Coleman Spilde

MaXXXine may be less intimate to its detriment, but it does such interesting things with its scale that the lack of closeness doesn’t matter. It’s small compared to most movies, but massive compared to West’s first two installments.

Gaga Chromatica Ball feels as all-consuming as being at the show yourself. It’s a mobilizing watch experience, one that will make you dance, sing, and sweat. It’s rare to have such proximity to a performer where she’s most in her element: on the stage.

The Garfield Movie fundamentally misunderstands the charm of Garfield.

Instead of weaving any thoughtful critique into the film’s subtext, Atlas grounds its assessment of artificial intelligence into a powder so fine that it’s near translucent.

It’s Stalter’s brazen conviction that really sells the film. Carried on the shoulders of Cora’s leopard print, faux fur coat, Cora Bora is a taught indie that straddles funny and forlorn with unexpected depth.

In Challengers, tennis is sex, and sex is tennis. The two things are never separate, and their concurrence is what makes the film such a fascinating, lithe creature.

Babes’ benevolent humor skims the great heights of a Nora Ephron film for a modern take on womanhood that feels close to classic on arrival.

I Don’t Understand You stays one step ahead of its audience at every turn, armed and ready with unexpected gags and memorably biting dialogue that repeatedly quell suspicions about whether or not it can pull off its big narrative swings.

Weir and Clark have crafted an absurdly stylish film that is never content to rest on its ambitious visual scope, burrowing under your skin for an eerie glimpse at how men in their youth form bonds with one another that can slowly spin out of control as time passes.

We Strangers constantly tries to hold onto something that was never there in the first place. It’s a movie that’s sort of about community, sort of about racial assimilation, and sort of about the lies we tell ourselves and others to wrestle with life’s mundanity.

A Nice Indian Boy is filled with enough novel truth to transcend its predictable elements, leaving viewers with a film that feels like a genuine love story, instead of an idealistic imitation.

Irish Wish is bland, woefully flat, and entirely devoid of laughs, and is a vacuum of charisma when its star isn’t in the frame.

Benson’s film is a crafty yet subtle inversion of a stale genre. It moves the viewer and gets out while it’s ahead, aiming for maximum emotional impact over any flashy, absurd striving.

Weaving confirms that she has the nerve to be a horror icon, delivering a wicked and gritty performance, and rising to the demands of a film where she must believably convey the nuances of fright and rage, without any words to do so.

Though Immaculate won’t raise any hairs, it should boost Sweeney’s career. She transcends all of the triteness, proving herself to be the megawatt actress with virtuoso potential that she’s already demonstrated herself to be.

Though Monkey Man is exasperating, Patel’s work shows heart, love, and promise—something that can’t be said about many other action films.

Liman’s work in Road House is downright captivating. The fights are oiled to perfection, cameras planted on dollies and tracking his characters’ every last move. The director is completely unafraid to experiment, using every last trick in his arsenal to make the crowd go absolutely wild.

The Greatest Love Story Never Told is a study of celebrity, and the drive that it takes to maintain it. It has no intention of humanizing its shining star, only reminding us of exactly why she has retained her wattage.

This Is Me…Now: A Love Story is gleefully messy, just like love so often is. Whether that frenetic chaos is intentional or not doesn’t matter when it feels so apt for the story.

It’s a satisfying return to the genre from Gluck, a promising feature-length script debut from Wolpert, and an intriguing first outing from Sweeney and Powell. The two stars have the stuff; it just needs some more refining before round two.

The Mean Girls movie-musical barely differentiates itself from its predecessor.

Haigh is otherworldly when it comes to capturing not only the feeling of falling in love but all of the fear of vulnerability that comes along with it.

By cleverly setting its timeline between the series’ first two installments, Saw X is both an invigorating thrill ride on par with the franchise’s best entries and a trenchant, timely charge against industrial systems set in place to keep humans sick.

The most surprising aspect of Rotting in the Sun isn’t how many hard dicks are knocking together at any one moment, but that it’s genuinely a blast despite all of that. It’s a sexy, searing satire of influencer culture and gay misanthropy, as well as a pseudo-murder mystery in one abrasive package (pun intended). This is the sleaziest fun you’ll have all year.

The movie has a tighter, more out-there scope than its contemporaries, but its ideas about aging and companionship are universal. Bolstered by a terrific core cast of older actors, Jules is a warm film that proves senior cinema doesn’t have to be the same fluff, repackaged several times over.

Juel Taylor crafts a tense, timely mystery that’s brimming with atmosphere, wildly smart, and packed with laughs at every single turn—an instant entry into the modern canon of incisive Black science fiction.

In Gerwig’s capable hands, even a movie about the one of most popular toys of all time eludes expectations at every turn. Barbie is her mainstream masterpiece, a dazzling dream that will touch the souls of everyone who sees it, even if they’ve never picked up a doll.