Karen Gordon

While it’s fun to see the characters back in action, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is overstuffed and meanders. The film also suffers from self-consciousness. Too many celebrities show up in ways that feel pointless, turning TDWP2 into self-congratulatory mush.

Is this about forgiveness as a pathway to love? Lowery doesn’t sew it up for us in a neat package or give us the answers, but I have no doubt that anyone who resonates with the film will come away with thoughts of their own.

The scenes feel like they've come straight out of 1970s and 80s B-comedies, outdated and out of step with the main plot, which feels richer in comparison. It’s distracting enough to slow the movie down.

We can see the character’s angst, happiness and sorrow, but it doesn’t cut through. The film’s emotional life doesn’t quite connect and feels remote.

Wuthering Heights is a sensual feast. But, while there’s plenty to admire and lots of passion and heat, the film doesn’t quite add up in a way that brings the feels.

Kristen Stewart makes an impressive directorial debut with her adaptation The Chronology of Water. The film is a raw, emotional primal scream anchored by a career highlight performance by Imogen Poots.

By turns exhilarating and exhausting, Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme is a whirlwind race of a movie anchored by another brilliant all-in performance by Timothée Chalamet.

With Breakdown 1975, Neville isn’t asking us to consider whether the year was pivotal. He’s making the case that it was.

A soft, sentimental, gentle movie that doesn’t ask much of its audience, but can, if only momentarily, provide a salve for the spirit.

Sentimental Value, one of the year’s best films, is an absorbing, beautifully drawn family drama that walks lightly, but goes deep.

It’s one of the year’s best. Built around a moral question, the film is complex, intelligent, and relatable.

It speaks to the legacy of things that are impossible to record: love, experience, encouragement, a sense of family and belonging that Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller gave to their children, and which continues through them into the next generation.

At its core, the film is the story of a man who has outwardly achieved everything that most of us imagine any artist or ambitious individual would want but still has to face himself. As we all do. The film captures that with real poignancy.

It takes incredible talent to make something this spare work. The Mastermind is the kind of high-wire act that only someone as gifted as Reichardt could pull off.

Eleanor the Great is a small-scale film with depth and relatable themes: grief, loss, identity, family among them. The film has some flaws that lessen its emotional impact but there is admirable work here all around.

Ultimately One Battle After Another is about a father and daughter, and I think about one of PTA’s big themes: Love. But that’s just me.

This is Spinal Tap is now a movie classic. I wish I could say the follow up Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is as good. But, alas, it doesn’t really touch the beloved original.

It’s an easygoing, entertaining movie, boosted by its name cast. And sure, it doesn’t ask much of its audience. But sometimes a well done movie-length TV mystery is enough.

The film is part buddy comedy, part rom-com, and partly just good natured silliness, but it coheres. It’s entertaining enough that you can just go with it, but there is depth there, if you’re so inclined. It says a few meaningful things about relationships without becoming a self-help class. And it has heart and charm in spades.

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is a reminder of the beauty of what he was looking for, and why his loss still reverberates so many years after his death.

There’s life in Highest 2 Lowest, but I didn’t feel much of it. David King is meant to be a man driven by his passions, for music and for himself, his legacy and perhaps his family. I could see that and understood that, but I didn’t feel much of it.

Wala doesn’t go deep enough, and the film stays on the surface. At the same time, the characters stick with you, enough to make us want to know what happens next for Ash and Claire.

An Honest Life is an interesting if undemanding made-for-Netflix thriller that weaves together themes of classism, anarchy, and ultimately a young character coming to terms with who he is, and how far off the path of an ordinary life he’s prepared to go.

It’s utterly brainless fun with a big, big heart.

Aster packs a lot into the film but never loses control of the material. In his most mainstream work to date, he once again shows his mettle as a serious filmmaker.

If you're looking for a little kid–friendly movie, Pixar’s delightful new animation Elio is just the ticket.

Materialists is fun and satisfying and, thanks its wonderful cast, full of tender sweetness.

It is engaging, warm, touching, and sincere without being cloying or manipulative.