Graeme Guttmann

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.

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

I imagine that Sound of Falling will reward repeat viewings. There's almost too much to take in upon first glance, decades of life condensed into two and a half hours. Schilinski's vision is so confident and so bracing that it's hard not to be arrested by what's happening onscreen, even if you're not sure what's going on.

Oppenheimer is a devastating portrait of man's hubris in the face of change, with some of the most startling & horrifying images of Nolan's career.

Lanthimos has often bewildered audiences with his sensibilities, but Bella Baxter proves to be the perfect muse for the director's inherent curiosity, a lens through which to look at the world that reveals harsh truths and startling beauty.

It's a bold swing from the director and, despite it being tonally uneven and a bit messy, Napoleon can be still quite fun.

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.

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.

A fever dream in the bleakest sense, Sirat is a wild and apocalyptic epic, mythological in scale but intimate in its story about family.

The transition of tones is subtle - you don't realize you're watching a horror movie until it's too late.

As Between the Temples reveals more layers to him, Schwartzman deftly uncovers something much deeper. There's grief there, but there's also a profound ability to love without shame and that is perhaps the most revelatory thing of all.

It eludes classification, refusing to commit to being one thing and instead asking us to question our relationship with the world around us.

Baker's familiarity with the area gives Janet Planet a distinct sense of place and Baker an assured way with the camera, but there's also a universality to it and to the film's central pair that helps it transcend to something even more affecting.

It's dramatic storytelling with blockbuster-levels of energy, a triumph for Guadagnino, and a new all-time great sports movie where the games off the court are just as hot as they are on it.

The Things You Kill may seem like a simple revenge drama, but it allows itself to be so much more through form and story.

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 isn't a perfect movie — there's one big fumble that's sure to be divisive — but it's damn near close.

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.

Perfect Days is engrossing in its monotony and fascinating when something disrupts it, a portrait of a simple but beautiful existence that serves as a life-affirming reminder to value the little moments as much as we do the monumental ones.

Bonello posits that, even in fear, feeling is more important than forgetting, and every little death is a door to another future.

Dune: Part Two is an awe-inspiring, visually stunning sci-fi spectacle and a devastating collision of myth and destiny on a galactic scale.

Twinless is designed to make you squirm, but it's through this discomfort that Sweeney finds humor and heart.

Conclave is not trying to be some treatise on the state of the Catholic Church, nor is it saying anything new about modern religion. It's engrossing nonetheless, and it milks the titular event for every dramatic drop its worth.

Priscilla is another masterwork from Coppola, a study of a woman in a gilded cage and her journey to freedom with two central performances that will go down as some of the best in Coppola's entire filmography.

It's full of fast-talking tech nerds and morally compromised corporate A-holes, it bites off a bit more than it can chew in telling the story of Research in Motion, but it's still a good time, reminiscent of mid-budget dramedies that have all but disappeared in recent years.

The Ballad of Wallis Island is effortless in its execution and breezy in its pacing, which makes its emotional undertones all the more surprising and affecting.

It's a film that sneaks up on its audience, revealing layers to friendship and other intimate relationships that otherwise would not be parsed through if there wasn't the time.

What A Love Song lacks in execution it more than makes up for in stellar performances and beautifully directed scenes.

Using her face alone, Monroe shifts from morbid curiosity to abject terror and emotional devastation, culminating in a killer final shot that encapsulates what's so unnerving about the movie. Sometimes fear doesn't immediately register — it can be a seed, planted and cultivated over time and, once a full bloom settles in, it's hard to shake the fears that grip you.