While countered by a throughline which is a bit on-the-nose—that loss comes for us all, and that what matters is how we choose to live with it—Mothering Sunday still succeeds as a moving, beautifully crafted and sensual period picture.

No Time to Die is neither lean nor mean; it’s a hard-working attempt to reconcile the Bond rituals with a series-finale emotional weight that these movies have been accumulating (with mixed success) since 2006.

Disaster is horror, and Bayona’s direction allows for a deeper comprehension of a tragedy that exists beyond our grasp.

Park is a virtuoso of tone, and for a while, No Other Choice hums with delirious energy: the precision of a thriller and the absurdity of farce. But once the machine reveals itself, its designs become clearer and more repetitive.

In its unapologetic leaning into tropes, stellar casting, idyllic locations and occasional venturing off of the beaten path, A Castle for Christmas does something totally underrated: It gives us exactly what we want this holiday season.

In its keen and sensitive and moving observations about the uncertainty in being Asian-American, it’s always drifting, and Wu’s incredible ability to convey all those ideas wordlessly is what makes the film more than just about a material China girl.

Motherless Brooklyn is far from an airtight masterwork like Confidential—it’s too bloated at almost two and a half hours and contains some acting choices that borderline on irritating—but for those looking for a neo-noir that goes down as harshly yet as satisfyingly as Sam Spade’s favorite Bacardi, it’ll deliver.

Happy Death Day 2U makes deliberate moves away from horror, adding both science fiction and comedy to muddle the original mixture for better and also worse. For better: The film is even more of a gas than its predecessor. For worse: It’s not as much of a horror movie.

It’s easy to find yourself so wrapped up in the austere unease of Campion’s first feature in over a decade that one might fully overlook the obviousness laden in Peter’s opening words, and uncertainty as to the film’s overt approach to its subject material is recurrent.

The main issue is that the story, while reasonably interesting, is not as interesting as the setup would like you to imagine, and that in such a context, Lena Olin is way too powerful for it. She not only overwhelms her young executor-suitors but the entire movie.

I found myself oscillating between being impressed by The Sweet East and feeling like it was trying very hard to impress me. And it did, though probably less than it intended.

[Barker's] film only tries to let us understand the constant and harsh pressures that people in such high positions of power go through daily, and that it does well enough.

What we’re left with in War for the Planet of the Apes is an absorbing, intelligent finale. The film builds to an ending that, although not particularly surprising, feels appropriate—even inevitable—considering all that’s come before.

They Might Be Giants is intimate and rough around the edges. It’s a film that was made by people who’ve been around a bit, and come out tarnished but more interesting. It’s a cinematic version of the oldest sweater you own: It’s stained and there’s hole in the elbow, but damn it if it isn’t the comfiest item in your wardrobe.

Lightyear is a beautiful starship with precious genre cargo, functional and direct in its simple mission to carry on.

Don’t Die offers an engrossing window into the mania of a unique individual, one with the outlandish resources to do something that no normal person would even be able to dream about attempting.

Everything is not awesome, but everything isn’t so bad either. How could it be when everything is everything? Perhaps this is the lesson on which kids can glom amongst this admittedly overlong, overwhelming experience: Yoda was wrong; trying is what matters. It’s a lovely lesson, and a lovely movie.

Everything I’ve been asking for from a Resident Evil movie? Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City accomplishes.

It’s often said that going into business with family is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea, but Clara’s Ghost provides an exception to this particular rule.

Between Lansbury’s dry run as Jessica Fletcher, the riotous juxtaposition of movie legends and a quaint village in England, and Hudson and Taylor’s long love story reaching its poignant conclusion, The Mirror Crack’d is essential viewing for those with even a passing interest in Hollywood history.

Cooper’s struggle to structure his stories and reign in his melodramatic tendencies flattens its successes into a somewhat lackluster, occasionally brilliant, ode to an American icon.

The themes of Leave the World Behind—and the place where everything ends up, which is funny and charming but a little unfinished—aren’t as tautly composed as the body encasing them. But considering ideas of “us against them” in times of crisis, and who exactly is “us,” and who is “them,” are worth considering in our current time.

Zoë Kravitz playing an endearingly awkward agoraphobe is always entertaining to watch, and often elevates the film in spots where it otherwise might flounder.

The two-part film will satisfy fans old and new, bringing an added depth to the guardians’ sisterhood that reminds us of how insecurities lurk in even the most powerful of people. It’s nothing the power of friendship can’t fix.

This exciting formal approach, with its diverse selection of striking nature photography and archival sources, moves swiftly and effectively. Its more traditional talking heads, which the film relies on more as its focus shifts to the present and future, still bring power to the doc—letting people tell their own stories is never a bad thing—but can move more haltingly, dictated by the speakers’ thoughts.

The Rhythm Section certainly doesn’t rewrite the structure of the revenge movie. The usual plot twists can still be seen coming a mile away. None of which keeps it from being a smart and insightful genre exercise in an already promising director’s young career.

Even when Creed III treads familiar ground, this series feels like the ideal outlet for the on-screen persona Jordan is building: a resilient man who needs to better understand the power he’s fought so hard for.

A counterpoint documentary to its festival companion Love Machina, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s Eternal You observes the burgeoning industry around techno-spiritualism with wry skepticism.

Thanks to its commitment to the ‘70s made-for-TV bit, ever-escalating stakes and nervously swaggering lead performance, the ratings ploy from Hell finds substance inside its shtick.

Where Grabbers is a raucous gem, Unwelcome is subdued, more polished but sadder.

All in all, Get Away becomes surprisingly effective by the time all is said and done, bleakly satirical, bloody and a far cry better than the trite parody of director Steffen Haars other 2024 collaboration with Nick Frost, Krazy House.

The power of Fouéré’s performance echoes across the film to its gruesome, tragic ending – further supporting evidence of the past’s grip strength on people of any generation.

Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off is a reckoning of passion told by those who best understand the price of that love story: Hawk, his loved ones and his peers on the board.

The gritty, glowing neon textures of the ‘80s cover practically every frame of director Cody Calahan’s Vicious Fun, a horror-comedy caper that lovingly sends up the era’s genre tropes while never breaching egregious self-indulgence.

Deeply silly but more narratively ambitious than one would likely expect, it’s bursting (honestly overstuffed) with ideas and cinematic verve, taking advantage of a slightly longer runtime to really venture into increasingly bonkers metaphysical territory as it draws on and creates new cinematic tropes for movies about witches.

Arterton’s at a peak in her career here, repurposing bits and pieces of her work in Their Finest for a film with much more intentional sentiment.

It’s the work of a mature filmmaker, far more concerned with the respectful telling of his friend’s story than any need to shock or provoke.

If you’re looking for an engaging-enough rehashing of a riveting true story, by all means watch Thirteen Lives. Just don’t expect it to present you with anything that you haven’t seen in the long list of survival flicks already out there.

In its clear-eyed and naturalistic way, Smoking Tigers takes on a surprising fullness. Like other coming-of-age stories, it must leave some matters unresolved; like many of the best, what we’re left with somehow feels like enough.

Part adventure, part wistful romance—alongside some nice lessons imparted about friendship, family and taking risks—Vivo is enjoyable and familiar.

Blessed/cursed with a charmingly unwieldy title (To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar comes to mind), Good Luck to You, Leo Grande can bobble the more dramatic elements of the pair’s professional and personal relationship, but its feel-good story satisfies to completion.

Like many of the bright suggestions The Pod Generation offers, it would have been better left trimmed from the story, not because the outcomes and repercussions of the tech shouldn’t be explored but because there isn’t room to explore them all in under two hours.

Thanks to Gosling—playing his role like his schmuck detective from The Nice Guys accidentally found himself in a Mission: Impossible—the film breezily flits between a savvy behind-the-scenes pastiche and a committed action rom-com.

The Sky Is Everywhere is an emotional ride, one that frequently skirts the line between sharply truthful and painfully saccharine. (Usually ending up in the realm of the former, but not always.) Yet its whimsical, fairytale feel generally keeps the story from feeling like something you’ve seen before.

The Last Matinee embraces the cat-and-mouse game between the killer and those to be killed as horror’s naughty pleasure. It’s central to the genre’s function in cinema.

It’s spread a bit thin, but not distractingly so if you anticipate the stories as parts of a whole. Through episodic logic, Costner and co-screenwriter Jon Baird balance the film quite well.

The Strange Ones is a solid movie on first watch that becomes a seriously good movie on second watch. Maybe that’s a poor framework for an endorsement, but the film is more than the shock of its climax.

Epicentro depicts Cuba as a land that has long battled imposed polarities akin to that false Renaissance dichotomy: barbarous and noble—utopian and dystopian, scenic and impoverished. Intimate images in an age of transition: Sauper finds a view of modern Cuba between the contradictions history has forced onto it.

A fantastically frenetic performance from Dianna Agron, a truly chilling central entity and interrogations of Jewish heritage elevate Clock (and the potential of further monstrous motherhood stories) above otherwise lackluster competition stateside.

A few key performances and a filmmaker with a clear vision unite for a film that truly feels fantastical, like someone somehow snuck a camera as they were falling into a holy reverie.

Although its barebones backstories and straightforward storytelling may not leave a massive impact, I.S.S conveys the dangers of space and human desperation in a way that will leave you gasping for oxygen.

It doesn’t always work, and it’s a little messy in its attempt, but the ambition to manipulate a cash-grab into something evolutionary—something many legacyquels wish for but almost never attempt so brazenly—makes this Matrix the rare resurrection resulting in more than a sad IP zombie.

Beyond the brutal violence and clever quips there’s a specific call-back to a type of film that flourished in the decades past, one that recognized fully that the specific joy of watching people get punched in the face doesn’t need to be wrapped in a dour or overly complex narrative.

Backstory is fine. Seeing King introduce scores of anonymous leering henchmen to their varying deaths is better.

This is a startlingly creative and skillfully assembled little movie–one that eventually overreaches to some degree, but as a viewer you wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. The ambition of its filmmakers to reach well beyond their meager resources is as inspiring as the film is creepily unsettling.

As a newsroom drama, Scoop succeeds with its taut presentation of the negotiations and the egos at play when executing an interview of this caliber.

For what it is, Fall is an excellent white-knuckle affair of the highest order, and it succeeds in what it sets out to do: Keep you locked in for an hour and 45 minutes with thrills, terror and suspense.

All the components for bite are here, from unflattering character portraits to hideous amorality, but The Commune never clamps down quite as hard as you’d like it to. Your time won’t be wasted with the movie, but it won’t send you out of the theater scarred, either.

It’s tough to watch Secret Mall Apartment and not fall under the spell of Townsend and his earnest collaborators, possessing as they do the idealism and righteous conviction of young people in a bygone era who are quite certain that they’re going to change the world.

Monster’s mystery is one only in the ways that all of our experiences are inherently mysterious to others; its drama is devastating, a tragically inevitable snowball rolled by this existential loneliness; its warmth is gloriously defiant of this fate.

Though it lacks a more exigent purpose, The Crime Is Mine has layers of textbook farce decorated with a confectioner’s critique. We rarely see such quaint delights in cinemas these days.

Playing in the stylish, piss-taking space of Gurinder Chadha and Edgar Wright, Manzoor’s feature debut attacks adolescent fears—failing to achieve your dreams, settling for less, fading from loved ones—with spin-kicks, fake mustaches and evil plots so absurdly sinister that even the most jaded, monosyllabic teens will have to crack a smile.

Despite Sweeney’s uneasy performance, there is something present between Sweeney and Powell, and in the text of the film, that feels fresh—or, at the very least, like a homecoming.

Porcelain War‘s questions around how we cope, and what’s worth fighting for, are as vital as ever with the world still full of ignored pandemics, government-sponsored genocide and ongoing invasions.

Color Out of Space feels shaggy at the edges but so rich within them that the flaws of the DIY aesthetic matter less than the merits of Stanley’s perspective.

Hawkins’ performance in Maudie is as indelible a feat of psychological imagination as it is of physical dedication.

As a blistering exercise in sustained tension, Warfare works. As a depiction of the toll war takes on the body and soul, well, it’s pretty good at that, too.

Eastwood, still so earnestly attuned to the mechanics of personal guilt and faltering systems, finds timelessness in that growing unease.

Interested in interrogating the exploitation of fantasy and imagination for human consumption, Shaw’s psychedelic, patently adult animated feature brings daydreams into the pointedly violent and bleak reality that its genre contemporaries are privy to ignore.

Lilo & Stitch is not only incredibly well cast, it also brings the movie into 2025 with some smart changes and thoughtful additions.

There’s some surprisingly compelling footage, played over the end credits, of real life Juggalos providing testimonials about what their community means to them, and in that a message about understanding the misunderstood.

Director Nisha Ganatra, who also comes from TV, doesn’t really create a cinematic experience that begs to be seen on the big screen, but treats the characters and the setting with enough depth to breathe life into an otherwise tired project.

What’s present is so incredibly promising that it’s almost disappointing the film doesn’t wrestle with something bigger than bullying.

While genre veterans may effectively point at what and where it borrows, Smile will positively terrify casual fans of horror. It’s creepy, dreadful and jumpy.

This is a sequel that literally puts on trial not simply its protagonist, but the very storyline that preceded it, making mockery of the simplistic readings that it engendered, while at the same time engaging in the kind of hoarish courtroom antics that make the musical sequences feel almost vérité in stylistic contrast.

Without giving any spoilers away, the rest of the Once & Always is both chock full of Easter eggs and callbacks for longtime fans and pays haphazard regard to basic storytelling elements like continuity and history.

Far more interested in unpacking the pervasive misogynistic sentiments in Kosovo than the actual war itself, the film is pointed in its chosen observation, but appears remiss of broader political engagement.

Army of the Dead is a film full of pleasant surprises, but Matthias Schweighöfer, playing a German safecracker with a hair-trigger for impassioned speeches about locks and bolts, is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of them all.

It’s not every day that you see a by-the-books rom-com squeezing in a semi-twist ending, and Franco does so in an admirably sneaky, cheeky, subtle way. Similarly, Somebody’s moments of genuine, heartfelt drama are bound to pull on your heartstrings.

While not Park’s best work, nor a masterpiece, Decision to Leave is an extravagant and hopelessly romantic thriller that weaves past and present into something entirely its own.

80 for Brady isn’t going to add to anyone’s long list of Oscar nominations, but it definitely moves the goalpost for the kind of movies audiences want to see. To mix up my sports metaphors, I hope the box office hits it out of the ballpark and we get more female-oriented, age-defying movies like this.

On film, The Humans is more Thanksgiving-appropriate than ever. No preludes, no gifts, no tinsel. Just you and your family—or, worse, you and yourself.

Even if it feels a bit too neat and tidy and predetermined a metaphor, one has to appreciate 2nd Chance’s ogling commitment to dissecting a perfectly American parasite.

Heart Eyes can’t help but swoon at the rich tradition of slashers serving as first-date fodder. It’s not especially scary, but it’s a thrill all the same.

In a world marred by the tragedy of displacement—casualties of myriad geopolitical, colonial and economic interests—Green Border’s resonance speaks for itself.

King Coal might not be an invigorating, fire-lighting work like Harlan County, USA, but it is still a startling piece of anthropology: An expression of a place and a people, and their local god, ruler and captor.

What Buffalo Boys lacks in originality it makes up for in spirit. There’s a verve in Wiluan’s direction, a sense of joy shaping his approach to the tried and true familial vengeance hook.

Yes, Ali & Ava is messy, and overly stuffed, and not quite as satisfying as it could have been—but if anything, that makes it feel all the more true to life.

At times, By Design is agonizingly opaque or borderline insufferable in its pretentious indulgences; at other times it’s laugh-out-loud funny as it skewers equally pretentious targets.

Somewhere Quiet is a thriller, not just a moody exercise; it knows when to step back from the issues it raises and deliver real suspense.

This is a confidently directed and visualized debut with a strong central performance, albeit one not fully supported by its screenplay.

What makes Body at Brighton Rock such good fun is understanding where Wendy is coming from, and connecting to the very specific engine that’s fueling her fear. The movie’s truth doesn’t disappoint, because the truth is that nature plays tricks on the mind.

By the end of Light, Mendes has taken his message a little too literally.

Beast Beast is made with integrity and its narrative leverages violence in a way that simultaneously critiques and perpetuates said violence. The issue is not that the story doesn’t build to that place, but that it—like us—seems uncertain how to react to this fire once it’s been undeniably lit.

Despite its shortcomings, American Made can be deceptively nuanced, as Liman and Cruise put care into their depiction of a natural born charmer who may eventually find his luck has run out.

In its lovingly observed, casually bold and uneasily tense coming-of-age drama exists familiar dynamics we’d rather not recognize.

Half mock-doc, half sci-fi two-hander, all bone-dry L.A. satire, Something in the Dirt takes a bemused look at those all too happy to exploit phenomena and each other—with the typical small-scale charm of an Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson project.

For all its flaws, the film interrogates the limits of a biopic. And what better subject to do it with than the most beloved media fixation in recent history?