Clint Worthington

It’s a film about outsiders, made by outsiders, that feels like outsider art, which is maybe the most exciting thing about it.

Lousy Carter, at its best, feels like a cruel joke on its own protagonist, the kind of guy so convinced of his own genius he doesn’t want to mess it up by actually putting himself out there.

At the ripe age of ninety, Shatner remains as alive as ever—his eyes wild with curiosity and humor, his honeyed voice barely worn down by years of voiceover and soliloquy. But he remains deeply aware of his own numbered days, which makes “You Can Call Me Bill” feel like something of a self-administered cinematic eulogy.

It’s frothy and insubstantial, but at least takes its central idea — life’s too short, start a polycule — seriously enough to be charming.

Rich Peppiatt’s feature debut spins the freewheeling cinematic language of Edgar Wright and Guy Ritchie into a fun, heartwarming, and suitably raunchy celebration of the Irish language.

Eclectic and unconventional in its presentation, Soundtrack’s density can throw you for a loop, especially if you don’t know the first thing about the geopolitics of the time and place. But it proves a healthy primer on the skeptical eye we should take towards world powers, and how even the art that’s meant to free us can be used against us.

It’s a brave, uncompromising debut.

Its essential components touch on the valuable insight that the white imagination often can’t wrap its head around what Black music is actually saying, and the ways it says it.

Amid Hammel’s acid-tongued approach and jaundiced eye, there’s a lot of intriguing potential; after all, cinema that imperfectly confronts is oftentimes more interesting than comfortable competence.

Donaldson has a tremendous command of pace and silence, laying the desperation of middle age (and how it looks to those whose lives are still ahead of them) bare with little more than a gesture or a closeup. It’s a killer debut for both her and Collias, and it will be exciting to see what both can do with the momentum a picture like this can provide.

It’s a little too “Garden State” in places, but Johnson smartly puts a grim enough layer on their dynamic to avoid turning the whole thing into a treacly rom-com.

Just don’t expect it to rewrite the genre playbook.

In its current shape, Rebel Moon isn’t just boring; it feels hopelessly compromised.

Wrestling, at its best, is a mythic art, an extension of the traditions of ancient Greece — with all the grand pageantry and theater that turns mere mortals into titans. Durkin knows this, and uses all that bigness to startling effect, transforming the tragedy of an American family into a bittersweet legend.

Besides the gags, there’s little to grasp onto, and try as it might to echo Barry Lyndon’s naturally-lit tableaus, Scott’s film lacks that film’s acid-dry wit.

It’s steamy and transgressive in a straightforward way, an in-your-face bacchanal of sex and violence of the kind Fennell so delights in depicting. But as the film barrels toward its bonkers but highly predictable twist, the shine on Saltburn begins to fade.

If someone decides they don’t like you, there’s nothing you can do about it. If enough people share that opinion, they can absolutely destroy you. Combine that with an always-fantastic Cage, thoughtful and buffoonish in every gesture and tic, and it makes for a delightfully mixed bag.

One wonders whether Fincher sees something of himself in The Killer — a man obsessed with process and precision, constantly tamping down the emotionality that he fears might violate the perfectionism he’s sought his whole career. In this way, it’s a perfect match of director to material, with a phalanx of great artists at the height of their powers aiding him in that mission.

Even amid its flaws — Scorsese’s sprawling focus leaving some characters in the dust, most of them the very indigenous Americans this film purports to speak for — Killers of the Flower Moon remains a staggering work of cinema.

The director of Dogtooth and The Lobster has been gradually making his way towards something this vivid and vibrant his whole career, inching toward his audience with one absurdist feature after another.

It’s a master class in discomfort.

It’s difficult to overstate how badly Foe fumbles its heady premise and firecracker cast, a film so dependent on its biggest secret that it’s both predictable and hard to grasp by the time the trigger is finally pulled.

If this film is Miyazaki’s true bow, it’s a magnificent final flourish that folds together many of the thematic and aesthetic threads he’s explored through his career: man’s relationship to nature, the majesty of flight, the twin pulls of love and loss. It’s stunning and inscrutable and measures among the best of his works.

As pretty as The Creator looks, and however well-considered its world may be, it feels like all sizzle and no steak. AI is an extremely prevalent issue facing us in the real world, but Edwards seems disinterested in exploring beyond its aesthetic surface (e.g. borrowing real people’s voices and likenesses in perpetuity) in favor of a warmed-over critique of American imperialism in the global East.

As a primer for one of the funniest, most emotionally satisfying thumbs in the eye to the super-rich in recent memory, Dumb Money is a pretty good time. That said, it leaves out crucial details and has little time to dig deeper into its cast of characters, making it feel like a cardboard glimpse into a complicated blip in the rigged game of American finance.

Like the superhero stories of the ’90s and 2000s that clearly inspired it, Blue Beetle feels like the scrappy origin story we need to get through in order to explore better things in the more exciting sequel. Hopefully, Gunn and Safran see fit to keep Jaime Reyes around for their version of the DCEU, and toy with the true potential of its hero.

Admittedly, big stretches of Demeter are a bit overwritten and unnecessary; there’s no real need for a film like this to exist, especially considering we know how it’ll all turn out. But as long as it’s here, it might as well be celebrated for what it is: lean, effective nautical horror of a type we don’t often get anymore. Seaside scares are a rare thing these days, especially when Øvredal packs this much atmosphere and characterization into such a wafer-thin premise.

I still don’t know whether all (or even most) of Asteroid City’s ideas coalesce, so scattershot is the film’s pacing and plotting. But from moment to moment, it charms and moves in ways only Anderson can deliver.