Karen Gordon

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

Without being explicit, and by leaving the details up to us to intuit, Wells has given us a film that has a tonal delicacy yet a deep emotional core. It’s a beautiful debut film.

Koefoed’s stylishly made film takes its time, gives everyone their due, and leaves us with some profoundly interesting questions.

The film, which is an economical 90 minutes, is a drama which, at times plays like a mystery, with incredible tension. Çatak gives us a satisfying film, but an unsettling one with unanswered questions.

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.

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

Porter and Souza together, in this film, are using his images as a reminder that a true leader can bring more than just relief from a chaotic time, and that the best leaders have always had a deep and measured well of compassion.

Thanks to performances by this formidable cast, this is a riveting film.

There is magic in French writer/director Céline Sciamma’s beautiful new film Petite Maman. Running just 72 minutes, this spare and gentle little film has an emotional core that feels true and authentic.

Jensen is a master at finding that sweet spot between oddness and pathos. Mikkelsen makes you believe it’s all possible.

The good news is that director James Mangold has made a rich, vibrant movie chronicling four key years in Dylan’s life and career without demystifying either the man or his creative process. Together with a uniformly brilliant cast, he’s made one of the best films of 2024.

What makes Marriage Story so profound and affecting is its tenderness. Although there are points where one character’s choices puts the other into serious difficulty, Baumbach doesn’t demonize Charlie or Nicole, and never ever asks us to judge either of them.

The Rescue will take your breath away. It’s an incredible chronicle of a true impossible mission, of how the world can come together to save life.

Helped along by a fantastic cast, the storytelling is so rich and vibrant and the characters so well drawn that the film never flags.

Like sequels of beloved movies, puberty can either be terrific, passable or really suck. So, while Riley, the lead character in Pixar’s Inside Out, has a rough-ish start to adolescence, the sequel Inside Out 2 — I’m relieved to say — is terrific.

In a word, it’s terrific.

On the Rocks is a delight.

Mary Poppins Returns is a rare treat. It’s an old fashioned movie musical with an old-fashioned message that works perfectly in the modern world.

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.

It’s bonkers and a hell of a film. And even better, with The Lighthouse, Eggers establishes that he’s more than a one trick pony. He’s a true original, auteur and clever filmmaker who isn’t interested in pandering.

A work of sublime sweetness and beauty.

Poor Things is like nothing else you’ve seen this year: A darkly comic satire set in a dazzlingly designed steampunk world. It plays like it’s for fun, but is built around a deep philosophical core, that is ultimately about living authentically.

There’s a lot more going on than meets the eye in Steven Soderbergh’s wise and deceptively breezy new film Let Them All Talk.

On the surface, it’s a simple enough premise: a young woman transitioning into adulthood, trying to find her place in the world. But in the hands of Norwegian director Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World is at one level a social satire about love, identity and relationships, and at the same time, a warm and deeply poignant look at the imperfect way life can creep up on us.

Writer/director Sébastien Pilote has turned this piece of Quebec history into a visually stunning, deeply satisfying piece of cinema, a gorgeous period piece. Canadian history has rarely, if ever, looked so sumptuous on the screen, or felt so rich.

Burnham’s debut is a little gem that feels true and is surprisingly tender.

Shortland has given us a fast-paced movie with action sequences, character depth, and very subtle social and political subtexts about the way women are seen, treated and exploited in the world.

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