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.