Richard Whittaker

For all the effort that Van Sant and his team put into making Dead Man’s Wire look like 1970s Indianapolis, its ability to really summon the spirit of the era only goes skin deep.

Cameron makes you care for this place, for its residents, for its wildlife, and most especially for its whale analogs - a major element of the story, one that curtly reminds us that our own cetaceans may well be our intellectual equals.

Blanchart’s not reinventing any wheels – if anything, there’s a certain pleasure to be had from his decision not to follow the current trend of trying to simulate a real-time effect.

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

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

In its mix of angsty formalism and sing-along fun, Annette may be the closest that musical cinema has come to when Brecht and Weill put a knife in Macheath's hand for The Threepenny Opera.

The deepest pleasures of Sanctuary are in how Abbott and Qualley – both identifiably horny and human – suck every drip of pleasure out of Micah Bloomberg's script.

Quantumania goes big, but it never forgets that Ant-Man is our guy.

Freaky hilariously modernizes the high school bloodbath for laughs.

The Legend of Ochi is a kids’ movie in all the best possible ways, all the most enriching, magical ways that a kids’ movie should be. It’s also educational, but not in a teaching, preachy fashion. Instead, it’s filled with wisdom and heart, a fabulous tale of the fantastical that will leave your children filled with a sense of wonder about the world.

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.

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

The Life of Chuck is not so much about raging at the dying of the light but about how we embrace the inevitability of death and the wonder of what comes before. It’s blockbuster metaphysics, a twinkle in the eye of the infinite.

Tran undoubtedly aims for an old school Hong Kong comedy martial arts movie feel, lighthearted and light on its feet, and he lands that blow dead on. But rather than a knockout punch, it's a tickle on the ribs and a tussling of the hair from this sweet and funny action flick.

The interpersonal storylines, the tackling of the connections between grief and rage and flight, are some of the deepest and most nuanced in the franchise's history, as is the underlying narrative of two powerful nations heading to a needless conflict in the fog of war. When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is at its best when it looks at confusion rather than adds to it.

Jurassic World Rebirth struggles to find a reason to exist, so composer Alexandre Desplat peppers in the original, wonderful Jurassic Park theme by John Williams just enough to remind you that you’re watching a sequel, not a rip-off.

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.

This is the antithesis of a sequel for sequel’s sake. Instead, it’s second verse, even catchier than the first.

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.

There's an undeniable boldness to Capobianco's decision to channel a biography through the medium of stop motion, but it's perfect for the untrammeled exuberance and boundless ingenuity of Da Vinci.

A new comedy classic whodunnit in the honored tradition of Clue, Werewolves Within finds the laughs in the jump scare, and brings back the uproarious joy of the "it's behind you!" creeping fright.

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.

What really keeps Wander Darkly together is yet another convoluted, conflicted, and honest performance from Miller.

Las Vegas may demolish its own history, but The Last Showgirl will break your heart by showing you a woman clinging to the rubble of her life.

What Riddler is doing is nakedly political, and there’s a risk that the audience may fall for his persuasive, butcherous way. Yet in the rebuttal to the Riddler’s conundrum, Reeves give this Bruce Wayne something more meaningful than an origin story: He gives him redemption.

Ultimately, it’s an aspirational and inspirational tale of daring to reach for the stars even when authority figures tell you they don’t exist – and the value of having a friend who believes in you, even if they have an umbrella handle for a nose.

Just because you can shove a bunch of IPs together, should you? Especially when the motivation is a 90-minute joke about beloved TV series, with a lot of cheese-as-cocaine gags. Who is it for? People who still laugh at uncanny valley jokes. For those that don't, no reason to worry, because most of the references will be explained to you.

What makes Fully Realized Humans all the funnier is the couple's conviction that they're always doing the right thing: and, again, if it wasn't for the wide-eyed smart-naïve performances from Wexler and Leonard the whole thing would be insufferable.

The pat defense is that Skinamarink is not for conventional horror audiences, and that's obvious, but at the same time it feels overextended as a conceptual piece.

It’s trashy eurosleaze with none of the sumptuous debauchery.

It's a finely-crafted puzzle box that speaks as much to the heart and the head, with a simple but poignant message that we are only ourselves if we are complete.

All too often, in life and in cinema, systems are shown as working simply to oppress: Thirteen Lives reminds us that communal acts can be what literally save us.

Noa may not be Caesar's heir as leader of the apes, but he definitely walks in his footsteps as a worthy protagonist in the latest iteration of this ever-intriguing sci-fi classic.

There is enough of a sense of awe here, and enough scale, that it brightens up the big screen as it stares into the ebony black of space. And if one child is instilled with a sense of cosmic wonder and channels that into a career probing the mysteries and poetry of the night sky, then Elio will have truly reached the stars.

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.

Don't let the big (but not that big) budget fool you: It's Troma, baby, just how you like it.

If it wasn't for Thorp, this would be intolerable, but as Signe she creates a fascinatingly off-putting character study of a menace to society. There's no redemptive third act here, yet she still creates a rounded depiction of a singularly minded bully.

This is still Dragon Ball, with all its quirks so well established that they're just part of the process now.

With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted.

It's not if Michael gets out of his rut (or when he gets to chasten Pineapple a little along the way), but how, and it's a fun ride with him until he reaches that destination.

It’s rare to say about a contemporary film, but maybe it could gain from a little didacticism, a little lecturing, a little clarity to ensure that its muddied purpose becomes clearer. Instead, its idiosyncrasies obscure its insights.

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.

Pulsing up and down the arterial route of the B train from Brooklyn to the Bronx, Caught Stealing is a portrait of NYC at its most grimily charming.

Sweet, silly, with that profoundly bizarre world view that makes a snail trail gag open to everyone for a laugh, this may not change SpongeBob forever, but it's more SpongeBob as we love him, and that's all the fun you can need.

Gaunt, reserved, unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight having risked life and limb to avert nuclear war, he's a figure from a bygone time, a bygone culture, and that's what Dominic Cooke captures so perfectly.

With neither the grandiosity of pagan vision that illuminated The Green Knight, or the subversive forest horror of Ben Wheatley's In the Earth, Garland's Men is never quite a joke, but maybe that would have made it a more pointed parable.

It's chilling and tragic in equal measures.

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.

Heavy-handed and stuffed with cardboard characters, everything about Twisters save for Powell feels like a pale imitation of what made the original such an unexpected smash of a disaster movie. Lightning definitely does not strike twice.

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.

In its often distressing, sometimes nauseating depiction of a woman caught in weaponized co-dependence, Alice, Darling is rarely an easy watch. Yet it is always captivating, and that all comes back to Kendrick in what may well be her most powerful performance to date.

It's the period details that really make The Black Phone ring. It's not the set dressing, or the costumes, or the hairstyles (although Jeremy Davies does sport a fantastic muttonchops-mullet merger as Gwen and Finney's alcoholic, abusive father). It's that grimy sense of the era, that way that kids felt left to their own devices. This is an Amblin adventure drenched in R-rated fear.

America undoubtedly needs serious artists to explore the brain worms that the pandemic era gave the body politic, but Eddington most definitely ain’t it.

Oppenheimer never quite embraces the absurdity and madness of his own proposition, and instead engages in a surprisingly flat tragicomedy of manners.

Raging Grace is too gleefully ridiculous to live up to its didactic ambitions, and too on-the-nose to let its wings of crushed velvet madness truly spread.

Yuasa entrances the eye, but he also know how to make your heart soar with this deft, delicate, and highly entertaining story of loss, of coming to terms with grief, of moving on without ever forgetting.

Kudos to the suits for backing a horror film this provocative and spine-chilling.

Like Johnson’s Kerr, The Smashing Machine is a surprisingly gentle giant.

It's all peak Anderson, which sadly also means his inability to put a story together.

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.

I will admit, the fact that Oklahoma oddball Mickey Reece had recently become the cinematic flavor of the month left me cold and baffled, especially with his breakout festival hit Climate of the Hunter. Yet the excellence of religious chiller Agnes finally means you can mark me as a true believer.

Adapting the graphic novel The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg, writer/director Julia Jackman creates a fable that is still damningly important and relevant: that women are not allowed to control their own bodies or their own stories.

Originality is what made Alvarez famous. If only he showed more of it here when it comes to storytelling, not just innovative jump scares.

In his debut feature as a director, The Valhalla Murders creator Thordur Palsson lets the icy-blue pitilessness of the inhospitable Westfjords permeate every frame and every moment.

The pleasures are in watching Maxine navigate through the bloodshed to the denouement she deserves, and watching West cut into the seductive allure of cinema.

In the immediate post-Roe era, any discussion of abortion is going to be timely. But what gives Cherry life beyond this moment is that central idea of facing change, and realizing that not making a decision is in itself a decision. There's something heartwarming in it being less important what choice Cherry makes than in watching her try to make it for the right reasons.

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

As the energy-beam projecting, space-flying defender of the underdog, Brie Larson has captured the pugnacious, charming, steely Captain Marvel in the ways she deserves.

A testament to the adage that a good filmmaker can make anything out of nothing, Undertone should go in your playlist now.

Honestly, this may be the only horror film that invokes Red Shoe Diaries and Cthulhu equally.

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.

It's Gillies' performance that raises Coming Home in the Dark from fascinating to utterly chilling, complimenting Matt Henley's cold, angular cinematography and John Gibson's score, all reed instruments and long, clean draws over strings, like an icy wind blowing slow through dead grass and bones.

Try as he might to capture the political complexities of their relationship and how it was sacrificed because of the needs for an heir, Scott tells rather than shows (much as Napoleon's much-harped-upon mommy issues turn out to be a narrative and thematic dead end). It's all strategy, no tactics.

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.

The best moments are when Keery and Campbell get to be blue collar schlubs facing down these messy menaces. Maybe if there was more of their back-and-forth and less of Neeson and Torchia’s distant double act, or vice versa, then Cold Storage might balance between its gruesome and goofy aspects.

While there is undoubted visual spectacle to All You Need Is Kill, Kido’s rewriting of Rita and Kaiji as just ordinary people stuck in extraordinary circumstances is grounded in their mundanity.

There’s none of the visceral artfulness that Scott managed in the original. Quite simply, if you can’t make man-on-baboon hand-to-hand combat interesting, why do you think you can make a sword fight fun?

Just like the best of the 1980s actioneers, Nobody has just the right mix of brains, brawn, and gut-busting laughs.

There’s an insufferable longwindedness to Kinds of Kindness, each installment dragging on beyond the point of patience. Watching becomes a chore, made heavier by Robbie Ryan’s often flat cinematography and the pacing created by Lanthimos’ longtime editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis.

Most importantly, Sherman and Abbasi deflate the myth that has dominated the last decade, that somehow Trump is some kind of aberration from the historical Republican Party, perverting it to his will.

This is not some whacked-out drug trip movie, or scolding afterschool anti-drug special. This is anti-psychedelia, grounded in the strangeness of true life.

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.

Taken on its own fluff piece terms, Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too.

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.

Singer has great inspirations, and the multilayered approach to edits and sound design within the hypnosis is ingenious and excellently executed. But it doesn't add up to much.

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.

Gloriously gonzo Appalachian creeper Spell makes one big change – having both the urban family in peril and the horrifying hicks with malicious intent be Black – and that's a refreshing change to a genre that's felt moribund since about "Wrong Turn 2."

The Nightmare Before Christmas said that it’s all right to wrap a few scares up under the Christmas tree. Terrifier 3, the latest in the extreme gore franchise, sets fire to the decorations, cuts off your eyelids, and makes you watch the whole house burn.

Faces of Death is dull and thoughtless, its attempts to smash influencer culture into voyeurism feeling artificial.

Sinister and hilarious, psychedelic yet grounded, absurdist while still gripping, In the Earth will take root in you.

The episodic nature of Beau's misadventures serves as both distraction and bloat, a metaphorical cavalcade that lacks the acerbic agility of many of its predecessor.

Brimming with cornball humor and overt sentimentality, there’s something compelling within the film’s unyielding commitment to its own idiosyncrasies, not to mention the emotionally cogent backbone.

The narrative is too flat, too drily filmed by César-nominated cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie (8 Women) to induce much emotion or debate about Anne’s hypocrisy and abuse of power.

Unabashedly warped and horny, Morgan knows exactly when to set off the depth charges lurking in the waters of Bone Lake, making its big, filthy reveal feel like the inevitable result of the characters’ urges.

A loving, gory, ribald slasher flick that is both serious about the genre and gruesomely ridiculous.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a reminder of the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza. It’s a reminder that the constant smears against human rights organizations and aid agencies are vile slanders by people who want this to happen again and again and again.

It's easy to see this coming out in 1998 with Ashley Judd as Rebecca, and Carey Elwes under Victor's tattooed skin. However, this midbudget drama doesn't have quite that star power, and it definitely lacks the visual flair of that era's overdriven and weird procedurals.