Peter Debruge

At times, the dramatic tension is so strong, “Dreams” could almost be a thriller.

For nearly two centuries, Brontë’s book has been a romantic fantasy for readers. Fennell treats it as an erotic one as well, leaning into all that is sensual.

The filmmaking pair don’t stray far from Wills-Jones’ intention, using the story’s unspecified time and place to poke fun at superstition, the pressures to conform and the institution of marriage.

While the pieces for a white-knuckle mission seem to be in place, The Weight has an uneven, lurching quality, where slogging through the picturesque-yet-endless expanse of tall trees (arboraceous Bavaria doubling for Oregon) is punctuated by bursts of excitement.

There’s real wisdom to Chasing Summer, which Shlesinger and Decker offset with a handful of steamier-than-you’d-expect sex scenes.

Delightfully insightful ... Whatever comes next (and the movie makes a beautiful kind of peace with not knowing), Green has given his subjects an incredible gift: the kind of immortality only cinema can provide.

The intermittently clever movie is full of art-world in-jokes, but seems oblivious to its many plot holes, which are more conspicuous than the slashes in one of Lucio Fontana’s “Spatial Concept” canvases.

Life has a way of getting complicated when you introduce temptation, and though Union County can be frustratingly simple at times, the stakes are life and death.

What’s so much fun about Send Help, beyond its twisted B-movie premise and refreshing disinterest in anything more highfalutin than handing Linda a chance to turn the tables, is how unpredictable it manages to be for most of their time on the island (except for that darn ending).

While some might find it triggering, “Josephine” dares to confront the life-shattering intersection of sex and violence in our culture, facing the toughest of “adult situations” with clear eyes.

Hoffman and Wilde’s commitment makes the film feel more important than it is. It’s better to think of this either as pure, irreverent escapism or a guiltless pleasure.

With The History of Concrete, John Wilson takes the least interesting subject imaginable — the dull gray composite used for sidewalks, overpasses and that great big church in “The Brutalist” — and crafts what’s likely to be the most entertaining documentary of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

For genre aficianados, it’s bold, mind-bending work which satisfies that so-often-frustrated craving: for a zombie movie with brains.

The movie could have really used some of that anarchic, industry-skewering “Tropic Thunder” energy. The only risk taken here was asking Sony — plus any surviving members of the original cast — to poke fun at themselves, which only goes so far when the film has no fangs.

It’s a rare privilege to spend so much time with Helen and her charge, and the footage of Mabel (filmed by Mark Payne-Gill in the wild and DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen in dramatic scenes) hunting pheasants and so forth mesmerizes. But there’s arguably too much of it, dominating the film’s slightly excessive run time.

One of the year’s few masterpieces.

These movies are comedies first and crime-film homages second, but it’s their tertiary value as social commentary that makes the franchise so indispensable: Behind the laughs are teachable moments.

The emotions are real; everything else is movie magic, representing where we now stand — at the apex of artificiality — for better or worse.

In the end, “Badlands” is about the value of teamwork and learning that “alpha” and “apex” don’t mean the same thing where Predators are concerned.

Not everyone knows Ibsen going in, but that needn’t diminish the satisfaction of watching “Hedda Gabler” so vividly reinvented.

The look and feel owes an obvious debt to the beloved films of Studio Ghibli, which have offered some of the most iconic representations of wartime Japan and its long, fraught recovery period. “Little Amélie” starts from a place of (mostly endearing) solipsism and builds empathy and emotional depth as it goes.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is an unapologetically irreverent, wildly inventive, end-is-nigh take on the time-loop movie — call it “Terminator 2: Groundhog Day” — except that here, Rockwell’s dizzy protagonist knows what it takes to stop the cycle.

There’s humor in every detail, much of it skewing to the sordid, if not downright scatological, end of the spectrum, from exploding buttocks to anthropomorphic hairballs.

The movie strives to apply logic, inviting laughs (which are not unwelcome in the tense genre), but ultimately succeeds by devising a formula where two threats — ghosts and serial killers — come calling.

While it was exciting to see what “Tron” might look like in the 21st century, the brand gets in the way of Ares’ internal evolution. However fascinating it might be to watch him “level up,” what audiences expect — and what Rønning delivers — are cycle races and dynamic gladiator battles.

Good Boy reflects the powerful connection between people and their pets as few films have, ultimately devastating us with the devotion these soulmates are capable of showing.

It can start to feel quite tedious, unless you allow your brain to engage with the movie on an almost subconscious level. That’s where the incredible attention paid to crafts — the cinematography, sets, costumes and sound design — kick in at last, and “The Ice Tower” becomes a sort of reverie in which we just might see ourselves reflected.

The film’s humor doesn’t necessarily translate, and the animation style doesn’t come close to the medium’s most artistic work. Beyond the sheer inventiveness of the movie’s made-up martial arts, that leaves the tragic elements, which can be disarmingly effective in giving audiences reason to feel invested in the battles — battles that have only just begun.

Movies like this don’t exactly light up the box office, but they stick with the folks fortunate enough to see them.

There’s a virtuosity to Gavras’ filmmaking, which yields some surprising laughs and thrills along the way.

In the end, it’s inspiring to see a director of Coppola’s stature back at work, and better this than some impersonal job for hire.

Doin’ It wants to preach sex positivity, but feels stuck in the immature, shock-comedy mode of “American Pie” and early Farrelly brothers movies.

Tipping embraces the self-indulgent label of “elevated horror,” crafting a tense, trippy, ultra-stylized movie that’s so surreal at times, it might feel like you’re watching an extension of Matthew Barney’s “Cremaster Cycle.”

As wild as things can get (tamer than you might expect), Early keeps the film emotionally grounded. Can Maddie be cured? Maybe not, but her secret’s safe with him.

A laid-back rom-com crossed with a low-key crime thriller, combined with something more serious — unafraid to ask existential questions about overcoming a handicap that directly impacts one’s art — Tuner feels like the discovery of the Telluride Film Festival.

Hanks’ doc mostly shows how great it must have been to know John Candy when he was alive, although Conan O’Brien does a nice job of contextualizing how he inspired others. Amid all that adulation, Hanks might have scrapped the title “I Like Me” and called the movie “Everybody Likes Candy” instead.

With director Aneil Karia’s interpretation, we get the great Riz Ahmed in the role, which is reason enough for the film to exist — but it’s perhaps the only one in a remake that might better have chosen not to be.

The action is entertaining enough in the moment, but not especially memorable.

Even though it’s fairly obvious where “Good Fortune” is headed, Ansari manages to surprise in how he gets there. Like his character, the writer-director-producer-star seems to be juggling one too many jobs here, and yet, it’s that very connection to overworked, undercompensated Americans that makes his movie so right for this moment.

The affectionate reunion of alter-kocker rockers plays like a greatest hits of past laughs, building to a thrilling live performance of songs fans know by heart, featuring guest appearances from several bona fide music gods.

A lean but revealing film of unexpected existential heft.

Because it’s Wheatley directing, the already funny script gets an extra dose of dark humor from its over-the-top kills.

Some things you simply can’t fake. Take talent: There’s no room for anything shy of genius in The Christophers.

In the end, it’s the through-the-roof chemistry between the two leads that makes the film worthy of repeat viewing.

A movie like Rental Family lives or dies by its tone, and the one Hikari strikes is reflected in the concerned creases of Fraser’s forehead: It’s maudlin and unconvincing, means well but isn’t above manipulating us for the desired emotional outcome.

The Lost Bus resembles several other Greengrass films in that it’s also slim on character (only one of the kids has a name and personality), but succeeds in plunging audiences into the action — which, in this case, means trying to steer an unwieldy vehicle through hell itself.

A profoundly moving and superbly acted diamond in the rough, Steve is better than anything the streamer has pushed for best picture to date.

Ballad of a Small Player looks great, but lacks the fundamental human insight to make it a winner.

Technically, “Frankenstein” was made for Netflix, and though the streamer will give it whatever theatrical run it’s contractually obliged to honor, the visual effects weren’t rendered for big-screen consumption. Alexandre Desplat’s baroque score, on the other hand, makes up for it in grandeur.

Ultimately, the filmmaker invites the world to feel loss in a new way, and in letting go, liberates something fundamental in all of us.

The technical side isn’t nearly as dramatic as it sounds, and there’s only limited interest in watching White navigate the icon’s first serious bout of depression. That is, unless one understands just how much that record represents to the next generations of musicians and why.

Caught Stealing might feel like a break from the “Pi” director’s intensely subjective character portraits, which range from “The Wrestler” to “The Whale,” but in fact, Aronofsky brings us as close to Hank as he has to any of his characters.

Precisely the sort of intelligent, human-scale adult drama audiences insist no one makes anymore.

The action sequences are well choreographed and intuitive enough to follow, but romance doesn’t work quite the way we might expect, which proves to be yet another of the film’s distinguishing features.

The “Neon Bull” director has always had an incredible visual sense, though his plots tend to lack focus. Not this one.

Regardless of how you feel about the ending (and many will happily embrace the movie’s darkly comic finale), Cregger has achieved something remarkable here, crafting a cruel and twisted bedtime story of the sort the Brothers Grimm might have spun.

The movie doesn’t deal in labels — it’s not important to the filmmakers whether Luke identifies as gay, straight or bisexual — but instead presents this relationship as one that expands the provincial notion of romance someone like Luke might have had.

When it comes to customer satisfaction, does Amazon’s refund policy apply to stuff like this?

True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start. And like this summer’s blockbuster “Superman” reboot over at DC, that could be just what it takes to win back audiences suffering from superhero exhaustion.

Provazník’s focus is not on trauma, and it’s fitting that such a sensitive, understated treatment of real-world abuse should end on a poignant note of solidarity.

“Nobody” director Ilya Naishuller takes gags that have no business working . . . and milks them for laughs, adding original solutions to otherwise familiar action scenes.

The movie offers an updated version of the same basic ride Spielberg offered 32 years earlier, and yet, it hardly feels essential to the series’ overall mythology, nor does it signal where the franchise could be headed.

Sparkling like a rhinestone in the rough, Ponyboi stands out amid a lineup of cartoon gangsters, tough-guy dealers and gum-smacking prostitutes — lowlifes recycled from a hundred late-night cable movies with superficially similar plots.

Because the nimble, genre-hopping movie is set in the world of K-pop, it may not even occur to fans that they’re watching a musical — although it’s kind of hard to deny as you catch yourself singing along.

When you’re simply looking for something semi-interesting to stream, stories like these don’t necessarily require great actors, but great actors are the reason some of them still reverberate in our memory decades later.

The message feels muddled amid all the pratfalls and fart jokes.

Typically, we look to adrenaline-fueled entertainment for catharsis. Boyle’s thrilling reboot offers enlightenment as well.

Elio is right at home in the Pixar catalog, but lacks those undeniable signs of intelligent life (wit, surprise and the capacity to expand the medium) that set the studio’s best work apart.

Sacrificing good taste in pursuit of the higher goal — which could be described as joining “Fritz the Cat” in animated infamy — Tartakovsky and co-writer Jon Vitti (a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons”) make no apologies for the project’s obscene sense of humor.

At first, DeBlois’ involvement felt like a way of protecting “Dragon” from some other director coming along and destroying it. But by the end, his vision serves to bring the whole fantastical story one step closer to reality.

The film unfolds in a dreamy, liminal place in Sofia’s personal evolution, but lacks the tangible sense of vicariously experiencing it ourselves — a shame, since it’s a splendid location in which to be doing such intensive self-healing.

While the ultimate destination somewhat underwhelms, it’s a thrill to see Foster navigating a fully bilingual role, while tossing off the kind of personal insights only an expat could feel toward the French — a tiny glimpse into Foster’s private life, perhaps.

Deeply moving but never manipulative, Young Mothers amounts to the brothers’ best film in more than a decade.

The psychology simply doesn’t add up.

While not as stylistically radical as Trier’s last film, “The Worst Person in the World,” this layered family-centric drama (which was also written by Eskil Vogt) shares its ability to find fresh angles on sentiments you’d think that cinema would have exhausted by now.

While the simple premise recalls certain post-WWII dramas in which survivors recognize the Nazi culprits who once terrorized them, the film’s chilling last scene feels like a call to action.

Martone’s repetitive, tediously non-linear film attempts something more impressionistic and expansive, with emotionally muted and sometimes strangely exploitative results.

There’s no defiling of peaches or precocious sexual experimentation between the roughly decade-apart duo, though the ambiguous subtext proves infinitely more fascinating, leaving everyone who sees it with a different interpretation.

Laced with a wry sense of humor, Pillion manages to be both understated and explicit in the way Lighton presents practically everything that happens in Colin and Ray’s unconventional relationship.

Somehow, Lilo & Stitch has lost its unpredictable sense of anarchy in the retelling.

In the end, Lee has taken “High and Low” to new highs, delivering a soul-searching genre movie that entertains while also sounding the alarm about where the culture could be headed.

It’s painful to watch such talents pour so much into roles that are fairly common, if not clichéd by American indie standards.

Mendonça crams the film with vivid time-capsule details.

The efficient and highly effective thriller scarcely allows a calm moment in which to question how deranged its premise truly is.

The film is at once old-fashioned and refreshingly, realistically up to date in its take on modern courtship.

The propulsive nonfiction story feels as inspirational as any scripted feature, reuniting the four Gallaudet grads who organized the movement to describe events in their own words — words of passion, dynamically signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors.

It takes a certain esprit to pull off this kind of bombastic yet larky star vehicle. Joe Carnahan’s film provides passable diversion for a couple hours, but the fun to be had is limited by uninspired action staging, less-than-sparkling dialogue and a maudlin streak of the “It’s about family!!” type.

With his stellar indie family adventure Sketch, commercials director Seth Worley has come up with a creative — and highly teachable — concept for his feature debut, using imaginative visual effects to impart a valuable lesson about dealing with grief and other strong feelings.

As with the Guardians of the Galaxy films, what works here is the uneasy tension within a team that comes together out of necessity, rather than any natural sense of affinity.

The cheesy screenplay, shallow characters and wince-worthy acting (from all but A-listers Hardy, Whitaker and Olyphant) suggest that Evans might be better suited to specializing in the second unit or action sequences on a major franchise, rather than writing and directing a quasi-dramatic feature.

It’s a big step backward from the likes of “Anora” in terms of respecting sex workers, but at least it scores as many laughs.

Action does not come naturally to the “Under the Same Moon” director, though the script poses an even bigger problem in G20, a movie whose short title manages to reflect both its high concept and shockingly low intelligence level.

Much like Penny Lane’s endlessly amusing “Listening to Kenny G,” Yousef’s illuminating doc appeals to all sides, from Kinkade’s haters to his most ardent defenders, revealing dimensions altogether absent from his enormously popular oeuvre.

The movie’s hella derivative, but still quite entertaining, with an appealing cast and memorable characters.

There’s a current of tragedy running beneath all of the couples here, as the characters create obstacles to their own happiness. It can feel a bit diagrammatic, as if the novelist were setting up impossible loves and then watching them fail. But there’s hope too, and however contrived the last scene may feel, there’s poetry in watching someone betting their future on yet another horse.

Jason Statham is good at his job, which explains why he keeps booking the same kinds of movies — well, that and the fact that people keep watching them.

If there was any doubt as to De Niro’s greatness, it’s laid to rest in these face-to-face confrontations. No star could’ve held his own quite so effectively against De Niro.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is nothing if not an homage to the lasting impact that junk culture can have on impressionable minds.