Jordan Hoffman

It asks more questions than it answers, and doesn’t let anybody off the hook. It’s also a great movie for anyone who grew up in New York City area in 1980, with the right needle drops and art direction. This is James Gray’s eighth feature and, in the end, his simplest. It may also be his best.

At 76 minutes, Caesar Must Die is more of an art piece than a thick steak of a feature film, but it maintains a fascinating hum from start to finish.

The look (and sound) of Murina are mesmerizing.

There's a ton of technobabble that you have to take on faith, but Jones and Powell do more than sell it; they make it compelling.

For his third feature, Cronenberg the Younger doesn’t ape his father’s style so much as he expands upon it. With Infinity Pool, in comparison to Cronenberg the Elder’s good-but-not-great Crimes Of The Future, you could even say he’s perfecting it.

An essentially plotless but engaging and enriching recollection of childhood steeped in warmth, grace, honesty, and crystalline specificity.

To put it in a way the kids do: Men is vibes.

[A] blend of classic sci-fi fare and current pop-culture irony is what rockets “Guardians” into the stratosphere.

It is extremely clever and deeply moving, and winningly gets at the essence of Goldin’s current and past work, without straining too hard to ape her style.

The first feature from Owen Kline, Funny Pages is not a dramatic masterpiece, but its setting, tone, look, feel, and casting would send real comic book geeks off doing cartwheels—if only we possessed the coordination. Instead, it will have to suffice to sit there, mouths open with the typical drool, thinking “I feel seen.”

Prepare for more gruesome kills, more gross-outs, more insight into how a society might actually look a generation after an unfathomable event. These movies are clearly infectious.

The film, which uses the gimmick of jumping between parallel universes to explore, essentially, how to be your best self, is awash in zany sci fi culs-du-sac, sly movie references, and a deranged high fructose attitude that scoffs at the idea of everything but the kitchen sink. The Daniels want infinite kitchen sinks.

Form and content collide in inspiring ways in this documentary about Milford Graves — avant-garde jazz percussionist, educator, gardener, martial artist, and cardiovascular researcher. Milford Graves Full Mantis is a jazz movie in every sense of the word.

Directors Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews create a great framework for the epic nemesis battle, but also know when to pull back to keep the movie grounded in reality.

The Walt Disney World-set Escape From Tomorrow is both a great gimmick-dependent story and a remarkable piece of filmmaking. It is a radical, transgressive departure that exploits new technology in heretofore unseen ways.

The location photography does much of the film’s heavy lifting, especially visits to Mount Kilimanjaro and Mulanje’s Sapitwa Peak. (The rumor is that a young J.R.R. Tolkien visited there, and Barbosa leans into this a bit for the big finish.) The star of the show, however, is the dialogue between cultures.

This movie will spark debate, even with an end title card that reminds audiences of the concept of dramatic license. But as a movie, and not a court document, it is extraordinary.

The key word in the title is My. Bertrand Tavernier’s three-hours-and-change film-essay is not a history lesson. It’s an invitation to take the seat next to a renowned director as he shares the movies that mean something to him.

The movie on its own is great, but with this music it's sublime.

Shyamalan teases out new information in just the right doses, remembering all the while that this is, at its core, a B-picture. It isn’t gory, but it’s gross, and the camera knows just how much to show to keep us dialed in.

I spent the bulk of Paradise Love mimicking Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a disturbing film.

The film is so engaging because it's so damn funny.

This immersive, richly detailed snapshot of hoarders undergoing a mandated apartment cleaning is equal parts horror film and existential howl.

Serkis’ Caesar gets more than his fair share of rip-snortin’ badass moments. He’s arguably the finest leader of men we’ve seen on screen since “Lincoln.”

Throughout the picture you understand the miracle and good fortune of finding love, and recognize the great changes in tolerance American society is currently (albeit slowly) undergoing.

Listen Up Philip is big, sprawling and tortured, if a little lacking in focus – while funny in parts, it isn’t really a comedy.

Nothing short of fascinating.

The first half of “The Congress,” while still fascinating, does suffer a bit from keeping its focus on the gripes and accusations between Hollywood actors and producers...Once the Philip K. Dick-meets-”Inception” second half kicks in, the implications grow more universal.