Dao, named for the Taoist belief in an unceasing motion that flows through and unites all things, is a film of anthropological self-reflection, but it is also a surprising exploration of cinematic process.

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.

The first and final scenes of any film are vital, and contained within these bookends you can find the entire story of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Unfortunately, nearly everything in between is standard biopic filler and reinforces filmmaker Scott Cooper’s unique position in the Hollywood landscape: he’s a tremendous director of actors and quite unremarkable at most other parts of the job.

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.

It’s a preposterous story to follow, but thanks to the expertise of Emma Thompson, it keeps you interested.

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.

Based on Henrik Ibsen’s classic stage play Hedda Gabler, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda seeks to reinterpret and modernize the late 19th-century material. However, in the process, it loosens the nuts and bolts of Ibsen’s dramaturgical machine, causing it to ricket until it falls apart.

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.

The star-studded After the Hunt has a lot on its mind about human complexities, but largely expresses these notions in didactic form and through dramatic conflict that all but resolves itself halfway through the movie’s languid 2 hours and 18 minutes.

Remakes are odious, even when they’re nothing more than harmless television takeoffs on successful feature films, but The Roses is an especially egregious waste of time and talent because it takes itself so seriously.

Like Steven Spielberg, [Howard]'s films are usually polished, coherent, and suitable for all ages. His obsession with Eden delivers none of those things, and it’s so vile, pretentious and confusing in style over substance that a lot of it is downright unwatchable.

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.

The actors are fine, but the roles they are forced to play are so deadly they might as well have stayed home reading screenplays for better films.

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

In their seventh slog around the forbidden tropical island that author Michael Crichton originally created, the prehistoric monsters are noisier, the people they terrorize are prettier, and the screams are louder than ever. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

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.

Though there are glimmers of greatness tucked away in this film, its full potential goes unrealized and this fantastical, pharmaceutical flick ends up surprisingly unmemorable.

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.

Opus isn’t as superficial as the world it’s commenting on, but it’s not cleverer, either.

The Electric State is weighed down by a staggering tonnage of stuff, dozens of CGI robots wandering around and muttering off-camera jokes, clunky newsreels dumping details that end up contributing very little (but featuring MTV News anchor Kurt Loder as himself!), a total overload of boring, gray dreck.

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.

Even the film’s title lacks a much-needed punch. Ridley is a strong action heroine, but she deserves better material than this.

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.

Not particularly good or bad, it is “another Marvel movie” — certainly not the cure to what’s been ailing the Marvel Cinematic Universe since Endgame.

It’s hard to label a film this empty, but the word “worthless” comes to mind instantly.

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.

The enterprise snaps to life only sporadically, primarily when its well-chosen character actors manage to steal moments of vitality away from the profound indifference that surrounds them.

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

Credulity is strained on every level in scene after repetitive scene. The shallow screenplay robs the actors of success whenever they strive for any kind of badly needed comic relief, which is probably why the acting seems so bland and unconvincing.

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.

Diaz and her co-star Jamie Foxx are genuinely charismatic, often delivering lines with a winking sarcasm and likeability. But Back in Action muddles its tone too much to be actually funny, a detriment to the cast’s best efforts.

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 Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is a safe bet, a mostly rote medieval fantasy tale that doesn’t have the widespread appeal of Peter Jackson’s trilogy but does keep the spirit of Tolkien’s words alive.

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.

It’s occasionally diverting, sure, but so is killing time while you wait for your flight to board.

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.

Despite a lot of silliness, primarily thanks to Nivola’s absurdist performance as the Rhino, Kraven the Hunter is entertaining—far more so than expected based on Morbius and Madame Web. If only it wasn’t so convoluted or dragged down by extraneous characters. If only the CGI was better.

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.

The screenplay, from Hailey DeDominicis, lacks the vibrancy you expect from a light-hearted holiday movie. Sure, there are a few genuine emotional moments and Lohan aptly gives Avery as much dimension as possible, but there’s only so much she and Chenoweth can do to liven things up.

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?”

Shaving too fast with an old razor blade, I’ve had more scares than anything in Heretic from my bathroom mirror.

Color it long, clumsy, gimmicky, schmaltzy and pointless.

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.

True to form for this trilogy—which supposedly concludes here—the brainless and disjointed Last Dance skates by on star Tom Hardy’s charm and a few good gags.

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.

For fans of the first film, it’s more of the same, and for any casual horror viewers who are up for a funhouse thrill this October, it’ll do the trick.

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.

Katherine is searching for inspiration during her time in Morocco and, meanwhile, Dern should search for a better project.

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.

It falls flat as a musical, as a courtroom drama, as a romance, and as a character piece. It’s the rare film that is both weird and boring, to a degree that it’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying it.

All of this furious, empty noise keeps reminding you that you’re watching a cheesy horror film that is not confident enough in the story it’s telling to avoid succumbing to old tricks.

Never Let Go never manages to answer any of a number of recurring questions adequately, and the movie makes no more sense than one of those head-scratchers by M. Night Shyamalan, which it annoyingly resembles.

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.

To pass the time and justify the film’s nearly two-hour length, director Elliott Lester and screenwriter Chris Kelley concentrate on loading everyone with enough oddball characteristics to convince jaded viewers who hate Westerns that they are watching something unique.

The Front Room, the new horror-comedy from filmmakers Max & Sam Eggers and A24, boasts a strong premise and a game cast, but it’s not particularly scary or funny. It’s surreal, clever, and occasionally visually quirky enough to fit the “indie horror” mold, but a little too unsubtle and user-friendly to feel like arthouse fare.

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.

AfrAId, the new thriller from writer-director Chris Weitz, is a boiler-plate example of the exploAItation genre, a condemnation of A.I. so by the numbers that an A.I. could have written it. And, like the best examples of A.I. “art,” it’s solidly, emphatically, “good enough.”

It’s lifeless as a stump, and destined for box-office doom.

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.

This contrived, pointless, blindingly boring vehicle is a pathetic, desperate attempt to keep Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg’s careers alive.

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.