Glenn Kenny

If this is in fact merely a longer Simpsons episode, it's a damn good Simpsons episode.

If you’re a scholar of comedy, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, a concise doc about the founding, life, thriving, and death of the '70s-defining satirical magazine, is likely a must-see. It’s an engaging and entertaining film, filled with funny anecdotes expertly related.

Bonello’s not here to tell us that the only thing to fear is fear itself. He’s here to tell us to be afraid—be very afraid. What he delivers is not just a densely packed art movie but the most potent horror picture of the decade so far.

An observation that when you’re running away, it doesn’t matter where you’re running to as much as it matters where you’re running from. “Compartment No. 6” has an always energetic sense of place even when it’s keeping to the confined space of its title room. Combined with the committed acting, it makes for a worthwhile journey.

Taormina purposefully dresses his cast and designs their environment in a way that throws them into a sort of temporal never-never land. He achieves a number of other startling effects in this impressive movie, which sheds its naturalism slowly as it embraces a surrealism that’s both disquieting and poignant.

Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group’s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film.

The details of the story, as they unfold, do not correspond with any dimension of reality. Character development is nonexistent. The sluggish rhythms, the awkward cuts, the unlovely cinematography cohere into what seems like the enactment of a pointless dream.

The movie biz inside jokes eventually yield to fairly merciless plumbings about the construction of the self, resulting in a kind of philosophical discomfort that's much different from the run-of-the-mill humiliations this sort of thing usually trucks in.

David Strathairn, playing Murrow, follows his writers' lead beautifully, delivering a performance that's all understatement on the surface and searing fire underneath.

This is a purely sensationalistic cinematic experience that paradoxically encourages reflection and contemplation.

Because Eklof’s approach is formally very clean, showing some genuine, intriguing detachment, I’m apt to prefer it to Seidl’s work. But not by much.

Clouds of Sils Maria is oodles more poetic and enigmatic than the term “backstage drama” generally encompasses.

Diverting and often funny enough, largely thanks (as is not unusual in cases like this) to its cast.

The Endless rewards patience with mind-bending twists and turns.

The Other Side of the Wind is a very rich film and a very difficult one. I’ve seen it nearly three times now and what I intuit about the aspects of it that “work,” and those where the seams just show too nakedly shift all the time.

Malkovich is more interested in hitting notes of elegiac lyricism than delivering socko action; this is a thriller that means to get under your skin rather than make you leap from your seat.

Wildlife is a domestic drama both sad and terrifying. The entire cast does exceptional work (Oxenbould is an exciting find), but the movie is anchored by Mulligan, who gives the best performance of any I’ve seen in film this year.

It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.

A sturdy, watchable character drama.

Wife of a Spy is something like linear narrative perfection, with every scene perfectly calibrated.

I think the most productive way to look at Mank, a new film about Hollywood in the 1930s and ‘40s, and about the screenwriter of a particularly famous and iconic work, is to understand it as Fincher’s most playful work.

By turns harrowing and stirring, it’s a shame-inducing history lesson that never feels like a lecture.