Richard Whittaker

The animated feature directorial debut of both Kim Burdon and Robert Chandler (writer/producer of The Amazing Maurice) is a light jaunt that's mostly delivered in mid-tier CG and mildly overblown celebrity voice-acting. However, there are still some delightful flourishes, like opening credits that evoke the distinctive vintage British Rail tourism posters, and a flashback involving articulated paper puppets.

The Northman lives and breathes like the old epics; not Old Hollywood's cartoonish depictions of warriors with horned helmets, but the ancient tales to which he pays deep respect.

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.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

Mass takes the high school shooting drama out of the exploitation rut into which it has fallen, and instead turned it back into a story of people. It's a simple achievement to name, but an extraordinary one in its impact.

Weapons is such a deliriously twisted blast that, as soon as it’s complete, you’ll want to shake up the box and do it all again.

Truly, Everything Everywhere All at Once does one thing: exactly what the title promises.

There's as much of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru here as there is the rubber-suit genius of Godzilla creator Ishirō Honda (himself never shy of political subtext), and that's a pairing as powerful as any monster mash-up.

I Am Everything is most fascinating when it goes deep into his formative years and the influences of truly obscure figures like Esquerita and Billy Wright (both Black queer musicians). Yet the further into his life the documentary goes, the less insightful it becomes.

Audiences wanting a more rounded discussion of the U.S. occupation of Iraq might find it too militaristic and Americentric, while flagwavers wanting raw jingoism may find its questioning too probing. But as a depiction of the futility of conflict from those who fought, Warfare is far from ambivalent.

Through talking heads over archive materials, Pollard deftly explains why the tapes exist and how the inflated claims about national security were no excuse for them being recorded.

Remember that meme format about how “men will literally x instead of going to therapy”? That’s arguably the elevator pitch for Riders of Justice, a spiky, sensitive, lewdly humorous, and sporadically violent meditation on obsession, vengeance, and statistical probability.

If you’re just along for the spectacular ride, then Furiosa is Miller at his nitro-fueled, chrome-covered, overblown best. But if you’re trying to make any sense of this, you’ll find it increasingly stalled out.

In this charming, funny, tear-inducing, and instantly recognizable world, and through the (in)actions of Grace, Elliot tells a gentle, touching, bitter-but-ultimately-sweet fable with a warming message: It’s OK to leave your shell behind.

While though the influence of 19th-century Russian literature has always been evident and admitted in Ishiguro's work, Living is even further removed from the The Death of Ivan Ilyich than Kurosawa's film. It is even smaller and more intimate, and much of its suppressed wonder comes from a career-best performance from Nighy.

For a movie about our relationship with our bodies, there's surprisingly little intellectual meat on its pretentious bones.

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.

While The Mitchells vs. the Machines has its points to make, it’s also deftly funny, and never didactic. You’ll care about the message because you’ll care about – and probably identify with – the Mitchells.

[DaCosta] may divert the series from its withering dissection of the green and pleasant land’s self-image, but her absurdist perspective on this inherently absurd franchise is still undeniably entertaining.

Liu’s adaptation of Atticus Lish’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning 2014 novel wends its way through the contradictions and tragedies of love between two people who need more than just a bed warmed by another body. Preparation delicately brings them together and devastatingly gives every reason for them to fall apart.

Johnson may need reminding that atheists aren’t just here to provide comfort to believers. That misstep aside, Wake Up Dead Man is a cunning and entertaining mystery, a return to form for the franchise.

What Wright makes us understand is that it's never really been that hard to understand Sparks. Plus, "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us" is a stone-cold classic.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

Even if it beat Videodrome to the screen by two years, it's not quite the same level of must-see programming. It's fascinating, but less coherent, less scathing, and far more meandering.

What Taylor illustrates in this version of Little Red Riding Hood is a sensitive portrait of guilt, of the difference between people who simply want to bury it and those that are consumed by it.

It’s not frustrating, but then, it’s not quite that engaging. It may spark a little light self-recognition among filmmakers, and that’s all Hansen-Løve seems to aim for.

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.

At every point, Strange Darling is a grisly melding of deviously experimental form and terrifying function.