As far as COVID movies go, 7 Days is certainly in the top tier of that still nascent subgenre—whether that’ll be true this time next year, we’ll have to wait and see.

Ridley Scott directing a grand, riveting medieval epic that doubles as an analysis of gender dynamics might be unexpected, but The Last Duel manages to effortlessly combine Scott’s action sensibilities with an empathetic thread between the past and present.

Like Green’s first 2018 Halloween reboot, this is a badly overstuffed film that largely ignores the inherent strength of what should be its central story—three generations of Strode women, facing down The Boogeyman—in favor of random, gratuitous action scenes and endless subplots.

Though [Hamaguchi's] highly anticipated Drive My Car distills these musings in a slightly more meticulous manner, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy cuts to the chase in a way that’s quaintly quirky—and never dull to watch unfold.

The feverish Knocking puts together a fittingly upsetting portrait of lonely instability through its simple premise, visually inventive first-time director and physically invested star.

As directed by Rachel Fleit, in her documentary feature debut, the movie is an unflinching look at what it is like to live with a degenerative disease that attacks the spinal cord and brain. But it’s also a look at a woman who has a fractured relationship with her mother, was never quite comfortable with her fame and struggles with anxiety and depression.

What begins as a straightforward story of two artists creating different projects ultimately turns into Hansen-Løve’s strongest argument for the inextricable nature of life and art yet.

What is a fishing community if restrictions deny their catch? The world continues to change no matter what anyone does. Camilleri understands that dilemma and puts it on film with humble clarity.

Saad’s is a bleak film, as claustrophobic and oppressive as the unyielding blue that smothers each frame, and brave enough not to sacrifice honesty on the altar of catharsis.

Particularly paired with Cruz’s knockout performance of a woman whose life endures the legacy left by the trauma of her family’s unresolved past, Parallel Mothers is a deeply political example of what is lost when we have forgotten—and what is achieved when we fight to remember.

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is an apt, simple fable that feels somewhat hopeful for our modern world—one where evil wins, but love overcomes.

Though it remains true to the first part of the text’s unhurried pace and detailed world building, Villeneuve’s adaptation feels overlong and void of subtext.

Bleak and crisp and cold as an Icelandic waterfall, Lamb is a movie with a sheepheaded toddler in great knitwear, the vague looming of something sinister and a filmmaker that can’t seem to wrangle it all.

With a gentle touch, Sciamma crafts a profound, easily digestible film that takes heavy themes and makes them bite-sized. She looks at the way we speak to one another, and to ourselves, at every age, and how these conversations are inevitably dulled in the schism between a child and their parent.

Time melts beyond its tangible limits when watching Memoria, resulting in an audiovisual trance disorienting in its peculiar placidity.

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.

Put simply, V/H/S/94 is almost less an anthology than it is a vehicle for a single, deliriously creative segment from director Timo Tjahjanto, which dominates the entire center of the film. All the other segments simply orbit this central anchor, caught in the inexorable pull of Tjahjanto’s demented imagination, which manages to give V/H/S/94 at least 30 minutes in which one cannot look away.

In amplifying the diverse voices of American children through the film’s radio vérité subplot, C’mon C’mon proves that kids have some pretty insightful advice to impart, if only we’d just listen.

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.

Unfortunately, There’s Someone Inside Your House is a considerably more rote endeavor in mass-market horror filmmaking—competently shot and staged, but decidedly familiar, it displays none of the emotional nuance or attention to character detail we’ve associated with Brice in the past.

The film becomes a wry showcase for the director’s evolution as a creative who has been refining an unparalleled style for over two decades, with a sharper humor but without the more deeply felt pulse of films like The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox or most recently, and most effectively, The Grand Budapest Hotel.

While Chase, Taylor and Konner figure out a way to give us a half-assed rundown of the gangster rise-and-fall we saw again and again in the series, they couldn’t figure out how to make that into any kind of satisfying film—let alone one worth its references to the gangster canon and let alone one that has anything at all to say about the race relations in Newark during its setting.

The Velvet Underground will leave one less acquainted with the band with an incomplete picture in mind, but it’s unfair to say that the film is only for true enthusiasts. Instead, Haynes is interested in capturing a mood: A feeling of creative interconnectedness, of change, innovation and of a revolving door of people and art that will never again be replicated.

By way of candid humor, a magnetic performance from Rex and Baker’s careful attention for authenticity, Red Rocket is a sympathetic profile of a porn star past his prime.

As a standalone film, The Souvenir provides Hogg with the means to articulate and meditate on her past, creating a work that is bleakly beautiful and enchanting all on its own.

Vortex, while visually captivating, only functions as a window through which to look at death detached from the beauty of life.

Joel Coen’s Macbeth lacks risk, ingenuity and, most importantly, reward. For those who seek a safely satisfying rendition of the lean Shakespearean tragedy, this latest execution will surely suffice.

Though Drive My Car reaches a significantly less smoldering conclusion than Burning, it channels a similar feeling of catharsis. Though certain things are still left unsaid or incomplete, the tension they create—or shatter—conveys just as much as simple words or actions.