Kimberley Jones

It’s an electrifying watch in its profound discomfort, and a testament to McKenzie’s ability to disarm with a smile, then land a righteous blow against the bad guys.

Much of the fun of The Christophers – and it is very fun – is in anticipating the hitches, then startling when they snag left rather than right. The delight is in watching Coel and McKellen play off each other.

Any SNL fan, and I am one, is still going to get a kick out of the close access and cavalcade of stars like Tina Fey, Chris Rock, John Mulaney, Paula Pell, and Paul Simon giving testimony. By dint of that access, Lorne is by definition revealing. Revelatory? Not as much.

A Rorschach test of a movie that reveals more about the audience than the characters onscreen. The Drama doesn’t just invite judgment; it’s coded in its DNA.

It’s all rather stunning to behold, especially in black & white, but Below the Clouds eloquently articulates the maxim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” That eye sees something very different from a safe remove. By and large, the people featured in Rosi’s documentary are in the path of danger.

Mesa Soto initially mines wry humor from Oscar’s sad-sackness; he and editor Ricardo Saravia are especially good at scene transitions that land like a punchline, and the marvelous Rios – small of stature and existentially slumped – cuts a comical figure. But the film, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes last year, subtly evolves (more successfully than Oscar, it turns out) to find just as much to scorn in the poetry center elites, and to nudge the viewer toward a more compassionate approach to its luckless sorta-hero.

The film tracks the laborious training process of how anxious, heartbroken Helen forges a bond with Mabel, and it’s fascinating stuff.

An undeniably novel film that nevertheless lost its novelty for me around the time the Shakers washed up on American shores (that’s about an hour in?), The Testament of Ann Lee still had me in its grip every time a musical number rolled around, which is often enough.

Anchoring all the wild plot machinations and shocking, garish violence is Wagner Moura’s focused and forceful lead performance.

Hamnet is at its best when exploring primal emotions, following the example of Agnes, with her elemental connection to the earth.

Sentimental Value lacks the giddy bracinginess of The Worst Person in the World; it’s a more measured, more meditative thing. It is also a return to form, of a sort.

Peter Hujar’s Day is a monument to the thrillingly mundane minutiae of living. I found it almost indescribably moving.

At just under two hours, Die My Love is a lot of movie with not a lot of story. Good thing, then, that it centers Lawrence in very nearly every frame.

For a film that gets right up close to a musical genius, it’s when he’s walking away, hands jammed in his leather jacket, that you can see the resemblance most clearly.

There are no life lessons here, only an uncommonly focused look at one life – the sometimes joyful, sometimes punishing day-to-day existence of a young man whose future is more uncertain that most.

It’s one of Roberts’ best ever performances, not in least part because of how confidently she wears her age and Alma’s secrets, now that her ingénue years are firmly behind her. The woman with the mile-wide smile is no longer interested in courting our favor.

It’s a dead-serious cautionary tale and sincere call for de-escalation, dressed like a political thriller by a director who’s aces with action (and whose actual best film, by the way, is Point Break). A House of Dynamite does not always easily straddle the gulf between docudrama and disaster movie conventions.

An impression is ultimately all that coalesces in 105 minutes, and I wonder if that has something to do with how little the film engages with his songwriting.

Lee makes the material his own, for better and for worse.

Writer/director Seth Worley is clearly having fun with the Amber-inspired monsters made real: They bear googly eyes and vomit sparkles before incrementally scaling up to more malevolent creatures that may test younger viewers’ mettle. But Worley is just as invested in the emotional nuance of the story, which meets each of its grieving characters at their own speed and shows them a lot of grace.

By film’s end, my cheeks were wet with feeling so many feelings for these young people just getting going. I am in awe of their boldness.

There are worse accusations to hurl at a filmmaker than that she has too much empathy for her characters, but in the case of Oh, Hi!, it stymies the potential in its provocative premise and holds a pretty good movie back from greatness.

Shot on location in Northeastern Massachusetts, chilliness hangs in the air of every frame, but Sorry, Baby – a uniquely special thing – is suffused with warmth.

Modestly scoped, sometimes sweetly dopey, and sincerely moving, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a charmer.

Materialists is messy in a good way – there’s a lot to chew on here, and Lucy in particular feels recognizably unresolved – but as good as Song is at succinctly compacting her characters’ past lives, I struggled to entirely understand what everybody in the present was thinking. That mystery might be fun on a first date, but as a romance, Materialists left me wanting more.

Just because Pavements is a prankish film about a prankish band doesn't make it any less deeply heartfelt. It’s one for the fans – and we are legion.

After 2023’s exalted Asteroid City, as raw and ragged with grief a film Anderson has ever made, anything was going to feel like a comedown. More charitably, The Phoenician Scheme is a palate cleanser – a lovely lark, a spirits lifter.

What it conveys, quite beautifully, is the essentialness in sharing your life with others, through joy and grief.