Richard Whittaker

It's a performance that ranks with some of Cage's best, a mix of Pig's earnestness and Adaptation's idiosyncrasies.

This is Wenders’ portrait, and as such it is as unique and thought-provoking as Kiefer’s own epic works.

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

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.

This is a family story – of a time, a place, an event, a community – in all its rich and quiet nuance, with all the members, related by blood or by affection, given their space.

The script, and Byrne’s suitably breathless, solipsistic reading of it, give the audience every reason to not simply dislike Linda but despise her.

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

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.

While Raes may not be able to replicate the experience of the show for the cinematic audience, she undoubtedly leaves them with a new perspective on the curator's calling, and the work of Vermeer himself.

What makes The Front Room universal is that it’s ultimately about power, about who runs the house.

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.

If future films deliver similar spectacle and true, epic filmmaking, then this lengthy sequel can afford to be a prelude.

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

The Shrouds is arguably Cronenberg’s most introspective film. His earlier work was driven by fascination, fetishization, and a puckish humor. All those elements are present here, but muted, restrained, and ultimately under an overwhelming sense of futility, as Karsh uses the shroud tech to retain a detachment from his grief.

There's still too much punching down, but especially too much peddling in stereotypes and xenophobic clichés.

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.

What's most fascinating is that there's no self-indulgence on Medak's behalf. It's a filmmaker coming to terms with a deep bruise in his life, and the realization that time may heal all wounds, but will still leave a scar.

It’s a slow document of stiff upper lips beginning to quiver, and while Knightley excels as the perfect Kensington upper-crust mummy, it’s Goode who personifies that desperate attempt to keep a veneer of control, even as his world is on the verge of devastation.

Freaky hilariously modernizes the high school bloodbath for laughs.

In a time when happy endings seem in short supply, The Water Man's sense of heroic wonder is the kid-sized epic we need.

The final destination is a truly touching and very modern story of being an overlooked child, and you'll cross an ocean of wonder and amazement to get there.

Aftersun is lyrical without ever being obtuse, and it's a film that flourishes when attention is paid to details.

The longer you are immersed in this exchange of stories, of hope dying against darkness but proving its value just by its glimmers, the more it enthralls.

Something in the Dirt doesn't hide its answers, because there may not be any answers. It's the danger of obsessing over the mutability of facts that is its true and fascinating subject. In an era of post-reality politics, Something in the Dirt may be a quiet wake-up call.

There’s an element of synesthesia and a touch of religiosity to The Colors Within, but more importantly there’s Yamada’s welling compassion for the inner lives of young people.

At some levels, there is nothing new here: Everyone knows about the casting clashes, the abandoned score, and even Friedkin's take on it all. But it's the immediacy that comes from Alexandre O. Philippe's decision to leave everything to Friedkin that makes its so important.

It’s that rare film that truly tackles how people live within a bloody conflict.

The influence of the original Mad Max is undeniable – not the crazy biker bits, but the sense of a collapsing world, of the personal impacts and damage inflicted by the end of everything.