In the end, Jones’ performance is even more lifelike than I feared — a tortured and astonishingly nuanced rendering of a childlike creature whose id could only be tempered by love for so long before it chose violence instead. And it should go without saying that Kurzel’s fatalistic storytelling so pungently exhumes the pain that led up to that awful day in April 1996 that you can smell the death coming several hours in advance.

Zero Fucks Given is refreshingly unwilling to be prescriptive or teach Cassandre any moral lessons, but it often struggles to crystallize how she finds the strength to seize control over her own flightplan.

S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR is a dazzling work of historical fiction — emphasis on the “fiction” — that makes the moving image feel intimate and enormous all at once.

7 Days is a film about a lot of things — matchmaking, familial expectations, being your best self, opening your heart — but it’s also about a strange, horrible time in all of our lives and how it changed us. In the minimum of time, Sethi and his cast give that a truly honest go.

Despite the refreshingly experiential flavor of Szumowska’s approach, her film is handcuffed by the facts of its true story, and Pam remains at such a pronounced emotional remove that it sometimes feels as if she’s only hiking up that mountain because the facts of the matter demand that she must.

Inspired by a rush of paranoia that Stourton once experienced at a wedding where he felt unwelcome, All My Friends Hate Me effectively splits the difference between Ruben Östlund and Ben Wheatley as it pinballs between squirmy laughs and sly horrors.

Bay’s latest reeks of falsehood veiled as righteousness.

For many of the extremely online people born after the year 2000, “Under the Influence” offers a closer look at the cultural history that’s already close to their hearts, less valuable for Neistat’s insight than for his access ... For the rest of us ... this film provides a bone-chilling biopsy of the malignant narcissism that’s quietly metastasized across Gen Z’s celebrity-industrial complex, more valuable for Neistat’s perspective than for any of his characters.

While Baena and Brie, who wrote the film together, don’t exactly flip the script on this seemingly well-trod subgenre, the duo (plus a star-packed cast) certainly add some spice to it.

It’s a film that relies too heavily upon its scenic location and not enough on building any real sense of story, let alone suspense, and only adds to the growing feeling that, when a work calls itself “Hitchcockian,” it’s more of a red flag for something half-baked than an enticing homage to the master himself.

The film unfolds like a runaway train, a rapid-fire thriller and drama and horror film all in one, both breathless and breathtaking.

It Is in Us All, a hyper-visceral portrayal of manhood in its purest unrestrained form, is anchored by the force-of-nature turn from its superlative star Cosmo Jarvis. Intoxicating to the senses, this film boasts an indomitable vitality, a zest for life so uncontainable it brims with mortal danger.

Populated by a feverish humor and governed by fatalistic doom, Reijin’s Bodies Bodies Bodies moves with a slapdash pace that belies its sturdy aesthetic construction.

Master of Light is a gentle and graceful film defined by the capriciousness of sight.

Despite its flaws, Umma is an impressive debut for Shim, the kind of outing that hints at plenty more under the hood or tucked inside a massive suitcase, just bursting with secrets.

As they bond and converse, their conversations take on a closed aspect, never inviting us in to their increasingly close relationship. We remain watchers, appreciative of but never truly understanding the magic of Jane Birkin.

As “The Cow” sinks deeper into increasingly limp twists, turns, and choices, Ryder keeps hold of Kath, offering the film’s most genuine surprise: a real, lived-in, fully fleshed out performance. No one else can match her, but who could even try?

"Deadstream" feels like ’80s Sam Raimi traveled forward in time, became obsessed with streaming culture, and turned Ash Williams into the dumbest possible stunt streamer. And it rules. With stunning creature effects, a great balance between laughs and scares, and one of the best uses of the Screenlife format, this is a film that could easily become a Halloween tradition.

"To Leslie" doesn’t always make things easy, but it’s deeply touching to watch the film’s characters learn how to share their mutual good fortune.

While the filmmaker’s craft has never been shakier than it is in this stilted and wildly uneven tale about the twisted strings that tie some couples together, it’s also never been clearer that said filmmaker is Adrian Lyne. Not only does this delirious movie find him swan-diving back into the same fetid lap pool of envy, lust, and psychosexual control where he used to swim laps every morning, it finds that he’s basically got an entire lane to himself.

Linoleum is difficult to pin down; the obfuscations and slippages that run through it seem just as likely to frustrate viewers as they might compel them.

It may not resonate as anything deeper than a modern satire of the idea that father knows best, but it leans into its high-wire act with the fearlessness of a movie that knows just how fraught it can be to connect with anyone these days.

While West isn’t always operating on the same levels as his influences, his signature flair for tension through simmering slow-burn pacing remains unparalleled.

This semi-autobiographical sketch isn’t really a story at all so much as a sweetly effervescent string of Kodachrome memories from the filmmaker’s own childhood — the childhood of someone who was born in a place without any sense of yesterday, and came of age at a time that was obsessed with tomorrow.

Though movie references and Cage quotes abound, there’s something for everyone in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. It’s one of the funniest movies of the year.

The Lost City might not be as majestic or breathtaking as its loftier influences, but it is the swooning stuff that great romance novels are made of.

Here is an orgiastic work of slaphappy genius that doesn’t operate like a narrative film so much as a particle accelerator — or maybe a cosmic washing machine — that two psychotic 12-year-olds designed in the hopes of reconciling the anxiety of what our lives could be with the beauty of what they are.

While a nihilistic vision of the future — of climate disaster, war, disease, or some combination of the three — is certainly relatable, Gold ends up being rather empty itself, void of any real message aside from the lyrics to the Nick Cave song that play as the credits roll: “People Ain’t No Good.”