Chase Hutchinson

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.

Jackie Chan has some fun playing himself in Panda Plan, but this family action movie falls flat.

It’s a film whose magnificence sneaks up on you, delighting in plenty of clever silliness before hitting you with a succession of somber scenes that lay you flat.

It isn’t always a pretty picture, but it is a truthful one, proving to be a loving tribute to those lost.

It’s a compassionately constructed film — it never looks away from the agony before us, and the subject is of the utmost importance.

It is a film you won’t fall head over heels for, but one you can’t help loving many parts of. You’ll just have to do your best to fondly recall the good parts, namely Quan and Lynch, while hopefully forgetting all the rest.

When you arrive at the final bittersweet destination, swept up in its dizzying collage of history, emotion, time, and space yet floored by the vision you experienced, you’ll find yourself drawn to watch it back all over again.

A sporadically interesting though ultimately superficial exploration of online connection, video games, and modern alienation, writer-director Flora Lau’s Luz is a film in search of something greater than it is never quite able to grab hold of.

OBEX is a lo-fi stunner of a video game movie, merging a deeper understanding of the way games work with playful and creative sequences that also pack a deeply emotional punch.

Rabbit Trap finds some occasionally effective moments of atmospheric dread and sadness, only to leave those moments stranded.

Without all of the performers being completely at the top of their game, none of this would work, and it could grow tiresome rather quickly. Luckily, all of them give such refreshingly vulnerable, funny, and lived-in performances that make you more than happy to spend time with all of them.

Last Days is a film that is so contrived, superficial and misconceived, it does a disservice to the story with every choice it makes.

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley doesn’t do much of anything new with the documentary form, though still excavates plenty of interesting details within a familiar package.

More a forced, one-note farce than the sharp satire it’s trying to be, Atropia is almost impressive in how it manages to allude to so many complicated subjects surrounding U.S. militarism without authentically skewering or even poking at any of them.

It’s a deeply painful, necessary watch that confronts the way cruelty and repression leaves deep, lasting wounds over lifetimes. But some blunt narrative decisions and a rushed conclusion ultimately keep “All That’s Left of You” from greatness.

The result is a film that’s not just funny, skewering so much of the lazy yet still effective tropes of so much of true crime, but also a wake-up call for the genre.

Lacking anything resembling a remotely conventional narrative, it just lets the conversation flow naturally and thus, Peter Hujar’s Day lives and dies based on its performances. Luckily, both Whishaw and Hall are outstanding, disappearing completely into their conversing characters.

Thankfully, even when sudden exposition about past trauma lands clunkily, the rest of the film remains light on its feet and properly fun as we observe the couple being tormented by whatever is drawing their corporeal forms together.

A Western epic of breathtaking visual splendor and formidable lyrical cinematic poetry, it’s a work containing all the wondrous, devastating layers of an entire life, which it explores with a gentle grace without hiding from the agony that comes with it.

In a world that often rewards mediocrity where true artistic greatness is hard to come by, a work like Opus had the potential to be a defining movie of our current moment, but the film’s half-hearted swipes at celebrity culture are never sharp or incisive enough to get under the skin.

Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out in terms of where things are going, a new wrinkle will be introduced that delightfully sidesteps all of your expectations.

Rather than serve as a shallowly classical body swap story that provides a moral lesson about her growing to appreciate the life she had, the aftermath of this decision is more thematically complicated and engaging. It’s also sincere, tapping into anxieties about being not just liked or even loved, but truly seen.

It’s a cute premise that ultimately gets wrung so dry that you’re left waiting for it to finally stop. The majority of its jokes either land flat or are run into the ground. Even worse, it pulls on the heartstrings with such force and impatience that the audience manipulation is palpable in every painfully predictable scene.

It’s far from perfect and is at its brutal best in the final stretch, though it manages to get there in mostly one piece — even when its characters do not.

The film could be mistaken as cringe comedy, but it’s much more than that, and Sweeney never lets the film’s delightful twists overtake the emotion at the root of the movie.

The result is a film that’s not just incisive and compassionate, but fully attuned to the rhythms of this modern family.

An exercise in riveting restraint and painful poetry, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is an emotional knockout.

Even as Paulson is putting her all into the film and can firmly grab hold of you at some moments as her strong-willed matriarch comes undone, much like the dust that is floating around the confined setting, it all slips through her fingers.

Even with a more gleeful performance by Kate Hudson, Shell is merely a fine film that’s far too tame to completely pay off.

Seo excavates universal truths that transcend all generational and cultural divides. The many geographical, social and emotional pains these young people are grappling with are ones everyone faces down. As they find ways to fight this, coming to realize all the many ways they may not be so easily able to, there is something both genuinely heartfelt yet quietly haunting about it.

It’s a meandering experience defined by the broadest of narrative strokes, cardboard cutout characters and musical numbers that start fun before growing more oddly obligatory in nature.

It’s a movie about the forces that consume anything and everything to make them into something that is a part of a collective. The more it expands on this, the better it gets, sweeping you up in stunning visuals that swallow you whole.

This void of a movie has plenty of the right pieces to work with at hand, but continually arranges them in the most blunt, least interesting manner possible. It’s a film that bolds, underlines and then shouts at you what it’s about, though never authentically earns your emotional investment.

As Salles shows us, such a seismic loss spans many generations just as it does entire histories that are still being written. We must then always remember the people, their individual stories, and what it was that they endured so that others may never have to do so again.

Like the imposing, unadorned structures of brutalism (think: Boston City Hall, the blocky public housing of the Soviet Union, modern additions to any university campus), it can feel at times intentionally ugly or rudimentary. But it’s also a breathtaking work that’s simultaneously maximalist and minimalist – a searing movie that’s poetic on a formal, storytelling, and thematic level.

When Queer wanders in its own direction in the shaky latter half and captivating conclusion, it may lose some watchers in this descent into dreamlike despair. Still, it crafts a critical last paint stroke in its delicate portrait of desire.

Anora is Sean Baker's most searing and shattering film yet with a breakout performance from Mikey Madison.

It’s not only his best film yet, but it’s the work he’s been building up to over his entire career.

If Howard and Sweeney can make movies together like this all the time, may neither of them ever stop.

You can practically see the more complicated layers of the two men through the eyes of the performers alone, but they’re both left staring at a story that almost stubbornly refuses to excavate them.

For every moment where it seems like it’s getting somewhere more thoughtful, it will dance away into something else, lacking focus even as it remains faithful to the rather short source material.

It may not always come alive in the way Heller, or us, would entirely hope for, but one can still be glad “Nightbitch” exists, especially with Adams there to lead the way. In every facet of her performance, she paints a full portrait of a character herself figuring out who she now is.

In every piercing stare, you can see Terry’s determination and drive just as you do brief flashes of overwhelming despair at the depravity that surrounds him. It becomes surprisingly emotionally impactful at key moments, all of which Pierre plays perfectly. For all the restraint both actor and character embody, the joy of the film comes in how you see the righteous fury growing inside him. It's just waiting to burst free to set things right in a world gone awry.

Slingshot is more of a murky mystery where the big revelations don't hold up under scrutiny.

Andra Day delivers a commendable performance as matriarch Ebony Jackson, but the entire experience is neither scary enough as a horror film nor insightful enough as a drama to leave a mark.

This is no romanticized look back at a past film, but a deeply honest one. In every frame, both within the production of the film and outside of it, it feels like we're witnessing something profoundly personal that may soon slip through our fingers. It's worth cherishing every moment of.

It’s a breathtakingly melancholic film infused with mourning, journeying its way through subtly painful yet often poetic conversations about searching for something lost that may never be found. That only makes all the discoveries it makes that much more stunning to behold.

There is just enough magic that it discovers by the end to give it a closing spark, but there is a mighty long road to get there, ensuring it all just remains merely okay as opposed to comprehensively good.

All through the scattered experience, Page is a shining light. Every move he makes gives the film something greater that it is never able to grasp.

Hell Hole is a solidly gory, goofy little ride that cuts through any hiccups to get to the meat of a madcap indie monster movie.

There is much that could easily lose some people when they behold elements of its grand design, but for those willing to get on its wavelength, you’re in for a treat as beautiful to look at as it is unexpectedly haunting.

Jérémy Clapin’s Meanwhile on Earth is a mesmerizing work of science fiction with a magnificent performance by Megan Northman.

Oddity is another horror gem from writer-director Damian McCarthy with an enthralling performance by Carolyn Bracken.

My Spy: The Eternal City is an underwhelming action-comedy sequel that is best as a covert coming-of-age tale, but more frequently suffers as a grab-bag of tonality that abandons what helped My Spy succeed in the first place.

This is a film where the trappings of the procedural plot matter infinitely less than the moments that come when you glimpse the visually beautiful yet bleak pit into which Harker is going to fall.

Without going too far into detail, as the sudden swerve it makes is too delightful to dare give away, it takes a plunge into its own distinctly offbeat, frequently absurd, and ultimately melancholic vision.

If you’re willing to take the plunge, it’s a haunting experience. Whether you come up for air or retreat back into the woods, well, that’s another thing entirely.

It’s like a good theatrical production. It’s often charming and more than a little chaotic.

You get wrapped up in the whimsy of it all just before it all hits you like a truck, finding plenty of resonant emotional flashbacks that contextualize and deepen the experience just in time for the conclusion.

The film does pull out all the stops for the finale but, for nearly every moment it stands tall in this conclusion, it also stumbles and falls in the getting there.

While the more extreme moments of the film may capture the most attention on first watch and are remarkably well-executed, Potrykus deserves praise for how precisely he captures the depths of pain that come pouring out of people like the ash out of a firework.

Morrisa Maltz’s Jazzy is a gentle, impressionistic wonder that authentically captures growing up.

Robot Dreams is a beautifully animated look at life, friendship, and what it means to grow apart.

Along with his co-writer Bossi Baker, Erkman has made a distinctly eerie and sinister debut that succeeds at sneaking into the depths of your subconscious.

What makes The Damned so effective is how grounded it all is in the characters and their perception of the world.

I see dead people in this film, but their cause of death is simply boredom.

Though it assembles some of the right ingredients before laying them out before you, it never proceeds to arrange them in any particularly interesting or entertaining way.

It doesn’t deliver a knockout like some of Miike’s other films, but it still manages to beat all it has working against it into submission. One can only hope it manages to beat the odds again and find the audience it deserves.

Bionic is another sci-fi dud for Netflix, bringing nothing new to the genre and not much more to its action sequences.

It is a wholly uncompromising experience that dances with mirth and melancholy. Proving to be evocative in one moment and unrelentingly exhausting in the next, it’s as gorgeous to behold visually as it is hard to completely embrace thematically. And yet, if you abandon yourself to it by the end as one character says, you can catch glimpses of something spectacularly sublime in the vast journey that it takes on.

It’s incredibly effective and culminates in one of the best closing shots of any film to show at this year’s festival. Without ever once overplaying its hand, it ensures the smallest act of resistance and compassion hits like a train.

It's a remarkable, revolutionary work of art. As precisely focused and tightly constructed as it is expansive in its aspirations, it’s a rallying cry for the irreplaceable value of artistic expression in a world that will repress it at all costs.

It's a frequently fascinating and often moving film despite its many, often glaring, flaws.

Benjamin provides just the right balance of sincerity and snark to hold this dark action-comedy together. When combined with bloody good action choreography, the film mostly knocks any flaws aside.

It lacks the electricity of his past works but, as we come to see, the lifelessness of it all, is, in many regards, the point of the whole thing. It's about carrying on when nothing makes sense.

A lot is going on all at once, but little of it coheres into anything substantive, let alone actually memorable or meaningful.

Much as he’s done in the past, this film dissects the casual cruelty of love and relationships through a combination of the filmmaker’s distinct sense of dark humor that occasionally flirts with something closer to a more strange sociological horror.

Much like the city being built in the film, it’s all more interesting in theory than it ever is in actuality. Now that we will all have the chance to take it in for ourselves, the greatest revelation is that there just isn’t that much there to see.

While Schoenbrun’s film embraces its many influences, it is a distinct work that lingers in the very soul. It’s not just one of the most original American films of recent memory, but the best of the year.

From a talented cast in Léa Seydoux, Louis Garrel, Vincent Lindon, and Raphaël Quenard to an initial willingness to be ruthless in tearing apart the messy art of moviemaking, it could have been something truly great. nstead, just when you think this movie about making movies is starting to get somewhere interesting, it reveals itself to be only a sporadically funny satire with a surprising lack of teeth.

The performances are all giving the necessary punch even when the writing is not. It may frequently get lost in its own narrative woods, but Bana manages once again to bring it all back to humanity.

It wants you to buy into the heart and the humor without earning either.

There is much about it that remains imperfect, especially in terms of some of the broad character beats that it begins with, but it proves to be proper fun once it gets going.

[Bartholomew] gives us insights into her character more naturally than some of the occasionally forced dialogue, showing us glimpses of her increasingly fractured mind through an embodied performance. Even when the film doesn’t fully capture the spirit, the spell she casts gets awfully close.

It isn’t the worst shark movie out there, but that’s not saying much. By the time we get to the “big final confrontation,” it loses a handle on what it was going for.

Mars Express finds deeper truths that are as tragic as they are transcendent. This makes it a sci-fi tapestry not just worth getting lost in, but one that is deeply human as well. What a painful joy it is.

Even as it comes awfully close to overstaying its welcome just a bit, much like the spiders in the home of the characters, it very quickly grows on you.

Breathe is empty bluster and nothing more. It’s like a vacuum of where a movie should be, sucking all the air out of the room until nothing is left.

Though the ending is somewhat disappointing and less dynamic than everything that preceded it, this can’t take away all that the film still has going for it.

It is grimly funny at times, though no less terrifying because of it. Everything compliments itself as we observe the beautiful forest being made into a hunting ground where there is nowhere you are safe for long.

When watching The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed, the brilliant comedy from writer-director Joanna Arnow in which she also stars, both comedy and tragedy are expertly wielded in her hands.

There is no other horror film you’ll see this year as incessantly cruel and mean-spirited as The Coffee Table. This is both a compliment and a criticism, as, while the film is plenty committed to twisting the knife into its audience, it can also be rather repetitive before rushing to the finish.

Even when it can risk falling into being a little repetitive and dulling its impact, it will swerve in just the right way to keep you on your toes.

Not only does neither part of Rebel Moon work, but The Scargiver is such a downgrade that it could prove difficult for the franchise to bounce back for more.

Sting is a horror movie about a killer spider from outer space that somehow falls short of the fun potential of such a premise.

There are masterful works of horror that have proven less can be more. Despite some of its promise, Baghead is not one of them.

Where the original remains a work of art that is as entertaining as it is well-made, this remake proves to be nothing more than an empty and thunderously stupid approximation of an action film. Neither thrilling nor tense, it's simply dead on arrival.

Carter may remain quite lousy, but with Krumholtz at the helm, this film is anything but.

While the title promises fire, the only riddle remaining is where the adventure it was searching for ended up disappearing to.

Expansive yet focused, it is a work that is dense in terms of its ideas while also making room for more delicate emotional notes when you least expect it to.

Cuckoo will most certainly not be for everyone, but for those looking for a horror film that draws you in just as it defies any of your expectations for where it is supposed to go, it’s hard to think of a trip this year you’ll find that is as bold and bonkers as this one.

Sometimes, in film and in life, the greatest gifts are the ones you don’t expect yet were there all along. Omni Loop is this in beautiful, bittersweet action. As it loops back one more time, you’ll wish you could run it all back again.

A thriller that starts solidly enough and picks up steam before blowing the doors off with an outstanding ending, Magpie is one of those rare films that feels both fresh and alive while building off classic genre works of the past.

It is a film about journalistic ethics and, in its own way, the interpretation of images is grounded in [Dunst’s] outstanding performance. It isn’t an easy role to inhabit, but she does so perfectly.

Giving life to a horror vision that would not have nearly the same power and potency without her at the forefront of it, Sweeney has never been better than she is here. What a darkly beautiful yet brutal, bloody and bold film this is for her to wield.

The Fall Guy feels like an entire feature of scattered ideas that have been done better elsewhere.

Even at just over 90 minutes, it quickly runs out of steam and can only coast along.

While far more grim than one might expect, and miles away from being a straight crowd-pleaser, it proves Patel is a force to be reckoned with, not only as an action star but as someone with skill behind the camera.

Not only is director Benjamin Brewer’s Arcadian a good Nicolas Cage movie, but it’s one of the most fun cinematic experiences that he has been a part of in recent memory. It's a work of horror worth taking seriously even as things go gloriously off the rails.

Tim Blake Nelson and Chloë Kerwin give life to Asleep in My Palm, helping to smooth over the narrative rough spots when it count.

Just as credit must be given to Baker for how she so completely captures a moment in time and place, it is Nicholson who inhabits this world so naturally that you feel like you’re just peeking in on Janet’s life.

Amelia's Children is a horror film that has moments of unintentional humor, but is ultimately dull rather than some sort of clever dark comedy.

There is something occasionally charming about Outlaw Posse. Alas, charm can only get you so far when a film resembles more of a scattered work of cosplay than a robust cinematic work.

The Sweet East ends up saying quite a bit, though little leaves any real impression.

The result is a film that leaves a distinct impression, molding deeply personal elements and sweepingly profound ideas into something spectacular that sneaks up on you.

Stopmotion is a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted horror film with a great performance from Aisling Franciosi.

A magnificent work of minimalism, the film is about these minute moments just as it’s about the most existential parts of life.

The funniest element of what vaguely gestures toward dark comedy is how poorly written this story about writers is.

Trần Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things is a beautiful film that finds splendor in both its characters and their culinary creations.

Out of Darkness is an often jaw-dropping horror debut that arrives at a more substantive conclusion that makes everything more interesting in retrospect.

Skin Deep is the type of quietly ambitious film that never forgets about the personal while immersing us in vast ideas about the underpinnings of identity itself. It is a poetic and profound gem of an experience you wouldn't dare swap for anything else.

Much like the character he plays, Mikkelsen does a lot with very little, giving life to a barren world that is often defined by death and suffering. It is in his piercing stare that we are taken into the entire interior world of tumult he is trying to contain.

This supposed breakout strains to be edgy while remaining painfully inert. It initially makes for a sporadically fun game to play before revealing how little it has on its mind.

It takes a group that bumped up against the boundaries and instead just operates within them.

It certainly is a throwback, but it not only stops far short of being a comedy touchdown, it barely feels like it brings anything new to the field.

After pushing up against the confines of a conventional musical biopic, it does end up mostly operating within them, hitting all the notes you’d expect it to hit, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ring mostly true when it counts.

Through it all, Collias is so confident and assured that it feels like this is her fiftieth leading role instead of her first.

Unabashedly silly, yet effectively sincere, it is a film that grows on you.

Cinema as an art form is made infinitely richer via films like Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell. As we let it linger in our minds just as the camera does up until one final unbroken shot, you drift somewhere you've never been before and may never be again.

The Settlers' is a beautiful yet brutal look at historical violence and the lasting impact it has on all who come into contact with it.

Through it all, Scott gives one of the year’s best performances, creating life in small moments.

In the end, Bayona’s film takes us right into the heart of this story with clear-eyed focus and the necessary technical craft to make it work.

It gradually starts to shift into something more comprehensively striking and somber the longer you sit with it.

The Zone of Interest is a formally precise yet completely shattering cinematic intervention that emerges as one of the most monumental films ever made.

For being based on such a memorable story, it's incredible how forgettable The Boys in the Boat is. Clooney's direction is so empty and the writing so trite that it leaves the committed cast stranded out on the water with nowhere meaningful to go.

For all the ways a four-hour experience may seem daunting, every facet of the film is necessary to understand all of this world and the people that populate it.

As the film becomes about the conflict between a handful of key characters, it takes on the machinations and trappings of a psychological thriller surrounding a mystery of sorts that we already know the answer to.

Without talking about how, why, or in what manner, it is Acken who emerges as the darkly delightful standout of The Sacrifice Game.

Much like the scene from which it gets its name, where a photo from an old album is flipped to reveal those four words, turning things over and holding them up to the light is the necessary starting point to finding the truth.

It is very much an ensemble film, yet it also serves as one of the final demonstrations of how Cloud could command a scene like no one else. That alone makes Your Lucky Day a bittersweet gift, but the sharp film also has quite a lot else going on as well.

It is the vibrancy to the presentation that remains the standout though the performances are also good fun.

While it is not going to be among the very best of 2023 when it comes to its story, the craft that went into its presentation is unlike anything you’ll see this year or any other. It manages to burst through the surface of its frequently stormy narrative waters and grab hold of your heart just as it does your eyes.

Godzilla Minus One more than carves out its place among the best entries of this long-running series.

There is real passion in DeBose’s vocal performance as she tries to elevate the rote music. I just wish she were in a better movie.

It is a triumph in every sense of the word just as it is a humble portrait of life's small moments. The way Kaurismäki strikes this balance is breathtaking in its patience, proving how the most moving works of cinema can come from the simplest of places.

The pieces still come together to reveal a thorny portrait of how little a push it takes to create a villain.

While there is certainly still much that you feel like you want to know about Stallone at the end when it all neatly wraps up, Sly manages to be a documentary befitting of its subject with unexpected poignancy and just enough revelations to land some key punches before dancing away with a one-of-a-kind smile.

While Ridley gives her all to a more thoughtful and nuanced performance, The Marsh King's Daughter remains a film on a directionless journey to nowhere. Even with the commitment of its lead, it just gets lost in the woods before falling flat on its face.

There are moments where it feels like it could have become a more gleefully mean-spirited horror ride by really sinking its teeth into the story and actually biting down, but it remains hamstrung by the rating as well as a lack of creativity.

Foe, the beautifully shot yet scattered lo-fi sci-fi mystery thriller starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, is not a good movie. However, it is an interesting one.

It is one worth putting on your radar even as it magnificently goes all over the map into the cosmos the longer you get lost in it.

When creative directors are given the chance to take big swings and actually do so, the result can bring about nightmarish experiences unlike anything out there. The glimpses of this in V/H/S/85 serve as a reminder of the value of the series and the visions it can ultimately provide a home for.

All the emotional beats from start to finish are just completely unearned — it's as if every foundational aspect of a good horror story has been washed away, too.

For all the promising threads it pulls on surrounding a variety of faith traditions, The Exorcist: Believer doesn't earn your belief or your fear. Where Friedkin's classic will endure forever, this superficial sequel remains stuck in the past. It may try to speak all the same verses, but it doesn't add new life to any of them.

Is it a bit baggy and less amusingly chaotic than past entries? Absolutely. However, Bell's return as this character is still grimly fun when he's given room to let loose. Even as time isn't always on his side, he makes the most of nearly every moment.

There are moments of terror near the beginning, but it gets far too tangled up in a generic narrative that drowns out any sense of vision. Even with some striking visual moments and excellent sound design, it is all in service of regrettably very little.

The occasional moment of machine gun motorcycle jousting aside, it is a largely dull and dreary experience that never feels like it is ever anything more than a hollow mimicry of far better action works of the past.

It has a lot on its mind that it wants to tackle, but that leaves much of the explorations it is undertaking feeling half-baked. This doesn’t drag things down too much, as it is mostly able to keep light on its feet, but it does make things a bit wobbly.

Even when you then think it may have all settled down, the film twists the knife even further.

Across each twist in time and place that can rush together without warning, the grounding force to it all is Seydoux.

Rather than come away feeling like you’ve watched something truly daring or inventive, it all feels derivative. It is a film that is too mundane to even get mad at.

There is a wonderfully withering sense of humor in how American Fiction explores this as all of the conversations Monk begins to have around the book he wrote as a joke sees it spiraling out of his control.

If a film like this were to have anything less than perfection from its leads, it would likely fall to pieces. Thankfully, the story comes to life in the hands of two veteran performers at their very best.

For all the fun that the cast seems to be having with Dicks, it’s never as creative in execution as it needs to be. There are chuckles to be had, but the overall experience is defined by narrowness rather than naughtiness.

Even as Butterfield continues to try to bring something resembling gravitas towards the end of the film, it all just peters out. No matter how many quick cuts and bursts of sound it throws at you, everything it goes for falls flat on its back.

The cruelty at the core of this vivacious vampiric farce is blended up with sharp yet silly gallows humor, ensuring the grim absurdities Larraín gracefully teases out increasingly take flight even as he continually drags us into gruesome and gory depths.

The cast is sufficiently fun and the remote location a proper backdrop for the offbeat story to play out. It just never brings all its pieces together, revealing that the greatest paranormal force haunting the entire affair is the ghost of a better film.

While the film is rich in meticulous details from its crushing central performance to the delicate way it is all captured, any writing about it requires withholding to preserve the experience.

For all the classic horror stories it gestures at, Killer Book Club never is able to tell a memorable one of its own. No matter how many empty escalations and confrontations with the killer it makes its way through, the real clown show is the film itself.