Jordan Ruimy

Simmering with ambiguity, Burning plays its staging, writing, dialogue, acting, music, everything with carefully calibrated minimalism, but in turn it makes some grandiose statements. An unrecognizable murder-mystery Burning torches genre clichés and leaves a lasting, scorching blister.

The minute-to-minute detail is absolutely stunning, from the period costumes to the on-set locations, there’s a searing authenticity to the time period that is undeniably absorbing. However, the almost too tightening restraint he gives his film forces us to quickly witness its events rather than be enveloped or moved by them.

It’s Wang’s singular gift for life’s simplest moments which makes The Farewell ring so truthfully bare, funny and emotional.

While Long Day’s plot seems an afterthought, the experience is all that matters: the audience gathers all the clues, rummage through them to soak up the atmosphere and enter a world unlike any seen before. Make no mistake about it, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a flat-out masterpiece.

Leave No Trace is a universal, unforgettable experience.

This is a remarkable, triumphant, and confident picture by Aster, who gives the film an almost meditative-like sensation, as you feel every space you’re in, every emotion, every moment of grief. Hereditary refuses to employ cheap thrills, creating its cinematic scares with atmosphere, and continuously reinventing itself at every turn.

Through a few dreamlike, discreet and beautifully placed sequences, Rohrwacher makes us believe that a world of empathy and accord may someday exist again.

Ash is Purest White borrows heavily from “Mountains May Depart” — the narrative construct, the same actress, the musical gimmicks, even the flawed ending — and yet we are nevertheless absorbed by the finesse and grace in a film by this venerable artist.

Fisher must be given immense credit for making it all work as her performance is pitch-perfect in every respect. Sometimes, it feels like you’re not even watching an actress perform but an actual person. The way Burnham shot some of the scenes makee it feel like non-fiction rather than fiction.

What one takes away from My Life As a Courgette might be a casually simple and forward affair, but a deeper, more considered look at Barras’ moving tale reveals an emotional resonance and non-saccharine uplift that is mostly rare in today’s animation world. Consider it a diamond in the rough.

In a film that is so disinterested to conforming to accustomed mainstream movie audiences taste and rhythms, and is committed to its sometimes difficult choices, the bold and exacting Beanpole sometimes feels damn-near radical.

Through effective direction, the activism on display here is inspiring enough to rile one up to set aside preoccupations and try to make a difference in the world.

The set-up in Free Solo can sometimes be repetitive, as the filmmakers continuously fawn over their subject’s accomplishments in the nerve-racking build-up to the main event. However, the absorbing lure of the movie, the climactic, terror-provoking Yosemite climb itself, is overwhelming and worth the wait.

Biller explores female fantasy in the most diabolical of ways imaginable and gender politics are dissected with a brutal honesty that could infuriate some feminists with its observations.

A thrilling, near-silent film that brilliantly toys with the audience’s nerves while deftly avoiding familiar cliches, Krasinski shows a surprisingly assured and suspenseful touch within the horror genre.

Topics such as race, poverty, masculinity and politics are tackled in thought-provoking ways. It all makes for an entertaining, if not slight, ride that proves Kahn has the chops to graduate into feature films and maybe has a genre classic in him just screaming to get out.

After a string of films ranging from safe sequels (Finding Dory) to franchise duds (Cars 3) to not-fully-realized adventures (The Good Dinosaur), this is Pixar coming back in a heartfelt, gorgeous way.

What Western Stars best achieves, a universal notion that will hook fans and non-fans alike, is the shared sense of community displayed in the infectious love shown for playing vital and moving music.

Beyond Ocasio-Cortez and her magnetism, we may look back at Knock Down the House years from now as a nascent document of the beginnings of a groundswell in American politics.

This is an assured, confident feature-directing debut for Zagar who shows great promise in his ability to render a confident and brilliant work of art from difficult-to-adapt source material. His film is a complicated coming-of-age tale that not only brings refreshing insights but gives us beautifully rendered images that have the power to haunt you for days.

Melancholy in shape, but still hopeful, Crosby’s willingness to bare naked his personal struggles on-camera makes for a truly poignant movie.

The film is easy to admire, but lacks the kinds of scenes necessary to truly make a emotional connection.

As fraught with drama as this powder keg of heightened circumstances may be, make no mistake, The Wife is more than an actor’s showcase. The film itself is superb, a ticking time-bomb of simmering tension which benefits from the audience knowing as little as possible in advance.

Telling this story with a deep specificity, Larnell does the artist proud by artfully using his camera to capture a woman forging her identity through her art. He and Adams make a formidable team and finely stamp their own mark on the hip-hop movie genre.

Filled with plenty of ideas and a strong sense of identity, The Witness can still be somewhat unfocused, unfolding in a multitude of directions, but failing to provide a complete portrait about Kitty and her life, which is a truly fascinating one.

Turtletaub does have a hard time finding a way to conclude Agnes’ story, but he ends Puzzle on such a delightful note of simplicity, that this near-perfect movie nevertheless stuns.

While ‘Life’s Journey’ might be a deeper meditation on the meaning of life and deeper questions of who we are, The IMAX Experience is a more realized version of similar ideas. Ultimately, The IMAX Experience is a tone poem that not only pays tribute to planet Earth and the life that inhabits it, but marvels at how this miracle was created.

What keeps Burden captivating are the performances, especially from Riseborough, Whitaker and Wilkinson, consummate pros that give their characters flesh and blood dimension.

The potential of this movie’s premise might have been squandered by cliches, but McBride and DeWitt keep it watchable.

A valentine to movies and an ode to the stinkers which we love and can’t live without, Franco exudes cinematic passion with his finest directorial outing yet.

Oldroyd captures our gaze with every frame and doesn’t balk at the story’s more shocking sections. He means to shake us and does.

The struggles that Chris and Carol are put through may be brought to life with an authentic touch by Shelton, but they are explored with much complexity in better, more substance-filled endeavors.

Despite this disappointing effort, Diao continues to impress with the clever use of his camera. Now, one just wishes he could find the substance to pull all this style together in a winning fashion.

Brügger’s movie plays mostly like a real-time thriller, to be honest, but whatever hybrid of non-fiction you want to categorize Cold Case Hammarskjöld, it’s nothing short of groundbreaking.

Unique, unforgettable and cathartic, Border is an oddball, but poignant cult classic in the making. Abbasi’s sincerity wisely avoids caricature and mocking his marginalized characters and in doing so he crafts a surprisingly humanist and artful story of love for the diminished and dismissed outsiders of the world.

Overall, this is astute, fascinating filmmaking from Hawke who believes the small details are all part of the bigger picture, the deeper experience of knowing who Blaze Foley was.

Capharnaüm is not without its issues. The director over-relies on the courtroom scenes and the movie’s message is heavy-handed at times. Yet, the sheer force of the filmmaking and its artful delivery overpowers sappy overreaching.

Stripping the “I Will Always Love You,” singer away from sensationalist tabloid dirt that marred her life, MacDonald’s thoughtfulness is arguably its standout element. The finesse with which he crafts his doc makes for, quite simply, an absorbing and moving portrayal of an unforgettable heartrending figure.

For a film that has such an intriguing premise at its core, The Yellow Birds seems to drag due to Moor’s abrupt tempo changes and flat visual style.

The film is equal parts lovely and frightening as it explores romantic bliss, destructive capitalism, and the significance of the subconscious state we all spend a third of our lives experiencing.

If only more period pieces these days were as finely tuned and accessibly pleasurable as Westmoreland’s film.

Although Miller invests heart and soul into the performance, maybe even career-best work from the actress, and the rest of the cast, especially Hendricks, are excellent, Ingelsby’s screenplay foolishly decides to lay its interests on Deb’s terrible taste in men rather than her daughter’s disappearance.

With enlivening performances and thoughtful filmmaking, Girl has the power to not just change lives but reinvigorate your belief in cinema.

Although it may be lacking originality, Battle of the Sexes is finely-tuned storytelling that has been consummated by real pros.

There are no dull moments in this ridiculously brutal, often severely dumb, but enjoyable, film

All thanks to Herzog’s keen eye at having a continuous fluid flow to the story and his subject’s willingness to lay bare in front of an audience, this is one of the most important documentaries of the year because it still feels fresh and relevant to our times.

Luce is a dangerous minefield and simply crackles with the kind of distressing pressure that is beginning to define America in every conversation we have about race, marginalization, social strata, woke politics and even marriage.

Whereas the aforementioned Southside With You was a calm, romantic watch, this is a serious and refined drama which has the feel of a political firecracker.

Wildly bizarre and imaginatively alluring, if not occasionally slight, the animated movie, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, is an engaging surrealist take on the disaster movie.

The simplicity of the film is commendable, but it’s only in the last act where things finally come together and any kind of visceral thrills arrive far too late. Even Mikkelson’s on-screen talents can’t save an admirable yet stagnant film in dire need of a heartbeat.

Talking head interviews from his victims, business and works partners, and friends mesh together with archival photos, videos, and audio recordings of Weinstein for a compulsively watchable, yet not definitive, look at the man whose predatory behavior spearheaded the #MeToo movement.

Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian deliver wonders on both the technical and narrative ends of Search, but editors Will Merrick and Nick Johnson do an astounding job as well.

This is one of the most joyous and exhilarating movies you will see this year and because there is so much passion flowing out from the music, screenplay, and acting, you totally forgive the film when it strays into the predictable and even a little bit of corniness.

A hyper-realistic urban tragedy Dogman is ferocious and in its own way, much more frightening than “Gomorrah.”

Brewer, of course, is the glue that holds the puzzle together. If we didn’t care for her surreal plight, then the film would just not work, but the actress builds a thoroughly believable character in Alice.

This is a hearty, four-course meal for film fans, which, once again, demonstrates that the study of a film can be just as invigorating an experience as the actual film itself.

If the first half is an indelible treat and gives one high hopes that a film delicately placed in the awards season will in fact meet its steep expectations, the second half is troublesome and falls flat.

The story is a simple one, and sometimes it might feel a little too slight for it own good, but Paulson carries it all the way through with bravado acting.

Deepwater Horizon reminds us just how talented an action director Berg is and how often substance becomes a second thought for the director.

The filmmakers brilliantly set-up an atmosphere that feels uniquely cinematic and wholly original. But when impressive world-building is established and story takes over, Prospect quickly devolves into a mess of contrivances and overstuffed characters in its more problematic second half.

All four actors are perfectly fine here, but the set-up is predictably conventional.

Sober, unflinching and fits perfectly with the current political movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power is an important and relevant worldwide look at the environmental crisis.

Despite its ambitions, Monsters and Men makes its weighty subject matter feels thin and slight.

It helps that the chemistry between Lister-Jones and Pally works, but one does wonder if another pass at the script would have elevated the film for one to care more about what’s at stake.

Although the film flies off the rails in its climax, the rest of Brigsby Bear is an outrageous concept that’s pulled off quite well.

Much of the film’s success does reside upon Chbosky’s mostly restrained execution, but it is Tremblay that carries it. His fully rendered and exceptional performance is something of a miracle as it joyously goes past the prosthetics and into the core of his character’s roller coaster of emotions.

It’s an uneven film, but a deeply passionate one that also features an A-list actress at the top of her game.

[Robespierre] and Slate make a formidable, interesting pair together and I do look forward to their next venture, but Landline is a disappointing venture.

Ultimately, the lack of risk-taking not only makes for a pedantic experience but ironically serves Tubman very poorly, never allowing for Erivo’s performance or the spirit of the subject to ever feel truly free.

As striking as some of these performances are, 6 Balloons is not without its problems. At a barebones 74 minute running time that doesn’t dive into the emotional texture as much as it could, 6 Balloons at times, feels slight.

It’s a real shame that Walsh decides to concentrate a big chunk of her movie on the stilted love affair between Everett and Maud, in a relationship that starts aggressively intriguing, but becomes the definition of saccharine by its climax.

Dazzling in form and a chase film at its heart, Ready Player One is exhilarating, but it also can’t sit still. Fitting to the content perhaps, the movie still arguably suffers from troublesome A.D.D. with its hyper fast cutting and its tendency to wander narratively.

Appropriately frosty and aloof, The Lodge is a meditative plumbing of the darkest parts of the human psyche, our vulnerabilities, and self-doubts and it’s these personal fears that resonate loudly.

While Denial doesn’t do anything new on a technical side, it is fully aware of its gripping plot, one that welcomely avoids pushing its inherent clichés to the forefront of its story.

Even as an homage The Hole in the Ground feels like business as usual rather imbuing the genre with a much-needed modern edge or new context.

Wakefield fights formula and creates its own unique cinematic language.

The tension that Franco builds with every scene is crafty and strong, leaving one curious enough to wonder where this narrative is going.

The film is a trifle, albeit one spiked with mirth and malice.

The meaningful topics of female sexual expression, repression, and desire for acceptance that “To the Stars” portrays are relevant, but it’s a shame they’re not more poignant and persuasive.

The difference between Lights Out and any other mainstream horror movie is that it actually uses the dark as the center of its plot, organically drawing out the majority of its jump scares in the process.

Minghella surely knew that what he had here was a familiar story, but despite his gritty and admirable direction it fails to break the traditional formula.

Mandler’s background before shooting his narrative feature debut was in music videos and commercials, but the ADD-style filmmaking he uses for Monster suggests he’s not ready to fully command a two-hour movie.

Our Time is gorgeously shot, naturally, and the intentions are well-meaning but far too self-serving.

Embers attempts to be a complicated dissection of a possible world not too far ahead of us, but it lacks the imagination to make us soar along with its vision.

Feeling stilted and steeped in uninspired biopic tropes, Kelly’s film never comes close to an inventiveness worthy of JT’s imaginative, outrageous story.

The first hour is overwhelmingly exciting as Levinson uses split screens and more stylistic techniques to make his story pop. The dialogue is also delivered in impressively natural fashion, with the leading quartet discussing subjects that capture the zeitgeist. However, the ultra-violent finale goes over the top, lacking the pizzaz and inventiveness of the film’s earlier stages.

It’s a film that you would, of course, expect from the director of such an entity as The Greasy Strangler, but, say what you will about that film, at least it wasn’t boring.

Berman ultimately turns his incredible meta-story into an ode to documentary filmmaking. And its exhilarating stuff because you have absolutely no clue where this movie is going to take you next. Berman’s doc keeps pulling the rug from under you, and it’s a high-wire act of reinvention that rewards the viewer at every step.

Branagh—the actor—dominates the film, with everyone else in supporting roles. Meanwhile Branagh—the director—relies on a too-colorful style and atmosphere, shooting himself in the foot by cutting short the darkness that loomed in Christie’s original vision.

[Chan] brings energy to a film that desperately needs any kind of life, but there is only so much Chan can do.

The lack of narrative propulsion or powerful subtext of any kind results in little dramatic substance beyond its cult-like ambitions.

Newness attempts to be a prescient look at modern passion, but it ends up recycling the same old tired clichés that invade most sappy cinematic love stories.

The spy genre is a tricky business, because the tempo and flow of the film must adapt to numerous different scenarios and narrative changes. In Lewin’s movie, however, the ever-changing intricacies of Dawidoff’s book are rendered flat, unappealing and messy.

If George set his sights on capturing the effects of this tragic stain in history rather than love-making, we might have gotten a drama worthy of the talent involved.

One of the sexiest and most joyful road movies in some time.

The fact that you do care about their being together means Abu-Assad and company have succeeded, at the most basic level, what they set out to achieve.

There seems to be something missing; his life was an enigmatic puzzle and Strong hasn’t found all the pieces. It doesn’t help that his visual style is flat and the narrative is conventional enough.