Richard Lawson

Bros leans into the giddy little revolution of its own existence, inviting the audience into a good, gay time that hasn’t exactly happened, in this way, before.

Whatever the truth of Anning and Murchison’s time in Dorset together was, Ammonite could have done whatever it wanted. It chooses instead to do close to nothing, and leaves us, quite like its central pair, helplessly grasping for more.

The wonderful thing about Skate Kitchen is how inviting it is, welcoming you into its community and showing you around with cheery spunk. Skate Kitchen is a warm movie.

Shithouse is not some universal exploration of America’s youth, to be sure. But in its own narrow scale, it’s pretty effective. This is a discursive movie keenly sourced from individual experience.

The film shows—and says plainly, at one point—that people with extreme wealth are so divorced from reality that they become almost another species. Yet it doesn’t fully explore the weirdness of that, the chilling tragedy of it. Instead, Scott has made simply a competent thriller that dazzles only in the ingeniousness of its lightning-quick and proficient re-staging.

Promising Young Woman is not always surefooted in its style or substance, but Mulligan is consistently riveting throughout.

As much as Love, Simon’s winning, if slightly bowdlerized, coming-out story initially made me yearn for an altered youth, it’s since made me yearn even more for stories that reflect my gay life today, or my gay life as it might be years from now. (And your gay life, and your gay life, and your gay life.)

It’s funny in ways anticipated and not, and there is enough suspense—or something like suspense—to balance out the coy winks to the audience. The irony isn’t overweening, the doll is equal parts creepy and yassified, and the human lead, Allison Williams, anchors things with an admirable commitment to the bit.

On the whole, though, Mickey 17 tests our patience. While the dispensable clones premise is intriguing, and opens a door to the kind of socioeconomic commentary so signature to Bong, the film quickly grows distracted by other matters entirely.

His House is a grim and poetic lament about a boggling global tragedy.

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.

Elio is a spirited, engaging 98 minutes. But its tired attempts at the gentle profundity of old—that Wall-E wallop, that Up uplift—are emblematic of a studio that’s running out of ways to whimsically allegorize human experience. Alien experience, too.

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 so busy working through what it’s trying to say that it loses its specific pacing and texture, tumbling toward a finale that subverts its own rules and confuses its argument.

It’s homage and gentle parody at once, seeking to capture the energy of playing the game with friends rather than trying to seriously literalize an expansive world.

Midsommar is a shocking piece of filmmaking—unnervingly competent even when the film yaws into silliness, even when it risks tedium. This film will alienate a lot of people (much like Hereditary, its audience exit polling is likely going to be abysmal), but there’s a wonderfully audacious confidence to the way Midsommar is built.

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.

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.

The Suicide Squad walks about as far up to the line of the indecent as is perhaps possible for a film of this size right now, which makes portions of it genuinely exciting. But we get inured to its provocations too quickly, and then the movie tries to soften itself and add emotional dimensions that aren’t exactly earned.

It’s a performance that’s so far afield of the loud flash and melodrama of Star Wars that Ridley seems almost introduced anew.

The movie is deliberately alienating, but Oldroyd has not done enough to earn our devotion before he pulls the rug out and flashes us a smirk. The movie is a provocative tease that doesn’t have the stuff to back up the joke, try as its game performers might to make it all mean something. I found myself wishing that Eileen was longer. Its fertile territory is woefully underdeveloped—so much of the film’s innate potential goes unutilized. At least there is Hathaway’s glowing star turn, both reminding us of what we knew she could do and introducing us to something new.

The Invisible Man loses its personality as it tumbles into the third act, and with it goes a lot of the emotional fiber Moss has worked so hard to spin into something rich and memorable. She still holds her own as the movie crumbles around her, but her performance deserves better than what Whannell ultimately gives her.

The reality is that there is probably nothing truly novel to be done with Batman at this point. He’s been thoroughly mined for both fun and pathos; try as Reeves and his co-screenwriter Peter Craig might, they can’t squeeze much higher-meaning blood out of a fatally depleted stone. Pattinson, moody and saturnine, does what he can, but he’s not afforded much beyond growling and scowling.

The shivery crazy moments land, and a surprisingly emotional beat at the close of the film does, too. As nutty and off-the-wall as Suspiria is, it has a firm sense of control and proportion. It’s a loose and rambly thing that’s also tightly made, somehow.

Luca does, despite its vagueness, successfully pull off some of the usual Pixar tricks, provoking warm tears and weary sighs as one considers the familiar trajectories of life.

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 I will say is that director Jon Watts handles this grand convergence of properties old and current with enough verve to almost sustain the long run of the film. But there’s so much brand Frankensteining to be done that there’s really no time for quirk and texture; much of the bounce and sparkle of the past two Holland films is lost.

For all of technology’s cold gleam, Ralph Breaks the Internet has real warmth, the kind born of compassionate, invested filmmakers. Who, yes, may be serving at the whims of a distressingly ever-expanding imperialist force, but have nonetheless done something rather nice under its watchful aegis.

In Day’s magnetism, the film does enough justice to Holiday’s memory that its shagginess is almost forgiven. The rest of the orchestra could use a tune up, but Day, at least, makes for an exciting solo act.

The film’s self-seriousness bogs down what should be a mad and skittering thing, jangling us with all its agonizing silence. We should be having more fun as we watch through our fingers.

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.

Lelio’s haughty piece of flair doesn’t diminish the impression made by Pugh, who fluidly projects compassion tinged with the faintest hint of menace.

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.

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.

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.

Pike has been nominated for a Golden Globe for the performance, but don’t let that turn you off. She is, once again, a stealthy marvel in this movie, cruel and clever. The rest of the film might not meet the heights of its star, but it is still a sleek and compelling standout in an erratic season, anchored by one of the great performances of the year (so far, anyway).

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.

It’s an impressive feat of technical film-making, which has now become a hallmark of DaCosta’s work. But she caves to baser impulses in reinterpreting an old and, some might say, crusty play.

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.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is firmly on the B-movie end of the Marvel spectrum, a happy enough place to be: clacking along with all its bug friends, for the moment unfussed about Thanos and geopolitics. It seems pretty nice. Would that we could wrestle the rest of the world down to that same agreeable scale.

If the film feels awfully familiar as it glides along these narrative rails, that same-ness is enlivened and given polish by Manville.

It’s a genial, funny movie, not a mile-a-minute behind-the-cameras gag-fest (hyphens!) like 30 Rock, but an amiable workplace comedy that finds personal definition in its influences.

The film may have just been a failed stab at inter-gender empathy, were it not for its wretched final act. This is where Men takes an abrupt turn into surreal horror, and when something bad starts glinting just beneath the surface of Garland’s apparent motivations.

The Old Guard is a naked attempt to kick off a franchise, but I wasn’t bothered by all those obvious table-setting mechanics because what they’re establishing is so tantalizing.

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.

Anderson rescues his film from oblivion in the end, closing out his story with a disarmingly sweet—and, in some ways, provocative—moral argument.

Egerton tears into the material with an intensity that elevates Rocketman’s standard-issue tortured-artist drama.

Joel Edgerton’s earnest, solidly made film will be most effective on, and maybe necessary for, those immediately suffering under the crush of anti-gay bigotry, and those perpetrating it.

As this process unfolds, Reijn and DeLappe manage some moments of shivery suspense. Reijn makes expressive use of the house, tearing up staircases and down shadowy corridors with giddy abandon. But narratively, the film grows awfully repetitive, some version of the same argument taking place in one dark room after another.

You can’t taste all the miraculous food the sorry men of The Trip to Greece are served. But you can, at least, relate to the feeling the film evokes. It’s the wonder of new experience giving even further gravity to all that’s come along and happened before—and will, on some dusty day in some impossible future, hopefully happen again.

Mostly, Tenet is a straightforward caper movie—maximally staged and very, very loud, but flimsy at its heart.

If yet another Marvel movie is a little self-conscious about being yet another Marvel movie, does that excuse it from being, well, yet another Marvel movie? That’s the tricky territory that Spider-Man: Far From Home finds itself in.

There are enough surprising one-liners and asides to make this romantic comedy actually funny, rather than something to mildly chuckle at on the way to the kissing.

Samuel, who is also a musician under the stage name The Bullitts, makes an auspicious debut as a feature filmmaker. He knows when to deliver the expected punch and when to add his unique flourishes. The Harder They Fall trots along with invigorating confidence, a vision keenly realized.

On occasion the film is wryly amusing. But too often the humor is strained, playing as meek attempt to laugh through the pain—for the characters, the movie itself, the entire franchise, even.

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

There’s nothing wrong with a good soap opera—and when one looks as bespoke as this one, and has such fine actors in it, it should go down a treat. But Everybody Knows lumbers and frustrates as it goes.

It’s a rare treat these days to see Latifah in a movie (you can see her on TV on The Equalizer); perhaps we have Sandler to thank for this welcome, if brief, return. I’d gladly watch the pair in another project together.

There are moments of high drama in Infinity War—between father and daughter, brother and brother, mentor and protégé, lover and lover—that these actors, as deep in this series as we are, deliver on with teary intensity. And there’s a haunting final sequence that is as grave and, I daresay, almost poetic as anything the film series has done.

My Friend Dahmer doesn’t present some rueful wish that, oh, young Jeffrey might have made it if only someone had reached out to him. But it does extend him some human compassion, letting us see how the tragedy of his loneliness, spurred by the horror of his dark compulsions, made pre-murderous Dahmer something of a victim himself.

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.

Craig is certainly sent off in grand fashion, but it’s a grandiosity that isn’t quite fitting for his run of films.

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.

Etzler manages some nasty comedy, sourced from the bracing jolt of watching teacher and student cruelly manipulate one another. And he shows a sturdy technical command throughout.

It’s a rousing and moving enough film that one is compelled to excuse the limits of its artistry.

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

It’s a movie full of ideas that are never quite unified into a thesis. A bunch of wild imagery and grim hypotheticals about what could become of us may be enough for some viewers. Others, like me, will be left prodding away, trying to locate more meat on all of these ornately assembled bones.

Perhaps a new day of Cage has dawned. One in which he can get back to the business of acting, unburdened by all the constant, semi-loving demand that he just bug out his eyes and dance.

Black Widow is a prequel of sorts, and an origin story, a robust and satisfying glimpse into a defining interlude in Black Widow’s life that almost, almost pulls off the trick of being wholly its own thing.

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.

Though all three sections of the film have didactic bits when big ideas are plainly stated, the bulk of Monsters and Men renders huge issues with a fluid understatement. But that disarming pensiveness and interiority doesn’t forget the anger and sadness of the story—instead, it somehow heightens it, affording these characters a grounded texture that casts their struggles in a piercingly humane light.

Watching The Way of Water, one rolls their eyes only to realize they’re welling with tears. One stretches and shifts in their seat before accepting, with a resigned and happy plop, that they could watch yet another hour of Cameron’s preservationist epic. Lucky for us—lucky even for the culture, maybe—that at least a few more of those are on their way.

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.

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.

The Last Duel is a surprising jumble, a motley assemblage of tones that often work in perverse harmony.

Hawke and Byrne have a nice chemistry, handling an offbeat and initially epistolary romance with wary sweetness. Juliet, Naked is surprising in its emotional contours, hitting familiar beats from different angles or, occasionally, taking the story in wholly unexpected directions.

Fresh is instead a grim slice of visceral entertainment, occasionally dressed up as something weightier. When the script indicates toward its intent—especially in the final climax, when a couple of clunky, theme-driven lines threaten to derail the whole thing—the cool flint of what’s come before loses a bit of its edge.

It’s a lot of nervy construction built around very little substance. Driver and Cotillard are admirably committed, and the film does occasionally soar to giddily surreal, big-burst musical highs. Not near often enough, though.

Chappaquiddick isn’t a harangue against Kennedy, but it does take a hard look at a man who was a revered stalwart of the Democratic party for decades. The film works best as a character study, a profile of moral crisis, rather than any sort of true-crime exposé.