Writer-director Leigh Whannell makes art out of pulp in Upgrade, the year’s most inventive and entertaining movie, a mash up of Verhoeven, Cronenberg, Cameron, Crichton and a touch of Clarke. A freewheeling, near future, sci-fi actioner that manages to incorporate a spectrum of influences…
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Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, about a reverend’s crisis of faith, is the most narratively and thematically ambitious American film this year. A meditation on spiritual ennui and glimpse into the mind of a bleak character peering into the abyss without comfort, Schrader’s film is…
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One might imagine that any movie written by Ian McEwan based one of his novels and starring Saoirse Ronan would be a high-toned, psychologically complex and absorbing trip. Yet in the case of On Chesil Beach, one would be wrong. In a tedious misfire,…
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What if we could all be at peak confidence 24/7? Would we finally manifest the lives we so often make excuses not to attain? If we see ourselves differently, will everyone else? We can now forgive Amy Schumer for the lowbrow hijinks of 2016’s…
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Lean on Pete works on the strength of a terrific performance from young star Charlie Plummer as a down-on-his luck teen who befriends a past-his-prime racehorse. The pair teams up for a leisurely trek across the West in a modest movie that has a…
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The central visual motif in A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s heartland horror story of a distant future where marauding creatures lurk, is the “shhh” of an index finger covering the lips. The actors barely make a sound, and neither does the audience for a…
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Steven Spielberg’s visionary Ready Player One straddles old and new—post-modern and nostalgic—in a conceptual feat of imagination equal parts endearing and fatiguing. Guess which one wins? Despite its loving homage to 80s pop culture, the master has crafted a check-box movie with only a…
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The merits of Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman are primarily a deeply human performance from revelatory star Daniela Vega and a well-observed portrait of quiet dignity in the face of an unforgiving world. It is a movie, in its own way, as much about…
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A powerhouse Diane Kruger drives Fatih Akin’s German thriller In the Fade, a gripping descent into grief and revenge courtesy of the star’s 2017 Cannes-winning performance. Kruger, in every scene of the film, acts with a startling rawness, clawing deeply into the emotions of…
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