Derek Smith

The film speaks lyrically to a peoples’ determination to find a meaningful way to live in a rapidly changing modern world.

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

The Train makes unmistakably clear to us that heroism isn’t always black and white—that sometimes it’s simply about doing what’s right even if you don’t understand why.

Darius Marder’s film captures, with urgency and tenderness, just how enticing the residue of the past can be.

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.

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

It casually lays out the domestic space where the story’s events takes place with acutely detailed cultural specificity.

Milko Lazarov seems driven to record the inner workings of a singular slice of Inuit culture before it goes the way of the reindeer.

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.

It’s within the murky realm of self-doubt and spiritual anxiety that it’s at its most audacious and compelling.

As Virginia grapples with her inner demons, as well as a memory loss that leaves her disoriented and unsure of who she can trust, The Snake Pit periodically transcends its archaic psychological trappings to become an empathic examination of a woman battling both the internal and external forces that seek to fully erase her sense of self.

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 documentary dives down the rabbit hole to chillingly, comprehensively expose how algorithms can perpetuate bias in often unforeseen and unjust ways.

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

Art, commerce, and immigration are inextricably bound in Kaouther Ben Hania’s playful and gently moving, if uneven, film.

The film comes down to a draw between its flashes of brilliance and its missed opportunities.

While the film certainly lays out the dangers of technology run amok, it also sees its power to connect people.

While the film’s perception of the politics of the jungle is often profound, the same cannot be said of its take on the human world.

Throughout, director Masaaki Yuasa’s imagination runs so wild that it becomes impossible to resist.

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’s gore is just as likely to invoke fear as to serve as a killer punchline to one of Rodo Sayagues’s set pieces.

The film never quite pushes beyond the archetypal nature of its scenario to fully unearth its characters’ psychological turmoil.

The film persuasively sheds light on the grievances of the Palestinian people that have long fallen on deaf ears.

Emergency is uneven, but it’s grounded by dynamic performances and a vivid portrayal of the minutiae of friendship.

There are enough left turns here to allow us to shake the impression that we’ve been to this rodeo before.

If your hook is the promise of seeing Jason Statham go mano a mano with prehistoric sea behemoths, then leaning into the ludicrous is the only way to go.

The Hunter’s Prayer packs its brisk 85 minutes with an impressive array of car chases, gun fights, hand-to-hand combat, and foot pursuits, all cut with a precision and an economy that heightens the impact of every hit.

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.