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Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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The Lost Tapes lays bare the gap between private self and public image.
Posted Aug 09, 2024
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Trap
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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Like Cooper, Shyamalan confidently sees through the vanity. His vision is a sardonic one, and it feels as if his cinematic smirks conceal rage at the impotence and banality of which ordinary life is made.
Posted Aug 09, 2024
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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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The commitment to the story and characters is unmistakable, and Baldoni elicits performances of tautly focussed, high-relief earnestness...but what remains is a mechanism of thrilling power that's missing a touch of mere humanity.
Posted Aug 09, 2024
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Twisters
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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For all its concessions to modern times, Twisters doesn't make much progress at all.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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Fly Me to the Moon
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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This rom-com about the marketing of the Apollo space program, starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, has an inconsistent tone and a vague point of view.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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No Fear, No Die
(1990)
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Richard Brody
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The events that make up the action of No Fear, No Die are more than merely well imagined and plausible; they seem to have been excerpted from a fully realized world.
Posted Jul 23, 2024
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Green Border
(2023)
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Justin Chang
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With pulse-pounding sweep and moral fury, the veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland turns her camera on injustice at the Polish-Belarusian border.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Naked Acts
(1996)
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Richard Brody
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Bridgett M. Davis's 1996 drama centers the art of movies on the legacy and the experiences of Black actresses.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Flipside
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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Chris Wilcha’s documentary explores life, love, and art through his connection to a venerable record store.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Shoeshine
(1946)
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Richard Brody
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Vittorio De Sica's 1946 neorealist drama helped put Italian movies at the center of world cinema.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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The Bikeriders
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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The Bikeriders displays the cost of noninterventionist direction, of sticking to source material with a self-inhibiting fidelity. These characters are still in search of their auteur.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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The three-hour Western, the first installment of a planned tetralogy, rushes through its many stories and straight past American history.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Last Summer
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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Breillat's new film, a fiercely antagonistic tale of an incestuous affair, is both a long-delayed return to work and an artistic self-renewal.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Janet Planet
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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Annie Baker’s first feature conceals its depth of experience under a narrow array of details.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Music
(2023)
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Justin Chang
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In unfurling the story of a boy who becomes a killer, a lover, and a singer, the German director Angela Schanelec continues to move to her own inimitable beat.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Hit Man
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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The talk in Hit Man, which conveys the twisted fury of desire, makes this film a far more satisfying and substantial love story...
Posted Jun 15, 2024
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Janet Planet
(2023)
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Justin Chang
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Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler play a mother and her eleven-year-old daughter in a story that quietly sidesteps coming-of-age drama conventions.
Posted Jun 15, 2024
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The Most Precious of Cargoes
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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The movie becomes a bathetic wallow in Holocaust imagery, drowned in an Alexandre Desplat score whose every surge turned my heart increasingly to stone.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Marcello Mio
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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In this trifling meta-comedy from the French filmmaker Christophe Honoré, the actress Chiara Mastroianni embarks on a strainedly whimsical personal odyssey to examine the legacy of her late father, the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Apprentice
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama... It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Wild Diamond
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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The movie glancingly suggests the soul-rotting effects of beauty worship, but it falls victim to the trap that Liane is trying to avoid: in a sea of worthy candidates, it doesn’t especially stand out.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Parthenope
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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[Parthenope is] played by Celeste Dalla Porta, a great beauty indeed and an empathetic screen presence, though only fitfully does her character seem worthy of this movie’s epic enshrinement.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Why make a film about Eduard Limonov, the globe-trotting Russian dissident poet and punk provocateur reviled for his pro-fascist sympathies? The filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov never musters a satisfying answer in this muddled English-language bio-pic.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Beating Hearts
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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The result is much too long at nearly three hours, but I can’t say I didn’t warm to its rambunctious cornball charm.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Bird
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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The story may lose you -- as it lost me -- with a magical-realist turn that magnifies, rather than minimizes, the tortured-animal symbolism that has often dogged Arnold’s work.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scales back -- but goes long -- with a sprawling, increasingly tedious compendium of comic cruelty.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Three Kilometres to the End of the World
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Though the movie is persuasive enough as an indictment of small-town religious fundamentalism and homophobia, it proves curiously incurious about Adi’s perspective, to the detriment of its own human pulse.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Girl with the Needle
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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It’s a bitterly hard-to-stomach brew of a movie, at once hideous and beautifully made, with a chilling supporting turn by Trine Dyrholm.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Oh Canada
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Schrader bravely forsakes the narrative fastidiousness of his recent work and takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning, to formally ragged but sincerely moving effect.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Emilia Perez
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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I was disarmed from the start by Audiard’s quasi-Almodóvarian vibes, his touchingly imperfect embrace of song-and-dance stylization, and, most of all, his three leads.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Motel Destino
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Set at a seedy roadside motel where the clientele never stops moaning, it’s a feverishly shambling erotic thriller starring three very game actors in a romantic triangle that plays like James M. Cain with sex toys.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Substance
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Whether the outlandish premise and its blood-gushing fallout withstand intellectual scrutiny, there’s no doubting the ferocity of the two leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, or Fargeat’s sheer filmmaking verve.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Shrouds
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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A drolly fluid inspection of classic Cronenberg themes -- the deterioration of the flesh, the instability of the image, the paranoia-inducing incursions of technology into every aspect of life -- but imbued with a nakedly personal dimension.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Anora
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Baker’s multifaceted love for his characters proves infectious and sustaining, as does his belief that acts of unexpected kindness can redeem even the darkest nights of the soul.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Seed of the Sacred Fig
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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A thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Grand Tour
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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Its true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.
Posted May 30, 2024
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All We Imagine as Light
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration.
Posted May 30, 2024
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Caught by the Tides
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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It’s an achievement by turns fleeting and monumental: a series of interlocking time capsules, a wrenching feat of self-reflection, and a stealth musical.
Posted May 30, 2024
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The Idea of You
(2024)
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Katy Waldman
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Anne Hathaway, as Solène, is a vision of relatability, self-sufficiency, and poise, in a film that proves the rom-com isn’t dead.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Babes
(2024)
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Carrie Battan
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The humor of the quiet Babes emerges in small moments of absurdity...
Posted May 20, 2024
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Megalopolis
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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After a thirteen-year absence, a great American director returns with an ambitious vision of a city—and a world—in need of renewal.
Posted May 20, 2024
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Let It Be
(1970)
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Richard Brody
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For all the troubles the movie reveals, it’s nonetheless a joyful compendium of creative energy.
Posted May 10, 2024
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The Contestant
(2023)
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Inkoo Kang
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It’s the story of Nasubi’s post-TV life that elevates “The Contestant” from a chronicle of exploitation to a tale of resilience and reinvention.
Posted May 09, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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An intricate time-jumping framework is a large part of what makes the film distinctive, but the compromises made to achieve this are responsible for a pervasive feeling of emptiness.
Posted May 07, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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Schoenbrun’s vision of adolescence is finely detailed, with a clear understanding of the relations of adolescents to their parents and to each other.
Posted May 03, 2024
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The Fall Guy
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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As a movie that takes place in the world of movies, “The Fall Guy” displays a palpable joy in craft, revelling in the deftness of its comedy, the inventiveness of its stunts, and a generous sprinkling of Easter eggs.
Posted May 02, 2024
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The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
(2023)
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Richard Brody
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Arnow’s poignant and original performance—refined in its awkwardness, exalted in its degradation, touched with grace in its rude self-presentation—is a double masterwork of acting and directing.
Posted Apr 29, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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Justin Chang
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A funny, tempestuous, and exuberantly lusty story about how three athletic demigods see their destinies upended. And Guadagnino tells it the way he knows best, with a sometimes exasperating but ultimately irresistible surfeit of style.
Posted Apr 24, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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Richard Brody
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Clamorously making its claim on viewers’ attention by subject matter alone, rather than by artistry or world view, the film is a kind of advertisement for itself.
Posted Apr 23, 2024
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The Mad Miss Manton
(1938)
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Pauline Kael
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This is the kind of movie that helped kill the screwball genre.
Posted Apr 17, 2024
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