As Potrykus’ unromantic Midwestern losers mature, so too does his filmmaking. But Vulcanizadora still feels like a natural progression of his slime-slacker milieu: At the movie’s heart, there’s still a ridiculous and upsetting idea, thrust upon desperate members of the lower-middle class, seen through to its tragicomic conclusion.

Hold Your Fire certainly illustrates an oft-forgotten slice of history, assembling aestheticized archival footage of tense crowds and police in peacoats scattering like ants on the streets of New York. But through clumsy structuring and skin-deep attempts to appease both sides of the coin, Forbes does not heed his own advice, misfiring entirely.

Bacurau is wildly creative, and its hilarious, Dadaist aura provides an uncanny comfort despite ample bloodshed. This is not to say that the film is without heart-wrenching loss and tearful contemplation of a world on fire.

Blade Runner 2049 should resonate deeply with anyone who’s ever held love for the original.

Step may stumble over its own hurried pace (cramming months of school into montage after montage), but such a method is almost forgivable once you realize that the film is speeding towards an effective finale that will have you cheering no matter what.

In many ways, Weapons is a topical ensemble drama; thrillingly, it has darker, more genre-driven ambitions beyond that. Cregger mixes all this despair, cynicism, and brutality into an impressively wicked and heady brew—and a ferociously entertaining horror movie, besides.

It’s simply up to the viewer to relinquish control, strap into the rollercoaster seat and trust that the ride will take them somewhere transcendent. And it does.

Much like the movie that started it all, Godzilla Minus One cements itself among the best entries in the series by successfully operating as both an evocative disaster flick and a more human-oriented drama, using each half to bolster the other.

The film represents a full embrace of a culture and its people, as well as a celebration of family, both present and past. As such, it’s difficult to imagine healthier holiday fare.

Elegantly shifting her lens between Little Richard’s biography and the history of the music that sprung forth from him, Cortés traces a nearly impossible trajectory without losing a grounded sense of context.

Theatre of Blood is a classic revenge story in the Grand Guignol tradition, following a single mastermind as he hunts down and messily dispatches all who have wronged him in ironic fashion.

With Revenge, Fargeat has waved a blistering middle finger at rape culture and rape culture’s enablers. Revenge isn’t hers alone. It’s womanhood’s, too.

Where What’s Love Got to Do with It was a midlife coming-of-age—a “Hello, here’s my story”—Tina is a redefining, empowering farewell that adds perspective as she tips her hat and has her happily ever after out of the limelight.

American Fiction is a satire about how far up our own asses writers can fit our heads, confronting and interrogating the concepts of genius, self-regard and good taste.

A dark, percolating family drama that eventually takes a stunning turn into the savagely metaphorical, writer-director Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill proved to be one of the most impressive overall features at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Though there’s a bit of a moral jumble to its ultimately productive deconstruction of the revenge movie and it’ll certainly never be a bedtime story, Riders of Justice still has a savvy lesson to impart to the grown-up children raised on the strong and silent type.

A River Below is pure investigative journalism.

Gardner’s a timeless actress, and it’s through her that Pandora and the Flying Dutchman gains its own timelessness. She’s so cool and controlled that any time the film starts tipping over the edge from fantasy to absurdity, her mere presence grounds it.

Let the Hitchcock comparisons come. Peele deserves them well enough. Best not to think about it too hard, to not ruin a good thing, to demand that Us be anything more than sublimely entertaining and wonderfully thoughtful, endlessly disturbing genre filmmaking.

It’s a gorgeous, shattering film. It’s an unapologetically real film about a number of very real subjects, plot-agnostic but driven by character, consequence and compassion.

Cavalli’s directorial eye is as strong as her writer’s wit, a combination that makes for an unusually assured debut.

If anything, The Janes is a call to find and form networks in one’s own community. It’s a reminder, as the inevitability of another abortion ban inches closer and closer every day, there will always be people who disregard what is lawful in favor of what is right—and documentary can be a tool in teaching what, who and how to effectively parse and evade that lawful, undeniably wrong side of history.

Casting Amandla Stenberg to carry the project was an inspirational choice: She’s luminous and always captivating in the part, delivering a natural performance that allows easy access to Starr’s soul.

Like RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Faya Dayi wanders lovely, liminal spaces between narrative and fairytale, between documentary film and something looser, something personally vérité.

Warren’s craftsmanship keeps the audience from swallowing a breath. He’s a merciless filmmaker, deeply considerate of his choices in staging and casting.

In Glass Onion, everything is more. More jokes. More self-reflexivity. More twists and turns. And, undeniably, more fun.

Summer of 1993 does what movies do so well (and yet so rarely do), which is to let viewers see the world through the eyes of another.