Sundance Is a Feast of World Cinema
Manuel’s approach to narrative is as original as his sense of cinematic form, and his gift for documentary-style observation is balanced by a refined sense of style. (He sketched this…
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movie reviews
“Melania” Is a Forty-Million-Dollar Journey Into the Void
The First Lady’s lavish new documentary portrays world events as B-roll between wardrobe changes. Source link
“Dead Man’s Wire” Is a Tangle of Loose Threads
The film draws a link between these journalistic versions and the unfolding action through the character of Linda Page (Myha’la), a TV reporter on the scene outside the office building.…
The Best Films of 2025
This year’s best movies feel plugged in, inextricably connected to forces bigger than the ordinary faces of local and private authority—and confrontationally so, with a sense of danger and…
“Fire of Wind” Is a Bold and Inspired Début
There is a sense of replay in the heightened and artificial diction with which Mateus has her cast bear witness, and this sense is enhanced by the painterly compositions that frame the…
In Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” a Vast Vision Gets Netflixed Down to Size
The first time we encounter the Creature, though, we see almost nothing of him at all: he is a faceless wraith, in a dark cloak and a vengeful mood, coldly pursuing his creator, Baron…
Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” Reinvents the Heist Movie
One of the joys of reviewing movies is witnessing a longtime filmmaker’s artistic breakthrough, as has happened with Kelly Reichardt. A serious director with a principled world view, she…
The Real Battle of “One Battle After Another”
A first viewing of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” mainly sets up the pleasure of seeing it again. The movie, which runs two hours and forty-one minutes, is stuffed with…
What to See in the 2025 New York Film Festival’s Second Week
When I’m looking at what’s on offer in the Revivals section of the New York Film Festival—and, for that matter, whenever I see a noteworthy retrospective coming to one of the city’s…
“The Smashing Machine” Pulls Its Punches
Only two kinds of actors are bad: those who can’t be themselves and those who you wish wouldn’t be. All the rest are likely to shine in movies by good directors, and most actors whose…
What to See in the 2025 New York Film Festival’s First Week
The New York Film Festival, the centerpiece of the city’s year in cinephilia, is a victim of its own success. Many of its most noteworthy films are already scheduled for commercial release…
“Megadoc” Shows Francis Ford Coppola Going for Broke on “Megalopolis”
Figgis comments that Coppola uses the script as a mere premise, and he likens Coppola’s approach to it as “instinctive,” calling the director “kind of like a jazz musician.” Voight, who…
The Political Trickery of “Eddington”
With this humiliation, Joe snaps, and, in short order, commits several shocking acts of deadly violence. His brazen maneuvers to cover his tracks soon give rise to tense standoffs with…
“Caught Stealing” Makes New York a Comedic Criminal Nightmare
From the start of Darren Aronofsky’s new film, “Caught Stealing,” it’s apparent that it hits the sweet spot of his cinematic artistry—the right scale, the right scope. Set in the summer of…
“Eden” Is a Desert-Island Thriller That Despoils Itself
The new movie “Eden” features bursts of foul temper, wild sex, grisly violence, and nihilist ideology—a departure, you might say, for Ron Howard, a director whose cinematic disposition can…
What The New Yorker Was Watching in 1925
Film criticism at The New Yorker started with a bang: the first movie reviewed in the first issue, dated February 21, 1925, was the German director F. W. Murnau’s “The Last Laugh,” a…
“Honey Don’t!” Revives the Spirit of the Coen Brothers’ Movies
The main elements of Ethan Coen’s new film, “Honey Don’t!,” are sex and violence. Both involve profound sensations and potentially life-changing events; both reveal personality at its most…
“My Undesirable Friends: Part I” Is a Staggering Portrait of Russian Journalists in Dissent
Because the Russian alphabet has no direct equivalent of the letter “H,” speakers often substitute a “G” sound; “Harry Potter” thus becomes “Garry Potter.” We’re reminded of this funny…
The Shrewdly Regenerative Apocalypse of “28 Years Later”
Perhaps because cannibalism comes with the territory, the zombie movie has proved uncommonly immune to a certain strain of critical attack: the kind that instinctively finds fault with the…
“Ballerina” Leaps into John Wick’s Bloody World
It’s been instructive to see “Ballerina,” which opens this week, so soon after the new “Mission: Impossible” installment. In the latter, it’s hard to top Tom Cruise’s intrepid stunt work,…
A Joyfully Chaotic Tribute to Pavement in “Pavements”
Rock documentaries and bio-pics have been parodied for nearly as long as they have existed, but there’s a reason for their ingrained absurdity that’s even weightier than fan service: music…
“Invention” Probes the American Mind in the Post-Truth Era
Whether a film is a documentary or a fictional drama, all modern cinema is in a sense docu-fictional, because most viewers know that a documentary is carefully crafted to yield a narrative…