Jake Kring-Schreifels

This is a sure-handed debut with a reliable group of actors.

The beauty is that Torres never forces these messages down your throat. The movie is too looney, too specific to be so obvious.

It’s exciting to see a debut so self-assured and comfortable in its own sun-baked skin.

Down Low doesn’t know where to end and what to center. It’s eager for a happy ending and forgets the necessary work to produce one.

The risk for these kinds of stories––the best ranging from 12 Angry Men to One Night in Miami––is that they lose momentum after the initial setup. You need strong, convincing characters to make persuasive arguments and unearth deep-seated secrets. Brooklyn 45 supplies such.

What would a high school movie look like if its queer characters ended up as jock-slamming, hierarchy-upending heroes? Bottoms is this year’s righteously indignant, big-swing answer.

Rockwell has plenty time to develop into a more distinguished storyteller, though her directorial instincts have a staggering specificity. This is a movie that gets gentrification right––she thrives in showing the way brief observations out a window paint a larger picture––and connects little dots from childhood to adulthood.

It’s hard to find sensitive little movies like this.

The narrative manipulation is the only thing clouding an otherwise crystal-clear dip into sublime terror.

The abstracted, bright-colored flourishes and chamber-thriller structure––not to mention its punctuated moments of extreme carnage––provide a crimson foundation for the writer-director’s third and latest feature, Infinity Pool, a blistering big swing that matches its unique premise and privileged-class takedown with his very specific violent, pornographic palette.

As Guggenheim shows, Fox has reclaimed what it means to be afflicted by a neurological impediment, allowing himself to be vulnerable and letting people see his real self.

“Can I quote you?” As it did throughout Jodi Kantor and Meghan Twohey’s intrepid investigative journalism for the New York Times, that question reverberates in Maria Schrader’s She Said, an understated, polished procedural that chronicles the way two reporters exposed Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse and assault.

Saint Omer isn’t a movie concerned specifically with a verdict. It asks you to listen, to observe and consider a tragedy and its ripples within a community.

That you can’t always tell—the movie arbitrarily pivots from serious conspiracy to buddy comedy throug every scene—only highlights the chaotic tonal friction at its core. There’s enough heat to call this a lukewarm mess.

Sans some overarching Avengers narrative providing these standalone epics their thrust, Thor: Love and Thunder plays adrift and uneven, once again resistant to use its untethered narrative and leading hunk in any meaningful—meaningfully sexy—way. By film’s end, when one character tells another to “choose love,” I could hear a handful in my theater beginning to sniffle and cry. It’s hard to understand why. The only thing my eyes could do was roll.

In an era of superhero gluttony, in which these familiar stories, characters, and visuals tend to bleed together, The Batman holds the rare distinction of creating and embracing its own identity.

As Bahrani goes to great depths to verify his subject’s contradictory tales and the circumstances behind his company’s termination, 2nd Chance turns into a familiar American portrait of mythmaking and cognitive dissonance.

Newton’s dynamic performance keeps you hooked.

A romantic comedy that functions best as a fable of friendship and self-reflection, Am I OK? is the kind of lightweight, amiable movie that just barely earns the emotional beats at the heart of its story.

[Okuno’s] made a smart, controlled movie of pricks and gestures and tones that accumulate into a satisfying catharsis. And perhaps validated the urge to follow your gut.

It’s hard to find movies—no matter their scope—that grasp and depict the human experience with the kind of honesty and dexterity Raiff has committed to the screen so far.

Call Jane is a competently made, well-acted historical drama that doesn’t give its charged subject matter the stakes or urgency it needs.

Despite highlighting some chaotic encounters, Williams isn’t interested in explosions and one-dimensional, hell-bent villains. His focus remains on the way years of criminalization can impact decision-making and friendships, and, as his last shot suggests, how distinct sounds can traumatize even as they’re meant to help.

This is a movie engineered to resemble a thrill ride, a greatest-hits carousel powered by fan service and corporate recycling. It practically embraces Marty’s designation—and that’s OK. Despite their noted limitations, theme parks like this still offer plenty of fun.

Smith has found a character whose egocentricity and dynamic range matches his own itchy movie star persona.

This movie’s power comes in the slow-burning revelations found through the straightaway desert roads and rolling lush hills, which amount to an emotionally wrenching crescendo.

It’s riveting stuff, to the point you almost want Coen to keep pushing the scope just to see where he’ll go.

Is it possible to stand out and disappear at the same time? Matt Damon makes a convincing case study in Stillwater.