The Homesman doesn't play things safe, and that's a welcome change.

A Haunting in Venice is the best of Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot movies. It's also one of his best, period, thanks to the way Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green respectfully adapt the source material (Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party) while at the same time treating it as a chance to make a relentlessly clever and visually dense "old" movie that uses the latest technology.

Monsters like Cohn are created by a nation that judges its people based on the level of their clout rather than the content of their character. Cohn embodies the primal urge to succeed at all costs, and the first step toward defeating him is to root him out in ourselves.

Even though the film is ultimately not much more than an exercise in nostalgia, that's hardly a bad thing when you're delving into a past as rich as the one on display here.

If you can look beyond the 90-minute runtime depriving this movie of a more satisfying conclusion, there is not simply “a lot to like,” there’s an embarrassment of riches crying out for perusal. On the Rocks is the kind of doodle only a truly skilled director could produce.

As much as Eastwood finds to condemn in the movie’s designated villains, he does not deliver any comeuppances to them in the end. Which is merciful in the context of fiction, and kind of the mordant point in the context of fact.

La Cocina is a phenomenal showcase for Briones, who gives one of the most mesmerizingly multi-faceted performances of the year.

While this documentary doesn’t rise to the level of his masterwork “Exterminate All the Brutes,” the pain and anger, resolve, and courage that Peck captures in Silver Dollar Road make it a complex, intense document of the persistence of Black existence in a world hell-bent on erasure.

Logan is the rare blockbuster that could be a game-changer. It will certainly change the way we look at other superhero movies and how history judges the entire MCU and DC Universe of films.

Crow’s camera captures the nuance of what these teens face and how law enforcement instructors and recruiters sell children on the idea of following in their footsteps.

A great newspaper movie of the old-school model, calling up not only obvious comparisons with "All the President's Men" and "Zodiac," two movies with similar devotion to the sometimes crushingly boring gumshoe part of reportage, but also Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell shouting into adjacent phones in "His Girl Friday."

Two Pianos is a melodrama, and damned proud to be one.

Red, White and Blue got under my skin in ways I was not expecting. McQueen uses the police procedural format to interrogate what it’s like to be the only Black person in a hostile and racist job environment.

Michell’s film allows us the privilege to spend an unscripted hour or so with the four acting goddesses during their routine visit to Plowright’s home in the English countryside, and though our time with them is brief, the very thought of our world existing in their absence is almost unbearable.

Despite the bleak-ness of the situation, the film vibrates with color, noise, music, ferocious arguments (both serious and teasing), and eye-catching snapshots of everyday life in Havana.

An ambitious, challenging piece of work that people will be dissecting for years. Don’t miss it.

This movie feels as if somebody woke from an intense nightmare, decoded it and realized it was rather unsubtly working through some of their unresolved issues, then brought it to Judd Apatow and said, "Here's your next comedy."

This kind of story has been told endlessly in dramatic movies and TV shows, but rarely has a film offered characters like these telling their own stories.

Most of the movie is conveyed through point of view, which is especially fitting because the central character is hearing-impaired. Wesley is a careful, thoughtful observer of the world around him, and this movie challenges us to look as closely as he does. Every frame is filled with significant, illuminating details.

Black Bear is ambitious for itself in its many layers of meta, but the observational moments of behavior is where the film soars. Writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine has created a highly self-conscious work that comments on itself and then comments again. Levine's sense of humor is one of his saving graces, and that's particularly true here. This is a disturbing film, and much of it is unpleasant, but it's also very, very funny.

There are conflicts in Princess Cyd, but they're on a low boil. One of the pluses of Cone's approach — if you're open to it — is you are sometimes confronted with your own preconceived notions about people.

It’s full of pure, unadulterated love for “The Greatest,” so much so that the viewer can’t help but get enveloped in its adoration.

This film does not scold us; it is hopeful.

With these scenes highlighting growth and resilience, Time refuses to be some kind of tragedy porn. Sibil and her brood demand justice, not pity. Her strength carries the film and elevates her sons toward success.

Filmmaker Zeina Durra’s entrancing, languorous Luxor wonders about the allure of the backward gaze and the uncertainty inspired by an unknowable future, and co-stars Andrea Riseborough and Karim Saleh are practically perfect in this thoughtful romance.

Suffused with fantastical elements, dreamlike sequences and hallucinatory images, A Fantastic Woman stars Daniela Vega, a trans actress, and her performance roots the film in a kind of intimate verisimilitude.

Despite the fact that you’ve heard these songs countless times in a variety of settings, these inspired incarnations will make you feel like you’re experiencing them for the first time, just as Moby Doc as a whole breathes thrilling new life into a safe and conventional genre.

The Godfather Coda does seem different, thanks largely to how he opens and closes the film. Overall, this version feels even more elegiac—a true coda instead of just another part of the same story.

Like its subject has done so many times in his six-decade career, this one exceeds expectations.

A powerful and entertaining film about a gang of girls, and what friendship means, the protection it provides.

It feels like this material could have been a bodice-ripping melodrama in less intuitive hands. But "The Promised Land" has control of its narrative.

The Forty-Year-Old Version is brimming with sharp but often understated humor and a deep experience of making art.

Alternately sad, violent, and dryly funny.

Fashioned out of fresh faces unable to lie to the camera, “Playground” is a study in human behavior wrapped in equal parts fear and curiosity.

To the credit of the filmmakers, 76 Days has been made in such a skillful and gripping manner that even those suffering from COVID news fatigue will find themselves caught up in it.

It's hard to write about In Jackson Heights without sounding like you're trying to write poetry.

A high-concept animated film about animals with superpowers is brought to vibrant, endearing life by the superpowers behind the scenes: lively voice talent from an all-star cast, a script that is smart, exciting, and very funny, and, above all, the ability to tap into one of humanity’s deepest emotions, our love for our pets and theirs for us.

Pulling back the curtain to see how Carrol Spinney "does it" is not only a revelation of technique but a reminder of just how brilliant he is as a puppeteer and as an actor.

This is a movie of vision and integrity made on an epic scale, a series of propositions dramatized with machinery, bodies, seawater and fire. It deserves to be seen and argued about. They don't make them like this anymore. Never did, really.

More than just your standard horror/comedy, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a tonal balancing act, a movie that doesn’t go for laughs or horror as much as weave various tones and styles through its excellent script. I thought Cummings was a talent to watch after “Thunder Road,” and now I’m sure of it.

A tougher, smarter film than American sci-fi cinema buffs are used to seeing.

Some will argue that all of the themes of “undertone” don’t connect, but that’s a feature, not a bug. This is a film that doesn’t feel the need to explain itself. Nightmares rarely do.

What Megan Park has done with “My Old Ass” is so authentic and thoroughly winning that she breathes new life into a familiar genre.

20 Days in Mariupol, about the first 20 days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, spares no one's sensibilities. It goes on a short list of great documentaries that the viewer will never want to watch again and likely won't need to because some of the images are so gruesome and the context so upsetting that they'll be burned into your memory.

Director Jan Komasa’s film — nominated this year for the international-feature Oscar — may feel a tad slow at times, but Bielenia is never less than totally compelling.

Like all of Petzold’s recent pictures, Afire draws you in confidently and prepares its knockout emotional punch with scrupulousness and a vivid sense of surprise.

Body feels downright old-fashioned: a thriller with tension that doesn't stem from gore, jump scares, or other cheap shock tactics, but rather a creeping dread that grows with each red herring, and slow-burn plot twist.

Morris' direction offers other filmmakers a template for how to make a small movie that feels big, just by making definitive choices and sticking to them.

Although events unfold amid a gorgeous pastoral setting with rolling green hills and leafy trees, there is a silent starkness about this countryside that suggests Ingmar Bergman’s use of natural surroundings.

Most Holocaust dramas show us the trains, the barbed wire, and the starving prisoners. This movie shows us what happened before, making the story real by making us identify with the people who were lost.

Her remains one of the most engaging and genuinely provocative movies you're likely to see this year, and definitely a challenging but not inapt date movie.

Hedges has a gift for bringing us into the lives of characters in even the briefest sketches with the strong support of an outstanding cast.

Set in 1800s Italy and based on a true story, “Kidnapped” is so primally upsetting that you would think it would be unbearable to watch. But it proves intoxicating, at times nearly overwhelming, thanks to perfect casting, an economical and impassioned screenplay, and filmmaking overseen by 84-year-old cowriter-director Marco Bellocchio, who might be one of the greatest living narrative filmmakers who is not usually recognized as such.

Reichardt—who also edited the film and has said that she based the story on details from many real-life people and incidents, including the 1972 robbery of an art museum in Worcester, Massachusetts—builds the movie with her characteristic mix of dry humor, incisive psychological details, and elegant, minimalistic visuals.

It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry.

[Miller's] mastery makes the movie eye-popping; his freedom and audacity make it surprising and unsettling.

If you have a good idea, a strong cast, a smart script, and directorial chops, you don't need a lot of money to make a compelling movie. The Endless is proof.

Catch the Fair One is a revenge-thriller, and a satisfying one, since the evil on display is so total. However, the satisfaction is hollow. Hopelessness is the dominant mood.

The organization of the film, jumping back and forth in time, is distracting. But the subject is never less than enthralling.

July’s best and most mature work to date, the often hilarious and gradually heartbreaking Kajillionaire.

In a sea of so much tragedy, it’s a marvel to stop and consider each individual’s experience fighting the tide.

An intensely felt cinematic experience.

Let’s just say if you are human, there is no way that Lion won’t move you.

Director Kate Beecroft’s Sundance darling “East of Wall” is a stunning portrait of the American West.

Mistress Dispeller” isn’t really about Wang, or her methods...It’s about the mysteries of the human heart. Its exploration of these subtle depths is sensitive, as are its conclusions.

Ira Sachs is one of American cinema’s most reliable crafters of human-scaled cinematic dramas. That description doesn’t sound too terribly exciting, so I should assure you that Passages is some kind of time at the movies—a briskly-moving, turbulent, emphatically sexy, deliberately exasperating love triangle in crazy times.

Here, Pfeiffer’s Kyra is our conduit to a world of anxiety and destitution within a seemingly exciting, glamorous city. And she’s absolutely heartbreaking with just the slightest register of sadness in a gesture or facial expression.

The documentary’s skillful use of archival footage connects us to Tucker’s extraordinary talent as a singer and her vibrance and magnetism as a performer, adding poignant context to the present-day scenes, showing her often faltering, trying to hide her vulnerability.

An adrenalin-shot of a comedy and a fearless dissection of identity politics, corporate malevolence, and the American tendency to look the other way when confronted with horror.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a love letter to the art of spinning a good yarn, but it’s also a sharply observed paean to the lies and truths we tell ourselves so that we may function from day to day.

What Emily does so well is establish a mood. The mood is flexible enough to contain multitudes.

Yes, the script might as well have been written by an algorithm to hit every rom-com beat, from the meet-cute to the magical connection to the setback to the happy ending, but it deserves extra credit for what it avoids. There are no silly misunderstandings, contrived situations, or cartoonishly awful people.

The melancholy that falls over this chapter is hard to shake but its tempered slightly by the love Gomes has for his characters, bad habits, ingrained sadness and all.

Rasoulof gets terrific performances from all of his cast, but particularly noteworthy is Sohelia Golestani's work as Najmeh, which captures the woman's subtle, gradual transition from defender of her husband to an ally of her daughters.

You won’t forget any of the young men who populate this film, nor will this be the last you’ll hear from them.

A dynamite thriller.

With "Maria," about the final days of the iconic American-Greek soprano Maria Callas, Larraín turns his "historic women" movies into a near-perfect trilogy, giving us a stunning conclusion to his series.

The aftertaste of this madcap escapade is unexpectedly sweet and romantic thanks to its unapologetic commitment to womanly smarts and pleasures.

The travesties of justice on display throughout “President” become so repetitive and inevitable that it renders one exhausted, grateful if only that the killing of democracy has been so clearly and meticulously documented.

Both actors give incredible performances, playing characters stopped up with feelings and secrets. "You'll Never Find Me" is intensely alive.

“Rental Family” is unabashedly sentimental, almost Frank Capra-esque at times. It’s also a thoughtful and insightful presentation of this unique and admittedly strange business of renting humans to help other humans. And it’s a knowing character study of a gaijin in Japan who knows he could live there forever and never fully grasp and understand the culture, but will never stop trying.

The Greatest Showman, directed with verve and panache by Michael Gracey, is an unabashed piece of pure entertainment, punctuated by 11 memorable songs composed by Oscar- and Tony-winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

It also serves up a smorgasbord of explicit homoerotic imagery, surrealism and ambiguity at a time when Western culture seems to be stampeding towards 1950s prurience, fascist-scented literal-mindedness, and corporate self-censorship, "Queer" is a film out of its time in just about every way. That's what's invigorating about it.

While the end result may not quite reach the heights that Miyazaki has regularly hit during his amazing career, it is nevertheless a worthy effort, filled with visuals that frequently dazzle the eye even if the story is more likely to inspiring the scratching of heads instead.

Common wisdom says Hollywood doesn't make this kind of movie anymore. But it's not true.

With its image folding onto itself like a wave in unstoppable motion, “The Human Surge 3” envelops the senses until the very end.

It’s just funny, sweet, and smart — three things that this father of three doesn’t get to say often enough about entertainment while watching movies with his kids.

I found myself captivated by The Devil's Candy because of how well Embry conveys his character's angst-y struggle to understand himself.

Though Sehiri’s third feature offers a seemingly minor concept, it’s certainly bountiful in its power to unearth the unspoken codes that reign over this community, where some men demand reverence from women solely for their gender-based status in the social hierarchy, where the notion of absolute loyalty to one’s extended family guides every decision, and where romantic companionship remains mostly transactional.

As the film progresses, Russell’s grasp of the subtle can sometimes get away from him; while “Lurker” doesn’t lapse fully into violent thriller territory, the stakes of each one of Matthew’s calculations grow larger and larger to the point where the script sometimes gets away from the filmmaker’s otherwise impeccable sense of control.

In this charming and delightful biopic that bears her name, the matronly Jenkins is an endearing and courageous stand-in for countless other mortals whose aspirations in the arts often far exceed their talents.

The director has said that the “classical” (her word) style of the earlier film, with its elegant, distanced compositions and paucity of camera movement, is typical of her work; the ragged, edgy, mostly handheld approach of Don’t Call Me Son (flawlessly executed by cinematographer Barbara Alvarez) is a departure.

This Italian import's title may make it sound like either a kids movie or a cooking documentary, but it proves to be a wild and compelling work that simultaneously evokes the influence of such disparate filmmakers as Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, and Sergio Leone (not to mention a dash of “Broadway Danny Rose”-era Woody Allen) while still coming across as a fresh and unique cinematic vision.

Röhrig has the tricky task of carrying this story on his shoulders—and us along with him—without the benefit of being able to emote or even say much. It’s a physical performance as much as it is a quietly emotional one; he has to establish who this man is mainly through his gestures, demeanor and energy.

You don't watch the movie. You experience it through your senses.

Carroll’s film never loses sight of Kennedy. It would be almost impossible to do so. She’s a prickly character, an energetic curmudgeon who wields her sharp tongue as readily as she cuts tomatoes with a knife. She will not suffer fools asking her to change recipes or vendors trying to sell her items that don’t meet her high standards. She’s an intimidating presence, even in her old cooking shows from decades ago, who seems unforgiving of mistakes.

The movie adaptation is typically described in articles and on streaming platforms as an "erotic thriller" or simply "a thriller." But as is so often the case with Denis' films, that's a misleading way to characterize, or even think about, what's actually onscreen, which is more of a vibe than a story, and all the more fascinating because of that choice.

In movies, there’s “character driven,” and then there’s “CHARACTER driven.” Earl Lynn Nelson, who plays one of the two lead roles in Land Ho! a truly disarming and beguiling movie, seems from all indications to be an all-caps character.