Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, an exceptional historical fiction, doesn’t so much transport you to the past as it brings you to the edge of the translucent curtain that often obfuscates history from view.

I Want Your Sex may not ultimately have much to say, but its livewire comic scenarios yield the kind of raucous, sexually charged entertainment seldom seen in Hollywood of late.

The latest entry in the overcrowded genre is a sobering, well-made drama that is well worth seeing, titled Truth & Treason, about the youngest person ever executed by the Third Reich for his dedication to criticizing Adolf Hitler.

Panahi has crafted a moral quandary fit for Plato; yet unlike his past works—including 2022’s No Bears and 2018’s 3 Faces (both of which, like this film, were filmed without permission in Iran)—there’s nothing theoretical or metaphoric on display here.

Although simple in appearance, Father Mother Sister Brother beats with the wisdom of an artist in his early twilight.

Cooper’s latest is clearly the output of someone who has been through personal anguish, and like Alex Novak, he attempts to use his pain as the basis for not just something healing but something hilarious, albeit something deeply imperfect, too.

It’s filled with powerful ideas about the many ways that violence—of the body, of the state and of the soul—manifests in men, and the generational ripple effects therein, even if it doesn’t cohere enough to be consistently engaging.

It’s a film that seldom comes out and tells you exactly what’s happening, but its drama is so lucid that before any real tragedy unfolds (or is even hinted at), you feel it in your bones.

From its gentle introduction to its jarring final scene—a lifelike anticlimax that makes sense spiritually more than logistically—My Father’s Shadow acts as both a retrospective and a soulful reconstruction, breathing life into the past while distinguishing the personal and pragmatic details that inform the complexity of a person—even one who exists entirely in memory.

Few films this year have been as soulful or as quietly defiant.

It’s ultimately a very strange movie, and a far cry from what anyone expects from even the most idiosyncratic biopics. But it’s hard not to wonder if Franz is ahead of its time, much like Kafka was—which Holland depicts by tethering his consciousness to our fragile present, and constructing, in the process, a bridge to the past.

The unfolding action is never farcical enough to make the film satirical or outright funny, but it’s also never imbued with enough historical gravity to truly matter.

Megadoc is a mood piece and a process piece, shot up close with lo-fi video equipment, but it’s never allowed to probe deeply enough.

Will Tracy’s screenplay adapts the basic premise and parameters of Jang’s original, but director Yorgos Lanthimos puts his unique tonal spin on the material, turning in one of the most sardonic Hollywood comedy-dramas in recent memory.

Considering the rest of the summer’s flotsam, My Mother’s Wedding is hardly a waste of time. In an otherwise grim summer, it goes well with air-conditioning.

Sovereign is an ambitious, above-average action thriller with the extra bonus of being a thought-provoking civics lesson.

To miss it would be to overlook a rare and compassionate work of art, not to mention one of the most honest, heartfelt performances of this or any other year in motion picture history.

Even without its numerous rug-pulls, which occur early enough that the movie soon takes on an entirely different tone, Twinless is a masterful example of shifting cinematic POV.

Although it eventually loses staying power, Lynne Ramsay’s ferocious relationship drama Die, My Love quickly seeps beneath your skin, practically holding you hostage in its initial half.

By focusing on characters who can seldom put words to their experiences—whether the ravages of war and trauma, the jealousies of adolescence, or the desire to simply no longer exist—Sound of Falling marvelously tells a century’s worth of women’s stories by weaving together the psychological, the physical, and even the spiritual, resulting in a dramatic tour de force of mind, body, and soul.

It’s Deneuve’s movie from beginning to final frame, and she dominates every scene with a gorgeous and contagious charisma that is bewildering.

How refreshing it is when a small film with a big heart comes along unannounced and captures your affection.

Between its recreation of that Greenwich Village apartment, its use of archival audio recordings of telephone conversations and its fuzzed-out cutaways to vintage TV clips, One to One...often feels more like a museum installation than journalism. But its subject and its music would reward either.

Despite the danger of G-rated sentimentality, which everyone involved heroically avoids, The Penguin Lessons is a work of surprising depth and subtle, irresistible impact.

A carefully considered mix of humor and melancholy glows in the fragile sunshine that bathes an isolated Welsh coastline in The Ballad of Wallis Island, a wan yet affecting consideration of lost love, forgotten bands and the odd ways those entities manifest themselves in our hearts and on our turntables.

It’s self-reflexive at times, and occasionally pretentious in its high-brow approach. But writers and directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel have not only made the story accessible onscreen, they have infused it with a raw emotional life that was less easily attained in print.

Bob Trevino Likes It, the feature film debut from award-winning short film and web series director Tracie Laymon, wistfully and powerfully recaptures a more guileless era in our digital lives—which the Facebook interface and the lead character’s cracked second-gen iPhone put at around 2010.

Black Bag is light, unpretentious entertainment for grown-ups, a solid 90 minutes of pure, mostly bloodless fun.

Comparisons aside, Mickey 17 is a remarkably solid and compelling sci-fi flick, with an absurdist flair that can only come from a filmmaker like Joon Ho.

There are questions and uncertainties that linger once the movie ends. But like difficult, repressed memories, there is no easy resolution to be found.

Perkins’ take on the short story The Monkey certainly shows that he’s a filmmaker with a unique eye for horror (and comedy), though his attempts at grounding the story are less assured.

The Gorge is chaotic and fun, despite some narrative and design hiccups. It’s too bad it’s not heading for the big screen. This is the sort of thing you want to experience with a lively audience with the sound turned all the way up.

It’s both a pretty good post-Kevin Williamson slasher movie and a pretty good post-Nora Ephron studio romcom. The finished recipe isn’t much more than the sum of its ingredients, but when one of those ingredients is in such short supply, the result is some welcome — if blood-splattered — comfort food.

A film can exist for aesthetic value alone, but only if it doesn’t try to expand itself to unreached depths. In the end, Parthenope seems to assert is that beauty is unappreciated until it vanishes—a lesson we all learn too late—but like its lead character, the film remains too shallow to fully understand.

Companion offers a relatively surface-level thriller that asks far bigger questions than its easygoing vibe might suggest.

This long-anticipated, patiently awaited film revelation doesn’t tell it all, but almost. What there is tells and shows more than anything you’ll ever see anywhere else.

Sensitively directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Gia Coppola, it’s a film about a familiar subject, but with a heart as big as the Vegas strip and a style of its own that holds interest from start to finish.

The issues the film raises about journalistic integrity and broadcast morality make September 5 the most rivetingly responsible film about journalism since Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Not to mention the obvious fact that in light of the current political climate, this is a film of gravity that screams relevance and is one of the best achievements of the year.

Maria is not a terrible movie, just a big disappointment.

A Complete Unknown never really parses anything new about Dylan or reveals his psychology, instead letting us continue to wonder about the man behind the dark lens. It’s a thrilling, entertaining journey as we do, with performances that never falter by actors who clearly did the work and then let it go once on set.

It’s a movie that is not only worth returning to again and again, but one you will be grateful to have walking alongside you for years to come.

With a strong cast, tight script, and exemplary direction, The Order is first-rate filmmaking above and beyond the usual expectations of your standard thriller.

That sense of history grabbing you by the throat was still there—it’s all but impossible to drain that quality out of any iteration of the plays in Wilson’s towering Pittsburgh Cycle—but the grip on your windpipe was not nearly as tight as it should be.

It’s equal parts compelling, ridiculous and uproariously pleasurable, often to the point where you can almost hear director Ridley Scott shouting, “Are you not entertained?”

If Juror #2 does turn out to be Clint Eastwood’s final film, he’s gone out with fireworks.

Admittedly, A Real Pain is an acquired taste; like a top-flight IPA, it is at once overly aggressive and serenely balanced.

While Berger’s film should be applauded for envisioning a way forward for the profoundly troubled and still deeply corrupt organization, by not more completely and honestly reckoning with the crimes of its past, its optimism for the future—while both deeply felt and dramatically conveyed—ultimately rings hollow.

There’s no way to avoid the resemblances of this film to one of Keaton’s biggest past successes, Mr. Mom, but it’s consistently more intelligent and original.

Like Mikey Madison’s title character, Anora is pretty, messy, witty, wild, and highly competent, one of the funniest, saddest, and best films of the year.

It’s not a flashy movie, and the vintage aesthetic sometimes feels unnecessarily dour, but it makes for good storytelling that embraces both our past and present concerns at once. And sometimes it’s the unassuming movies that manage to sneak up on you.

By crisscrossing time frames, Crowley, working from a script by playwright Nick Payne, halts his film’s momentum and lessens the overall impact of the central romance.

Although the film centers on Trump, a divisive man and genuine threat to American democracy, Sherman and Abbasi leave space for The Apprentice to embrace larger themes. It’s about the possibility of corruption and how easily money and power can entice us.

It is both empathetic and brutal, but at the core is a hint of optimism. That despite our human instinct to create conflict, we could do better. In conveying this in such an original way, McQueen proves that there is always a new way to navigate a well-trodden path.

The nostalgia is so thick in Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s furiously busy paean to the nascent days of SNL, so unrelenting and potent, that eventually it unmoors from the film and begins swallowing its characters whole, like the titular alien in Steve McQueen’s The Blob.

Filmed in England, Hungary and Croatia, Lee is a vivid and unforgettable tribute to one of the bold women who devoted her life to the penetration of male dominance to change the way we see the world. Don’t even think about missing it.

Like the book, Chris Sanders’ onscreen adaptation is compassionate, funny and filled with unexpectedly poignant moments.

Omni Loop is good enough at telling a story sweetly, but it does falter in its 110-minute runtime. The sci-fi elements are left to the wayside at times, even when they seem ripe for making metaphors and deepening the story.

Remakes are odious, but Speak No Evil, while thoroughly unneeded and unasked for, is an Americanized remake of a 2022 thriller from Denmark that services its original material well, thanks mostly to a sprawling, contradictory and totally galvanizing centerpiece performance by James McAvoy.

My Old Ass is a success because it’s so earnest, allowing these ideas to resonate with subtle humor, emotional heft and, most importantly, self-acceptance.

Directed by Burton and written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, the fantastical comedy is a hilariously strange and charismatic voyage through Hollywood’s best creative minds and most skilled special effects magicians.

More than anything, Daughters—along with Greg Kwedar’s remarkable current release Sing Sing—speaks to the absolute societal and spiritual imperative of investing in rehabilitation, within prisons and outside their walls.

Fortunately, despite its stranger-than-fiction premise, this thriller does have a handful of interesting ideas outside of the realm of true crime. Unfortunately, it also all but abandons those ideas in its messy third act, making for a mixed bag of a movie.

It’s a shallower product than either of its inspirations, but it also has its own, distinct energy. It doesn’t totally jettison the franchise’s 45 years of baggage, but when it does, what’s left is a damn good monster movie.

A lot of boxes are ticked here—a protagonist who runs a flower shop, a love interest who is a chef, the ridiculous character names, Lively’s impeccable-but-quirky wardrobe and hair, a Taylor Swift song that plays at the exact right emotional moment—and It Ends With Us could have easily felt completely contrived. It’s a credit to Baldoni, Lively and their collaborators that it doesn’t.

By centering on the start of the film and its conclusion, you realize Wang possesses not only a preternatural feel for the emotional jumble of boyhood, but also an astute understanding of both film structure and how to mine many layers of unforced truth from his troupe of talented actors.

It is a difficult and painful subject to consider, talk about, and confront both in life and in the movies. But Kormákur’s quiet little film reminds us that when we do—and however we do it—the process can remind us what it is like to be human.

Prison has long been seen as fertile soil for drama, but no movie has engaged with that idea quite like Sing Sing. This isn’t a legal drama or an escape thriller, but an exploration of what storytelling and artistic expression can do for a person who dearly needs an outlet.

The movie, brought to life in part thanks to the efforts its star and producer Scarlett Johansson, is a charming, cute possible history, invoking rom-com tactics and old-fashioned appeal in a way that is fairly successful.

Though it’s a neat throwback that features a few memorable performances, MaXXXine imitates its period setting a little too well, prioritizing style and adding little substance to the series.

Writer-director Nicholas Tomnay knows how to make maximum use of plot twists that keep an audience on its toes, and Nick Stahl is a skillful master of how to move the gore with exactly the right pace to exude charm in spite of his character’s ongoing toxicity.

A Quiet Place: Day One is a surprisingly tender and moving film that uses the franchise’s alien apocalypse to tell its own, very different story.

Lanthimos is so sure-handed and masterful in his craftsmanship, his cast so able and willing to crawl into whatever strange corner that he leads them to, that you cannot help but respect the man and his bizarre creation, even while resenting its obtuseness and self-regarding nature.

This is a feel-good comedy bordering on farce, but [Squibb] makes every scene and every line so natural that when you laugh, you’re reacting to genuine humor, not calculatedly constructed punch lines.

It oscillates between moving and manufactured, but the movie’s honest portrayal of life on a tribal reservation and a powerful performance by Lily Gladstone keep things grounded.

It’s gritty, nostalgic and occasionally romanticized, especially if you have an affinity for the era in which it’s set, which Nichols clearly does.

Those looking to re-experience the tear-jerking emotional heft of Inside Out won’t find that here, although the climatic scenes are sweet. It’s less joy than it is moderate satisfaction.

I Used to Be Funny reflects on essential concepts, even if it doesn’t always grasp them in a satisfying way. Still, it’s worth watching Sennott in almost anything.

Tuesday is a challenging watch at times, and it requires an acceptance of the strange world it inhabits, but it’s a deeply worthwhile experience.

Rønning unfurls the journey with tension and then triumph, even if some of the storytelling leans towards the formulaic.

[Adlon] has crafted a film that is at once sophisticated and aggressively sophomoric, profoundly romantic and deeply cynical, and as feminist as a barbecue at Gloria Steinem’s house and yet seemingly apolitical enough to appeal to your average Entourage fan.

Miller is an undeniable storyteller and filmmaker, and Furiosa is an epic, world-building creation imbued with its own vast mythology and expansive scope.

Kingdom provides a rock-solid foundation for a new series of Apes films, leaving the titular planet with its most interesting status quo to date.

I can sympathetically and intellectually appreciate just how rare it is to see a wacky comic-book movie about growing up trans and finding yourself and your people, about coping with a repressive parent who takes your gender dysphoria as a personal affront, of struggling to build a healthy relationship when so many of your peers are similarly traumatized by a society that is hostile to their very existence.

A triumph of sensitivity, humanity and good taste that manages to admirably transcend every tendency inherent to the usual label of “tearjerker.”

There’s so much to look at and think about that it is sometimes difficult to concentrate on the story, but a plot does emerge in the capable hands of Maïwenn, who keeps the facts straight while keeping one of the most shocking chapters in French history alive and kicking.

Loud, long, a little messy and very sweaty, Challengers may not be as sexy as its explosive first trailer implied, but it’s still a hell of a movie.

As a cautionary tale about America’s inevitable self-destruction, the relentless cynicism of its narrative is often preposterous, but as a visionary look at the horrors that lie ahead for a great country on the rocks—and what America has done to itself already—this is one of the most harrowing yet exhilarating science-fiction epics ever made.

It’s compelling to see [Ritchie's] take on a World War II movie, despite a few narrative holes, and it’s a good reminder that not all war stories have to be so serious.

Filmed on authentic locations in Poland by meticulous Canadian director Louise Archambault, Irena’s Vow is one of the most astounding true stories to ever emerge from the ashes of the Holocaust.

Balanced and solid, with equal measures of terror and suspense, the movie is Arcadian and I’ll be darned if it didn’t scare the daylights out of me.

Set in the upper-class echelons of Paris and written, acted and filmed entirely in French, the title Coup de Chance translates as “stroke of luck,” and that’s exactly what it is, restoring the masterful filmmaker to his deserved position as one of the screen’s most profound storytellers.

A kitchen-sink directorial debut from actor Dev Patel, Monkey Man is a knife-through-the-throat revenge thriller, a diatribe against institutional injustice and wealth inequality, an ode to both ancient and modern Indian culture and folklore, and a portfolio that proudly displays the action hero bona fides of its prodigiously muscled leading man— who just so happens to be the director himself.

Scoop is presented as a thriller, which works. Although we know the outcome, Martin successfully immerses us in the narrative in a way where it feels precarious.

It’s mostly nostalgia that keeps the movie going, although Grace is very compelling and should have been allowed to properly lead the film.

There are and have been countless Hollywood actresses for whom this role would be particularly resonant, but for this moment, there’s no better person to tell this story than Sydney Sweeney. And, thankfully, she gets to tell it on her own terms.

Agreeable, multifaceted Michael Keaton has been away from the screen for a while, but as both star and director of Knox Goes Away, his fresh and sophisticated new crime thriller, he proves he’s forgotten nothing about how to invest an offbeat film with his own unique sensibility and control it with precision and power.

We need silly rom-coms to get through the long, hard days of reality just like Ireland needs tourism dollars after the pandemic, so why not celebrate Irish Wish for the joyous entertainment that it is.

In another in a long line of memorable, effective and inspired performances that resonate with truth, Anthony Hopkins is a magnificent centerpiece.