Tomris Laffly

This light pick-me-up of a flick is as eager to please as Lawrence is to show off her luminous physical comedy skills, elevated by the star’s fiery comic timing and effortless drollness.

Happy Clothes gives us an intriguing snapshot of a creative force who can mix patterns and colors more fearlessly than anyone in the business. But it ultimately leaves us craving move.

The filmmakers know that one drops into fare like Extraction 2 not for feelings and tears but for the fast-on-its-feet action, one they deliver in heaps.

This is a movie that neither works as a quirky dark comedy about the hapless people of a small town (on that note, the film is painfully unfunny), nor as a period piece on the anxieties of the Reagan era, no matter how many “1984” references the characters throw at you.

Where Bay’s movies where incoherent messes that necessitated heaps of migraine meds, Caple Jr. actually manages to pull off something articulate and rousing with “Rise of the Beasts,” thanks in large part to the ever-relatable presences of Fishback and Ramos, and a parting note that’s just witty enough in its suggestion of a bigger universe.

Robot Dreams—as much a movie about coupledom as it is about friendship—sneaks up on you with an ending that both eulogizes the ones that got away and celebrates the memories that they had left behind.

La Chimera is a pictorial delight to luxuriate in, as it is a philosophical wonder on the unknowability of time. The earth belongs to the past and the future, this miracle of a film quietly suggests. We just live in it.

It’s a searing, mesmerizing and unforgettably wintry mood piece and character study.

Despite a heavy-handed cocoon motif that sometimes spells out the story’s themes to a fault, Haynes has done something spellbinding here: heady, grown-up and committed to a refreshing dose of moral ambiguity at a time in cinema where moral pandering sadly seems to be the default.

Killers of the Flower Moon is vast and vital in its scale, purpose and emotional scope, a Western-thriller and ensemble piece that is every bit a Scorsese crime picture as one can dare to imagine.

Monster manages to sink its claws into one’s conscience, thanks in large part to the movie’s young leads—like Farhadi, Kore-eda is an astute director of children, able to shepherd their performances in ways both precocious and disarmingly innocent.

Sadly, the film is a tedious and erratically cut caper, whose shape-shifting story feels like an uneven and over-plotted rehash of various recognizable films that we’ve seen before.

Perhaps it was enough for “Book Club” to merely exist as an act of rebellion against the stubbornly young-skewing studio fare. But this follow-up needed to give us more, something along the lines of a sharper film deserving of the earned legacies of Fonda, Keaton, Bergen and Steenburgen.

In the end, Master Gardener is ripe with seeds of ideas on the verge of blossoming into something beguiling, maybe even generously healing. What a way for Schrader to close the loop on his long line of tortured men.

Manzoor demonstratively disregards the cliches that often define Muslim families in cinema (an act this Muslim critic is grateful for) and on the whole, gives us a lavishly costumed and fully realized cinematic outing whose agile camerawork and charismatic leads demand the biggest screen you can find. What an absolute treat!

Even when Carmen occasionally hits some narrative roadblocks with the trio of writers not knowing how to fluently weave together dance and plot, Barrera and Mescal consistently burn the screen, and our foolish hearts.

Lowery once again treats his young audiences as shrewd viewers who deserve multilayered stories, well-developed characters and lush visuals.

Sure, Ghosted feels mostly awkward, but everyone seems to be in on the joke for some shameless fun. And that’s all you might get from this movie, a little pick-me-up before you ghost it forever.

Hallström mostly strikes a nice balance between approachability and mystique, between the definitive and the abstract, getting a huge amount of help from his daughter Tora’s open and warm performance in her first leading role.

While Hardwicke’s direction is slick across picturesque Italian locations and various high-octane set pieces that are shockingly bloody, there isn’t a lot she can do to rescue Collette’s fish-out-of-water protagonist from a lackluster mafia comedy with romantic undertones.

Admittedly, it’s all a bit much, an exercise in familial grief, inherited burdens and compressed feelings of guilt, but that excess is entirely the point of Aster’s longest and most ambitious film to date.

In its final moments, How to Blow Up a Pipeline proves it has the guts and lucidity to challenge even the most capitalist of minds, even if the film never blatantly endorses the extreme measures it depicts.

A slight comedy that sadly embraces neither the worthwhile questions that surround its central premise nor the story’s dark humor potential.

Still, the greatest asset of the picture is Dafoe’s finesse in a part that’s both physically demanding and fiendishly fun to witness. It’s like someone dropped him in the middle of an antique shop with a baseball bat and said, “Go to town!” And that he does.

The film's biggest con doesn't come from this imposter protagonist so much as the messy script and direction that squanders an amusing-enough premise, and the apathetic performances from A-listers in search of a purpose other than fulfilling a contractual obligation.

Finley loses his exacting handle on the material, allowing the story’s more commonplace ideas to dictate its direction in ways both unsurprising and a little rough around the edges.

Radical isn’t so much an irresponsibly magical against-the-odds yarn as a truthful one, in which a well-intentioned outsider can only go so far in protecting underprivileged students from certain grim paths.

Eileen leaves one wondering whether there was supposed to be an additional 20 minutes to the movie somewhere that someone accidentally deleted.

It’s still worthwhile to consider the post-#MeToo ideas that Cat Person throws at the wall around notions like empathy, consent, and the vitality of crystal-clear communication and see what sticks. What you will end up with might look like a messy artifact, but one that will at least rattle in ways both witty and provocative.

A Man Called Otto isn’t exactly as philosophical as “About Schmidt” or as socially conscious as “I, Daniel Blake,” two films that occasionally hit similar notes. But it’s nevertheless a wholesome crowd-pleaser for your next family gathering.

Babylon mostly operates in a structure of set pieces, thoroughly earning its not-a-minute-too-long runtime—a whopping 189 minutes—and it’s packed to the gills with stunning craftsmanship.

Avatar: The Way Of Water not only delivers upon everything its predecessor established, but advances them in ways gleaming and ocean-deep, through the eyes and heart of a cinematic storyteller with a passionate and well-documented love of the sea.

Mylod’s stew saves its most mouth-watering plate for the last. That’s why it’s fiendishly delightful.

Even with an embarrassingly rich cast, The Estate chokes on its own airlessness.

Guadagnino’s documentary is very much like walking through an immersive and interactive museum designed to make one feel nostalgic for a bygone era of art and craft. It’s magical stuff.

Bless the old school stars Roberts and Clooney for elevating this lackluster mélange and in certain instances, even making you forget about the non-sensical film that surrounds them. But that’s hardly enough, especially if you are hoping for a homecoming for the rom-coms of yore.

Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s soulful masterpiece offers a a windswept elegy on a camaraderie that has reached its inexplicable expiration, as well as melancholic rumination on mortality.

It’s immensely satisfying to follow Kantor and Twohey while they take on that toxic system as two working mothers trying to set a good example for their children, sharing resources and a sense of sisterhood down the line. It’s, in fact, so satisfying that you find yourself wishing there was more of that intimate camaraderie throughout “She Said,” which sometimes gets too repetitive in newsrooms and private interview sessions with lawyers, PR spokespeople, and silenced victims alike.

There’s something fresh about the story’s unwillingness to pit a woman’s romantic quests against her career goals.

It’s a stellar film that hits a rare sweet spot as both mainstream, accessible entertainment, and also an undeniably incisive piece of cultural commentary. And best of all, it will keep you on your toes until the sensational final moment of its breezy drift.

A sleazy and neon-soaked ride that splits the difference between a crafty caper and a guilty pleasure, “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon” is the kind of cheeky flick you can’t help but surrender to.

While some of these struggles are specific to the French communities the film follows, they are also universal, with recent echoes deeply familiar here in the US. And despite a morally ambiguous parting note, Athena incisively engages with these battles despite a brassy style that at times overpowers them.

A committed group of dazzling actors keeps viewers consistently engaged until On The Come Up arrives at its predictable life lessons.

Raymond & Ray is curiously alienating despite the two A-listers in the driver seat, some decent chuckles to spare and a handsome, cinematic finish courtesy of DP Igor Jadue-Lillo.

What lingers most about it is a sense of selfless compassion, the kind that Amy possesses when she painfully reminds herself of the good buried within inexplicable evil. Watching her try to summon that good makes for a quietly devastating finale, one that’s thoroughly earned by the soulful film that precedes it.

It’s Spielberg’s most personal film, one that gorgeously revives the memories of his childhood and youth with a lavish sense of wistfulness and an aptly Hollywood-ized, fable-like touch.

While The Eternal Daughter manages to sell a truly spine-tingling atmosphere of ghosts, it feels closer to a thought and style experiment in the aftermath. But the film’s time-and-logic bending final reveal arrives as a gut punch nonetheless, with a restrained parting note both ethereal and lifelike.

Perhaps the chief deficit of Don’t Worry Darling isn’t even predictability, but a discernible lack of new ideas of its own.

Empire of Light feels more like a sweet experiment on nostalgia and memory than an articulate film with something to say.

Often draped over each other like a pair of gorgeous statues, O’Donnell and Corrin strike palpable chemistry throughout, selling both their desire for one another and the consequent love born out of it believably.

Polley strikes a hypnotizing rhythm amongst the women, who attack despair with cheeky humor (Women Talking is unexpectedly funny in parts) and uncertainty with astute deliberation, respectfully challenging each other on a course of action as much as lovingly braiding one another’s hair.

In the end, Lelio earns the powerful close of The Wonder with every temperate turn. His film, a career-best, departs like a birdsong, with an optimistic finale as perfect and revelatory as they come.

Me Time has some structural problems that drag the story, taking too long to reintroduce Huck in the second act, and littering the overall canvas with too many side players throughout. But it comes with enough rewards nonetheless thanks to an idiosyncratic group of lovable people who just need to get a little crazy in order to survive as their true selves.

Breaking is a noble and deeply sensitive effort that aims to commemorate an honorable veteran who was failed by the dysfunctional and racist country that he bravely served. But despite a committed cast, and a well-staged and devastatingly truthful finale, Corbin fails to break this story out of its predictable mold.

Between all the cool gadgets—a vintage VW van serving as The Guard’s G-Mobile being the best of them—a devoted cast and a well-meaning spirit, you desperately want Secret Headquarters to be a fun and swift adventure like the one Joost and Schulman clearly conceived on paper. But that imaginary film is unfortunately trapped somewhere inside this clumsy wreck, waiting for its superpowers to be restored.

It’s quite a ride even when the tempo drops ever so slightly towards the end; the kind of stuff fun summer entertainment should be made of.

This stylishly bouncy teenage romp mostly reaps the rewards of its fearless gambles, not least its willingness to treat teenagers as in-progress humans with a dark side.

Dunham unearths a refreshing amount of humor, honesty, and sincerity through Sarah Jo’s misadventures with Josh between bedsheets, at once challenging her complex (though not entirely unwarranted) reputation of being a tone-deaf and privileged one-trick pony, with her second-only feature.

This deceptively frothy yet incisive little film asserts that even if the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, redemption can’t be claimed in public spaces. Rather, it has to be earned in private, and sometimes, forgiveness isn’t necessarily the most virtuous next step—especially since healing takes time. For these mature observations alone, we have no choice but stan a peerless Quinn.

Porter’s delightful debut is perhaps most groundbreaking exactly because of this familiarity, one that grants a black, high-school-aged trans girl—a character we rarely see in cinema, if at all—a recognizable youthful tale not defined by bigoted adversity. At least not solely. In other words, what “Anything’s Possible” says is, “Here is a mix of teen romances and comedies you know, but featuring characters you might not have seen before.”

The world isn’t the happiest place to be these days, so why not cheer a little bit for a wholesome, decent character in a lovely dress?

A throwback buddy action-comedy that offsets its run-of-the-mill sense of humor with a pair of appealing leads.

A deceptively unserious movie it may be, but Brian and Charles leaves a serious trace through its pure sense of optimism.

It’s surely a crowded canvas. But Alazraki and Lopez joyously melt all the ingredients into a hearty hotpot of generational clash, cultural conflict, patriarchal one-upmanship and domestic chaos, allowing the uniqueness of both the Cuban and Mexican cultures to shine through in their Latinx tapestry, rendered through production designer Kim Jennings’ sumptuous sets.

Meandering around complex spiritual inklings more than it makes a coherent statement out of them, "The Righteous" manages to impress with its curious demeanor even when its overwrought ideas don’t add up to an articulate whole in the aftermath.

What ultimately waters down Lightyear, an otherwise polished, gorgeous-looking entry into the Pixar oeuvre, is an absence of the excitement and disciplined storytelling spirit that made Toy Story such a pioneering hit.

The whole thing is oddly beautiful, absurdly compelling and even freakishly watchable. The general sensation of it approaches the out-of-place feeling of being at a party you don’t quite feel cool enough for. But since you’re already there, why not linger for a few drinks and embrace an intriguing ride outside your comfort zone?

A gleaming and delightful anime with a large appetite for tenderness and laughter.

It’s not exactly revolutionary, and more alarming than scary. But it’s still provocatively feverish stuff from the dearly missed vintage annals of Cronenberg.

Sweet-natured and good-humored.

As the jets cut through the atmosphere and brush their target soils in close-shave movements—all coherently edited by Eddie Hamilton—the sensation they generate feels miraculous and worthy of the biggest screen one can possibly find. Equally worthy of that big screen is the emotional strokes of “Maverick” that pack an unexpected punch. Sure, you might be prepared for a second sky-dance with “Maverick,” but perhaps not one that might require a tissue or two in its final stretch.

Among Diwan’s greatest feats with Happening is making a case not only for safe access to legal abortions, but also for true sexual freedom that dares to yearn for a world where slut-shaming is a thing of the past.

What’s jarring in Crush is the absence of some requisite dose of youthful mischief, a sense of stakes and perhaps even a lightly scandalous touch, integral to the spirit of many of the genre staples Cohen and co-writers Kirsten King and Casey Rackham attempt to revive on their own terms.

I Love America is hardly a life-changing rom-com. But it’s a good candidate for your next airplane watch.

For every laugh the family lets out, for each merry chance encounter they experience—like an oddly hysterical one with a Lance Armstrong-loving cyclist—there are tears shed in secret, cagey deals made in the shadows and the impending separation they inch closer to with every passing moment.

Through Cobb, we take an alarming and up-to-date look into the life of any average contemporary teenager that grows up and establishes a voice mostly online, struggling to close the gap between the real and virtual. It’s that performance that elevates a film that often rings to be less than the sum of its parts.

At least from an ambition standpoint, Eggers’ devotion pays off in heaps. The Northman offers a lot to enjoy in what is a lot of movie. It features both see-it-to-believe-it “fuck yeah!” gruesomeness in its 10th Century tale and the kind of historical and mythical attention to detail to be expected from Eggers

Despite an eager-to-please ending that tries too hard to redeem the elderly Frays, Bialik’s movie still offers up hope, humor and above all, keen observations on grief in the wake of those who’ve damaged us in ways both tangible and veiled.

By the end of Arnold’s lyrical passion project, one feels genuinely connected to Luma and her likes, deeply concerned about their wellbeing amid the grueling circumstances they are obligated to dwell in.

The most bewildering thing about The Secrets Of Dumbledore is how superfluous each of its ideas feel in relationship to one another. There are countless globe-trotting international characters, worlds-within-worlds, and constantly competing historical, political, and mythological references, but they all fizzle because their ill-considered stakes never seem fully realized.

You Won’t Be Alone announces the arrival of a fierce new genre talent, an inventive stylist and an unapologetic interrogator of mankind with something worthwhile to say.

Movies rarely come as chic as The Outfit, a thrifty, continually unpredictable whodunit, fashioned with the same meticulousness found in the bones of a deceptively simple suit.

While the film’s slightly bloated finale overpowers some of the leaner moments that come before it, Turning Red flickers with a bright feminine spirit, one that feels new, crimson-deep, and unapologetically rebellious.

Though thinly conceived overall with not much philosophy to back its daunting visuals, Offseason still offers some genuinely spine-tingling images and sounds that will keep midnight audiences on their toes until the end.

Allow the tongue-in-cheek “Fresh” to satisfy your appetite for a generous helping of heartening sisterhood and eradicate your cravings for a juicy burger, possibly forever.

On the whole, Abu-Assad is less successful in braiding the respective tales of Reem and Huda through Eyas Salman’s editing. But eventually the seams show and clumsy jumps between the two locations feel strangely episodic, losing Huda’s Salon some of the urgency it has claimed in its earlier moments.

This ambiguously humorous film with a shaky pace and viewpoint sets forth a tough proposition: will you be patient for its 80+ minutes of running time, accept that nothing much will actually happen throughout that duration and settle for occasional jolts of rewards only?

For a tender movie that follows an old man on a long and demanding multi-bus excursion to honor his late wife’s wishes, the placid affair has curiously little emotional range, and an even narrower sense of stakes

Aimless, immature, and frustratingly amateurish, Richard Bates’ “King Knight” feels like it was made exclusively for those involved in it, with no regard for an audience’s patience or time.

It would have been one thing if Alone with You at least worked as a genre outing on some level. It doesn’t—the film’s chills and scares are nearly non-existent; plot, stretched to the seams, unable to sustain a feature's length; and camera work, amateurish.

Not all of Diallo’s thematic queries land, and at times, she weakens her ideas by over-explaining them. Nevertheless, her fearless interrogation resonates like a penetrating scream you can’t unhear.

Amid the mischievous mayhem that ensues, Bergholm and Rautsi deserve credit for not abandoning Tinja’s mother.

The most groundbreaking thing that Hyde and Brand pull off with “Leo Grande” isn’t merely an honest depiction of female sexuality — although that alone would have been enough to make their film a triumph. Rather, the duo goes further and observes an aging woman while she studiously unlearns her long-held beliefs and constraints.

The result is yet another wearisome tale that inelegantly depicts themes like acceptance, understanding and diversity within a saga that has always been rather clumsy with its messaging around such weighty topics.

There is some panache to the film’s visuals and a lot of heart in the actors’ collective dedication, but “Mother/Android” feels like a bland mash-up of genre staples to forgettable effect.

It is with a zippy touch and a number of questionable directorial choices—Sorkin is still a much better writer than director—as well as an immersive, pressure-cooker structure that is never less than enthralling, that Sorkin implants his aforesaid signature style into Being the Ricardos.

Scott’s soapy epic—his second cinematic outing this year after the superior (and also partly campy) “The Last Duel”—isn’t exactly a bore, thanks to a number of its actors (like Leto) unafraid to lean into the film’s kitschy tone as well as some fearless moments—like one sensationally go-for-broke sex scene—that meet them at that amplified level.

On the whole, “Julia” won’t be the most groundbreaking meal you’ve ever had, but you’ll leave the table comforted and satisfied, in a state of bliss that Child would very much approve of.