Sophy Romvari’s intimate and incisive Blue Heron only grows even greater from there.

It’s faithful to the book without being overly devout, asking a multitude of deeper, more probing questions while reflecting on the same unsettling and existentialist ones that the book did. By the time it closes with its unexpectedly mournful yet gently searing final frames, reinterpreting and expanding on the enduring source material one final time, it names all that Camus did not.

It’s the least Charli XCX movie yet, with her disappearing into her role so completely that it's often breathtaking to witness, but it's also the one that marks her arrival as an essential voice.

It makes for an entertaining watch in which the attention to detail in every technical element helps smooth over the scattered and superficial story’s many residual shortcomings.

Heimann is so focused on the spectacle of it all that he forgets to do anything with it emotionally or formally, dragging everything to a close, as we return back to the beginning with little of anything meaningful or engaging occurring over the film’s running time.

In the end, “Rhythm Is A Dancer” remains a classic banger, but Pretty Lethal never finds any remotely memorable rhythms of its own.

They Will Kill You is a modern action gem with a knockout leading performance by Zazie Beetz, who more than cements her status as a star of the genre we ought to see more of.

Wishful Thinking is then one of those great films about love that treats it not just as an abstract concept, but as a living, breathing, and constantly evolving state of being, painting a full portrait of its couple who find themselves swept up in it. You fall in love with the film just as you do both of its characters, together and separately, even as they may, too, break your heart.

It seems like Over Your Dead Body is caught between deconstructing itself and just going through the motions.

It’s not only properly unsettling, making great use of darkness and sound, but also becomes a quietly poetic reflection on loss when you least expect it.

Even with some perfectly fine comedic gags, Power Ballad can never overcome the emptiness of its characters and the equally flat, overlit visuals that make the entire thing look more like a bad TV episode than an actual film.

All you’re left with is the echo of what was better before. You watch only able to wish Weaving was given more to work with than this, or, at the very least, greater room for her iconic scream to rattle you once more.

Riley, proving himself to be a romantic just as he is a believer in revolution, clearly not only loves these boosters with hearts of gold, but anyone that is trying to make it all work for themselves and those around them.

While neither Tommy nor the film itself was ever likely to be immortal, the closing frames prove to be a fitting sendoff for him as well as his long, sad saga. For what could very well be the last time, he and Murphy burn bright.

In the Blink of an Eye is a disaster of its own making, living in the shadow of far better sci-fi films of old, and never doing anything interesting with any of the ideas it throws out.

Critically, the film’s many revelations aren’t neat and tidy, but they are revealing in all the ways that matter.

Both everything and nothing happens in Filipiñana, the cutting, confident, and ultimately formally captivating feature debut from writer-director Rafael Manuel.

This film, though not formally revolutionary, is the type of defining, delicate portrait that moves beyond the often tiresome trend of music documentaries that simply shower praise on their subjects.

Credit where credit is due to Wicker, it’s not every day you get to see an Oscar-winning actress mount a Hollywood heartthrob made into a literal wicker man. Alas, despite the novelty of seeing icon Olivia Colman climb a towering Alexander Skarsgård like a tree, the magical fable within which this happens is not only regrettably far less fun than this description sounds, but an oddly wearisome affair.

Throughout it all, Hawke is mesmerizing. The action scenes are tense and well-executed, though it’s the way he grounds it that makes you feel every setback.

There is a tension that comes from the humor clashing with the tragedy, but it’s a worthwhile one. Life is full of sudden loss and then also ridiculously funny moments. Capturing that authentically is no small feat, but Duplass does so with delicate care.

Though there are flashes of more chaotic comedy that get the pulse racing here and there, for the most part Chasing Summer is a surprisingly safe genre riff.

At every turn, the film earns every emotional, lived-in development, instilling this slice-of-life portrait with such a quiet humanity that it can feel like you’re sitting at the tables and in the meeting rooms along with all the characters.

As shot by his frequent collaborator, the cinematographer Benjamin Loeb, and cut together by Kogonada himself, Zi blurs the lines between tone poem and hangout movie, letting both merge together to become something unexpectedly moving.

Each time you think you’re seeing the daylight of something potentially better to explore on the horizon, “Buddy” keeps dragging you back into the banal darkness. Like the kids, you deserve far better than whatever this lackluster production amounts to.

Chiarella’s film is small in scope but shattering in emotional range, slowly burrowing under your skin. Once it makes its home there, there is no shaking free of its haunting, heartbreaking and surprisingly harmonious vision.

It’s honest about the deception that is inherent to celebrity, confronting us with one compromise after another, building to a pitch-perfect finale needle-drop over a captivating monologue that elevates the comedy into a work of grand, messy ambition.

Saccharine is not a film that goes down easy, but you may just find yourself hungering to return for a second course to get a better sense of what James is serving up.

Though an extension of the same tone that was experienced in his HBO series, this feature is more than just one very long episode of his show. Instead, it’s like Wilson has fully become a funnier, more frenetic version of Frederick Wiseman.

With Carousel, Lambert’s new romantic drama starring the excellent duo of Chris Pine and Jenny Slate, she strikes gold yet again.

The film may have begun with a joke on one man, but with the cutthroat world we’re increasingly building for ourselves, it may soon be on all of us.

Josh is flying solo this time, but Marty Supreme shows he’s capable of achieving a greatness that’s all his own. While brief plot elements weigh the film down, Safide defies gravity even as Marty cannot.

Even as all the comedy to be found within this setup had already run dry a full movie ago, The Family Plan 2 keeps going back to the well in the desperate hope that there are still a few drops left.

Lopez, while certainly dancing all the right steps, is only ever a composite of a movie star who feels trapped in a surprisingly stiff production. She deserves better than what the film gives her, but there’s never a moment when she gets it.

Indy is a delight who can do no wrong. Though the film around him is not always as assured, he is a star who has earned all the pets and treats a dog could dream of. After all the nightmares he had to endure this film, he more than deserves it.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — the most entertaining, exhilarating movie you’ll see all year — is an incision into a raw nerve. A thrilling, tense portrait of modern life, it’s Anderson’s most urgently relevant work yet.

It’s this generation’s answer to “Cry-Baby” and also distinctly Early.

Credit where credit is due, Sacrifice ultimately made me seriously consider the prospect of death while watching it. However, this mostly came from a desire for it all to end so we no longer had to keep enduring the inescapably vapid and shallow film unraveling before us.

What could’ve been a fun little sci-fi horror transforms into something that deflates any remaining tension and engagement in one fell swoop.

It’s a film where every detail of the craft is worth taking in even when the story starts to lose steam a bit towards the end.

Even as Fuze is not a great film, let alone one that will be remembered as a classic new take on the genre, it’s an endlessly watchable one.

The more we are taken on this journey through Grace’s early foray into adulthood, the more it earns its classic coming-of-age beats while also cutting into something deeper it can call its own.

An engaging enough dramatization of the true story of a man who became known for spending months hiding out in a Toys “R” Us to escape capture after robbing businesses by coming in through their roofs, Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” is also a regrettably safe film defined by missed opportunities that ultimately steals any deeper resonances it could find right out from under you.

Even as Dillon is the one with more to do and dialogue to speak, it’s an outstanding De Bankolé who holds the camera with such intensity that you don’t dare look away for even a second.

Though this film does gesture towards urgent issues, like misogyny being endemic to the modern tech industry, and is genuine in how it seeks to talk about them in a more crowd-pleasing package, it never amounts to being more than one note.

As long as Odenkirk’s grumpy sheriff has his coffee and mustache intact, he is the key to finding the perfect balance. No matter how many blows the film and he take, the joy in seeing him swing freely makes it all good, family fun.

Etzler wields the film’s urgent satire like a scalpel, precisely cutting away at all the lies we so easily find ourselves telling that mask the darker truths about who we are.

The characters may cut into the cinematic canvas with a knife, smother it with glue, and just generally wreck it, but they can’t destroy what Soderbergh has achieved.

The writing is frequently darkly playful, the direction measured and the performances all completely committed, ensuring the portrait of a family in crisis holds together just as they may all split apart.

Although “Wake Up Dead Man” is the “Knives Out” movie that’s most preoccupied with existential questions surrounding death, writer/director Rian Johnson’s third film in the series is also the one that’s most full of life.

Each empty bump in the night lands with a dull thud. Even a terrifying dog that becomes crucial to the film has a bark that’s worse than its bite.

It succeeds about half the time, making for a split decision where Sweeney and Christy both emerge as champions while the film itself can’t quite go the distance.

Even as Reinhart does solid work with the shaky material, her character remains adrift in a meandering psychological thriller that offers only a superficial look into her psyche.

While Magellan is still a haunting vision, the ghosts of a more impactful film you remember most are also the ones that can feel pushed to the margins of the frame.

Glander’s debut has vibes to spare, but he never coasts on them even as Billy coasts around the Florida landscapes. In the end, he delivers a full meal of a film that, like the giant hot dog we see in one shot in the middle, is a mesmerizing work of art worth taking a big bite out of. It will never be to all tastes, but to those who find themselves on its wavelength, it couldn’t be sweeter.

For every interview there is with a journalist offering more of this, there is one that just meanders with a notorious influencer that should have probably been cut.

As the focused film delicately yet decisively establishes, a job is still just a job and can take more from you than you may realize going into it, leaving you to one day look around to discover there is no ground beneath your feet.

Better Go Mad in the Wild is transcendent not because of big speeches or underlined ideas, but because of how it lets us sit back and watch two people, both flawed, funny and deeply human, struggle through another day.

It’s a film that almost entirely takes place in a handful of locations, but it feels vast in scope as the first-time filmmaker taps into deep existential questions about how you carry on after experiencing cruelty that nobody seems to care about.

Despite a strong performance from Nick Offerman, Sovereign is a film that’s inescapably slight and with little to say with its painfully relevant story of modern extremism.

Daniela Forever is afraid to ever dream big, leaving nothing more than a banal nightmare.

What makes Provaznik’s film most effective, beyond just the care it shows to its young characters and the way it keeps their humanity at the forefront, is the fact that its story, no matter how disquieting it gets, is also frighteningly ordinary.

As "M3GAN 2.0" drags on, it's impossible to shake the sense that Cooper's voice was the key to the original.

Pearce does have a good sense of how to direct actors and give the story something closer to genuine tension in how patient he can be in the focused dialogue scenes, though the story itself is too shaky for him to hold it together.

Telling the story of an obstetrician working in a rural town in the country of Georgia who also performs abortions outside work, it’s a quiet wail in the darkness of the night, hurtling along with all the force of a lightning bolt.

Every detail, be they the mirthful jokes or the melancholic meditations it taps into, comes together to create a vision that’s existentially resonant. It proves Boonbunchachoke is not just an exciting new voice who pays respect to the ghosts of cinema’s past, but one who finds distinct beauty as he brings them all to joyous life.

Kelly Reichardt’s heist movie The Mastermind is crackingly, urgently alive, an assured and magnificent addition to an already storied body of work.

Where a lesser film could fall into feeling like it is just hitting issues without exploring them, Young Mothers always grounds the bigger issues in real characters. It finds genuine emotion in capturing how this is not something abstract, but a reality with which they’ll have to contend.

There are plenty of silly recurring jokes and a collection of quirky characters, but it all exists to cover up just how empty the film itself is at its core.

It’s a feel-bad film like no other where you have to squint for even the smallest sliver of hope as we, along with the characters, get put through the wringer with little potential for salvation.

It’s a film with the power to fundamentally rewire your brain as it puts itself in conversation with the ghosts of cinema’s past.

Following a failed father and filmmaker attempting to connect with his daughters by turning the former family home into a set, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is a subtle yet sweeping tapestry of art, family and connection that takes the breath away.

That there is a genuinely clever current running through it about the cinematic history of sharks and the fear they hold in our imagination is just a little added bonus that offers a bit more to chew on.

Splitsville goes off the rails in increasingly entertaining fashion, with every single part offering something new and unpredictable. It’s a film of well-crafted jokes that are based in character and a willingness to more than go for broke when needed.

Even when the film can get tangled up in subplots that don’t quite have the same impact as all the moments we get with the main trio finding a new path forward, it still mostly holds together.

It’s a film in search of a character whose sole saving grace may be that it leads its audience to read Sapienza’s work for themselves — because the movie doesn’t do her or her legacy justice.

Serving as the anchor to a drama that otherwise frequently holds you at a distance, Melliti gives an understated yet riveting performance as a young woman finding her way in the world. The film lives and dies on her shoulders, making it all the more exciting to see her carry it with such nuance.

As Alpha’s family becomes increasingly isolated, the film’s ambition widens. Though the rhythms of this can take some getting used to, the resulting emotional payoff is more than worth your patience.

This is a full character that Dillane and Dickinson have built from the ground up, where the little details of how he reacts to things can tear right through when you least expect it.

Even as it’s not Ramsay’s best film, even a minor work from the filmmaker is still better than just about any other director. There remains a haunting power that she’s able to wield over her audience.

Despite its title, it’s unable or unwilling to surrender itself to being more than just another celebrity documentary.

Actors turning to directing is nothing new, but it’s unlikely you’ve seen a performer’s directorial debut as boldly confident and emotionally precise as Kristen Stewart’s The Chronology of Water.

Never could the story be described as a series of sketches haphazardly stitched together as many comedies can fall into being. It looks and feels like a drama that is coming apart at the seams as Robinson careens his way through it.

It’s the exact type of film that you could see a new generation of kids finding and causing them to fall in love with movies.

Until Dawn is more disappointing than deadly, leaving all the promise of the horror game behind for a jumble of horror-movie re-creations.

It’s just that while you can’t see any of the strings being used on the effects, you can see the story being manipulated. You may fall in love with Ochi all the same, but you can only wish you’d gone on a richer journey together.

For all it throws at you, it’s neither consistently funny nor scary enough to leave a mark.

It’s a simple yet effectively haunting work that’s well-shot, written, and acted across the board, especially for a first feature that takes on as much as this does.

Patterson’s latest film sees him painting on a broader canvas with such boundless care and unwavering confidence that it becomes beautiful to witness him spreading his wings as fully as he does here.

A captivating portrait of a man who can’t seem to remember who he is and may not ever be able to, Duke Johnson’s live-action feature debut is an enrapturing film that speaks in this language of half-remembered dreams before descending into something closer to a nightmare.

While Landon has made fun genre outings before with “Happy Death Day,” “Happy Death Day 2U,” and “Freaky,” Drop is, at its best, never more than just down the middle. At its worst, it’s an oddly clunky experience that strands its performers with little to work with.

It is her performance that ensures every tonal shift lands as it goes from playfully comedic to delightfully dark and back again. Despite how overstuffed and unwieldy it gets, seeing Kidman work her magic at every turn will never not be a joy to see.

There is a winning buddy comedy deep inside The Accountant 2, but it’s buried under so much tedious meandering that it never gets to fully see the light of day.

It all makes for a clever, measured, mirthful, and joyous film with the real potential to be a modern monster movie classic whose legs could easily see it sprinting into being a routine rewatch every single year.

Another Simple Favor is a sequel that never makes a case for its existence. It’s many of the same jokes that serve less as callbacks and more as reminders of how much more fun the first film was.

It won’t be remembered as the best Paddington film by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s okay, as that’s a high bar to clear. It still proves to be a trip worth writing home about, and when the traveling companions are as charming as these, it is one you’d happily take again.

Life and death is one big joke in The Monkey, with the sense that Perkins is manically cackling along while he never skimps on the craft to make it all hit brutal pay dirt.