Derek Smith

Ghost Elephants shows that Werner Herzog is fiercely determined to explore new frontiers while they still exist and capture the poetic phenomena of nature and the unshakeable dreams it continues to instill in mankind.

Hope and fear are inextricably bound in Akinola Davies Jr.’s semi-autobiographical film.

The documentary ultimately reveals itself as a paean to female strength and resistance.

If the film’s breathless pacing and rapid-fire jokes run out of steam just a tad as SpongeBob’s stay in the underworld extends, Search for SquarePants is still charming, spirited, and ludicrous enough to prove that it’s not quite time to tell this series to walk the plank.

Zootopia 2 provides plenty of food for thought for its young audience, making a more expansive statement on the dangers of intolerance than the first film, and without sacrificing any of its charm, humor, or visual ingenuity along the way.

The film meticulously yet concisely probes how, why, and when our understanding of the greenhouse effect went from a scientific certainty to it being up for debate.

A story of hazy memories that’s also a city symphony, Dreams elegantly captures the disorienting rush of first love and the frustrations and anguish that stem from romantic fantasies colliding with reality.

One small, shrewd decision after another allows Preparation for the Next Life to sustain its naturalism to the end.

The film is a bit too muddled to bring its main character fully into focus, despite Hélène Vincent’s best efforts to do so.

The Ballad of Wallis Island plays both its drama and comedy in decidedly minor keys, straining neither for grand emotional revelations nor big laughs.

The Quiet Ones is a reminder of the simple pleasures of a caper film with ice in its veins.

The interjections of quotidian reflection give a fullness and emotional resonance to a film that can, at times, be borderline oppressive in its depiction of war’s brutality.

Always exhibiting a deftness of touch and willingness to continue probing a cultural taboo that’s now, more than ever, a delicate and charged topic, Obit also challenges our preconceptions of a much-maligned group.

Alireza Khatami’s third feature is a subtly enigmatic examination of the nature of masculinity.

It’s as if by being confronted by new innovations that appear to have come straight out of a sci-fi film, Werner Herzog exercises his galaxy brain to see what we could be capable of a decade, even a century, from now.

The film paints a vivid portrait of what life was like for Black South Africans under apartheid.

The world of My Old Ass retains a lived-in quality, in large part due to the shrewd, sensitive way in which it treats the emotional struggles of its teenage characters.

The importance of touch between a parent and child—and, in the case of this film, specifically between a father and daughter—is rarely discussed openly in Daughters, but it looms large over nearly every scene.

The film speaks unflinchingly to the unique anxieties and frustrations of early teenhood.

Slow steadfastly remains a character-driven piece, homing in on the intricacies of its protagonists’ psychologies and engaging with their subtle emotional shifts as they become more intimate with one another.

The film is held together by the universal strength of its performances, particularly James and Smollett, and the elegance with which it veers between dreamy interludes and poetic flourishes stemming from Malik’s imagination and the more quotidian presentation of the small world he lives in, warts and all.

The film’s final act contains some of the most twisted, gory violence this particular subgenre of horror has seen in years, ultimately recalling nothing less than the films of the ultra-violent New French Extremity movement.

Much of Rich Peppiatt’s film isn’t about respectability, but rather debasement, and sugar-coating Kneecap’s widespread antics isn’t on the menu.

The film approaches a new tech frontier with an objective, responsibly apprehensive, eye.

Paul King again proves himself a masterful engineer of imaginary worlds, and it’s the meticulous attention to detail that makes Wonka so captivating.

Thanks to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s unflappable performance, the theories that Isabel Wilkerson laid out in her book emerge with an emotional clarity that can be forceful, but the film’s often inelegant, choppy structure also works against that clarity.

The searing images of various gulags, public executions, and private beatings will not be easily forgotten.

A fascinating metacommentary courses beneath the film’s emotional storytelling surface.