David Fear

There’s a genuine sense of admiration for these two middle-aged characters emanating from behind the camera, and you get the feeling that Walker-Silverman, a young filmmaker with a handful of shorts to his name, isn’t that interested in too-cool-for-film-school showboating.

It’s a moving-picturebook, drifting from hazy barrooms to muddy-track brawls to working-class homes and haunts, and with an eye on the cumulative effect of so much vintage cool on display.

Come for the snickering, it seems to say. Stay for the unexpected lump in your throat.

The primary goal of this entry is to establish a new team of heroes. The secondary aim is to stop what’s undeniably been a downward spiral. It succeeds in that respect at the very least. Don’t call it a return to form so much as a much-needed, extremely welcome return to a winning formula.

The natural world gives us the resources to live. It also gives us viruses. And while some characters seek to chart aspects of nature and others wish to pay loving tribute (and offer sacrifices) to it, the most resonant notion from Earth‘s characters is that nature is a living, breathing, and undeniably aggressive entity. How Wheatley translates this notion into a bounty of Pagan paranoia is what makes the film undeniably his.

It’s moments of blunt, borderline-brutal honesty coming directly from the source that make this whole endeavor such a necessary counterpoint to all of the mythology that’s sprung up around Love ... [But t]here are a number of questionable choices that the doc makes in terms of aesthetics.

The Brink, Alison Klayman’s insightful and often unnerving look at one of the most divisive figures in recent memory, isn’t a particularly fun or easy watch.

As a horror movie, Talk is cheap thrills, done cleverly and with an abundance of voltage. As a proof-of-concept for what these gents can do, given some time and a couple extra gallons of Karo syrup, this is a hell of an introduction. Hands down.

It’s Pixar’s E.T., played out in reverse.

Please welcome to the stage Anne Kendrick, Genre Auteur!

And while the action-set pieces and stand-offs and Raya–ders of the Lost Ark sequences are indeed thrilling, it’s the buddy-comedy aspect that actually makes the movie come alive.

It’s a memory piece, evoking a specific time, place, and political crisis in a way that is indelibly, achingly personal.

For a long stretch, Italian Studies turns this trip down memory-loss lane into a low-wattage livewire, an unpredictable stroll into the unknown. Its hero will slowly, eventually come back around to remembering her life before the reset. The movie itself, however, is unforgettable from the jump.

Imagine a feature-length episode of Succession that treated the final season’s villain, GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson, as its main character and then multiplied him by four, and you’d have something like Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong‘s caustic, corrosive satire of Silicon Valley mega-royalty run amuck.

You can’t accuse Day One of playing its safe by regurgitating the same ol’ shocks and ahhs. And while it may not fully satisfy that primal urge that drives us to summer movies in the first place, it’s still breathes fresh air into a series in danger of becoming rote and stale.

Blue Jean manages to take an ancient anti-LGBTQ+ law and use it to foster a story of personal liberation. But it also knows that when your basic rights are threatened, no matter who you are or how you live or who you love, everything most assuredly is political.

It’s a clever mash-up conceit that director/co-writer Christopher Landon and his cast milk for all its worth, none more so than the two leads.

Sound of Metal understands the importance of immersing you in this brave new noiseless world and giving you a compelling Virgil to guide you through it, but its real strength may simply be its powers of observation.

It may be a bit of a stretch to call what Brügger delivers here a documentary, exactly — it’s a “true” crime story with an emphasis on the quotes.

Like a particularly concise, purposefully elliptical short story, The Woman in the Yard quickly milks this beguiling, WTF-is-going-on-here? scenario for all the dread it’s worth, while not necessarily being in a hurry to fill folks in on the full 411 regarding this sticky situation.

It’s best to look at All That Heaven Allowed less as a Rock doc and more as a chronicle of Hollywood’s system of subterfuge and suggestion, all built around protecting and/or punishing those who preferred the company of their own sex.

Any argument that one doesn’t need a new spin on the Douglas-Turner black comedy is rendered more or less moot by the way [McNamara] sets up Cumberbatch and Colman with such gleefully profane, razor-sharp barbs.

We’re sure this will inevitably be sequeled into oblivion. For now, however, it’s a welcome transfusion of fresh blood into a genre that could definitely use it.

Some might qualify If I Had Legs I’d Kick You as a comedy, albeit one brimming with barely contained rage, while others might describe as a horror movie. Either way, it’s the kind of film that makes you want to call your own mother and apologize.

No Way Home is a perfectly fine superhero movie.

Cyrano may sometimes feels like its struggling to find a way to say something new about a beloved, centuries-old work of art, one that’s been updated and deconstructed and reconstructed ad infinitum. Once the sex-symbol movie star starts whispering in its ear what to say, however, and how to act, and why it’s the well-spoken sadness of it all that makes it so swoonworthy — those are the moments that make this musical positively sing.

For those of us who’ve been enthralled by what Collins has done on the periphery, the chance to see him occupy center stage — and in something so suited to his skill set — is enough to make this worthwhile. But the way in which he keeps both the rest of the cast and the story itself in the pocket without making it feel like a showreel, even down to his final here’s-the-big-payoff sequence, is what makes this special.

Kicking off with a barrage of kitschy imagery and an abundance of irony and ecstasy, Devo lets you know that it’s the definitive portrait of an art project by mimicking its subject’s Dada-meets-deadpan-humor aesthetic.

You may also feel so exhilarated watching an insanely creative voice in animation flex his storytelling muscles that you don’t realize the huge lump in your throat.

We may never see the likes of something like this again, even as climate change makes the impetus behind Biosphere 2 that much more urgent. But if Spaceship Earth proves nothing else, it left behind some one hell of a stranger-than fiction yarn.

It’s not a stretch to say that Linda Hamilton is the main reason you should rush out to see Terminator: Dark Fate posthaste.

Both a great excuse to stage brutal fight scenes and relieve a more-ripped-than-usual Jake Gyllenhaal of his shirt, this modern take on yesteryear’s guilty pleasure is twice as goofy, three times as violent and a solid tribute to both its predecessor and the art of bodily harm.

You know you’re in the hands of professionals here — Noujaim was a director or co-director on such solid nonfiction works as "Startup.com" (2001), "Control Room" (2004), and "The Square" (2013) — even if the proceedings sometimes come off like Muckraking Moviemaking 101.

Paddington in Peru sticks to its franchise’s overarching script, delivering exactly the kind of affection, silliness and gentle heartstring-plucking you now expect from the series.

Guggenheim and his subject also want to show what it’s like to be Michael J. Fox right now, and that’s really where this documentary, which premiered at Sundance today, turns into something else entirely — something beyond praise or tragedy.

Sex, drugs, profanity, penises, puke, poop, the use of “party” as a verb — Joy Ride embraces these reliable gross-out-comedy standbys with a gleeful sense of gusto. It’s also out to prove that you can make something novel without reducing it to being a novelty.

Alpha is not a perfect movie, and it is occasionally a way-too-pumped-up pulpy one relying on big-budget bulk. But it is most certainly a tonic in an age when every blockbuster film feels like part of some endless multiverse-cum-marketing scheme.

Winter’s impressive doc admittedly works better as a preaching-to-the-choir portrait than a work of advocacy or conversion. But it is one hell of chronicle of Frank the Walking Contradiction: He was a rock star and a symphonic composer.

This eerie riff on The Shining feels as if the Irish writer-director has a better grasp on both the catch-and-release tension that the genre needs and the balancing of sharp shocks and slow-simmering dread.

The overall lack of subtlety suits the age Aster is taking to task, though it also makes everything feel slightly wobbly on its feet. The viewpoint is both-sides misanthropy. Jonathan Swift has some notes.

Law and Coon aren’t the only reason to see Durkin’s marital nightmare of a movie, but they are the main reason to see it, and both of them give these characters so much shared history communicated without saying a word.

By the time these two comedians are served dessert, they’re bickering over Coogan’s level of fame regarding a fake eulogy and trading celebrity impersonations. Fourth verse, same as the first. Only the scenery has changed.

It’s bone-chilling romantic cringe-comedy, in the form of a public nightmare. And for a split second, a movie so dedicated to getting under horror fans’ skin truly succeeds in making you want to crawl out of yours.

As with Landon’s equally ludicrous Happy Death Day 2U (2019), the fun comes from seeing exactly how deftly and stylishly the director can pull these things off; it’s like watching a magician successfully perform a trick that you know isn’t a real illusion so much as an act of misdirection, extreme co-ordination and a specific set of well-honed skills.

It’s all admittedly funny and nerve-jangling, with the comedians mugging and the pressure mounting and the chances of Michaels’ dream of a show “made for the generation who grew up on TV, by the generation who grew up on TV” actually airing slipping away minute by ticked-off minute.

You can tell there’s a voice and vision behind Selah and the Spades, one that’s likely to come into its own after some seasoning. It might seem like faint praise to throw a “watch this space” sign on top of what is indeed a more-than-impressive first movie.

And suddenly, amid the claustrophobic compositions and shadowy hallways and tick-tick-tick of inevitable sickness, Sea Fever goes from being a monster movie to an eerily timed example of pandemic horror. Coming to a TV screen in a near you in the middle of a quarantine, this exercise in it-came-from-below suddenly takes on a whole other level of resonance.

Australian filmmaker Grant Sputore, making his directorial debut, has a knack for keeping things moving, whether its within the claustrophobic walls of the “safe” house or, briefly, in the evocative scorched-earth landscape above ground.

There is a sense that it could have gone farther out and pushed even more boundaries, especially before tying everything back up with a “happy” ending that feels mostly but not quite completely earned. But there’s still a bark and a bite here in the way that its allowing a specific strain of too-often stifled female rage to really bloom.

The seeds of our destruction have already been planted by us; they simply need a little water and and sunlight to grow. And the more that Leave the World Behind pokes at that notion, the more you fear that this isn’t a thriller. It could be a documentary with movie stars.

Even as the story builds to a final mano a mano, the movie is less invested in a win-or-lose outcome than in taking you along for the ride.

As something that seeks to confuse and delight you in equal measures, this is seven courses of absurdity, served with a side of tongue in cheek from a trio who know what they’re doing, even if you’re not always sure what that is.

Erupcja knows what’s it’s working with, and how to tap into something bigger than itself.

The interactions between the people may seem small in comparison to the wide-open landscapes and rolling hills. In the hands of everyone involved with this moving drama, however, they echo long and loudly nonetheless.

What makes this film unmissable, however, is the fact that we get Marianne’s story more or less in full as well. It’s a fleshing out of someone who was more than just a muse, more than just an object of affection for a notorious ladies’ man, a famous singer and an infamous bastard.

The fact that Shyamalan seems to be working out some issues onscreen doesn’t stop him from crafting a thriller, and one which goes about its job with steady determination in Cabin’s cryptic, superior first half.

You can be successfully creative or you can end taking a much more crooked path. As The Painter and the Thief so ably demonstrates, your life is worthy or compassion and consideration regardless.

It’s a movie that stumbles every so often, overplays its hand numerous time, and relies on an oddball true-story premise and 1000-watt star power to pave over some of the rougher spots. It would also give you its coat if you needed it without asking, and the big takeaway from Roofman, we’d argue, is its emphasis not on sympathy for the “devil” here but a palpable sense of empathy for everyone involved. Given the scarcity of this particular quality today, that’s no small feat.

What truly makes this a movie worth searching out is the way writer-director Bernardo Britto’s sideways take on carpe diem sets the stage for its lead to rage, and somehow never lets the high-concept premise eclipse the performance at the center of it.

You do not need a documentary to prove that the tour guide of No Reservations and Parts Unknown contained multitudes. Any viewer could see him mature and mellow out, or at the very least become more meditative, as seasons progressed. But Roadrunner, Neville’s portrait of the late, beloved Bourdain, would like to give those other sides a bit more screen time.

No one would blame you if you prefer your gothic-lit tales straight with no meta-chaser. Yet, largely thanks to Pugh, Leilo’s semi-experimental attempt at blending an old-fashioned melodrama with Media Studies 101 commentary never makes you feel like you’re watching something created in a dorm-session smokeout.

It’s a quietly radical take on the art of finding one’s voice, playing out both in front of and behind the lens.

Pine is the secret sauce that keeps this thing buoyant and fleet-footed, even when the plot turns start piling up. He’s the guy at the center of this ensemble who’s shining but not eclipsing everybody. More than the VFX and the grand-gesture spectacle, he’s the one making this movie fun. Like vintage summer-blockbuster kind of fun.

Yet you have to applaud how boldly this fifth entry tries to flip the bird to the entire rinse-repeat-regurgitate idea of trapping film series in amber, while also delivering you the thrill of the familiar and those dopamine bumps that come with the pang of recognition.

What Cooper has given audiences here is way more compelling than a live-action greatest-hits compilation.

A horror movie that hides its monsters in plain sight, Soft & Quiet is meant to disquiet you from the very beginning, forcing you to ride shotgun with these “jus’ folks” who mix matchmaking suggestions for single members with toxic comments about immigrants and minorities.

What felt like an unusual metaphor for how parenting taps into an inherent need to nurture suddenly swerves into Grimms’ fairy-tale territory. It’s the sweetest, most touching waking nightmare you’ve ever experienced.

It’s really a comedic road movie at heart, with as much yuks over a mismatched pair trying to get along as yucks involving the goopy innards of cosmic mastodons. Finally, the Predator cinematic-universe remake of Midnight Run that no one knew they, er, needed?

You will not necessarily be enlightened, empowered, or enthralled by all of Gladiator II. But you will almost assuredly be entertained.

Corpus Christi doesn’t skimp on the humanity; the film earns the slow smiles it brings to your face.

If this is Ferrara hashing through his issues, may his troubled soul never be totally purged.

It’s neither del Toro’s best nor his worst, but this feels like the movie he was born to make, and the one he would have died trying to get done.

This may be the first film in which mutual attraction is commodified by cold, hard business talk.

At its best, The Batman is a helluva tough-guy yarn — an entertaining pulp-fiction epic under the guise of sure-thing blockbuster. At its worst, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a mixtape.

There’s a lived experience pulsing at the center of this slice-of-life tale, which helps guide it over some of the more generic elements and weaker patches, especially when things threaten to detour directly into poverty-porn and/or Amerindie miserablism territory.

Zodiac Killer Project starts as an autopsy of a fail, and ends up dismantling the subgenre via a sort of cinematic jujitsu. You leave happy that Shackleton’s project ended up crashing and burning.

It was a singular experience, impossible to replicate and uninterested in being definitive on anything, much the gent at the center of it all.

The War Is Never Over is as much about trauma and processing and empowerment — the real kind, not the bumper-sticker-slogan kind — as it about music, or a musician, or a cultural moment. What it leaves out of Lydia’s history is substituted by what it adds to understanding her story.

There’s a constant feeling that a lot of hands were wrestling for the steering wheel of this biopic behind the scenes, with various parties pushing the story this way and that, even with the united goal of collectively crafting the greatest love letter of all. Yet Ackie just keeps her eyes on — and her energy directed toward — delivering a screen-worthy Whitney, scaling the heights and earning her Hall of Fame status.

Come for the uplift of an underdog sports story centered around the guys who made you realize a shoe isn’t just a shoe, superstar foot or not. Stay for the film that Davis gives you when, standing unguarded, she’s suddenly passed the ball, effortlessly rolls it off her fingertips, and gets nothing but net.

Part horror movie and part sideways swipe at cancel culture and social pariahdom, Dream Scenario is the sort of high-concept, surreal comedy that Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Charlie Kaufman used to do on the regular — think Eternal Nicshine of the Spotless Cage.

Gillespie and his movie-star cast aren’t trying to short squeeze the topic for statuettes. They’re just laying out what happened, why it happened, and why it mattered in the most audience-friendly manner imaginable, then take the whole thing to the moon. And it’s the lack of pandering in the way that they do it while also drawing clear battle lines that make it a surprisingly safe bet. We like the stock here.

The movie nearly killed him (Gilliam). Yet the victory isn’t just that he finished it, but that he’s fashioned something so magnificent in its messiness. He should be proud as well as relieved. The impossible dream is dead. But long live The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

Should you want to spend 90 minutes watching Nazis get shot, stabbed, gutted, blown up, run over, and beaten with a variety of inanimate objects, in the most violent and gory manner possible, this war movie is the answer to your pulp-cinema prayers.

She Said doesn’t pretend that wrongs have been righted once and for all. It just wants to pay tribute to two people stood up to a Goliath and took him down not with one good shot but a million tiny cuts and a lot of hard work.

Wicked may take great pains to recreate the musty Britain of the 1920s, but don’t be fooled by the cloche hats and frilly frocks. The female rage that powers every frame of this comedy didn’t go away when that decade ended. It’s regrettably more recognizable and still more righteous today one century later.

[Eichner] wanted to make a gay rom-com. It isn’t a huge leap, however, to say that he’s both entertaining a mass audience and leaving his own mark on a long, storied history of fighting to be seen and heard — to tell stories that have been dismissed or neglected or suppressed. Mission accomplished.

If this pitch-black comedy seems perilously close to falling apart under the weight of its creator’s ambitions and near-camp aesthetic (a common problem with even the best of Dupieux’s work), it also comes at a type of delusional alpha dudes in the most gleefully caustic of ways.

While the movie also offers a much-needed context of the “Satanic panic” of the ’80s and ’90s — backwards messages and heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons, oh my! — as well as vintage afternoon-TV handwringing and glimpses of organizational in-fighting, it’s these scenes of folks engaging in real political showdowns by any ridiculous means necessary that give the movie its sense of currency.

Chase has delivered something that walks the tightrope between social melodrama and fan service, and that sometimes teeters on the edge of falling. But he has also given us the foundation for the moment when a man from New Jersey will wake up one morning and get himself a gun.

War Game concentrates a lot on the “how to” part. But it also says a lot about how eerily easy and how horrifyingly relatable the “why” of it all is.

It’s all a very by-the-books music biopic, which the sole exception of which species is singing about manufacturing miracles and angels contemplating his fate.

The movie may want you to see the best of us in the dingiest of places. But you’re as delusional as Mikey Saber if you think it will avert its eyes from showing us the worst of us as well.

It’s a surprisingly good sports movie that wants little more than to be a surprisingly good sports movie, one that knows it’s working with creaky triumph-of-the-underdog clichés but is willing to do a full-court press to sell them.

What gives this pulpy creation such a savory flavor and lasting bite isn’t just the puncturing of romantic clichés cemented 24 frames per second over decades, or the low-hanging-fruit pokes at society’s reliance on technology taken to extremes. It’s the way it makes you suddenly start questioning the whole notion of finding your soulmate if, given the opportunity, you can just purchase them and pay on installment.

There’s a whole other movie happening within Good Fortune‘s attempt to Aesop-fable its way to some moral about a modest life being a more fulfilling one even if you’re forced to live in your car. And when Reeves gives you a glimpse of that story, in which someone truly learns that humanity is both painful and blissful in equal measures, and anchors it all with a truly divine turn, well — you feel fortunate that get to witness that.

There are many elaborate lessons on life and how to live it in Soul, though its best may ironically be its simplest: Look. Listen. Learn. Enjoy. You may not turn the film off with an answer to what a soul is. But you may find yourself wondering if you’re forgetting to occasionally connect with your own.

Fans have been patiently waiting for the screen version of Wicked for decades now, and it’s safe to say that their faith will be rewarded. It’s also obvious that as much as this is still a tale of two witches, each blessed with equally beautiful voices, there’s a very clear standout here that’s lifting this occasionally leaden jazz-hands-extravaganza up to higher ground.