Graeme Guttmann

That's what makes Forbidden Fruits feel both timely and timeless. We rarely leave the inside of the mall, giving the film a claustrophobic feel. The girls use cell phones – it'd be strange if they didn't – but any recognizable social media are absent. It feels like a distinctly modern take on female friendship, but one that owes a great deal to the films that have come before it. And it's lost the sort of optimism that those films often came with.

Unfortunately, Reminders of Him isn't a very good film, at least in the traditional sense. But, like Regretting You, there's a certain level of lizard brain enjoyment that transcends much of the film's flaws and allows for all the soapy, melodramatic elements to be enjoyed at their own level.

Thankfully, Boon, Graham, and Riseborough do enough to anchor the film and bring it home as it lands on a strangely poignant note both chilling and endearing.

A piercing, explicit, and oftentimes sexy study of one 25-year-old's search for identity in a world that has discouraged him from accepting all of himself unabashedly.

With Holland and Mara, the commitment to The Dutchman is apparent and though its ending feels as if things are wrapped up a bit too cleanly, the film succeeds in being an unnerving odyssey over one New York night.

Even as it veers into darker thematic territory, Feig's light touch and Seyfried's committed performance add an air of deranged enjoyment that make The Housemaid one of the most fun movies of 2025.

Serious People doesn't deal in cynicism. Its quiet ending wraps things up too tidily, but there's a strange sort of optimism to its idiocy that is quite endearing.

Black Phone 2 is still a solid horror film, with gory kills and exciting set pieces. But the question of why still lingers over the film, even as it delivers on its many promises.

Shell is funny and nice to look at it, but it lacks the depth or the darkness that it needs.

Fuze may not reinvent the wheel, but sometimes all you need is a solid thriller with a hot cast to really give a film the oomph it needs.

Tuner is a small film, but one that will leave a big impact. It truly is one of the most delightful surprises of the fall and deserves to be seen on a big screen with the loudest sound possible. Here's hoping it gets that chance.

What makes Carolina Caroline so magical is the way it transcends its clichés to tell an engrossing story.

Its best moments aren't in the octagon — they're in the quiet moments when Johnson's Kerr is talking to an interviewer backstage or when Dawn and Mark are exchanging barbs in between affections in their cozy Arizona home.

By the time the film turns off autopilot, it's far too late, and the ending lands with the dull thud of a long-rotted body wrapped in an old rug.

DaCosta makes some key changes to the ending of this story that slightly undermine its more subversive inclinations, but that doesn't make the film any less effective. Her confident direction and Sean Bobbitt's lush cinematography make Hedda an electrifying adaptation that relishes the chaos as much as its characters, even as blood, bullets, and booze continue to fly.

Just when it feels like it's going to hit the gas, The Wizard of the Kremlin holds back, all the way up to its confounding, out-of-left-field ending that is both abrupt and fittingly bleak.

It’s bleak and hysterical and violent — everything you’d want from a Park film. But it’s also devastatingly intimate and intensely relevant, both in the ways it tackles questions of identity and our place within an increasingly dangerous system, one that could feasibly lead people to murder.

In its own way, Griffin's experience is universal, but Griffin in Summer finds specificity in its amusingly abrasive central character.

It doesn't reinvent the wheel, and it shouldn't have to. What it does prove is that queer stories, more often than not, add new layers to narratives that have been done before.

It’s a stunning achievement from the director, one that has sat with me since I saw it, growing in its effectiveness.

Amrum doesn't fully confront all the questions it poses, instead serving as a meditation on the ways a child might respond to a world he doesn't fully understand.

It’s thoughtful and quietly devastating. In its insistence to buck conventions of the queer drama, though, it inevitably falls into some of the very traps it hopes to avoid, landing somewhere between expectations and the underwhelming pic it flirts with becoming.

Trier captures so much while saying so little and, in many ways, Sentimental Value feels like the film he's been building toward his entire career.

The beauty of a musical isn't just in the songs themselves, but the feelings they leave us with as we exit the theater. Leave One Day opts for a cheerier disposition that undermines staying power beyond its infectious tunes.

Some may find this despairing and baffling, but Ducournau finds a strange layer of hope and love beneath all the dust and grime.

It’s less challenging and possibly less rewarding but it’s no less fun.

Enzo is subtle in its examination of queer desire, understanding that quick glances and soft touch can be just as sensual — and even more effective — as anything intense.

Despite the film’s title, though, The Secret Agent isn’t your typical espionage thriller, but it’s all the better for how it plays with genre, tone, and expectations.