Richard Lawson

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

The pleasure of Let Them All Talk is in how it expands on the premise of an older lady hang movie, burrowing into darker corners and pausing to consider the ambient hum of life tumbling along. It’s a fun movie. It may also be profound.

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.

Murphy animates Rita Kalnejais’s script—itself an inventive reimagining of cliché—with insistent artistry, announcing her arrival as an ascendant talent.

There’s an anger at work in the film, but what’s more effective is its ruefulness—its ribbons of abiding hope, frayed and tattered but still there, somehow.

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.

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.

There is something undeniably exciting about seeing a polished piece of studio-ish entertainment like this be cognizant of the world it exists in.

Karam makes an auspicious directorial debut, one that captures all the tense, rattling mood of his stage horror while giving it a new, decidedly cinematic shape.

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.

Black Panther works best as a dynastic drama, and as a musing on global politics from a perspective we don’t often get. Despite familiar action-scene wobbliness, it’s easily the most engaging Marvel film in a long while. Because—finally!—it has something new to say.

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.

The movie’s messaging is solid and persuasive, and Spielberg’s finely honed filmmaking, his sense of movement and controlled spectacle, does not fail him here.

The movie belongs wholly to Ronan, who at just 20 years old is such a remarkably poised and confident performer. She's a great actress to watch, and Brooklyn is a wonderful, if low-key, platform for her talents.

Beyond that interesting character profile, Free Solo also operates as a sort of meta criticism of this kind of documentary filmmaking. We see Chin and his crew, most of them friends or at least affectionate admirers of Honnold’s, grapple with the difficult realities—and the potential trauma—of what they’re doing.

Trite as it may sound, we gradually accept that the beautiful boy of the title is not some innocent child, lost to the past, but rather the real and imperfect young man hunched before us. It’s Chalamet’s great accomplishment, and the film’s, that we feel that so keenly.

Bad Education (which honestly isn’t a great title for this movie) is an arresting, nuanced depiction of insatiable want, of the bitter fact that reaching for things is often more instinctual, more human, than holding on to what we’ve already got.

Though premised on the slight pretenses of Twitter, the world of Bravo’s film is no fictionalized, seedily appealing underbelly. It’s simply America: often frightful, sometimes grimly amusing, and ever rattling along in its entropy.

Mostly, the cat-and-mouse of Lowery’s film is just reason enough to contemplate the shuffling everydayness of life, of how we are ever aware of its finality while also tending to, seeking out, and appreciating the little joys, mercies, and adventures of it.

Gentle, sad, and funny in a just-shy-of-cutesy way, Broker continues Kore-eda’s tradition of handling tough subject matter with a light touch.

It doesn’t wring its hands with grief and beatify its rumpled subjects. Instead, it arrives at a place of humble, true understanding. Which means more than mere forgiveness ever could.

Freaky is a pure pleasure, an absurd thriller that cuts through descending autumn gloom with a surprisingly bespoke prop knife.

Toy Story 4 not only delivers plenty of gonzo-funny moments and genuine thrills, but also interrogates and complicates the series’s core themes.

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.

For all its strife and sorrow, Marriage Story is a generous film. It sensitively acknowledges the ways people fail each other, and the ways they don’t. It’s well worth your time. Maybe don’t watch it with your spouse, though.

The pleasures of Ol Parker’s film are simple and sensual, its riot of color and sweet, nostalgic songs proving wholly agreeable even without much of a plot to hold it all together.

Basking in the film’s ceaseless swirl is as intoxicating a moviegoing experience as one could want these days, a burst of communal joy (and sorrow) that serves as an effusive welcome back to the world.

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.