Jesse Hassenger

In its gentle, modest way, Aftersun might well break your heart.

In many ways, this is an Old Man movie — a slower late-period work by a filmmaker ruminating on his advancing age, and on the beloved classics he made as a younger guy. But it’s Scorsese’s version: pulsing with more life than most younger filmmakers, before giving way to stark, chilling regret.

While the movie’s amusing comedy bits are a little too slow for vintage screwball or farce, its love story has no such limitations. Astaire and Rogers sell their whole relationship through movement, on and off the dance floor.

Though Nickel Boys is at least in part about Black oppression and the suffering that comes along with it, Ross uses the movie’s point of view to avoid making a movie that turns that suffering into a marquee attraction or an endurance test.

Baker obviously loves most of his characters, and while Anora doesn’t necessarily give off warmth, spending so much of time in the visceral chill of a Coney Island winter, it regards the entire situation with nonjudgmental good humor and a touch of melancholy.

A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.

It’s a fascinating spectacle in large part because Nolan isn’t especially Malickian at all (though at least that frame of reference might temporarily ease the overworked, underbaked Kubrick comparisons).

The miracle of Chalamet’s performance is that as brazen, indecent, and dishonest as Marty is, he makes a temporarily convincing case for himself as a thwarted athlete, rather than a crook with an athletic fixation.

Campion’s take on the Western is an elegant, sometimes unnerving accomplishment.

It deserves a big screen if possible, though; Bentley and Kwedar have made an enveloping movie, one that might more closely echo its obvious influences from the comfort of home. This is a movie that belongs out in the beautiful, terrible world.

Todd Haynes obviously loves rock and roll, which makes it all the more impressive that he’s spent his career making movies about key figures in its history while avoiding the usual lionizing cliches.

It doesn’t capture the full horror potential of climate change, rising floodwaters, or even bloodthirsty sharks. But the filmmakers sure throw themselves into the fray with enthusiasm.

The movie’s dedication to girls everywhere is unnecessary; it already feels so specific and true without it.

The filmmaking itself is often witty, finding gags in whip-crack editing and shifts in perspective.

Just getting to see McDormand and Washington assay these famous parts makes this Macbeth worth preserving for posterity, alongside Fences in the Denzel Washington Giants Of Theatre section. But Coen’s equivalent of a solo album has its own virtuosic style.

This is a striking introduction to Donaldson’s unflinching eye.

The film’s other performances aren’t as engaging as Seydoux and young Martins, which means One Fine Morning itself sometimes feels like it’s muddling through with Sandra’s same weariness, too faithfully reproducing the repetitions of real life.

"Boyhood" has the natural endpoint of its lead growing into a young adult, while Girlhood stretches out in front of Marieme, an uncertain path into a haze.

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins doesn’t reach the giddy, earnest heights of something like Aquaman or a Wachowski project. It methodically sets up sequels—to be recast and released around 2030, judging by the Joes’ cinematic track record so far. But the dubiousness of its present-day achievement, the sheer ludicrousness of making the best G.I. Joe movie in 2021, is part of the dumbfounding fun.

At times, The Wild Robot feels almost elegiac – or is that just what happens when DreamWorks drops their worst habits and dedicates themselves to serving as a genuine creative competitor to their old rivals at Disney.

Without slackening its tension, Black Bag sometimes resembles a bitter comedy of manners, which are apparently also kept in the black bag for certain stretches. These are people who like to tell each other what they find irretrievably boring, especially if it’s each other, whether or not they’re even telling the truth about their disdain.

Sinners, which the filmmaker himself has been touting as his first wholly original feature (Fruitvale Station, his debut, was based on a real-life tragedy), is both Coogler’s most fantastical and most closely rooted in the history of American racism. It’s pulp from the heart and the gut.

Wilde’s film gets a lot of comic mileage from its lead actors’ ability to create a funny, believable relationship. Feldstein and Dever are both terrific in it.

As they often do, Tomlin and Fonda make their material look sharper than it really is.

In traditional terms, it could simply be described as a tearjerker. Like Buckley’s performance, though, it’s richer than that, a cross between an out-of-body experience and a full-body sob. Some will likely resist it on those grounds, understandably. But, again, framing our reactions with the feelings of others is rarely a good idea, and despite its moments of faltering, Hamnet hits like an emotional wrecking ball—devastating as it clears its path.

This is Laika’s least droll, least ghoulish feature so far; the plotting is even more dreamlike than "Coraline."

Though this series is built on comic looseness, it’s that sincerity that carries through its minor comedic missteps, like underusing Hall and leaning too heavily on Cedric’s wacky-old-man shtick.

Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit.