Josh Larsen

Crime may not pay, but The Public Enemy was one of the first pictures to recognize that it sure can be exciting to watch.

Andersson catalogs misery of many kinds, and aside from the moments of humor in the film he offers no balm.

The incessant, rhythmic swishing of the chain gang’s scythes burrows into your brain – and then adds Newman’s supernova performance. It’s a gulag melodrama, if such a thing is possible.

The only thing I can imagine anyone offering in complaint about Roma is that the movie delivers an uncomplicated depiction of a secular saint. That’s true, to an extent, and yet it’s also what I love about this full-hearted, exquisitely crafted, deeply grateful film.

Train to Busan is a cleverly concentrated shot of zombie terror.

Farrow admirably bears the burden of carrying the movie’s dread, portraying Rosemary as sharp and wary, but with too many social forces arrayed against her for her to have a fighting chance.

Diane is brutally honest about the losses that can define this stage of life.

Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed Margaret, deserves credit for the framework and dialogue he provides, but it’s Paquin who channels the roiling surges of that age with a startling combination of unpredictability and precision.

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.

Little context beyond that narration is provided, a wise choice that provides the sort of self-imposed restrictions that a good biopic—fictional or documentary—needs.

There is no denying that for most of its substantial running time (including a haunting post-credits sequence), Sinners sings.

The moral burden of wealth weighs heavily on Knives Out, a dexterously cunning, immensely entertaining whodunit that has more than catching the killer on its mind.

Written by David Koepp, who also penned Soderbergh’s Kimi and Presence, Black Bag displays the twists and intrigue you’d expect from a top-rate spy flick, along with some scintillating dialogue. But it’s the movie’s intellectual provocation and formal invention that marks it among Soderbergh’s best work.

You know those countless slasher flicks in which a psychotic maniac slices his way through horny teenagers, only to be thwarted by the virginal heroine in the end? Halloween is the fountainhead. Despite countless imitators, however, few have been able to match the level of craft and psychological depth on display here. Halloween is a landmark, and a legitimately enduring classic.

By far the highlight is Astaire and Rogers’ impossibly fluid routine to Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” in which even that formidable song knows its place and quiets down for a portion of their dance. The two are so elegantly in sync that the ill-fitting conventions of The Gay Divorcee simply melt away.

During much of Black Mother, the top of the next frame can be seen peeking from the bottom of the current one. The effect is a certain cinema verite bleariness, but also the suggestion that the person upon whom the camera is focused has a story that not only matters in this moment, but will go on.

Anyone who’s seen Beau Travail knows that Denis is a master of color. Here she uses the ship’s lighting system to shift between cool, medical blues and warm, arousing reds. And in the “garden,” a lush conservatory space where the crew grows their food, the deep greens evoke a primordial Eden, a place where nakedness carried no shame. The goings-on in High Life—including two instances of sexual assault—are like a crash landing into the Fall.

A Clockwork Orange ultimately asks: how deep is sin’s hold—on Alex, and on us? This being a Kubrick film—and considering that it leaves us with Beethoven’s Ninth triumphantly, transgressively ringing once more in Alex’s ears, after a fall from a window knocks the Ludovico out of him—the movie doesn’t seem to think humanity is worthy of an answer. To A Clockwork Orange, we’re all droogs at heart.

Mostly the movie registers as a comedy flag being planted, a claim being made. Anything your average clown could do, Chaplin could do better.

Time takes on a different tenor in Train Dreams, in which the life of an early 20th-century logger in Idaho both flits by in a blink and makes an eternal mark.

Honeymoon in Vegas is a bit corny and contrived, but the movie gradually levitates above its limitations thanks to its three leads, whose performances count among the best in their careers.

Asteroid City might be Anderson’s bleakest film, bordering, at times, on nihilistic. His comedies have always had a mordant edge—both The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited directly address suicide and grief—yet they usually employ despair as a starting point, from which the characters move toward healing of some kind. In contrast, Asteroid City—like the rumbling reverberations of those atomic explosions—quivers with disquietude throughout.

It’s as if Moss is directing the movie through her performance.

As in the nature documentaries of Werner Herzog, there is grandeur and servility to be found here. Like the Kraffts, Fire of Love demonstrates a brazen humility.

It’s probably unwise to come to Leone looking for too much in the way of feminism. Instead, Once Upon a Time in the West offers quintessential examples of the things he was better known for, including another blustery Ennio Morricone score. Visually, he mostly vacillates between extreme close-ups of intense faces and vast widescreen compositions, a technique that is lurching but also luridly beautiful.

Paris is Burning crackles because of its subjects, almost all of whom are natural performers in some way.

Collette anchors all of this supernaturality with a powerhouse performance.

BlacKkKlansman is a joke that sticks in your throat, as well as a necessary examination of blight history (those shameful marks on the American record when “white history” and “black history” awfully intersect).