Katie Rife

Where Jude’s previous feature, “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,” could be didactic at times, “Do Not Expect…” slips its knife between the audience’s ribs with such skill that the severity of the injury isn’t obvious at first.

Petite Maman is the work of an unusually sensitive filmmaker, and it speaks to Sciamma’s skill as a director that she’s able to express the nuances of this complicated dynamic through such simple actions and words.

Abortion stories are real, and they take place every day, often so quietly that no one but those closest to the people involved even know they’re happening. The power of Hittman’s film lies in that combination of ordinary suffering and extraordinary strength.

Burning actually justifies its running time by slowly building paranoid atmosphere before an explosive, hauntingly ambiguous finale.

Little Women is the best kind of Hollywood film: thoughtful yet escapist, sophisticated yet accessible, expertly crafted and deeply felt. The performances are all top notch—Ronan and Pugh, especially, breathe new life into their characters. Gerwig’s direction is also first rate.

So it’s bit disconcerting, the unfamiliar sensation provoked by his new movie, The Favourite: Is this the first Yorgos Lanthimos film that can be called genuinely fun?

The Perfection takes deep, fetishistic satisfaction in pushing the envelope, then pushing it some more, building in seductive fits and shocking starts to an orgiastic frenzy of cinematic excess. Is it a progressive movie? Not especially, but that’s okay as long as you know what you’re getting into.

The Power Of The Dog divulges its secrets in deliberate, measured fashion, growing richer with each new reveal.

Maintaining an audience’s sympathy for a character through their most fumbling, frustrating lows requires compassion and clarity of purpose, both of which McCarthy amply demonstrates here. It’s a career-best performance, the kind of nuanced turn we all suspected she could deliver, if only someone would give her a chance to do it.

Nomadland is, in some ways, a condemnation of a system that rewards decades of corporate loyalty with poverty and insecurity. But it’s also remarkably clear-eyed and honest about the pleasures and benefits of life on the road, its blend of documentary and fiction allowing those on the margins to tell their stories on their own terms.

Nyoni’s direction is brilliant, contrasting the chaos of Uncle Fred’s multi-day funeral with the stillness and solace Shula finds in her cousins’ company.

Levi has a smirking quality to him that sometimes reads as if he can’t believe he’s starring in this crap. He is credible as a clean-cut, all-American boy, however, and he and Paquin work as an onscreen couple. In fact, some of their banter is kind of cute. The supporting cast has its charms as well.

Good One is beautifully observed, making its point without being too obvious, and perfectly judged in that it doesn’t waste a single shot. The beats of the film are simple and straightforward, but if you hone in on the details, every second is full of information.

It reinvents the zombie movie.

Astonishingly beautiful and vulnerable, I Saw the TV Glow's surreal art-horror speaks to lonely teenagers, past and present.

The squibs are juicy, the nudity is full-frontal, and the psychedelic orgy sequence is extended. But there’s a trenchant point to all the blood, sex, and urine.

There are many moving scenes in City Of Ghosts, but towards the end of the film one especially powerful sequence shows a RBSS member shaking uncontrollably as he thumbs through a stack of pictures of his friends, dead and alive.

Fitting for a film backed by the groovy sounds of the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, the biggest myth Crip Camp is out to bust is that disabled people aren’t sexual beings.

As a result, it isn’t as cohesive or inspired as her penultimate film, the Oscar-nominated Faces Places. But as a parting gift from one of the most singular creative minds of the 20th century, it’s as life-affirming as they come.

Pillion is a film about self-knowledge, and about asserting one’s needs and boundaries without shame.

Even thought it’s a bleak and uncompromising film, it’d be unfair to call Beanpole “misery porn.” The questions it’s asking are much more complicated, and more cutting, than that.

Kikuchi’s strong, singular presence immerses the viewer in her character’s whimsical imagination and confusing emotions. She makes Haru a character worth rooting for — even, or perhaps especially, when she’s making all the wrong decisions.

For her debut feature, The Lure, Smoczyńska has very loosely adapted Hans Christian Andersen’s classic story — so loosely, you might not realize that’s what she’s doing until halfway through — into a genre-defying film that blends elements of musicals, horror, romance, and fantasy into a contemporary fairy tale that celebrates the animalistic, the feminine, and the intimate intersections between the two.

Ironically, this charming and visually ravishing film may further fuel the demand for white truffles, inflating the bubble and ultimately accelerating their decline. On one level, that’s understandable; we all want to be part of something rare and beautiful. But if you truly heed what the film has to say, you’ll go to the park and play with your dog instead.

Although Stanfield and Kaluuya offer up two compelling—and contrasting—performances, Judas And The Black Messiah is an ensemble piece with no weak links, only secret weapons.

This is Tarantino’s Eden, the unspoiled garden when the things he loves don’t have to be sought out or championed because they permeate every aspect of life. The sense of blissful immersion extends to the film’s costuming and production design, both of which are as meticulous as one might expect.

A film that’s refreshingly free of the gushing sound bites from sycophantic celebrities that too often dominate fashion documentaries.

What good high school movies do is take the basics of the teenage condition and refocus them for a specific generation’s point of view. That’s where Booksmart excels.

In the end, Nancy is a bit too dogmatic in its refusal to provide easy answers, its emotional impact dissipating like dust in a sunbeam with every understated non-revelation.

In some ways, Rafiki recalls Nijla Mu’min’s 2018 film "Jinn," which also superimposes a unique, beautifully realized point of view onto a conventional coming-of-age story.

Although this is a story about innocence lost, the overwhelming impression left by “The Friend’s House is Here” is one of sweetness and hope.

It’s impressive to see such sophisticated camera work from a newcomer. But to combine that with experimental narrative and sound techniques, and place it in a detailed mid-century modern environment, and to have all these ambitious gambits (mostly) work, all on an independent film budget...well, it’s quite the feat.

As one might expect from a movie based on a play and directed by a famous actor, dialogue and performances are the driving force.

Saint Maud distinguishes itself through an emphasis on character over metaphor, as well as the nightmarish depths of the darkness at its center. We only get to see the true ferocity of Glass’ vision for a few fleeing moments, but have faith: It’s enough to burn into your soul forever.

It’s about perseverance and the power of working together toward a common goal. Those themes are universally relatable — as is the giddy thrill of watching racist forces of imperial oppression get exactly what’s coming to them.

If The Love Witch simply raised the profile of its director, Anna Biller — a true auteur who not only wrote, directed, produced, and edited this film but also designed and hand made its sets and costumes — then it would be a success.

Sound Of Metal is nothing without its sound design. It’s a story about music and deafness—both auditory phenomena—and its success depends on being able to put you into the main character’s beat-up Converse. The film does accomplish that, thanks in part to its unique, first-person approach to sound.

The film comes directly from its writer-director’s own lived experiences with racism, which gives it a rawness and an urgency that’s hard to ignore. And given America's cognitive dissonance about the looming threat of white supremacy in this country, an unsparing take on the issue like this one is very much needed. If you feel sick watching this movie, that means it’s working.

Although the film ends up as a shallow rumination on revenge and single-minded dominance, it’s hard to beat as spectacle. In terms of making history exciting and engrossing, The Northman is about as titillating as gateway drugs get.

There are things in life that you can’t avoid, and things that you can’t take back. Vulcanizadora doesn’t know how to cope with these truths, and will alienate much, if not most, of its audience as a result. But the honesty with which it expresses these dark thoughts is commendable — and more reflective than a dozen articles on the “male loneliness epidemic.”

As a statement on American entitlement and the intersection between capitalism and colonial terror, it’s a frying pan to the back of the skull: clunky but powerful.

A rousing, spectacle-filled blockbuster, Godzilla: Minus One takes the king of the monsters back to his roots in post-WWII Japan. The story is character-driven, but the monster scenes are exciting and effective.

Whether this challenging film is more than the sum of its formally inventive parts will depend on a viewer’s patience, as well as their tolerance for ambiguity and discomfort.

The film gained an unfortunate reputation as a gross-out cannibal shocker on the festival circuit, and while that categorization is not entirely, technically incorrect — this is a piece of body horror, and an intensely visceral one — it detracts from the striking imagery and layered symbolism of Ducournau’s uncommonly assured debut feature.

The film works best if you approach it as a fantasy, with Jen as a near-supernatural angel of vengeance; otherwise, it’s easy to get hung up on the inconsistencies as the action grows increasingly over-the-top.

Sheila’s humanity is a necessary counterbalance to Strickland’s intentionally stiff, formal style, which manifests in the film’s efficient pacing and crisp sound editing as well as its stylized performances and lavish production design.

The scales ultimately tip slightly in favor of style, but when that style is this gorgeous, remembering a movie for the way it looks rather than its plot isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

It is an emotionally vulnerable piece of work, touching on everything from the pain of experiencing a mental illness that no one around you understands to what it means to waste your life.

Mistress Dispeller” isn’t really about Wang, or her methods...It’s about the mysteries of the human heart. Its exploration of these subtle depths is sensitive, as are its conclusions.

Huesera doesn’t necessarily re-invent either of those subgenres. But it does present them in a vessel that’s so artfully crafted, and filled with details that bring the characters and their relationships to such vivid life, that it accomplishes a lofty goal for genre cinema: Taking a familiar formula and turning it into a personal statement.

King Coal goes deeper into the cultural roots of the opioid crisis, looking at a region both devastated and nurtured by “the King” and asking what a future without it might look like.

He can afford the best treatments and technologies and — by the end — even to extend his life, because he’s a well-off former NFL player. Most patients don’t have these luxuries.

Director Greg Mottola deserves some credit for trying to give the film a little bit of cinematic flair, something that’s lacking in many Hollywood comedies these days.

A pulpy, violent tale of revenge based on a comic serialized in a popular Playboy-esque men’s magazine, Lady Snowblood didn’t have to be art. But director Toshiya Fujita treated it as such, utilizing a complicated flashback structure and expressionistic cinematography to tell the story of Yuki Kashima, a highly skilled assassin trained from birth to find and kill the men (and woman) responsible for murdering her father and raping her mother before she was born.

As a show-business fairytale, Wild Rose is pretty standard. But as a character study, it’s something special. That’s due largely to Buckley’s star-making performance as Rose-Lynn.

Strange Darling, J.T. Mollner’s self-consciously edgy gotcha of a serial-killer thriller, is so high on its own cleverness that it never stops to think about what it’s actually saying.

The Survivalist rewards with thoughtful cinematography — one fluid shot that effectively shifts the balance of power in a scene is especially noteworthy — and character development. But viewers looking for zombie attacks or thrilling chase scenes should go elsewhere.

Nyoni is clearly confident in her vision and the story she wants to tell, and in her capable hands, the result is spellbinding.

It’s the kind of film that, rather like its mournful title apparition, clings to your sleeve and follows you home.

Although The Endless works just fine as a standalone film, looking at it in the wider context of Benson and Moorhead’s work highlights another, more meta theme: the desire to return to an earlier, simpler period in one’s life, and relive those glory days forever.

It’s Close’s wonderfully subtle characterization of Joan that lifts The Wife above its cliché setups and neat role reversals, which is really rather ironic. Once again, it’s the wife doing all the hard work. At least this time, she gets top billing.

Gariépy reveals very little about her character’s state of mind in these moments, and this ambiguity is what makes “Red Rooms” so intriguing.

Starring Kingsman: The Secret Service’s Taron Egerton jutting out his chin and sporting oversized glasses in a concerted attempt to appear less handsome, Eddie The Eagle wears its quirkiness on its puffed sleeve.

The nagging, inconvenient fly in the ointment is this: Who was this really made for — African immigrants in need of advocacy, or bureaucrats in search of Oscar glory? The answer seems to be a little of both.

A quick, funny victory lap for anti-establishment Redditors and stonk enthusiasts.

Pretty darn entertaining.

What stands out about the film is the pain that lies underneath Bustamante’s placid compositions—an anguished desire for justice that, like the Weeping Woman herself, still cries out to be heard.

Subtle and intuitive, this documentary about NYC psychics asks all the right questions.

A meta-commentary on filmmaking in general and cinematic conceptions of beauty in specific, the film is clearly enamored with its own cleverness—which isn’t to say that it’s not clever, just that a more clear-headed film could have distilled its ideas better, and been more satisfying as a result.

The style of humor in Shiva Baby can best be described as “sex-positive cringe,” in which the secondhand embarrassment comes less from the sexual situations themselves than our heroine’s collision with polite, conservative society.

The chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood is undeniable, and Rodriguez’s more naturalistic performance balances out her costar’s affected shuffling and deep, gravely monotone. Wood’s performance is sensitive, but it’s also silly at times.

Oddity is an elegantly constructed tale of supernatural revenge that’s full of spine-tingling atmosphere.

It’s a female-driven fantasy, for sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not toxic. And God help the poor woman who believes it.

The slimness of the plot—and its familiarity, if you’ve seen Lelio’s original film — also allows the viewer to focus on Gloria Bell’s true raison d’être: the one and only Julianne Moore.

Maybe there’s something out there, or maybe there’s nothing at all. Most horror films presuppose that the former is the scarier of the two options, but It Comes At Night is more concerned with the seemingly bottomless depths of the unknown.

In terms of celebrating his life by letting us soak in his impassioned, inspiring presence one more time, the film is successful. But viewers should take one more note from the man himself and not fall for easy scapegoats and trite narratives, whether they concern countries or a person who devoted his life to exploring them.

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is so affable, so good-natured, so modest—just so gosh-darned charming—that it’s difficult not to crack at least a little bit of a smile while watching it.

While Girl Picture isn’t necessarily breaking any new ground, this sensitively rendered dramedy invites viewers into the world of three young Finnish women on the cusp of adulthood with an affection and mellow sense of humor that makes it a more than agreeable cinematic companion.

In an age where corporate IP has become a de facto religion in global cinema culture, The People’s Joker is a blasphemous Molotov cocktail of a movie, with a unique and valuable point of view. And it’s hilarious, too.

Dead Mail’s quirkiness never grows tiresome, which is impressive.

Del Toro’s love for the grotesque and the abject is sincere and passionate, and there are scenes in Frankenstein that play like thesis statements for the director’s entire career.

It’s animated by a white-hot rage that escalates throughout its epic 140-minute run time, building to a jaw-droppingly audacious climax that sprays a firehose of blood at the audience. It’s demented and absurd in the best way possible.

There are moments of genuine horror and genuine artfulness in Nosferatu, neither of which would have been possible if the writer-director had approached the project with tongue in cheek. But at two hours and 12 minutes, it’s a solemn death march towards an inevitable conclusion—which fits the theme, but strains the limits of audience engagement.

There are moments when Longlegs feels like a movie you’ve seen before, but with an evil filter laid over it: This is both a weakness and a strength, as Perkins’ horror surrealism renders the familiar strange, and the strange familiar.

Ferreira is a believable and sympathetic protagonist, bringing a vulnerability to Grace that makes the viewer root for her even as she blows up her life for reasons even she doesn’t seem to understand.

As that ending approaches, the tone shifts from dark comedy to sentimental drama, adding a maudlin aftertaste to an otherwise appealingly bitter brew.

Overly simplistic piece of Southern poverty porn, which asks questions it’s not really prepared to answer and proceeds from a set of dubious assumptions that undermine whatever nuance it does possess.

Dead Lover is daring you to take it seriously, or perhaps distracting you with a goofy dance while it quietly queers the “Frankenstein” myth.

Joanna Arnow’s second feature is a symphony of ambient embarrassment, whose movements are structured around the various men with whom the protagonist, Ann (Arnow), has relationships of varying length and ambivalence. Within these movements, Arnow hits uncomfortable notes that range from cutting corporate indignities to the ritualized abjection of erotic humiliation.

The problem is that, while the film is conceptually solid, its story gets shakier as it goes along.

Combined with realistically messy family dynamics and expert turns from the ensemble cast — particularly Nevin, whose performance forges boldly into challenging territory — the result is powerful, if a style of horror audiences have grown used to in a post-A24 world.

Love Lies Bleeding combines intense lesbian sexuality with shocking, graphic violence for a film that really gets the blood pumping. Kristen Stewart embodies her dirtbag character with the jumpy physicality she does so well, and her chemistry with co-star Katy O’Brian is powerful. The film loses focus as it escalates to hysterical heights in its second half, but its pulpy, fetishistic pleasures are potent.

Wu weaves together the stories of two live-streaming stars, a manager, and a devoted fan to form a portrait not only of the extreme acceleration that defines contemporary Chinese pop culture, but also the bizarre fantasy economy and parasitic interdependencies of late capitalism as a whole.

While the film is kinetic, colorful, and frantically paced, it’s also not quite as outrageous as Miike’s gonzo ‘90s yakuza movies.

Perhaps because he’s had a couple of decades to think about it, Flanagan’s vision for the film is assured, full of intimate closeups that allow Gugino’s multi-layered performance to shine.

Making her feature debut, writer-director Chandler Levack has pulled off a rare trick here by making a movie that feels warm and safe without coddling its protagonist.

By engaging with multiple forms of oppression, the film forms a radical statement on the intersections of racism, classism, and sexism that elevates it far beyond a nicely shot, Victorian-era episode of "Snapped."

What the film lacks in depth and focus, it makes up for in personality. Murphy’s obviously the star here, but Moore’s loyal entourage comes to the movie with plenty of charisma of its own.