The Descendants constantly hovers on the brink of a dark comedy. But it never takes the big plug. By treading carefully, Payne has created his warmest, most earnest work, if not his best.

Showcases Jones' ability to provide ample entertainment value with sharply drawn characters in a minimalist setting.

Red Rocket is so arresting because of how it keeps hope alive by rescuing devastation from the jaws of happiness.

From Romero’s original zombie series to the films it inspired, this type of horror succeeds when it laces its scares with biting social commentary, and “Cargo” utilizes this formula to great success.

We are afforded the intimate sight of a man who gave his life to music making a final offering.

Every Body” is a beautiful and cathartic celebration of intersexuality — and should be mandatory viewing for people of all genders.

Omar maintains an unsettling rhythm of suspense and sociopolitical critique throughout.

Alan Partridge stays true to this small, very specific world of regional British radio and this class of local celebrity while also injecting the high-level drama needed to carry such a story to a much larger audience. It’s this balance that should win the film over for Alan Partridge fans and the general movie-going public alike.

The least funny and most tender movie that Andersson has made since building his own studio with the profits he’d saved from decades of enormously successful commercial work, About Endlessness adopts the same qualities of life itself: it’s both short and infinite.

Like all of the best comfort food, Tampopo tastes familiar but not derivative, something more than the sum of its ingredients. If Tampopo resonates with you in ways you might not expect or be able to name, it’s because Itami also engenders the same respect for everything that goes into the making of a movie.

A singular, hypnotic, and formally unbound psychodrama that’s staged between a Lady Gaga-like diva (Anne Hathaway) and the only person who might be able to quiet her demons (Michaela Coel), this talky chamberpiece of a film is almost entirely confined to an unheated barn somewhere outside of London, and yet it grows to feel as vast as the synaptic gap that stretches between literalness and metaphor. A wound and its memory. A pop song and the person who wrote it.

As Burden, Garrett Hedlund astonishes in a nuanced portrait of a man resistant to change, until he finally comes to understand that hatred is literally killing him.

While blatantly topical, this is not a political film of the moment, but rather a calculated meditation on self-defined purpose in the midst of societal confusion.

Using a remarkable personal lens, the film examines the reverberations of propaganda on broken families across multiple generations. The cumulative effect creates the sense that its destructive effects continue to be felt well beyond China’s borders.

Although Madsen's survey of warning strategies has an aimless structure prone to repetition, he creates an effective mood that transcends his time-travel gimmick and eventually becomes topical.

This searing brand of humor has never felt more essential. Blending activism with entertainment, Baron Cohen’s best movie to date gives us new reasons to be afraid of the world, but also permission to laugh at it.

Detailed and deliberate, assertive but rarely obvious, Diallo’s Master is a towering, inventive shot in the arm for Black horror.

It's an unflinching update to media scholar Neil Postman's prophetic claim about the deadly impact of television on cultural identity: Smartphones in hand, we face the danger of filming ourselves to death.

I had to see the new version twice to realize that there's so much to appreciate about this multilayered production.

What a miracle of a movie.

A throwback character study that invokes the kind of mid-budget hits that kept the lights on at Warner Bros. for 50 years, Juror #2 both enriches our understanding of the Hollywood icon who made it and stands on its own as one of the best studio films released in 2024.

As much a film about crises of faith as it is the powerful friendships between women, The Innocents steadily unfolds over its nearly 120-minute runtime, revealing new secrets and new surprises (most of them, but not all, appropriately gut-wrenching) at every turn.

Not every moment stimulates a belly laugh, but that’s part of the point. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is more thoughtful than meets the eye, a cockeyed ode to what it feels like when nobody takes you seriously.

With so much to say and a supremely talented cast embodying lovable and multi-dimensional characters, a sequel is a no-brainer. “Joy Ride” is easily the golden standard for progressive, raunchy comedy and the need for more diverse stories being told on screen.

Mackenzie (whose previous credits include "Perfect Sense" and "Young Adam") applies a sharp kitchen sink realism to this haunting setting and directs it toward an ultimately moving family drama that just happens to involve vicious convicts.

It may go without saying that Poetry adopts a lyrical tone, but this forms the crux of its appeal. In this case, the title says it all.

In Tamhane’s dreamy, transcendent character study, the undulating raga melodies serve as a transformative portal to self-discovery that places the audiences in the confines of its entrancing power.

Think "Death of a Salesman" with demons.