Joshua Rothkopf

It’s a movie about a citizenry at war with itself, hoping to keep the plates spinning for one more night. You watch it and think how easy it would be to envision an American remake — and wonder, too, if a filmmaker like Lapid even exists here.

There isn’t much of an original signature here. Returning director Dan Trachtenberg hits the beats competently but not too stridently, like a good superfan should.

A film this well-made and cut (the pacy editing by Aden Hakimi calls back to the elder Romero’s own cutting of his major titles) shouldn’t be relegated to just one kind of audience. Anyone who appreciates horror should find something to smile at here.

More testimony to the experience of eating at Nobu would have helped this feel less like a commercial.

This isn’t the kind of puzzle thriller in which all the elements click into place with a thudding literalism that compliments an attentive eye. It’s one that accommodates the vagaries of human behavior, leaving punishment aside as a secondary concern.

A timid, far-from-revelatory film, authorized by the three surviving Zeppelin vets and graced by their presence in new interviews that give off the faint scent of impatience.

Superfans aren’t necessarily going to love this. It’s a movie made with affection, but also with the wisdom that visionaries can sometimes be jerks.

The potent image-making and performative ferocity turns what could have been a crime thriller into a near-metaphysical showdown.

A miraculously subtle piece of work.

This is a film that seems to know a lot about future psychology. May we never know such mournfulness outside of an ambitious summer blockbuster.

Once you let go of the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there is much to enjoy in “Megalopolis,” especially its cast members, leaning into their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement.

For the first time in Miller’s now-five-film franchise, he seems to be falling shy of the immediacy he’s sustained, often deliriously, for an entire feature.

The takeaway isn’t exhilaration; the unease is what makes Garland’s film valuable. You watch it with your jaw hanging open.

Let’s credit debuting feature director Arkasha Stevenson (a former photographer for this paper) with the stylishness to pull off a potent sense of atmosphere and the kind of lovely period detail that deep studio pockets can fund but rarely have cause to summon.

If I call the movie a love story, don’t laugh. Torres has made it with love in his heart.

Villeneuve has made good on one of the great Hollywood gambles in recent memory, delivering a two-part epic of literary nuance, timely significance and maybe even the promise of another film or two.

Not only has a real filmmaker emerged with A Real Pain, with both the sensitivity and boldness that could launch a career, but Eisenberg has never let himself be this exposed as a performer.

Out of Darkness is effective enough — and gory — to function as a thriller of the loud-noise-springing variety. But a last-act grasp at profundity in Ruth Greenberg’s screenplay feels unearned.

The ambition here is invigorating and, during its most exhilarating stretches, Night Swim seems to be actually pulling it off — until suddenly it’s not, a victim of overplotting, pushing the water thing a little too hard.

Woo is capable of bigger and better.

The Killer is an opportunity for America’s most stylish director to reboot, to get back to basics, to come in under two hours.

Saw X may not be the best one to start off with, but it’s hard to imagine a better one to end with.

That title, Cobweb, suggests only one cobweb, but why be stingy? This movie’s screenplay is strewn with them: dozens of dusty tendrils linking it back to older, better horror films, sometimes on a shot-by-shot basis.

Splattery, puncture-heavy violence — the hard-R rating is earned — alternates with deadening rafts of therapy-speak, including an actual therapy session. But there's no deeper meaning to any of it; the Scream idea, meta to its core, was always a preening celebration of its own cleverness, never mind the occasional half-explored nods to toxic fandom or cancel culture.

In its colorful, Godardian way, Return to Seoul becomes a quest movie, but not the one you're expecting — it's the opposite of sentimental or overly therapized.

At least Mia Goth, herself recently reborn as indie horror's new scream queen with Pearl, understands the assignment, getting more unhinged with every scene (her character starts off with vigorous flirting and a brusque handjob, and goes from there).

Obliquely related to her recent movies, Hogg's latest is either her slyest joke to date, or another swerve in an especially fecund career phase.

A team of screenwriters more creative than Pat Casey and Josh Miller (best known for two manic Sonic the Hedgehog movies) might have done more with the backstory, and director Tommy Wirkola's beatdowns never transcend the merely serviceable. But there's no denying the joy in a child's eyes when she sees Santa's weapon of choice, a sledgehammer hefted with brutal artistry, and squeals its name: "Skullcrusher!"