Clint Worthington

With High Flying Bird, Soderbergh may well have crafted the most direct distillation of his own philosophy of filmmaking to date: idiosyncratic, confident, and endlessly disruptive.

Miroirs No. 3 feels positively Hitchcockian, a recurring preoccupation of Petzold’s oeuvre; shades of “Vertigo” abound as characters attempt to replace what’s missing in their lives with doppelgangers willing to fill that role.

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

It’s movies like these that prove that cinema still has the capacity to surprise, even in criminally goofy comedies like this.

Undoubtedly, Barbarian will raise comparisons to last year’s Malignant, a similarly wild-as-hell horror flick that zigs and zags down all manner of crazy roads. And to be sure, there’s a similarly perverse glee to be found here, as Cregger toys with your expectations before jumping you to another element of his insane narrative.

Jordan Peele's made a thrilling, exciting blockbuster that also touches on the nature of spectacle, and the ways artists get chewed up and spat out (in some cases, literally) by their work.

While these are major hurdles to the film holding together as a consistent exploration of its subjects, On Body and Soul is still an intriguing, cerebral comeback for Enyedi.

At its heart, it’s an assured tale of queer resistance, blended with the supernatural rhythms of the folktale, and it feels suitably transgressive for its gender-nonconforming characters. It’s sweet, and affirming, and hopefully opens a few people’s eyes (and hearts).

You won’t see another music biopic quite like “Better Man,” regardless of your level of familiarity with its subject. There’s a surfeit of charm here that helps sell the nonsensical gimmick.

You may not come away feeling like you know much about Wheatle himself, but you get to spend an hour in his shoes.

It’s impressive what Jeunet is able to pull off with a shoestring budget, but the ideas and characters underpinning his visual imagination leave a lot to be desired.

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.

With "Confessions of a Good Samaritan," Lane is in her most confessional mode yet, finally turning the camera fully on herself.

Berger’s take on All Quiet on the Western Front is a searing indictment of the futility of war, one that knows the way conflict erodes the human soul and the machinery that keeps that erosion moving. Its battle scenes are as impressively staged as they are visceral to watch, despite a few hinky ropes of CGI here and there.

Despite Sorkin’s significant shortcomings as a director, The Trial of the Chicago 7 hums along mightily on the strength of its god-tier ensemble and whip-smart script. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, all of them capably handling Sorkin’s overlapping, erudite dialogue with aplomb, and many of the big moments land with a splash.

It’s a film whose tranquility and humility sometimes work against it, even in those moments where it overcorrects with didacticism.

Zola‘s not without its faults. The script is a little too loosy-goosy for its own good, and the last 10-15 minutes are admittedly a lackluster resolution to the high-tension hijinks on display. But until that point, it’s downright thrilling to watch a film breeze through its grimly funny energy with such exuberant confidence, especially with such a new, vibrant voice in Paige.

Think of Timmy Failure like a food truck: the best ones do one or two things really well, and commit to just doing those things. With McCarthy et al., Timmy Failure‘s virtues are an expertly-delivered dry wit that works for kids and adults alike, and a series of adorable performances, from Fegley and the rest of the kids to the all-too-game adults.

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.

The Love That Remains plays out with remarkable intuition and sensitivity about its troubled characters, ones who try to love and reckon with hard feelings when those endeavors don’t work out, and you have to sift through the rubble to find meaning.

There’s a lot to sink your teeth into with Emily the Criminal, between its strong Plaza turn and a pitch-black moral core that refreshingly commits to the bit. But outside of those devilish comforts, a lot of Ford’s debut is frustratingly thin, more concerned with giving Plaza plenty of opportunities to bore through the screen with her eyes in extreme close-up than in really breaking down her psychology and the perverse romance at its center.

Gyllenhaal gives one of the most staggering performances of her career, and Colangelo’s deft command of tone keeps the lengths to which Lisa will go to stay close to Jimmy’s perceived greatness close to the chest right up to the end.

If you’re looking for a lean-and-mean action picture where Chris Hemsworth absolutely bodies dozens of disposable henchmen, Extraction might fit the bill, at least for its first hour.

Get Me Roger Stone offers its audience an unblinking, if disappointingly straightforward, look at the infamous operator.

It’s a gripping, fascinating watch, an elegantly assembled portrait of the end result of influencer culture and late-stage capitalism – the blind leading the blind into an empty, insubstantial image of success and luxury that turns out to be nothing but smoke.

Theron’s a perfect avatar for Cody’s irrepressible empathy for her subjects, wounded and loving in equal measure, and she’s hardly been more watchable.

Darkest Hour spends so much time as an actor’s showcase for Oldman that it oftentimes forgets to remind the audience of the ongoing war around him. However, despite the film’s occasionally languid pace, Wright imbues enough urgency through Oldman to maintain an undercurrent of tension throughout the film’s two-hour runtime.

Garland boldly asks us to take a step back, to forget about notions of who is right and who is wrong and simply focus on the horrors of what might happen if this happened at all. If you surrender to its abstractions, it proves a disquieting, terrifying watch.