Josh Larsen

This is Mulligan’s show. Her risky, raw performance is the life force of an otherwise muted film.

Nasty stuff—of the sort, lord knows, that I’ve praised plenty in my time. But in this case the return on icky investment just isn’t there.

Writer-director Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) does more veering that navigating, but stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson (the latter nominated for Best Actress) connect on such a genuinely exhilarating level in the music scenes (especially the early ones, where they’re refining their act) that you end up rooting for them and, by default, their movie.

As a character study, Mankiewicz registers as something of a boozy cliche. As a political project, the film is erratic.

Unlike its protagonist, Babygirl is too easily satisfied.

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.

How thoroughly does Joan Crawford own Grand Hotel? She makes Greta Garbo superfluous. A star parade (and Best Picture winner), Grand Hotel unfairly encourages such comparisons.

Director Arthur Jones delivers a fascinating deep dive into meme culture, tracing how something like this can happen so quickly in our viral age.

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

You’ll have to look for a spirited defense of the movie’s snowballing narrative, as well as the complicated character motivations driving it, elsewhere. I’m here to tell you to set much of that aside, breathe in the precious spice that has brought warring parties to the desert planet of Arrakis, and simply take the trip.

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.

Monster takes the long way around to get to the movie it ultimately wants to be, and I’m not sure the process is to its benefit.

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

Thanks in part to McKenna-Bruce’s performance, How to Have Sex never feels exploitative. She gives Tara a sharp emotional intelligence.

David Oyelowo plays King, and there’s no denying he brings a charismatic forcefulness to the part. This is particularly true in his speeches, which begin calmly, rooted in reason, and then whip up into a righteous fury that he struggles to contain and barely – just barely – does.

As a narrative, Thunder Road doesn’t entirely cohere—various plot strands involve Jim’s ex-wife, his daughter, and his partner on the force—yet Cummings remains riveting, never letting you get an easy fix on this troubled, troubling character.

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

Koepp’s fairly straightforward screenplay doesn’t take us in many surprising directions, so the film’s pleasures lie in Kravitz’s jittery performance (she’s working in a similar vein to Claire Foy in Soderbergh’s other recent psychological thriller, Unsane) and the experimental filmmaking that’s usually going on in the corners of a Soderbergh production.

In Miss Bala, sexism doesn’t take sides, but is rather a harrowing, pervasive, dehumanizing force that even turns fashion into a weapon.

This is a movie that has the courage of its own convictions, but also the playfulness to wear them lightly on its ridiculously embroidered sleeves.

The movie is a collection of ghoulish creative impulses (some of them gorily sadistic, as when a character is trapped in a room of barbed wire) rather than a coherent story.

Shiva Baby has a comic claustrophobia that almost makes you choke, so intense is its depiction of familial/traditional walls closing in on its main character.

Priscilla is one of Sofia Coppola’s “moments movies” — stories told not necessarily via plot, but via the textures, sounds, and accessories that combine to create an indelible 30 seconds or so, seconds which say as much about a character and their experience as endless pages of dialogue could.

The Painter and the Thief tells a remarkable story of artistic understanding, one which Rees gives a clever, two-part structure.

Kaufman’s last film as director, the stop-motion Anomalisa, was a meditation on misery that comforted viewers, if not itself, with its astonishing artistry. i’m thinking of ending things, while arresting in its own way, offers no such consolation. It’s depressing in form and function.

Writer-director Alex Russell, making his feature debut, offers a creepy, Talented Mr. Ripley-style character study that doubles as a meditation on celebrity and authenticity.

Considering this is a remake of a superior 1997 Norwegian film, director Christopher Nolan doesn’t create anything nearly as inventive as his Memento, but at least Insomnia is expertly conventional.

At its best, the movie is a destabilizing look at family as a big con. Yet the chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood never sings, which becomes a problem as the movie shifts to focus more on their relationship.