Richard Lawson

It’s heady, strange stuff, perhaps not as emotionally resonant as TV Glow, but captivating in both its confusion and honesty.

The steadily accumulated emotional weight of the film dissipates rather quickly as it reaches its abrupt ending. Still, Blue Heron is an affecting, promising debut feature.

Wicker is a warming, sometimes poignant pleasure, a film full of lively personality and possessed of a rather humane outlook on our petty foibles. It is not exactly forgiving, though; the movie has a harder, more merciless edge than one might expect.

Blair keeps the strange comedy coming, but he also lets the film dip into moments of contemplative thought, into hardscrabble philosophy. The Shitheads simply becomes a far more interesting film — a suspenseful one, too.

Leviticus has a enough gore and jumpy moments to qualify it as a proper horror film. But its true scariness is of the forlorn kind.

Both goofy and edgy, the film may not land every punchline, but it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not.

Badlands is a decidedly B-movie that thoroughly utilizes and enjoys the freedoms allowed when any prestige ambition is eschewed. The film simply wants to be the best version of a zillionth Predator installment that it can be. If it has to complicate — and, yes, soften — the branding to do that, so be it.

It is a frightening and galvanizing vision, Anderson putting away his complicated nostalgia for old (and more easily understood) days to confront, with disarmingly noble purpose, the here and now.

Poetic License is far from mere pastiche. It has a distinct, youthful sensibility and sources its comedy more from recognisably human behaviour than from profane, one-liner riffing.

The film prizes style, but has no higher ambition than to entertain, with an economy of means and no fussy pretension. That’s a noble mission, especially in this time of auteur worship, when so many genre movies seem determined to be something more.

The premise is so cute it’s surprising a movie hasn’t done it already. Eternity mines its compelling conceit for both peppery comedy and bleary sentiment.

Zhao is a good fit for the material. She, too, is a close observer of nature and of the many aching, yearning people passing through it. But she has previously not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this.

At its best, this new Naked Gun is a dumb, loopy delight, a return to the kind of comedy that was woefully taken for granted in its heyday and now barely exists at all.

It’s a shrewdly balanced film, a mix of flippant merriment and real dramatic stakes.

Whether 28 Years Later is a satisfying franchise followup, 18 years after the last entry, will have to be decided by the beholder. I found myself confused by the film’s unexpected tone, but also captivated by it.

Materialists is successfully seductive, eventually revealing a few potential deal-breakers but otherwise proving an engaging date. I wanted to fall in love, as I had with Past Lives. But a diverting, heady fling will do too.

One happily trots along with Ballerina as it ventures into absurdity. Its silliness is, at least, compellingly rendered. It helps immensely that de Armas is such a limber, confident action performer.

At times, Hermanus’s style is effective, selling us on the film’s lonely, years-spanning heartsickness. But too often the film’s muted emotion feels more gimmicky than credible to Lionel and David’s circumstances, particularly because Hermanus is so demure about sex; we barely even see the men kissing.

Sentimental Value is yet another rich and humane look at existence from a filmmaker wise to the endless nuance of being a person in the world, for better or worst.

It’s half mess, half triumph, and thrilling even in its failures.

The beauty of Pillion is that those of us watching on the sidelines are not voyeurs, but rather witnesses to something powerfully complex and human.

With Dillane’s invaluable help, Urchin paints a sad and compelling portrait of someone lost in the fringes, a victim of an often indifferent system and of the complex wiring of his brain.

Ramsay’s jumble of pictures and sound is bound together by Lawrence’s confident, fearless gravity. It’s quite something to behold: a comedic performance that manages convincing notes of devastation, or a dramatic turn that is also screamingly funny. What a thrill to see Lawrence expanding her artistry like this, a movie star reclaiming the talent that her celebrity once nearly obscured.

Accepting the wild ambition of Final Reckoning, embracing its maudlin amassing of all M:I lore into one turgid act of nostalgia, is the best way to enjoy it.

Sinners is propulsive and stirring entertainment, messy but always compelling. The film’s fascinating array of genres and tropes and ideas swirls together in a way that is, I suppose, singularly American.

Sorry, Baby is funny, sad, thoughtful, and specific, a keenly observed portrait of a woman blown off course by a traumatic incident.

It’s all rather lovely, a patient and affectionate consideration of a person who has no idea that his small observations will be closely listened to 50 years later, long after he’s gone.

Twinless is a disarmingly assured film. Sweeney’s stylistic flourishes and complex writing flow with an easy cadence.

At first, I thought I didn’t like the movie. But then, of course, I quickly realized that the film had simply done its job; the whole point is for the audience to desperately want out, just as Linda does.

The film is not going for total plausibility, but it is grounded in the logic and physics of the real world. Carry-On is refreshingly old-fashioned in that way; it is more interested in actual human capacity than in what modern technology can fake.

Brody and Pearce vividly manifest Corbet’s arguments about the clash between art and money, between the old world and the new. When they are blazing away on screen together, The Brutalist swells to epic size—two craftsmen prodigiously working to realize their architect’s flawed and awesome vision.

While we’ve seen that kind of portrait of an artist before—surely most of the greats have at least a dash of cruel vanity in them—Chalamet makes it fresh. To watch him is to feel what so many other characters in the film do: an affection and a curious sense of loss as he drifts away into the lonely mists of talent and fame.

Wicked succeeds because of some unreproducible, lightning in a bottle convergences—of director, stars, craftspeople, and high-status material. But Wicked also makes a broader case for patience and careful thought, for grand ambition honed over the course of many years. In order to defy gravity, gravity must first be understood.

It’s a patchwork that doesn’t always stitch together neatly, but is compelling and wrenching as a whole. The film is also a mighty vision of chaos and fire, of music and movement, of a city churning to sustain itself.

Fantasies like this can satisfy even in creaky packaging. All it takes, really, is some nice scenery and a pair of actors who can sell their chemistry. Lonely Planet checks those boxes, even if it makes one yearn for a more elegant vehicle for Dern—one in which her romantic adventure might prove genuinely inspiring.

Nickel Boys is perhaps a rebuke to the idea that violence must be plainly stated in order to be understood. Here, it is palpably present in every negative space. What Ross instead affords these young men is the dignity of a point of view, drawing the viewer into the bracing immediacy of mind and body.

Conclave whips itself up into high melodrama and then cuts through all the sturm und drang with sudden darts of humor. It’s a carefully calibrated thing, touching fingers with prestige greatness while keeping its feet firmly planted in the realm of rollicking entertainment.

Written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Heretic is an alternately clever and silly horror-thriller that wants to have a kicky, pointed dialogue about faith vs. reason, free will vs. preordination. It maybe doesn’t arrive anywhere profound, but it has a good time laying out its thesis.

What remains engaging throughout are the carefully textured performances—MacKay’s study of repressed energy and Ingram’s mix of wariness and gratitude are particular highlights—and the film’s myriad aesthetic graces.

There is also its nimble humor, its refreshingly frank and positive depictions of sex—perhaps we are finally turning a corner on that whole issue. And there is the remarkable Pugh, doing so much to deeply humanize a story of pretty people in pretty places and ever so slightly contrived circumstances.

It’s a pleasure seeing the pair reunited for another piercing character study, this time with Baptiste squarely in the lead role. It’s dazzingly complex, bracing work.

Queer is meant to be prickly, withholding, enigmatic. To want anything more from it might simply be repeating Lee’s mistake, grasping for something that could never be ours.

The film is not aiming to depress its audience, though. It is instead cathartic and energizing to witness these dire topics chewed over and spun into delicate poetry. It’s an act of communion, really, Almodóvar drawing us in close to say that yes, yes he shares our same doleful worry.

The movie is not trying to make any grand statements or reinvent any wheels; it is only trying to entertain.

What is decidedly clear, consistent, and declarative in the film is the force of seeing Kidman venture down yet another new avenue, tossing self-consciousness out the window (or, maybe, just laying it aside for a while) to help realize Reijn’s curious vision.

It Ends With Us is a tearjerker that indulges in its red-meat drama, but then gives it the grace of shading and complexity—and rare humanity.

Mothers’ Instinct is fun, in a throwback sort of a way. The performances are big and appealing; the period stylings are relatively lush for a lower-budget movie. Sure, there’s some silly stuff, overheated moments that merit guffaws—but that’s part of the mission of movies like this.

The film’s gaze is narrow and insider-y, but it somehow kind of works. Deadpool & Wolverine is an amusing reflection on the recent cultural past, and a half-cynical, half-hopeful musing on what its future might be.

How refreshingly nice it is to watch a summertime movie that lets us sit in our feelings and grim recollections this way, and figures that an adventure in its own right.

As is, The Bikeriders plays as if a longer, more robust version disappeared somewhere in the editing room. But a spell is lightly cast nonetheless, enough to make it sting when things start to go sour for Johnny and Benny and the rest.

As is true of Baker’s plays, Janet Planet envelops its audience with a lulling mood before delivering a closing punch of meaning, a kind of summation of theme and intent that casts a clarifying light on all that you’ve just watched.

This is a sad and frightening story about a family’s undoing, but Rasoulof ekes out some hope too.

It’s a wild, profane blast. But Baker is also zooming in, very slowly, so that in the movie’s startling, disarming final scene we are forced to reconsider what we’ve just watched. Was it a raucous chase movie or a quiet tragedy?

There are too many endings here, as if Fargeat had several great ideas for final images but couldn’t decide on one. So they’re all thrown in, one after the other, as the film wears out its well-earned welcome. Moore and Qualley keep selling it, though.

Emilia Pérez charms, partly, because of its imperfections, its bold choices that don’t always neatly land. The film walks a fine line between daring and ridiculous, and unlike some other big-swing movies at this year’s Cannes, Emilia Pérez stays mostly on the side of good. Its heart is in the right place, as its style.

Bird is a puzzling film, but gradually draws us toward a significant catharsis.

Kinds of Kindness is clever and a bit snide, a curio cabinet not designed for beauty.

Once the politics of food and gas and guns have finally been sorted, Furiosa revs its engines and goes chasing after the grandeur of its predecessor. It doesn’t quite catch up. But it comes close enough that we can at least glimpse Fury Road’s tail lights in the distance.

Directed by Wes Ball, Kingdom doesn’t reach the rattling grandeur of Dawn. But it's another worthy installment in a series that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary times.

While the stunt work is impressive—and the film’s appreciation of it is, uh, appreciated—The Fall Guy is maybe even more successful as an ode to the increasingly elusive X-factor that is star power.

The Idea of You is glossy and smart, a cut above the slop so often served to its intended audience. It may force a neat ending, it may strain logic, it may leave some intriguing avenues unexplored, but The Idea of You is otherwise transporting, a fairy tale worthy of a big screen.

It is a true star vehicle that asserts Faist and O’Connor as new leading men and gives further dimension to Zendaya’s already well-established profile. The humble ambition here is to charm and entertain, to arouse and amuse. This is, in that way, a refreshingly sincere and uncynical movie. Challengers may tire toward the end, but it’s scored enough points by then that a few double faults probably don’t matter.

Much of the movie’s charm rests on its lead. Gyllenhaal doesn’t have the same warm twinkle in his eye that Swayze always used to such lovely effect, but he makes do with the rest of his elastic face.

Nomadland, which is really more character study than surveying sociology, approaches Fern’s circumstances, and those of the people she encounters on her travels, with a fluid, un-judging sensitivity.

This is a movie that at its most sensitive is about loneliness, and at its bleakest and most searching is a look at the mechanics of sexual predation.

Heavy with spectacle and theme as it is, Part Two is often surprisingly nimble.

Those in recovery, and those close to someone who is, ought to find something nourishing in The Outrun, a stirring reminder of the human capacity to regroup, to accept a bitter past and anticipate a better future.

What Park creates from the tension between this joyful, exciting present and a seemingly ominous future is rather marvelous, a big and sincere sentiment about the risk and reward of life, a message that is just as worthy for a middle-ager as it is for a kid.

The film is among the most profound—and, yes, important—pieces of trans fiction that I’ve yet seen, vividly staged with bold, declarative style while remaining beguilingly elusive. It is open for all kinds of assessment, containing multitudes of meaning. I Saw the TV Glow is a great film to talk about, to pick apart with a friend or fellow traveler over dinner afterwards, to study and reflect on.

No film could fully capture the awfulness of this experience. But despite some of Bayona’s irksome flair, Society of the Snow does a sturdy enough job getting the point across.

Adapted from Rumaan Alam’s bestselling novel, Sam Esmail’s film is a dreary, harrowing sit—and all the more invigorating for it.

Wonka is, in fact, a lively, winsome pleasure, a film decidedly aimed at children that nonetheless incorporates some dark matter.

Songbirds is the rare intelligent, useful prequel; its origin story (or, really, stories) actually do better elucidate what we’ve already seen.

Reptile has a sense of tone and texture, elevating its clichés into something of distinction.

Funny and rueful, The Holdovers seems beamed in from another time in cinema history, when wordy and thoughtful little movies like this were in healthier supply.

Vivid and bracing as the film’s swimming scenes are, Nyad crackles most when Nyad and Bonnie are grooving together on land. Bening and Foster have an inviting rapport, credibly playing old pals (and onetime lovers) who are in it for the long haul.

American Fiction, a sharp and clever film, could be all the more so if it felt better connected to the present tense. As is, the reflection is a bit warped; contemporary subtleties are missing.

Dumb Money is a sturdy entry into the developing canon of docufiction that seeks to be lively and lucid and informative about the rotten state of the American dream. It’s often as crassly effective as Roaring Kitty and his cohort were in those wild months two years ago, when greed was good for the many instead of the few.

The emotional punch of The Boy and the Heron is a heart-swelling assertion of cosmic purpose, even amidst sadness and ruin. But it’s delivered after a lot of digression, which can make this swan-song film seem like more a collection of Miyazaki’s disparate, previously unused ideas than a discrete film with a focused mission.

Hit Man is determined to be fun above all else, and it largely succeeds in that honorable, populist mission. It entertains, and generously pushes two game performers closer toward the movie-star pantheon.

Priscilla is not an emotional epic, nor is it a furious correction of the record. It is, instead, a convincing and humane sketch of a young woman caught up in something vast and eternally defining. She may as well be wandering Versailles.

Stylish and intriguing, Saltburn proves an engaging sit for the majority of its run, and thus a stumble—even a big one—can mostly be forgiven. If anything, the film makes me curious to see what Fennell might do with another classic novel.

While plenty of scenes in Maestro have their discrete power—teeming with insight and impressive artistry—it’s only in an appreciation of Mulligan and Cooper’s full-bodied work that the greater whole finds resonance. In them lies the film’s true majesty, its best and most convincing approximation of what it is to love and create and, in so doing, reveal something transcendent.

At its best, the film is indeed piercingly clever, proud of its peculiarity to a degree just shy of smugness. Though, the 140-minute film does begin to wear out its welcome in the last third, when the jokes have mostly all been made before and the only fresh additions are cumbersome matters of plot.

For all of its piercing insight and arresting performances, its steamy sex, its devastating conclusions, the film operates at a remove, from behind a pane of glass. Perhaps because Haigh gives Adam so little tether to the realm of the real; so much of the film is lost in plaintive reverie.

Mann’s film is all the more pleasurable for its thoughtfulness and restraint.

The familiarity of RW&RB’s obnoxious indulgences are, in some ways, its greatest triumph: its version of storybook love is allowed to be just as annoying, in the same ways, as the heteros’.

It’s a piercing and often very funny character piece, a study of narcissism masked, at least in part, by bourgeois, Millennial understandings of progressive coupling. But Sachs, who is in his 50s, has not made some condemnatory thinkpiece about what’s wrong with a generation. The people of Passages could, in some senses, be from any time; mercurial partners have existed forever.

The movie is fun, which could be all we need right now. Let’s do it again next summer.

No matter its broader effect, Oppenheimer is a mainstream offering of uncommon resonance, sending the viewer out of the theater head-spun and itchy-eyed, ears ringing from all its sophisticated, voluble explosion.

There is plenty in Barbie to be delighted by, even moved by. I have no doubt that the film will be a massive hit, cheered for turning a cynical I.P. project into a loopy treatise on being. But the movie could maybe have been stickier, more probing and indelible, if it had reined in some of its erratic energy and really figured out what it wanted to say.

That McQuarrie and Cruise are eventually able to get this hurtling, heavy plane level and pull off a rewarding climax is a testament to the fierceness of their commitment to these projects.

No Hard Feelings is a nice comedy, courting taboo here and there but largely rounded out with sweetness. It’s an amiable time at the movies—but I was hoping for more of a shock.

[A] quiet and lovely film.

With Creed III (opening in theaters March 3), Jordan takes full control of the reins, making his directorial debut in calm and confident fashion.

It’s an oddly moving film, this bright and quite literally stagey curio involving an extraterrestrial. At its best, Asteroid City evokes the memory of what it was to first see a Wes Anderson film, surprised and delighted by its singular vision of life on Earth.

How to Have Sex is a vivid and heartbreaking depiction of what is caused by the willful, dehumanizing disregard of women. May its lesson be taken to heart by those who need to hear it most.

May December feels like a return to Haynes’s outre origins, a stylish character study that, when inspected closer, may actually have an entire culture—its art, its sexual mores—on its nimble mind.