I skipped this in theaters, assuming it would be mildly enjoyable, an offbeat comedy with some deeper thematic material thrown in to give it some dramatic weight, but I now regret having written it off, because this turned out to be the biggest surprise of the year for me. The writing, direction, and performances are perfectly calibrated. Understated yet emotional, funny without being too cute or quirky, serious but not somber, and most importantly, it all feels totally grounded. These…

Corbet's follow up to Vox Lux, one of the most polarizing (and best, imo) films of the past decade, is a rebuke of the American Dream (as one can immediately gather from the poster image), an epic which spans decades in its 3+ hour runtime. It's perfectly paced—to my mind, at least; I overheard a few people describe it as "tedious" during the intermission, but I was shocked when both halves ended far sooner than I expected—features some of the…

I stopped watching trailers years ago (even in theaters: phone's out, earbuds in) and it's one of the best choices I've made, because I can walk into a movie like this with zero expectations, as if I were in its festival premiere. I can't say for sure if knowing the outline of the plot (which is pretty clearly laid out in the marketing) would have diminished my experience watching this, but I doubt I'd have had such a beaming smile…

Soderbergh’s most daring film yet, Presence is a fascinating work, incredibly ambitious (within its own modest means) though not entirely successful. Soderbergh ultimately tries too many things, and occasionally the ideas or tones clash—most detrimentally the gulf between the naturalistic direction/acting and the sometimes ludicrously melodramatic writing—but it doesn’t diminish the film’s surprising emotional power, largely due to the cast doing incredible work to balance the tone. Those looking for a genre picture from Soderbergh will walk away disappointed, as…

Quite excellent until its final act. The cinematography, score, editing choices, and, most of all, the performances are firing on all cylinders. Guadagnino's electrifying filmmaking makes the shifting character dynamics as edge-of-your-seat thrilling as any of the tennis match showdowns. But in the end it sacrifices, and in some ways betrays, the character motivations it took nearly 2 hours to establish in detail, rushing through contrived plot developments in order to land on a final note that would be sensational…

I intentionally avoided rewatching the first part, especially at home, because I feared the "astonishing sense of grandeur," as I called it, would be dulled on a second viewing. Maybe my tepid reaction to this second part is confirmation of that. I found myself losing interest as it went along, neither awed by the spectacle nor intrigued by the story. Villeneuve does an admirable job adapting the book's much more challenging second half, but there's no avoiding the inherent goofiness…

Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust drama pushes the real horror off screen, showing only marginal glimpses of the concentration camp directly over the wall of the Commandant's family home. The physical barrier shields his family's view of the genocide occurring next door, but the sounds of the atrocities cannot be diminished, and its this juxtaposition of audio and visuals which makes the film so unsettling. But while I admire this unique approach to the material, its effect starts to wear thin at…

Fincher's funniest film by a mile, The Killer is about a hitman who lacks all self-awareness. He's profoundly bad at his job and unbearably corny, spouting generic aphorisms he thinks are wise and clever when they're actually rote and meaningless (and hilariously so). Fincher's made a career out of films about insipid protagonists who foolishly think they are far more intelligent and deep than the world around them, and this may be his purest distillation of that idea yet. That…