Josh Larsen

Bottoms—which puts a queer spin on teen sex comedies like Revenge of the Nerds, American Pie, Superbad, and (the partially queer) Booksmart—is at its best when it is at its most anarchic.

Thanks to Larson, Parris, and Vellani, The Marvels feels like a breath of fresh air.

James and the Giant Peach is a wondrous interpretation of Dahl’s book that revives the magical possibilities of film while liberating our own imaginations as well.

Bait functions on a subliminal level. A concoction of illogical insert shots, mismatched sound, and nonlinear edits, it has little regard for a cinematically conventional sense of time and space.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is stingy with the stunts—though it only feels that way because the movie, in keeping with its bloated title, runs nearly three hours.

An efficient thriller with eco-political ambitions.

There are laughs aplenty in this lawless, arbitrary, mythological Old West, but a feel-good yarn it ain’t.

It’s gutsy and largely works, though something about the theatricality of it all kept me at a distance.

I’m sure there’s a definitive explanation, but Enys Men strikes me as a puzzle that’s more enthralled with its individual pieces than any picture they might complete.

The doc works best when Mitchell, who narrates, gets past the facts and lets his acutely observant critical voice merge with his memories, as when he recalls seeing Spook on the big screen with friends as a teenager in Detroit. His education then, is ours now.

Good Boy is a harrowing experience for dog lovers—or possibly anyone who’s noticed an animal staring at something you can’t quite perceive—yet the movie never quite unearths the subterranean chills of the most potent horror.

Stunning on every account, however, is the cinematography by Claire Mathon (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Saint Omer). Working with an autumnal setting, Mathon manages to give each tree its own light, while also allowing the dark, mysterious undergrowth to add an unsettling darkness. Such shots are the most troublingly beautiful element of the movie.

Nine Days is slow going at first—it sometimes feels as if the title is a reference to its running time—but eventually this pensive, existential thought experiment blossoms into something more cinematic.

As with Knives Out, Johnson takes care to add a bit of political bite to the proceedings. This is a movie interested in unmasking killers, yes, but also emperors who wear no clothes.

Kudos to her and her team for finding a way—through imaginative production design and backup dancers who essentially serve as supporting characters—to make her music feel both intimate and anthemic, something like a diary entry meant not to be hidden under a bed, but chanted by the masses.

When experimenting with his own techniques—Shackleton gets ingenious mileage out of slow zooms and pans in those location shots—Zodiac Killer Project works as a provocative, meta consideration of the genre’s form. When dumping on other films and the genre in general, the movie comes across as a bit hypocritical and smug.

With After the Thin Man, the best thing about the series remains the playful, boozy, flirtatious repartee between Powell and Loy (even if Nick seems a bit bossier this time around).

Mostly a work of stop-motion, the movie boasts expansive, intricately detailed sets that the eye can’t help but want to explore, despite the horrors that take place among them.

If the movie, at times, feels exhausting, there are also painterly details to savor, like the flowing locks of a dragon or the shimmer of a seascape at sundown.

No, Toy Story 4 isn’t necessary. Yes, Toy Story 4 is fun. Does it end in a way that’s worthy of the series, and Woody in particular? We’ll get there.

Overall, Corsage doesn’t reinvent the royal-as-trapped-canary subgenre (it also glorifies Elisabeth’s ultimate fate in a slightly uncomfortable way), but the film style and attitude, much like Krieps’ empress, make a scene.

In this early feature, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker displays a soon-to-be-familiar instinct and affection for characters existing on the edges of society. If his eye for casting and sense of narrative drive isn’t finely honed yet, you can still sense a unique cinematic perspective being brought to bear on an overlooked milieu.

I laughed a great deal at the bad-boy banter during Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. I also thought the action stood up alongside anything else in the franchise. But the thing I enjoyed the most about this riotously ridiculous movie is that way it functions as a near-brilliant exercise in cinematic parallelism.

Directed by James Whale, The Invisible Man is missing the gothic poeticism of his Frankenstein films, but offers its own sense of unease, especially when the invisible Griffin smashes another cop’s head with a bench. The effects in these trick shots are incredibly sophisticated for the era, as are the moments when Griffin unravels his bandages to reveal … nothing.

Whenever someone wants to downplay historical atrocities, Descendant suggests, it’s because they’re also trying to cover up injustice in the present day.

Director Joe Dante provides a loving, detail-filled snapshot of youthful camaraderie and creativity – I love how their cockpit is a Tilt-A-Whirl – before indulging in the sort of bizarre satire that can be found in most of his films (especially Small Soldiers and Gremlins).

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey won’t work for everyone, but hearts of a certain shape may treasure it.

It’s a lot, and only becomes more so, but something about the movie’s central idea—as well as the black streak of humor Fargeat brings to the proceedings—kept me hooked.