Richard Whittaker

That's where Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is most fascinating, in its exploration of the blurred lines between what who writers (and filmmakers) are, and what they write, and why they write.

It’s almost like a “what I did on my vacation” essay assignment, only with an A-list of arthouse directors, and so it inevitably feels disjointed, switching from drama to tone poem to documentary to video diary.

It becomes a warm and insightful tribute to every kid that finds peace climbing up a tree, to every adult that realizes the value of the natural world, and to the ties that bind us to the world around us. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll learn what a keystone species is.

League of Super-Pets is a lighthearted, generically animated, fun time out for the kids.

It’s the same thrill as the Final Destination movies, which Egerton and Hardy have both noted as an influence: watching likable protagonists try and sometimes fail to evade death.

In its funny, implausible, and heartwarming depiction of a ramshackle platonic friendship between two oddballs, Brian and Charles creates a complete and immersive world – rainier than, but not that far removed from, Kyle Mooney's equally idiosyncratic and endearing fantasy Brigsby Bear.

The Cursed may be a shaggy tale in places, but its bite is ultimately deep.

Even its flaws and occasional moments of repetition between authors cannot detract from this fascinating collection about one of the great filmmakers of our era.

When Nothing Stays the Same is best is when it's about what it takes to survive, rather than indulging in handwringing: the flexibility, the raw business savvy melded with artistic vision that makes for great booking, and innovations like early evening residencies.

King Knight is a weird delight, the kind of unlikely low-budget pleasure in which Ray Wise turns up as everybody’s favorite f*cking magician and delivers dancing lessons.

Mārama is arguably at its most effective as a political text when it isn’t trying so hard to be part of the heritage that includes Hitchcock’s Rebecca and del Toro’s Crimson Peak.

Where so many queer creature features attempt to refract and reframe fairy tale tropes, Jae Matthews' script for My Animal is intriguing because there's always the threat of the real world at the edges.

Sapochnik has delved into bleak futures before, with his 2010 brutal forced-organ-donation capitalist satire Repo Men, but Finch is much closer to last year’s The Midnight Sky, in which George Clooney stared at his own incoming invisible apocalypse.

Rapid Response is a celebration of behind-the-scenes heroes, and their dedication to medicine and science as a way to save lives. Its microfocus, anecdotal structure, and reliance on archive footage and talking heads, undoubtedly makes this one for the true devotees of motorsports, but they'll not want to miss it.

For a film that is so fresh, thrilling and overdue in its very existence, just by having three Asian-American women leads, the narrative seems hidebound: for a story that break so far from the traditions of the Disney fairytale, it's still deeply predictable.

Meet Me in the Bathroom is like a well-curated sampler CD of the scene. It's cool, but you'll be left wanting full albums of the bands you liked anyway.

Léger and Robichaud’s update is mostly successful in filtering the intent of the original for modern sensibilities, not least in the plentiful sex scenes.

Paris, 13th District never quite provides a good enough reason to smoosh two of Tomine’s stories together.

There are moments in the bleak social commentary of The School Duel that make it clear that satire is dead. Or rather, that the extremity of what is happening in American culture is so grotesque that it’s almost impossible to push into the realm of absurdist commentary.

Seligman's script will strike a sharp chord in anyone that has run into overly-complicated situations at a family gathering (i.e. just about everyone). It feels like a hurdy-gurdy that is just enough put of tune to leave you uneasy, a sensation of queasiness further unbalanced by Ariel Marx's discordant, scratchy, string-and-timpani soundtrack

It takes a special kind of smart to be really, really dumb. And make no mistake, Bullet Train is a really, really dumb movie. Like, every gunshot echoes around its gloriously vacant skull. Because there's also a particular kind of smart-dumb film that is endlessly, idiotically fun, and that's what Bullet Train is.

Most importantly, Claydream is a reminder of a master artist and visionary who revolutionized an art form.

The Duke may superficially seem like old hat, but in its comfortable ways there’s still a strong message.

As the falsehoods stack up and fall away, My Old School will increasingly leave you slack-jawed.

6:45 is a deliberately uncomfortable watch, a loveless romance that’s left to bleed out again and again.

Observation is not always enough, and that seems true with the perfectly presented but oddly hollow Showing Up. Set in the world of small-time artists in Portland, it functions as a well-crafted portrait, but leaves wide open the question of why Reichardt chose this particular subject matter.

Val, while often tragic, is also a deeply spiritual film: a benediction of forgiveness for those that wronged him, and a mea culpa to those he has harmed (most especially, it seems, ex-wife Joanne Walley).

Ultimately, and as is to be expected, In Our Day is not revelatory or revolutionary. It’s a film about being comfortable from a filmmaker who is comfortable with who he is.

Even with all the conflations and simplifications, and a middle act that verges on an extended montage of guerrilla warfare and undercover intrigue, A Call to Spy is undeniably a heartfelt take on a fascinating and heartbreaking true tale of heroism.

Finally recovered from the archive by the George A. Romero Foundation, and restored by New York's IndieCollect from two faded 16mm prints, its mere existence as a lost Romero is enough to make it worth watching. But it's not simply a dated curio: it's a fascinating if dated curio.

Sometimes charmingly fantastical, Over the Moon definitely doesn't have the fairytale elegance of Keane's earlier work.

Caught with a mixture of cool reserve and neck-snapping energy by director Kim Jee-woon's longtime cinematographer Lee Mo-gae (I Saw the Devil, Ilang: The Wolf Brigade), Hunt is an ugly morality play, briskly told and given chilling, crackling energy by Lee and Jung.

Underneath the savage occult aspects of the story remains a constant exploration of what it means to see your loved ones as flawed, rounded humans, and ultimately as mortal.

The Tunnel may be shrouded in blistering embers and fumes, but it never loses sight of the victims and helpers, of whom there are many. Just as it's an ensemble drama, so it's the community that saves what it can of the day, and gives a feel-good ending with a tinge of sadness.

Mutiny in Heaven would make a fitting pairing with White's 2012 TV documentary, Junkie Monastery, another tale of hedonism and cerebral discourse clashing.

In its strange and successful mixing of genres, Dust Bunny is arguably everything that Mockingbird Lane, Fuller’s misguided attempt at an edgy take on The Munsters, was not.

A gleefully gross adventure that bundles together all of wrestling-and-horror nerd Eisener's favorite obsessions (he's also part of the team behind VICE's The Dark Side of the Ring), Kids vs. Aliens is exactly the kind of age-inappropriate horror that kids will absolutely love.

Acheson channels exploitation legend Sid Haig as Charlie, and it’s just delightful to see Nelson give one of the all-time “oh, it’s that guy” bit part specialists a truly memorable role. That it’s in that rare remake that successfully inverts an old favorite while staying true to its grisly inheritance makes it even more of a gift.

A film of immense contradictions and baffling coherency, it may be Besson’s most interesting work to date, because he finally embraces the outcast.

It may well be that Ozon has made the best possible conventional adaptation of the book. Yet maybe it requires a more unconventional touch to truly translate Camus’ point.

Neeson’s quietness doesn’t simply come across as tough guy silence. Instead, there’s a maudlin introspection that bears surprisingly meaningful fruit.

Save Yourselves! isn't completely toothless, although its softball targets are only lightly lambasted for their silliness. It's a comedy of manners of sorts, in which puffball personalities are outwitted by barely-sentient spheres of fur. The ending may waft away, but at least it stays true to the story of two people with no tools to make an impact.

If the youthful scenes seem a little mannered (in presentation if not performance), it's in these sequences of reconstruction, of quiet communication between Pietro and Bruno, of a depiction of adult male friendship, that The Eight Mountains is at its most endearing.

It's chilling and tragic in equal measures.

This is Rodriguez the lover of the C-movie, the kind of filmmaker that Roger Corman would have adored. Hypnotic has that run-and-gun energy, rough around the edges but not in a way that impinges on the fun. It's also Rodriguez flexing some old action muscles, with that opening heist arguably his most bruising and well-constructed practical set-piece in a couple of decades.

In Goodbye, Don Glees!, the first original anime from Atsuko Ishizuka (No Game No Life: Zero), innocent teen friendships and the hope for one last adventure are tenderly explored as a wildfire sends the trio into the woods – but most importantly, into a delicate exploration of growth, of dealing with mundane situations that seem impossibly huge and impossible challenges that somehow you can work your way through.

Bateman's worldbuilding introduces stranger elements that are always counterbalanced by more grounded emotional developments, keeping the audience engaged as hard as the esoteric mythology pushes them away. In that delicate balance it bypasses the logical parts of the brain and speaks purely in quiet emotional truths.

Mixing fly-on-the-wall observation with behind-the-scenes footage and reenactments, Czubek and Perez remain respectful, and even a little awestruck, while also understanding that Nabwana just wants everyone to have a good time. That's what makes Wakaliwood, as they say, Home of Da Best of Da Best Movies.

Director Rebekah McKendry follows up her deliciously disgusting Lovecraftian rest stop comedy Glorious with a feature that doesn't have quite the same twisted ingenuity. Instead, she focuses on good, old-fashioned scares.

Tornado is an undeniable success as a slow-burn, blood-soaked historical tragedy, both mournful and amoral, but it’s also a quietly fascinating exploration of identity and reinvention.

In three segments Satanic Hispanics has zipped between high Gothic, hijinks, and activist metaphor. They're all entertaining, but every time the action cuts back to the diffident Traveler – who keeps threatening dire consequences if he's not immediately released – you'll wonder why he doesn't tell pithier, more connected stories.

Ultimately, When I Consume You is a dark and tender portrayal of two siblings rejected by the world, and none of it's their fault. It's a startling depiction of bonding that will chill you and move you in equal measures.

By turns beautiful and ugly, occasionally infuriating in its obfuscation and disconnect, always slow and intriguing, King Crab is powered by the wild-eyed and soft-spoken charisma of Silli as the instinctually rebellious and disdainful Luciano.

Beyond surprising thematic depth, The Old Ways is an exercise in putting every cent on the screen, and hiding what you don't need.

Cumming presents a natural world red in tooth and claw, yet the inevitable lessons learned in this moss-covered and frost-blasted wilderness still have modern resonances – about fear, bigotry, superstition, survival.

There’s a rumbling, inconsolable guilt at the heart of Clean, the latest from fascinatingly flexible writer/director Paul Solet.

Its gentleness and incremental increases in weirdness are a feature, not a bug.

As much as Øvredal tries to evade all the modern blockbuster conventions that are bound to keep the Demeter from its best destination, it’s too bumpy a journey to ever feel quite on course.

It's a lot more than simply a string of names and dates and anecdotes, but after this many hours that's what it starts to become.

At a time when everyone is complaining about superhero fatigue, it seems almost perverse to say that maybe the Fantastic Four should have had another film first. Instead, they rush to an ending that bolts them so neatly into the greater continuity.

AJ Goes to the Dog Park doesn’t feel like a movie so much as two creative friends getting together and having fun exploring a comedic person.

In a year when there's been great discussion about unlikable protagonists, Colman's creation of Leda as a living, breathing, deeply flawed character who can be both wounded and cruel – and the way Gyllenhaal sympathetically frames this unflattering portrait – is a fascinating reminder that not every film needs to leave us feeling comfortable.

What Rana and Warin have also created is a quiet warning. As a new tide of fascism and monomaniacal cultural oppression looms on the horizon, they make Salomon’s story a tragic reminder that fleeing a nightmare may mean more than just keeping it in your rearview mirror.

It's delightfully frightful fun, a fine addition to the venerable and febrile tradition of Australian comedy-horror.

Even for its flaws, Captain America: Brave New World feels like the series may be finding its soul again.

While Figgis gets this extraordinary and unrestricted access, there’s a real question about what he does with it. Coppola is infamous for finding his films in the edit, but it’s hard to see that Figgis found that much more than he had in the camera.

Cherry is a small-scale tragedy, one repeated over and over again in broad sweeps, but still specific to this one instance. The issue is that, when the audience knows the inevitable path, there are limited opportunities for surprises – especially since the Russos set the entire story as a flashback.

It’s in how Harris depicts the seemingly psychic bond between the sisters for silent conversation. In those sequences, she plays the same kind of cunning games with layout and design that she did in the published text of the script, showing a raw ingenuity that adapts the stylistic possibilities of the stage for the more realistic setting of the screen.

It's less an examination of the psyche of one man than a PSA about manipulators. As a judge is quoted as saying: If you see Michael Organ coming, run.

If von Boehm adds anything to what's known of Newton's life, it's to explore his iconography, about which he was very honest. His dismissiveness of photography as insightful, his enigmatic storytelling, and the great contradiction of his work, of how a young Jewish boy who was almost murdered during Kristallnacht absorbed so much of the imagery of the Reich's most artistic propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl.

Eleanor the Great never quite grapples with the ethical dilemmas that it raises, either in Eleanor’s stories, Nina’s efforts to turn them into a news project, or Roger’s usurping of their wishes for a segment on their show. But if the narrative logic falls apart, at least its emotional core remains solid, much of it bound together by Squibb’s warmth and charm.

Robin doesn’t make a definitive statement about the science of the hunt, but after the audience gets snake-struck, staring into those strange nictitating eyes, they’ll have no doubts about which species is the real mass-murdering interloper.

In those complexities, and its more mordant analyses of the arbitrary mechanisms of power, The Promised Land bears impressively bitter fruit.

Rosi seeks to give glimpses of insight, to find emotional truths in the mother keening in the prison cell where her son died, and the courting couple who comment on the imminent rain but ignore the distant sound of machine gun fire. To fill in the contextual gaps would damage those truths, but to leave them inevitably will leave the audience questioning what's outside of his frame.

A few unforgivably heavy-handed nods to The Shining aside, [Kawamura] has created a fresh new addition to contemporary J-horror, one that deftly warps the characters around its own rules without rendering them merely props for the next shock.

Obsession is what they call it when you're wrong. When you're right, it's called conviction, and that's the story behind The Lost King, the remarkable, charming, and true-ish tale of Philippa Langley (Hawkins), the amateur historian who made one of the most important archeological discoveries of the century.

Will good triumph over evil? Who cares, when there's this much chaotic creature fun to be had.

If Brandon absorbed daddy dearest’s predilection for body horror and new flesh, then Caitlin has clearly studied his razor wit and grasp of metaphorical social commentary.

There’s an old thesis that if your comedy is over 90 minutes, it’s probably not funny. A funny comedy should leave the audience tired from laughing by that point. That Radu Jude’s satire Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World clocks in at an epic 163 minutes should be a cause for concern – as should be the presence of bullying schlock director Uwe Boll, even in a cameo as himself.

Rookie Season feels like it started off as a standard fluff piece about a sports team with a little bit of money to burn, and it's undoubtedly race fans who'll get the most out of its personal depiction of life behind the wheel. But what it really delivers, hidden under the hood of a very stock story of a season, is much more driven by Lidell's story.

Even if it becomes a little more familiar in the third act, especially to fans of that weird era of Nineties supernatural action thrillers like End of Days and Fallen, it's undeniable that Demonic rips open new technical possibilities for horror.

Squibb’s charm, her gutsiness, and her sharp, subtle humor fill the movie with warmth and veracity.

In her first feature, Bleed With Me, director Amelia Moses used vampirism as a tool to explore toxic friendships: in Bloodthirsty, it's clear that the lycanthropic fate that awaits Grey is less than metaphorical.

The golden era of slashers was defined by vicarious, often overblown pleasures, while the mood of Candyman is overwhelmingly dour and gloom-cloaked. No surprise, considering the weightiness of the issues at hand. Yet there are pointed discussions between Anthony and others in the art scene about the relative power of overt depictions of brutality and metaphor, something that somehow eludes this Candyman.

Wain's psychosis is shown from the inside, the Victoriana giving way to psychotronic visions that re-create Wain's futurism and dalliances with Cubism.

The destination may seem inevitable, but the twists, turns, and merciless bloodshed make Kill a trip well worth taking.

Phillips sets the stage for a courtroom procedural – and then rolls a hand grenade into the middle of that weighty stage with a series of song and dance numbers.

Director Amber Sealey gives the last word to Hagmaier, not Bundy. It's subtle, and may not be enough for the growing group of critics and viewers that worry that the cinematic obsession with serial killers ends up lionizing them, but it makes Bundy what he always was: pathetic.

Just because 7 Days knows the beats of the classic rom-com, that doesn’t make it a cover version. Instead, it’s a delightfully new riff, one filled with cultural specificities and timeliness.

As much as The Carpenter’s Son threatens to swallow you whole, and as much as it probes the oft-ignored darkness inherent in the Bible even outside of the Apocrypha, its thesis remains a little too academic to move the soul.

Even if One of Them Days does turn out to be a time capsule of an L.A. that has been incinerated, maybe time is the real test. After all, Friday wasn’t a big hit when it came out, gaining its cult status over time on home video. One of Them Days shares the same kind of comfy, goofy, undemanding rewatchability.

The ending simply lacks the guts to remain committed to King’s sociopolitical fury, and what starts as Wright’s best post-Cornetto Trilogy film ends up as his weakest. But when it’s really up to speed, The Running Man laps the competition.

It may stumble into heavy-handed moralizing around the checkout, but Slaxx is definitely a good look.

Strange World isn't afraid of taking on a rich mix of narrative strands: After all, how do intergenerational relationships fit together with an eco-crisis? The answer is very Disney in the best ways, and a rewarding continuation of the studio's recent narrative fascination with overcoming divides rather than evil.

Crimes may lack the incisive wittiness of eXistenZ or the suppurating nightmares of The Fly, but even lesser Cronenbergian body horror is something to behold.

Its open-ended nature, its calm ambiguity, and its captivating, self-contained world all come together to give a clear view into Oshii’s creative and spiritual obsessions – even if that view doesn’t really provide much insight.

After Tommaso, which was Ferrara at his least apologetic, it's so fitting that his most epic film is also his most introspective.

As documentary Free Chol Soo Lee shows, it's wisdom that seems to evade what are supposed to be the mechanisms of that justice.