Marshall Shaffer

By the end of The Incomer, Paxton makes explicit that this is a story about making decisions from an outlook that favors hope over fear. And, at least for the duration of the film, he creates an imaginary universe where such a choice feels both logical and lovable.

Let this film with no bite serve as rock bottom for the IP era.

Call it “naïve-core,” perhaps, as the film so thoroughly loses touch with reality by avoiding conflict of any kind. His empty platitudes like “humans help humans” are rendered useless and risible inside a work that seems to lack even a basic understanding of humanity in 2008, 2025, or any time at all.

Marty Supreme rapturously reprises a siren song that transcends any single American era, beckoning hustlers to heed its call.

There’s more to recommend than not here, thanks to Nathan’s keen visual eye and Jupe’s complex interpretation of a figure often flattened into a neat function.

By providing a voice to the voiceless, The Alabama Solution invites audiences into what they successfully argue is nothing less than a new frontier in the ongoing civil rights movement. Institutions may need more time to change, but any viewer of this film should only need two hours to be galvanized into action.

In a young girl’s face is all of Left-Handed Girl, as Nina Ye, like Shih-Ching Tsou behind the camera, translates the immensity of this sprawling saga into immediate, intimate detail.

If the people on screen only feel like characters, then no amount of creepy creature design or surprising twist can make a venture such as Perkins’ here register as anything other than an antiseptic experience.

The film ultimately feels like little more than hired hand work from Wright. What he lacks in compositional vision, he tries to make up for in clever casting (Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, and Lee Pace all deliver their best), as well as some simple gags. But like the people in Ben Richards’ fictional dystopia discover, amusing ourselves to death can only go so far. “The Running Man” settles for being good when, if the topline talent had leaned into their fortes, it could have been truly great.

Christy lulls us into complacency by deviating little from the standard inspirational sports-movie playbook.

To dismantle the mythologies of maternity, Lynne Ramsay's tool of choice is the sledgehammer rather than the scalpel.

With nothing but artful austerity to offer as a tether back to reality, The Ice Tower shatters.

It’s a bit of a bumpy ride in “Rose of Nevada” as the abstractions of his technique bristle against the demands of the storytelling to balance various story elements (not to mention an ensemble cast).

Its zippy stylings never feel derivative or overly familiar. Watching this adaptation is like getting caught up inside a storybook drama designed for adults, maintaining a mythic quality while harnessing the complexities of reality.

The film movingly conjures the feeling of music’s creation of a suspended present tense.

Guillermo del Toro reassembles a multitude of fragments, both lifted from the text and drawn from his own life, into a bloody and beautiful organ of empathy that will assuredly live on.

Gianfranco Rosi’s long, languorous, often hushed snapshots of the area between Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples conjure a sense of life here being suspended in time.

Its desire to resist easy storytelling paradigms around artists is admirable, but without punching up or down, the film feels like it’s pulling punches altogether.

Cover-Up is a sweeping, if tempered, tribute to investigative journalism, attesting to its enduring importance at a time when resources for it have substantially declined.

As Noah Baumbach sells the sappiness in Jay Kelly with the same sincerity of his convictions as in his more acerbic works, the film holds together as a lightweight delight.

It’s engaging to watch without requiring viewers to completely turn off their brains. Van Sant makes “Dead Man’s Wire” move like a well-oiled machine, even if he can only get so much mileage from an old vehicle. Simple, familiar pleasures are still pleasures.

Take out a thesaurus for any overused critical buzzword about political cinema – timely, urgent, necessary – and they all fail to capture the shattering impact of Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab.

Oppenheim’s script deepens that burgeoning pit of terror with its sequencing of events and information.

The Testament of Ann Lee often proves difficult to pin down, providing enthrallment in fits and starts rather than inducing a consistent state of rapture. It’s a bit slippery in the way that chasing the divine presence in art or life can be: present and tangible, then eluding one’s grasp like smoke.

Law’s take on the Russian leader feels both real and mysterious — two features that the film otherwise struggles to corral across its unwieldy runtime.

Director Park expertly fuses genres, navigating deftly between broad satire and taut thriller while always maintaining a grounding in the humanity of his characters. A hearty helping of gallows humor delivered with a marvelously mordant twist by the talented acting ensemble also cuts across both modes of filmmaking.

Bugonia might be as blissfully bonkers as the era of its release, yet don’t let that distract from what a masterclass in directorial control the film represents for Yorgos Lanthimos.

La Grazia embodies much of the Sorrentino appeal, even if it registers in more of a minor key for the Italian auteur. The film is playful when it wants to be and pensive when it needs to be.