Jake Kring-Schreifels

Greengrass doesn’t have you squirming in your seat because he’s manufacturing drama but because he knows when to cut, when to slow down, when to fire on all cylinders. This sounds like a science, but it’s actually an art.

The abstracted, bright-colored flourishes and chamber-thriller structure––not to mention its punctuated moments of extreme carnage––provide a crimson foundation for the writer-director’s third and latest feature, Infinity Pool, a blistering big swing that matches its unique premise and privileged-class takedown with his very specific violent, pornographic palette.

The younger Day-Lewis has crafted something haunting and exquisite, a slow-burning, two-handed meditation about grief, regret, and the kind of absence that irreparably fractures a family. Mostly, though, it supplies the elder Day-Lewis a chance to flex his dormant muscles, most prominently with a couple of monologues—one humorous and scatological in nature, the other reflective, darker, and more vulnerable—that sneak up on you in overwhelming ways.

In a satire like this, the laughs start heavy, but Early’s best trick is ending this journey in an earnest, emotionally authentic place. He’s not playing a punchline so much as a humorous, painful truth.

A Different Man is a loaded story––filled with plenty of passed detours and dark alleys––and it can start to feel a bit punishing by the end, where Schimberg struggles finding a natural resolution. But maybe that’s the point. This movie feels itchy because these are messy, undefined, unresolved topics.

It’s hard to find movies—no matter their scope—that grasp and depict the human experience with the kind of honesty and dexterity Raiff has committed to the screen so far.

What would a high school movie look like if its queer characters ended up as jock-slamming, hierarchy-upending heroes? Bottoms is this year’s righteously indignant, big-swing answer.

It’s riveting stuff, to the point you almost want Coen to keep pushing the scope just to see where he’ll go.

In an era of superhero gluttony, in which these familiar stories, characters, and visuals tend to bleed together, The Batman holds the rare distinction of creating and embracing its own identity.

It’s fair to say there’s too much going on at once. The movie can feel like it’s a bit on steroids, too. But it’s so self-assured, so confident with the characters it’s tethered to, the genre lines it blurs, and the love story that waffles with each dead body rolled up into a carpet or dragged down a stairwell.

This movie’s power comes in the slow-burning revelations found through the straightaway desert roads and rolling lush hills, which amount to an emotionally wrenching crescendo.

In many ways, AIR embodies the last decade of sports movies that have pivoted from showing action on the field or court, instead peeking into corner offices and classrooms to examine the power players and dealmakers pulling the strings.

Sweeney––who, in addition to acting and directing, wrote the script––has no trouble with lubrication, layering genres atop each other in a way that’s plausible and cohesive. He’s got an acute feel for how to deploy humor and grief into the same space, especially as more backstory unwinds and the movie’s heightened stakes infiltrate the perception of his characters.

There are similar beautiful moments checkered across this five-borough endeavor.

As Bahrani goes to great depths to verify his subject’s contradictory tales and the circumstances behind his company’s termination, 2nd Chance turns into a familiar American portrait of mythmaking and cognitive dissonance.

Even in its overwhelming melancholic power, Haigh has made something therapeutic—about longing and holding on and learning to let go.

“Can I quote you?” As it did throughout Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey’s intrepid investigative journalism for the New York Times, that question reverberates in Maria Schrader’s She Said, an understated, polished procedural that chronicles the way two reporters exposed Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse and assault.

The beauty is that Torres never forces these messages down your throat. The movie is too looney, too specific to be so obvious.

Saint Omer isn’t a movie concerned specifically with a verdict. It asks you to listen, to observe and consider a tragedy and its ripples within a community.

Smith has found a character whose egocentricity and dynamic range matches his own itchy movie star persona.

As Guggenheim shows, Fox has reclaimed what it means to be afflicted by a neurological impediment, allowing himself to be vulnerable and letting people see his real self.

It’s exciting to see a debut so self-assured and comfortable in its own sun-baked skin.

McBain and Moss capture all this with an unobtrusive eye. They have a real grasp of how to capture and frame candid interactions, how to pace this kind of near-reality television drama. It doesn’t hit its ambitious stride, though, until the end.

Rockwell has plenty time to develop into a more distinguished storyteller, though her directorial instincts have a staggering specificity. This is a movie that gets gentrification right––she thrives in showing the way brief observations out a window paint a larger picture––and connects little dots from childhood to adulthood.

A loveable, low-stakes joyride.

Much like the previous movie, Inside Out 2 has a predictably fun time journeying throughout the different corners of Riley’s brain. It also plays it pretty safe, careful not to disrupt too much about what its predecessor established, filtering in Michael Giacchino’s whimsical and soulful score to piano key stroke more of its connective tissue.

Despite highlighting some chaotic encounters, Williams isn’t interested in explosions and one-dimensional, hell-bent villains. His focus remains on the way years of criminalization can impact decision-making and friendships, and, as his last shot suggests, how distinct sounds can traumatize even as they’re meant to help.

[Okuno’s] made a smart, controlled movie of pricks and gestures and tones that accumulate into a satisfying catharsis. And perhaps validated the urge to follow your gut.