Nosferatu is a feast for the senses, so transportive in its world-building that one can almost sense the legion of rats scurrying below their feet and feel the chill in the air when Orlok glides through the moon-lit window to guzzle blood.

Despite such misgivings about an ultimately familiar shape, The Black Sea remains a thoroughly entertaining film that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

It relegates its thematic strengths to the corner of ironically thoughtless family fun entertainment that seeks to please and assuage where other projects might investigate the theme and leave you with a sense of concern over the real-world parallels without sacrificing entertainment

Carax allows his audience to see a process––assertive statement to hesitation to defeat. The true vulnerability of the essayistic form lies in showing attempts and failures, not only successes.

When approached as the big, dumb spectacle its much-trumpeted lack of historical accuracy had long teased, Gladiator II proves easier to embrace.

You’d think the DP would be ready to flex his muscles on his directorial debut, but Pedro Páramo, even with occasional forays into glossy surrealism, can be summed up as prosaic: a project hyper-concerned with respectability and never risking too much in images or narrative.

It’s an effective thriller––one couldn’t accuse it of being boring––but takes what feels like the safest possible approach to its fraught subject matter.

On first viewing, it feels like a big step down, with frequent glimmers of a much more satisfying family adventure throughout.

The film’s initial lightness and peace gradually give way to a bleakness, a sense of entrapment, that seeps beneath the skin. Catholic representations onscreen have often recognized the religion’s dedication to aesthetic beauty. While Vermiglio indulges in plenty of such, it also takes a clear-eyed look at the social structures it serves to camouflage.

This centuries-spanning journey is a shallow, inconsequential one.

Suburban Fury is a reminder that even the most candid historical figures are never fully transparent.

Loktev seems to be everywhere at once. She risks her life with the camera as journalists do with their pens, programs, and presence, holding on as long as they can in the week after the war begins.

With Costa’s nearly unfettered access to the main characters of modern Brazilian politics, the events of Apocalypse in the Tropics practically unfold in real time––a thrilling, profound documentary horror.

While The Damned sometimes resembles a reenactment, Minervini makes a valid attempt to highlight war’s aimless priorities on its marginalized and unheralded members.

Minh Quý’s slow-cinema sensibilities are nothing short of spellbinding, the trance of rumination within reason enough to seek it out. And if that’s not enough, go for the best final shot of the year: a breath-stealing beauty that will leave you frozen in your seat even after the credits are over.

Sundwall is quite impressive in the lead, with much depending on her in solitary sequences. Not every supporting performer can hold their own next to her, but she’s a gracious screen partner. There is much empathy in every frame here. Dizzia and Cho do superb work, anchoring the emotion and responsibility of the entire picture.

By the time Dream Team comes to its enigmatic ending, the journey has accrued a disorienting power––it’s the vertigo that comes from watching a film fearlessly pushing against the limits of what can be told, and how.

Rodgers has crafted a worthy companion to Chasing Amy, a warm and inclusive film that could not come at a better time.

Juror #2 stands out as the best late-career Eastwood film, from an era with its fair share of gems.

The writer-director never rushes this story, but still wastes no time in the film––each scene contains weight and value. Each moment builds on the memories of Shula and of the women in this family, fractured together, constantly reminded of monstrosities, somehow still taking steps forward.

Moghaddam and Sanaeeha obviously have things to say about the state of their country, but at heart this is a romantic, even nostalgic film.

Moments when the characters’ actions and dialogue drive home this reality of Israel’s apartheid state are where The Teacher truly shines.

The Summer Book as a whole proves much too programmatic (an early don’t-worry-it’s-nothing cough sets the tone) and much too fearful of leaving its audience in the dark about the characters’ emotional states (hence its symbolic clutter).

The Line is hard to watch, and the banality of this kind of evil is incredibly off-putting. Horrible things happen while people are laughing. Even while The Line extends its welcome, it’s an undeniably unnerving experience.

Rather than spoon-feeding the audience with sentimentality about the pair being destined for each other, it leaves one to decide whether it’s all worth it, even as it doesn’t shy from the allure of a secret romantic entanglement.

As a blockbuster adventure, Blitz has far more historical texture and a significantly less-romantic outlook than you’d expect from an unashamedly mainstream British drama. Even without that romanticism, it’s the most hopeful movie he’s made; Blitz is also the one most lacking for greater depth.

It feels alive like an open, bleeding heart. It’s a tragic story told with hope that doesn’t ring saccharine or overwrought. Sometimes it moves like water, flowing from ugliness to beauty. There are few American films that come close to what it accomplishes, as either film or adaptation. Nickel Boys suggests a miracle, with the makings of a classic.

Even if its airy, lighthearted tone may make the film too frivolous for some, at least The Paragon knows what it is, and more importantly knows how to have fun with it.