Josh Larsen

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.