Director John Crowley has fashioned a film that feels like a natural evolution from the Victorian novel, one in which the circumstances are deceptively modern even if everything else feels somewhat old-fashioned.

Mangrove elevates the oft-creaky genre of the courtroom drama with striking, evocative compositions, stunning performances, and a real sense of place.

Barely seen or even heard of since it was made, this “lost” Romero film doesn’t disappoint, and even though it’s not technically a horror film, it will scare you into spending any and all free time tending to anyone over 70 for fear of karmic retribution.

Your Name is the kind of film that’s all the more striking for how easily it could have gone awry, but Shinkai has accomplished something unique and genuinely special here.

Here’s a cocktail so potent that it may just snap even the most tired and cynical viewers out of apathy.

Zola‘s not without its faults. The script is a little too loosy-goosy for its own good, and the last 10-15 minutes are admittedly a lackluster resolution to the high-tension hijinks on display. But until that point, it’s downright thrilling to watch a film breeze through its grimly funny energy with such exuberant confidence, especially with such a new, vibrant voice in Paige.

Three Billboards may be a film chiefly concerned with rage, and pain, but it’s also one of the best dark comedies of recent vintage, and one of the better dramas as well. While some of McDonagh’s narrative threads do time out in unexpected and even unresolved ways, the film’s highs are exemplary.

While some aspects of that history should have been examined more introspectively, the documentary should be considered the definitive recounting of one of the most influential activist groups in American history.

Arnaud Desplechin delivers a thrilling reminiscence that romanticizes and believes in youth’s ungraceful but intense splendors.

Donaldson has a tremendous command of pace and silence, laying the desperation of middle age (and how it looks to those whose lives are still ahead of them) bare with little more than a gesture or a closeup. It’s a killer debut for both her and Collias, and it will be exciting to see what both can do with the momentum a picture like this can provide.

The film is relatively sparing in how it depicts said atrocity, but the horror of it still comes through, while never distracting from the delicate bond that emerges between Jacqueline and Callie (Alia Shawkat), another ex-pat working as a tour guide through the ruins.

Kogonada matches the inquisitive eye of his two leads, finding the splendor in the everyday, the unusual in the unlikeliest places, and the need for connection that runs beneath all things.

In a narrative filled with numerous opportunities for scenes you’ve seen before, Durham ducks all the cliches to stay focused on what’s most important: a father, a daughter, and the words they shared between them.

Get Back is the history. Let It Be is a poem. [2024 Restored Version]

It makes for a deeply unconventional sort of fairy tale, but this is George Miller we’re talking about. What else did we expect?

It’s the rare Marvel sequel that manages to expand on what came before in new and rewarding ways, while also striking its own distinct tone even as some of its narrative devices skew familiar.

There’s something relatively shocking about the way One Battle After Another comments on This Moment In Time; it almost seems like production on the movie wrapped yesterday, as opposed to mid-2024. Yet while its focus on issues of political power, immigration, and the rise of white supremacy are all too relevant, Anderson never loses sight of his characters, and the different ways in which they commit to taking action.

Spinal Tap II holds onto the real sense that these men, despite everything they've been through, have loved each other almost their entire lives. Guest and McKean in particular met in college in the late 1960s, and they've been playing music together ever since; there's something beautiful about the fact that they've found their way to this moment, after so many decades — one where the only laughter they care about is each other's.

A revelatory burst of Black history suffused with the joy and struggle that made it possible.

A simple story told well can still be effective if the emotional resonance underneath it comes through. In Kubo, it absolutely does, thanks to the uniformly excellent voice performances.

As the world continues to mourn the loss of Chadwick Boseman, his last performance will serve as a magnificent reminder of the actor’s talent, and an exclamation point on a life that inspired a generation.

The Birth of a Nation is one of the most confident writing and directorial debuts in recent memory.

Berger’s take on All Quiet on the Western Front is a searing indictment of the futility of war, one that knows the way conflict erodes the human soul and the machinery that keeps that erosion moving. Its battle scenes are as impressively staged as they are visceral to watch, despite a few hinky ropes of CGI here and there.

There’s just more under the hood than your typical imitators: the antic disposition of the idle rich, the way infinite money can absolve the rich of any accountability, and the ever-predatory nature of colonial tourism. Wrap it up in a package this wild, shocking, and perverse, and it makes for a delightful bloody mess that you’ll want to go back to.

It exists less as an adaptation than a love letter to the film, its large community of fans, and crazy dreamers everywhere.

By the time we finally do get to the blood and guts, the filmmakers have laid such an artful foundation that the viscera is just another part of Suspiria‘s hypnotic modern dance.

More than a metatextual look at the struggles of indie filmmakers to gnaw at their own emotional wounds, Black Bear is an astounding showcase for its leads, and way more than it says on the wrapper.

The Souvenir‘s power is deceptive, in a way; it’s only at the film’s end, at the moment of its bracing final image, that its ideas and genre subversions come fully into focus.