Clint Worthington

Wang, along with her stellar cast, manages to deftly weave droll, observational family comedy with deeply resonant examinations of the role of family and culture in our lives. It’s naturalistic without feeling downbeat, farcical without being goofy, and treats its cultural signposts with a sensitivity and honesty few filmmakers can achieve.

The Last Duel is a testament to male self-delusion and self-mythologizing, and the impact it has on the women around them.

Sarnoski’s debut is a scintillating tone poem about the inextricable links between love, creativity, and commerce, and what happens when the latter encroaches too much upon the former.

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.

David Lowery deconstructs the hero's journey with this sumptuous dark fantasy.

The Plague isn’t a horror movie per se, but it moves with the mood and music of one.

It’s undoubtedly one of the best films of the year, and of Anderson’s career.

Both here and in the real world, Tesla is more legend than man, and we can only ever really comprehend him through that warped lens. Almereyda understands this fundamental hurdle in the biopic formula, and leans into it with refreshing candor.

It’s a master class in discomfort.

Amid all the razor-thin editing, constantly shifting film stocks and styles, and purposefully opaque worldbuilding lies a curiously personal, universal story about the overwhelming noise of the world, and how impossible it is to deal with it.

Blade Runner 2049’s legacy will be estimated by both its ability to capture the spirit of the original and tell an enticing story in its own right. By virtually every measure, it succeeds — whether it’s Villeneuve’s careful, calculating directorial eye, Deakins’ sharp, distinct cinematography, or the film’s eye-popping visual design.

The glory of Hittman’s film is in finding those moments of beauty among the brutal silences, and the magnetic grace that can be found in a person’s most difficult days.

The Rider is nothing short of a masterpiece, an elegant work of cinematic poetry that elevates the everyday struggles of real people to the level of high art.

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.

The combo of Eilish’s stagecraft and Cameron’s filmmaking tools makes for a simply electrifying concert experience.

Even two viewings in, I’m struck by the density of the work itself, its feelings on death and aging and the past shifting with every line of dialogue or idiosyncratic image.

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

Tonally, McQueen and co-writer Courttia Newland’s screenplay flits capably between character study, issue film, and cop drama so seamlessly you’ll barely notice it’s changed gears, and at eighty minutes there’s not an ounce of fat on it.

Some people will think it’s a bizarre mess, others an unconventional masterwork. If there’s any justice in the world, the latter group will win out.

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.

Mangrove elevates the oft-creaky genre of the courtroom drama with striking, evocative compositions, stunning performances, and a real sense of place.

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.

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.

A revelatory burst of Black history suffused with the joy and struggle that made it possible.

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.

There’s just more under the hood than your typical imitators: the antic disposition of the idle rich, the way infinite money can absolve the rich of any accountability, and the ever-predatory nature of colonial tourism. Wrap it up in a package this wild, shocking, and perverse, and it makes for a delightful bloody mess that you’ll want to go back to.

More than a metatextual look at the struggles of indie filmmakers to gnaw at their own emotional wounds, Black Bear is an astounding showcase for its leads, and way more than it says on the wrapper.

With its painterly, brutal beauty and folk-horror underpinnings, it’s tempting to dismiss Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone as “Terrence Malick’s The VVitch.” But it’s so much more than that, a devastating yet highly-attuned exploration of the brutality of the world, and our yearning for identity and connection to protect us from nature’s capriciousness.