Maureen Lee Lenker

The film is not for the faint of heart, but it is viscerally compelling and unafraid to luxuriate in its own elegant weirdness. Its endless visual and literary layers will bring its ardent admirers back to it again and again, because it is a triumph of the cinema of excess, in all its orgiastic, unapologetic glory.

[Coppola] crafts an elegy to a Vegas of a different era and the tarnished reality of once sparkling dreams.

Nickel Boys is a fragmented film, so much so that it can be difficult to grasp it. But at a certain point, it turns around and grabs you instead, refusing to let go until you're left sitting in a startling and stunned silence.

Apart from the sci-fi element of the soulmate test, it's familiar fodder for romantic drama, but it's of the highest caliber thanks to its sharp script and devastating central performances.

Anchored by three arresting performances and playfully experimental direction, Challengers is fresh, exhilarating, and energetic.

Life is messy, and The Holdovers never loses sight of that truth. But the film never becomes self-indulgent either.

What makes Freakier Friday so special is that amid the laugh-out-loud humor and welcome fan service, there's also a beautiful film here about parenting, coming-of-age, loneliness, grief, loss, and sacrifice.

Grief is a funny animal; it tangles itself in our organs and sinews, permanently altering how we love, how we see ourselves, and how we make sense of our identity. That's what Haigh is unraveling here, with a bittersweet emphasis on the power of love and its ability to transcend even death itself.

For all its hilarity, explicit sex — which, for the record, is a) extremely sexy, b) earned, and c) hysterically funny — and foul-mouthed dialogue, Poor Things is a romance about a woman learning to fall in love with herself, no matter what others think she should be.

The Zone of Interest is a formalized and frightening Holocaust film, largely for the ways it displays the Hoss family as merely human beings. It's a stark reminder of our complicity and the capacity for great evil in the most mundane of circumstances.

It is piercingly honest, remarkably sardonic, and breathtakingly brave in the way it lays bare some of women's deepest struggles and truths. But it is not a film that is anti-motherhood. It celebrates it as well, in all of its primal, animalistic, savage contradictions and complexities.

The Fall Guy offers a potent blend of action and romance, as refreshing as one of its touted “spicy margaritas.” Sure, it’s got a little kick, but mostly, it exists to ensure that anyone who consumes it has a fantastic time.

This is a portrait of all that an artist must sacrifice for their work and the ways that is amplified further as a female artist. It's a fable of fame and control, but it's also an ode to a woman who could only find peace by singing her heart out.

It's a wildly entertaining love letter to a night of television that marked a cultural watershed.

August Wilson is a poet of the American stage. In the hands of this remarkable cast and Washington's assured direction, Wilson's work finds its best conduit to the screen yet.

Conclave is packed with unexpected twists and its final reveal is one viewers will never see coming, an increasingly rare occurrence in modern movie-making and the mark of an impeccably crafted thriller.

Never has pondering theology been so devilishly entertaining — and amen to that.

In Madison, Baker has found a perfect conduit for his ideals, making Anora a culmination of the themes that have dominated his work for years.

It gracefully captures the remarkable, singular relationship that human beings share with their pets, tapping into the poignancy and warmth that comes from such a bond.

The Apprentice encapsulates the American Dream, revealing all the ways in which it can be subverted into a nightmare.

Bathed in a pink-pop glow, its pastiche of romance and horror collide in a viciously mischievous parable of technology and control that speaks to these most anxious times.

Even with its preoccupation with death, The Room Next Door is not a dour film. In fact, it’s rather optimistic, celebrating the beauties of life and meaningful connection in the face of death with a thoughtful, pensive tone.

It’s clear those behind The Idea of You hold a genuine affection and care for the story, rather than the ironic eye that a book like this could so easily invite from a lesser team.

While it is so over-the-top as to verge on camp, it is also a chillingly pointed expression of the madness that ensues in pursuit of impossible standards — and the self-loathing and hatred that emerges when women are pitted against each other and themselves.

It’s less a Hawaiian rollercoaster ride and more a winsome, feel-good flick about what it is to find one’s family— and to, in turn, be found.

Materialists doesn’t offer any easy answers despite delivering on its romantic premise.

Films (and novels) are meant to reflect our lives back to us, to hold up a mirror and give us a way to engage with the more thorny issues of our existence via storytelling. Triet is both inviting us to do that with Anatomy of a Fall and warning against putting too much stock in the stories we read and tell ourselves (or is she?).

Jurassic Park Rebirth is one of the more successful and satisfying entries in the franchise precisely because it, uh, finds a way to keep Loomis’ mantra close, foregrounding the film’s sense of wonder above a mere blatant cash grab.