Binoche and Stewart, who has never before exuded so much mystery or nuance, share the screen for much of the movie, and they make a fascinating odd couple; with the former’s high-strung intensity and the latter’s cool watchfulness, the two are a study in contrasting performing styles.

A razor-sharp deadpan comedy suffused with sorrow.

It's a shattering masterpiece about sexual awakening, heartbreak, and self-discovery.

Hogg is not a sensationalistic filmmaker, but rather someone who can convey tremendous amounts of emotion through total tranquility on-screen.

The lesson of the film is a straightforward one—that in the future, people will still need to rely on each other—but Ad Astra communicates it with staggering profundity.

First Cow is a masterwork of indie cinema—a tale that’s both charming and unsparing, suffused with equal measures of wonder and dread.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is primarily a romance. But it’s also a film about the deeply personal process of creativity—the pain and joy of making one’s emotions and memories into a work of art.

Weerasethakul is unpacking a sensation everyone has probably experienced at one point in their life: the feeling that something is cosmically out of whack.

A tremendous but chilling achievement from one of America’s great storytellers.

Few filmmakers can manage such a dizzying blend of tones, but for Bong, one of South Korea’s finest directors, it’s a trademark. With Parasite he’s crafted his best movie yet.

Every visual composition is meticulously arranged, and every surreal twist of imagery feels nuanced and earned. But most important, the world around Tár seems real and tangible, so when it slips into chaos, the viewer becomes as overwhelmed as the protagonist.

The Worst Person in the World swerves from bustling comedy to erotically charged romance to bittersweet drama, executing each tonal shift seamlessly even as plot twists seem to come out of nowhere.

Wang, who has made only one prior feature (the little-seen 2014 comedy Posthumous), distinguishes herself as a thrilling new voice in filmmaking by crafting one of the most sensitively told stories of the year.

It pairs his inimitable visual elegance with an impassioned argument about the power of storytelling. And it’s a reminder that Anderson remains one of cinema’s best.

It’s an emotional, visceral triumph.

By its conclusion, Cuarón’s film proves itself both wonderful and fearsome. See it. You will never forget it.

Distance is key to the meditative magic of Past Lives. Song’s film is filled with space—the intangible kind between words, and the physical kind between characters.

May December begins grotesquely . . . It ends delicately, as a portrait of fragile, shattered human beings and the mundane entertainment they inspire.

It is a film that continually complicates and recomplicates itself, denying viewers the comfort of easy moral footing. It is by turns heartbreaking, harrowing in its violence, and very, very funny, and it features Oscar-level performances by Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Rockwell.

It is hard to imagine a better tribute to this victory of survival than Nolan’s spare, stunning, extraordinarily ambitious film.

It is one of the most moving and mesmerizing films of the year, a meditation on the wonders of nature and human curiosity.

Hard Truths itself is astonishingly sensitive for a portrait of someone who often behaves monstrously.

It’s bleak and brutal—and deeply affecting.

If the erotic thrillers of the past explored the dangers of lust, Park Chan-wook explores the risks of longing. His take on the genre isn’t just sexy; it’s playful and mordant and convoluted—and it begs to be rewatched, for the electrifying performances and for every frame he composes. It’s the kind of film that, like an overpowering attraction, refuses to be ignored. The only relief comes from indulging it.

The arguments Black Panther undertakes with itself are central to its architecture, a narrative spine that runs from the first scene to the last.

Hall seems to have grasped the story as a performer would, prioritizing the potency of the characters’ interior lives over the plot. And perhaps given her acting background, she draws from Thompson and Negga a pair of finely tuned and exquisite performances. In every scene they share, they radiate a tender but perilous chemistry.

The action in Honor Among Thieves is well choreographed. Anyone who enjoyed Goldstein and Daley’s last cinematic directorial effort, the comedy thriller Game Night, knows that they approach spatial geography with more care than do many blockbuster filmmakers. But I was really kicking my feet with glee during the film’s flights of storytelling fancy (its 20-sided die rolls for intelligence rather than strength, if you will).

The most daring aspect of Weapons is that it answers all of its big questions.