Josh Larsen

Torres gives a performance that gains strength even as Eunice increasingly trembles; this is no stoic, generic portrait of resilience, but one that’s always counting the cost.

A mixture of hard-boiled intrigue and mental instability, this dark passage takes us from the film noirs of its time to the psychological thrillers that Alfred Hitchcock would make in the 1950s. Altogether, it’s a wild, harrowing journey.

Mildred Pierce is a somewhat reckless mixture of film noir and soap opera. It opens with a murder and then proceeds to run on revelations and betrayals and wild swings of fortune. Yet the high-wire act works, largely because Mildred Pierce has the right trapeze artist dangling in the air.

So what is a Coen brother movie like? Imagine a work of German expressionism as filtered through the stark spirituality of Ingmar Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer.

At once a time-capsule snapshot of the economic despair of American youth and a larger, existential consideration of how to find meaning in a seemingly callous universe, Boys Go to Jupiter is sharp, knowing, realistic, and yet somehow uplifting.

Despite all the mania and exaggerated characterizations, Raising Arizona is ultimately one of the Coens’ kinder (if not gentler) efforts, a raucous cartoon that consistently offers the beleaguered, desert-stricken H.I. little oases of grace.

The brilliance of the screenplay, which Wenders wrote with Takuma Takasaki, is the way it doesn’t inflate the interruptions to Hiryama’s happiness (a pushy coworker, the appearance of an estranged sister) into contrived drama.

Ably mixing past and present sensibilities is no easy feat, but every person in Gerwig’s ensemble cast manages it.

Watching Game Night is like witnessing someone on a hot streak while playing charades. As they keep nailing points for their team in rapid succession, you wonder how long they can sustain it. In Game Night, it’s the laughs that just keep coming.

O’Connor balances an outer reticence with an inner confidence throughout, then slyly brings the two qualities together as the film proceeds (notice how he fiddles with his wedding ring while otherwise effortlessly lying to a pair of detectives). J.B. isn’t an antihero, exactly, but something more fitting for a Kelly Reichardt film.

It’s all incredibly immersive, to the point that these everyday farm animals—the sort that usually only receive a passing glance—begin to seem fascinatingly alien.

Everything we see in Welcome to the Dollhouse is filtered through Dawn’s heightened perspective. There is one explicit fantasy sequence, but really the whole movie could be taken as a hormonal exaggeration. Solondz and Matarazzo may offer the cringiest middle-school experience imaginable, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

A mashup of Macbeth and the biblical chronicles of King David, all set in contemporary New York City, Highest 2 Lowest sees Spike Lee playing with classical narratives in order to explore a modern man’s artistic reawakening.

The definitive zombie picture.

Watching The Souvenir is like watching a friend drown, and being unable to help.

For all its pointed critique, The Last Black Man in San Francisco also offers a fair amount of whimsy.

Leave No Trace, Debra Granik’s first fiction feature since 2010’s masterful Winter’s Bone, is a movie that’s willing to whisper. If you don’t listen (and watch) closely, you might miss out on the deep wells of emotion beneath its placid surface.

Shinkai’s recent films have all been wildly ambitious in terms of their imagination and scope; Suzume might be the most impressive in terms of connecting that to a powerful emotional core.

Perhaps the best lead performance of 2023 belongs to Hüller, who is achingly sincere as Sandra, while never pleading for an ounce of audience sympathy. It’s her purposeful performance, more than anything else, that opens the door to doubt.

The Turin Horse might befuddle you and it might bore you. But I guarantee you won’t forget some of the images, and more likely than not you’ll be left pondering their potential meaning.

What begins as a sympathetic, almost neorealist portrayal of a mentally and physically challenged newspaper peddler named Qinawi (played by Chahine) eventually warps its way into a slasher film, complete with sex-as-death overtones.

Earth Mama taps into a primal understanding of motherhood that’s true for Gia, whether she is a “good” mother or not. The movie captures what it means to be a mother of any kind, faced with watching your children being torn from their roots.

Beneath all the formal sophistication and dark humor, there is a roiling anger that defines Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

I could describe Uncut Gems for you, or you could try and hold your breath for a full minute and pretty much have the same experience.

The historical record, meticulously laid out here, speaks for itself.

One of Them Days is propulsively directed by music-video veteran Lawrence Lamont, who knows how to frame a punchline, from a sharp script by Syreeta Singleton, who wrote many episodes of HBO’s Insecure. The same mixture of hilarity and humanity is on display here.

Some might balk at the literary Easter eggs, but thanks to the fierceness of the lead performances and Zhao’s equal commitment behind the camera, I always experienced this as human story first and Shakespeare fanfic second.

The filmmaking is hypnotic, thanks partly to Kangding Ray’s thumping score but also to the early long takes of revelers in motion, as well as later, mesmerizing images of vans rolling across vast landscapes and open roads.

A thrilling and infuriating burst of movie id, The Wild Bunch makes you want to slump into the dust and stare dumbly into the distance.

Ultimately, The Zone of Interest demonstrates what it means to have moral vision, to choose to see—or, in this case, hear.

There are enough issues here for three films by a perennial provoker like Lee, and critics will undoubtedly accuse him of throwing too much fuel on the fire. But this time, aided by Reggie Rock Bythewood’s thoughtful script, Lee’s ambition pays off. With 15 men squeezed together on a single bus, issues such as racism, homophobia and responsibility are tackled as they would be in real life: fitfully, passionately, derisively and, above all, hilariously.

Nelson is jarring, scary and brilliantly bitter.

In its erratic narrative, random assortment of characters, and omnipresent soundtrack, Car Wash captures something perfectly: the rhythms of a working-class work day.

The race itself is another of the movie’s astonishing set pieces; Mann and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt give it a fresh sense of vroom, even if you think you’ve seen all the movie car races you’ll ever need.

Hahn and Giamatti make for a great movie couple, in that the very way they stand near each other makes you believe they’ve already been through better and worse.

As Naru, a smart, skilled young woman who would rather be hunting than gathering, Midthunder is mesmerizing—capable in the crunchy fight scenes (especially a single-take standoff between her and a handful of Frenchmen), but also in the ways her eyes are always watching, consuming every detail about the way the Predator works and the weapons it uses.

The structure doesn’t work and the characters feel like screenplay concoctions (despite being drawn from a Larry McMurtry novel), but that hardly matters considering the three performances at the center of Terms of Endearment.

O’Connor (Challengers, The Mastermind) gives a remarkable performance, tapping into Father Jud’s spiritual struggle while also nimbly managing the movie’s sense of humor.

It might be corny, but the basketball nerd in me can’t resist their rivalrously romantic games of one on one, which is a sweet motif throughout the film.

Near Dark boasts one of the horror genre’s most unique milieus.

The stunning set pieces take full advantage of animation’s unique mastery over time and space, so that we don’t just watch the characters’ daredevil exploits – we’re spinning and whirling right along with them. It’s as if we’ve mastered space and time ourselves.

This might be one of Bette Davis’ least sympathetic parts, which is saying something.

A minor miracle.

Mon Oncle zeroes on in the way we often use our homes as status symbols first, and places of care and comfort second.

Rashomon is a movie of ideas first and foremost. There is little room for subtext here. Matters of truth and human nature are debated in an anguished, grandiose acting style that can be jarring to contemporary, Western eyes.

It’s a given that the sound design would be a crucial element in a film about a drummer who suddenly loses his hearing, but Sound of Metal is so artfully crafted on that front that it nearly develops a new way of experiencing a movie.

Anora is a tale of two shots: its first and its last.

Great horror movies are often built on guilt, and that’s the case with Relic. The film has creeping mold, strange sounds in the night, and gore to spare, but at heart it’s about the increasing shame a middle-aged woman feels for the distance she’s kept from her aging mother.

To borrow a phrase from the movie itself, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a “terrible joy.”

Garner gives a remarkable performance, especially considering she has very little dialogue with which to work.

Devastation without manipulation. That’s the miracle pulled off by writer-director Andrew Haigh with All of Us Strangers, his supple adaptation of a novel by Taichi Yamada.

Thrumming with energy—thanks to vivacious filmmaking from director Lola Quivoron and a ferocious lead performance by newcomer Julie Ledru—Rodeo takes place within the world of underground motocross in the suburbs of Paris.

The fact that Columbia Pictures produced this is hugely significant. It’s not only that School Daze is written and directed by an African-American filmmaker; it’s that it offers a black perspective outside of genre (blaxploitation) or historical fiction.

Brother’s Keeper is more of a fly on the wall than opportunistic shock doc.

Romvari imbues both halves with their own observational elegance, at once soft and searing. She has a knack for the incisive, off-kilter image.

It’s all immensely entertaining, revealing, and moving—especially the occasional silences, when they sit comfortably together and the shared years fill the open space.

Yun’s portrayal of Mija has a novelistic richness to it, acutely observed in its details (the way she carries her purse), yet expansive enough to encompass the character’s long psychological journey.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is at once a showcase for one of the world’s greatest acting talents and a manic meditation on reality, regret, and the richness of family bonds. It’s a movie that’s difficult to describe, but easy to love.

Apollo 10 ½ is so adept at making the mundane magical that it almost doesn’t need the conceit that gives the movie its title.

The reprieves are what elevate the film, including a mournful moment in the coda – I shouldn’t give it away – that was almost shocking in its starkness and bravery. Such thoughtful touches are far quieter than a dragon’s roar, but they speak volumes.

A dizzying story told at a dizzying pace, Zola might register for some as a transgressive lark (it certainly has comic touches, including a montage of Stefani’s clients’ penises). My experience was more like a simmering panic attack; it’s “fun” in the same way Uncut Gems was fun.

Amidst all the controlled artistry on display in Tár, it must be acknowledged that as much as the movie seeks to skewer the pretensions of Lydia and her world (beginning with her flamboyant stage name, pronounced “tar”), it also exhibits its own indulgences.

Far from a courtroom procedural, however, Saint Omer expands beyond those wood-paneled walls to consider how culture, colonialism, biology, and race determine what women experience—and how society views them because of those determinations.

This ranks among the most mercilessly creepy children’s films I’ve seen.

Decades before an apologist Western such as Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, The Searchers bluntly addressed this country’s racism toward Native Americans by putting one of Hollywood’s most famous faces on it.

It’s a miracle it all works—and it works wonderfully, thanks mostly to Mendes’ script and his casting of Olivia Colman.

An amusing and heartfelt exercise in boots-on-the-ground feminism, Support the Girls takes place in an unlikely location for such an endeavor.

Whatever ineffable thing Wong Wong Kar-wai does—let’s call it despondent extravagance—he distilled it into its purest form with Chungking Express.