Josh Larsen

Crawford is riveting in the lead, tapping into David’s impotence and barely suppressed rage while also making him sadly sympathetic—especially in the sweetly sincere moments where he tries to maintain a genuine connection with his children.

Of course, Cruz is luminous—especially as she embraces a maternal side that is at once nurturing and ferocious.

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.

Full of nuance and understanding, C’mon C’mon meets a family in crisis and proceeds to hold them in its gentle hands.

Bergman Island deftly interrogates the idolization of art and the lionization of artists, while also distinguishing between experiencing a place and sucking it for “inspiration.”

Now this is how you reheat a piece of pop culture. Nearly 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions, which left its two main characters dead, director Lana Wachowski returns to the series with enough self-aware wit, narrative ingenuity, and filmmaking prowess to more than justify the endeavor.

As Yusuke Kafuku, the theater director, Hidetoshi Nishijima delivers a master class in withholding, while still giving the audience everything we need. He’s both stoic and seething.

Reinsve gives Julie both a hard edge and soft center, so that we root for her even when she makes decisions with which we disagree.

Featuring a pair of novice performances that will either make the actors stars or preserve them in cinematic amber as these exact characters, the 1973-set Licorice Pizza marks an ambling, deceptively breezy, and incredibly sweet effort from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson.

Be careful with Petite Maman; the movie is small and quiet, but if you let your guard down, it might devastate you.

Like each of del Toro’s nastier pictures, Nightmare Alley closes in on you with a hellish elegance.

Writing and directing her first feature, which she adapted from an Elena Ferrante novel, Maggie Gyllenhaal employs an intensely intimate camera, one that’s so tight on Colman’s face that at times her features are a blur.

Greene seems to have produced a respectful account of the experiment, allowing these men to find some form of catharsis without exploiting them.

Mosese’s camera is dispassionate, but deeply attentive.

Gently yet urgently, Flee gives intimate attention to one refugee’s story, while reminding us that Amin also stands in for millions upon millions of others across the globe who are subject to dehumanization as they simply seek a safer life.

During the production numbers, Spielberg’s camera is almost always on the move, but not in a distracting way. Usually it’s trying to keep up with the dancers and give them as much of the frame as they need; at other times it winds its way among them, increasing our sense of exhilaration and intimacy.

Rex, meanwhile—an actor and former VJ with a brief early stint in adult entertainment—delivers an unequivocally great comic performance. Simultaneously sweet and icky, he gives the character a light, even gentle spirit that’s at odds with the materialist manner with which he thinks about and engages in sex.

Garfield is fine, if a bit one-note in his show-must-go-on energy. The real issue is that the film is maniacally focused on Larson as the uber-struggling artist in a way that eventually feels monstrous, devouring any other character or concern that happens to cross its path.

If Test Pattern feels a bit unfinished by its end, it’s not because I wanted resolution—documenting the refusal of resolution seems to be the point—but because there seemed to still be more, especially between the main couple, to explore.

Director Ridley Scott and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski lacquer things with the right sheen—and the outfits and hairstyles, if nothing else, will keep you awake for the nearly three-hour running time—but House of Gucci’s promise as a campy, fact-based crime melodrama is only realized when Germanotta is running the show.

Spencer relies quite heavily on Kristen Stewart’s central performance. Once you adjust to the repetitive rhythm of speaking she employs—a rush of words, followed by a pregnant pause, then another rush with a single syllable of emphasis—you can appreciate some of the more delicate work she’s doing, particularly her darting eyes and changing posture.

Cumberbatch makes every moment he’s onscreen mesmerizing—entertaining and terrifying at the same time.

At its best, this is galaxy-brain, comic-book stuff rooted in a tactile sense of place. Unfortunately, Eternals runs nearly three hours and is bloated with elements that have served other MCU installments well, but fall flat here.

Detractors might call it navel-gazing, but to me The Souvenir: Part II is introspection to adroit, therapeutic purpose.

This is a film of clashing ideas and clanging style.

Passing is an impressionistic experience, much like the Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou piano piece that composer Devonté Hynes incorporates into the score, a portrait of an identity that refuses to be pinned down, for better and for worse.

Weerasethakul casts spells, and this is a particularly auditory one, the weaving of a liminal soundspace.

This is another sad-sack Anderson movie, with perhaps the saddest collection of actors we’ve seen. And yet, this being Anderson, The French Dispatch is also absolutely delightful.