Sandy is heartbreaking in the lead role, as his face registers surprise, then betrayal at the way the adults in his life—including, at times, his parents—fail him.

If both Ma and Levee are ultimately sympathetic, it’s due to the layered performances and the full stories that Wilson gives the characters.

As a character study, Mankiewicz registers as something of a boozy cliche. As a political project, the film is erratic.

It’s all incredibly immersive, to the point that these everyday farm animals—the sort that usually only receive a passing glance—begin to seem fascinatingly alien.

As adapted from the beloved Jane Austen novel by screenwriter Eleanor Catton and director Autumn de Wilde, Emma. is a cheerful confection—brightly colored, briskly consumed—and as such a worthy representation of one of the great literary characters.

Pixar’s 23rd animated feature is an exercise in psychedelic existentialism that astonishingly increases in inventiveness as it goes along. Then, before you’re overwhelmed, it shifts into a lower gear, eventually arriving as a stirring and relatively simple meditation on what it means to be alive.

Fiction, I’d argue, best captures the universal, while documentary—like journalism—details the specific. If Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a singular achievement, it’s in the way the movie manages to do a little bit of both.

Possessor cranks up the aesthetic volume on two familiar subgenres—the hired killer psychodrama and the sci-fi body-snatcher—until they meld into a destabilizing case of extreme cinema.

Stewart, Wolfwalkers borrows something from werewolf mythology, another thing from Irish history, and more than a few things from the animated fantasies of Hayao Miyazaki and emerges with a dazzling feature that ultimately establishes its own distinct pattern.

Director Arthur Jones delivers a fascinating deep dive into meme culture, tracing how something like this can happen so quickly in our viral age.

The true revelation is Dyer. A fresh presence amidst the boys’ club of Stranger Things, she’s incredible here in a performance that ranges from understated drama to physical comedy.

Cummings is a unique talent; Snow Hollow is just an awkward fit, beyond the ways he intends.

Bad Hair really needs a loud, live audience, preferably around midnight, to reach its full potential. But it’s a fun, guffaw-producing horror comedy even without that.

The dispiriting truth is that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s staged pranks can’t compete with our awful reality. The movie is trying to expose people who have already been walking around the past four years with their pants down.

Time puts a face—and a family—to the systemic injustice within the American prison system, asking why it took an extraordinary woman’s extraordinary efforts to reclaim basic human rights.

It works itself up into a fine froth by the climax, and even manages to score some political points against the repressive Iranian regime in the process.

At its best, the movie captures the thrill of those moments, whether romantic or friendly, when you realize something special is happening.

This is a work that thrums equally with Dada despair and do-the-right-thing agitprop, while somehow still managing to culminate in liberating exuberance. If American Utopia paints a doomsday scenario of the state of the union, it also offers joyous hope for a national rebirth.

Not the worst of Adam Sandler’s Netflix vehicles, but not any good either.

Here and there, Coppola seems interested in poking that Murray persona. On the Rocks would have been much better if Murray had done some poking too.

Works of art like these are more than creative endeavors. They function more as testaments: to the lives of their subjects, to the awfulness of death, and to the inspired ways we cling to the former, even in the face of the latter.

At its best, the movie is a destabilizing look at family as a big con. Yet the chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood never sings, which becomes a problem as the movie shifts to focus more on their relationship.

Antebellum—if you stick with it—reveals itself to be a sharp consideration of the lasting legacy of American slavery, right down to the present day.

The Nest proceeds pretty much how we expect before ending on a grace note that feels well-earned. It’s a compelling story, but what makes the movie special is the fact that we’ve had Coon to watch along the way.

The documentary displays such winsome artistry that you also leave feeling energized. It’s an invigorating act of creative defiance in the face of Alzheimer’s disease.

The cultural context is at once vague and oppressive—there’s constant talk of “chi” and “ancestors”—to the point that it’s nearly rendered meaningless. With Yifei Lu in the title role, posing elegantly but not given much of a chance to project any sort of inner life.

Kaufman’s last film as director, the stop-motion Anomalisa, was a meditation on misery that comforted viewers, if not itself, with its astonishing artistry. i’m thinking of ending things, while arresting in its own way, offers no such consolation. It’s depressing in form and function.

One of Nolan’s greatest attributes as a filmmaker is his trust in the intellect of mainstream audiences—audiences who have rewarded that trust by making challenging, original works like Inception huge hits. This time, though, it might have been smart to dumb things down a bit.