The Dardennes have always seemed like filmmakers who saw Jeanne Dielman at an impressionable age and decided every film they’d ever make should follow that vision - at roughly half the length. The Can...

Going into this, I had seen seven Kurosawa films and given every single one of them four stars. There’s something about his work that feels epic and accomplished almost by default - even the ones I ad...

I can’t say I’m a Ken Loach aficionado. I’ve seen The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Sorry We Missed You, two very different films. This sits firmly in the latter camp - a story about people who, thr...

For the first of my “watch all the Palme d’Or winners since 1980” project, I started here, a film that actually tied for the award in 1979 with an unfinished version of Apocalypse Now, beating out Day...

That title is doing absolutely nothing to prepare you for what this film actually is. Going in blind, you’d expect something gothic and supernatural - and while the film has those qualities, the story...

There’s a genuinely compelling movie buried somewhere inside this 1985 action thriller directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. The premise alone is the kind of pure, primal cinema concept that practically di...

In this modern age of “I did my own research,” I’m surprised the contrarians of YouTube and TikTok haven’t gotten a hold of this film. But much like American Psycho and Fight Club, it risks being badl...

I’ll admit upfront that I haven’t seen Fleabag, though by all accounts it seems like exactly the kind of show I’d enjoy. My exposure to Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been minimal, so I came into this witho...

I was in Disney World last week and sat through the Indiana Jones stunt show for the first time. The host called out everyone in the audience who hadn’t seen all five films, and I felt personally atta...

I don’t know what is the most disappointing thing about this movie: the slow degradation of Edgar Wright’s filmmaking prowess or the vast miscalculation of what could’ve made this modern remake someth...

The difficulty of pulling off a historical film about a religious figure is keeping it from being too preachy. But director Mona Fastvold doesn’t set out to convert us all into Shakers. She sets out t...

The beauty of horror in space movies is you aren’t restricted to the boundaries of standard horror. Now, horror can be as weird as it wants to be, but when the setting is Earth, there are only so many...

Full disclosure: I saw this in theater with my 13-year-old son during a rough week - fighting a head cold, grinding anxiety I couldn’t shake. I mention this not as an excuse but as honest context, bec...

Now that awards season has wrapped, I’ve set myself the task of working through a string of acclaimed British films that have somehow remained in my blind spot. First up: this absolute mindf**k of a m...

The poster and title of this movie make it sound like it's going to be about some faith-based thing. It is decidedly not — or at least, not in any conventional sense. The grace in question is harder-w...

My wife is an escapist moviegoer. She doesn’t want films that make her work too hard or drag her through an emotional winter - the kind of cold that settles in your chest with anxiety or depression. S...

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from watching a film that clearly wants to mean something but can’t quite figure out how to be interesting at the same time. This road trip dramedy,...

Poor-sploitation in the 2000s got a lot of people Oscar nominations. This film is a prime example of the formula: take a grim, unglamorous setting, fill it with desperate people making desperate choic...

After a near-fatal car accident left me hospitalized for a month, people would say “that must’ve been so difficult.” And while they meant it broadly, I always found it a little funny - because I simpl...

Sean Penn is briefly in this film as a Cuban. Maybe three minutes. So that’s weird. I’m not a big Julian Schnabel fan. At Eternity’s Gate is fine, and I’m not nearly as enamored with The Diving Bell a...

Oh, this movie is boring. It carries the same kind of energy as My Week with Marilyn - a glossy, period-dressed character study built around a single dazzling central performance - except without the ...

The most remarkable thing about this 2003 New Zealand film is also its most discussed: Keisha Castle-Hughes, then 13, earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination - one of the rarest things in Hollywood. Wh...

During the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, I was 12 years old, deeply in love with gymnast Dominique Moceanu, and only vaguely aware of the Centennial Park bombing that serves as the backdrop for this film. I ...

This is the kind of movie that feels like it should be a classic, even when it never quite coheres into one. It’s messy, tonally slippery, and occasionally exhausting, but it’s also anchored by one of...

Most films about obsessive protagonists follow a familiar arc - trials, tribulations, some form of growth or at least earned empathy. Think Miles Teller in Whiplash: we may not fully grasp his despera...

My god, Jessie Buckley goes THROUGH IT. And yet, paradoxically, the true power of this film comes not from its tragedy — which is, let’s be honest, literally half the film — but from the contrast Chlo...

This film arrives soaked - in atmosphere, in paranoia, and literally, in sweat. Set in 1970’s Brazil, every frame of this film seems to perspire. Wagner Moura’s Marcelo dabs his brow, peels his shirt ...

Going in, I assumed this would be little more than a handsome costume drama: corsets, cliff walks, and repressed Victorian longing. It’s only half that, and even then, only sort of. The film operates ...

I always return to a moment from, of all places, Kevin Smith’s Dogma when I think about religion. Salma Hayek, playing a muse, says, “it’s not about who’s right or wrong. No denomination’s nailed it y...

Isabelle Adjani commands the screen with the intensity of a French telenovela star - and I mean that as both compliment and criticism. Having seen seven of her films (with Possession standing as her m...

Going in blind was the best decision I made with this movie. I expected a straightforward music biopic, and while it technically is one, it takes some unconventional detours that left me genuinely con...

William Wyler’s 1961 adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play remains a powerfully unsettling examination of reputation, lies, and societal cruelty. Like The Bad Seed, this film boldly acknowledges someth...

The court will not tolerate contemptuous fripperies. This tackles apartheid-era South Africa with admirable seriousness, but the execution leaves much to be desired. While the film deserves credit for...

Scotland looks absolutely awesome in this film. As someone who watches Outlander with my wife, I’m constantly amazed by how big and open those landscapes are (no idea where they actually film it, but ...

I used to watch these 80s and 90s courtroom dramas and complain endlessly about the lack of character development. These movies are too - pardon the term - “black and white,” reducing complex social i...

Richard Jenkins delivers an Oscar nominated masterclass in understated brilliance in this little film. As one of cinema’s finest character actors, Jenkins eschews the typical leading-man bravado for s...

This film arrived in 1983 (like ME!), adapting Carol Amen’s brief 1981 story into a Cold War meditation that sidesteps geopolitical grandstanding for something more intimate and unsettling. It underst...

I like to imagine a world where the “Directors on Directors” video series defies time and space, letting deceased filmmakers discuss their craft beyond their contemporaries. Let David Lean chat with C...

First, I want to make it clear: naming a cat “Marty” is fantastic. What makes people “crazy?” One could argue it’s a variation from what we have, as a society, deemed “normal.” But where does the norm...

Richard Linklater operates best when invisible, letting screenplay and performance breathe without directorial flourish. This exemplifies this philosophy perfectly. Over ninety minutes, we shadow lyri...

Someone online said if you combined Mad Max: Fury Road with Sorcerer and left it to bake out in the sun, you’d get this. That’s not too far off from a surface-level perspective, though this film carve...

I was laid off this past April - the same month I finished my doctorate. To collect unemployment, I applied to 54 jobs in the first month alone, finally starting work in August. The hidden blessing? M...

Pedro Almodovar has crafted another near-masterpiece with this one. Having seen seven of his films “Talk to Her” and “Bad Education” being previous favorites - I’m continually amazed by his command of...

This arrives with all the trappings of prestige cinema - acclaimed actresses, an inspiring true story, glossy cinematography - yet somehow manages to feel like an overproduced Lifetime special that wa...

As a courtroom drama enthusiast, I gravitate toward films that delve into the mundane intricacies of legal practice: the paperwork, the research, the painstaking construction of arguments. This film a...

As someone coming to Jafar Panahi’s work for the first time with this, I found myself appreciating the film’s restraint and humanity, even if it didn’t completely blow me away. This showcases what see...

Do NOT buy a nine-year-old The Piano Teacher and Irreversible for his birthday. That slightly unhinged joke is about as close as this film ever gets to levity, but it also gestures toward what Joachim...

Ah, the white savior trope in all its formulaic glory. Meryl Streep has been nominated for 21 acting Oscars throughout her illustrious career. Someone this prolific is inevitably bound to have a few c...