Breeder Review: Intelligence Has Its Price
Russell’s grant interview in Breeder could belong to a different American film, one about a gifted young man waiting for...
Read moreDetails
Before the harvest god receives an offering in Banquet for Fools, somebody has to obtain the food and carry it to the shrine. Those provisions have weight, take effort to replace, and could sustain the party on its next expedition. Surrendering them gives worship a material cost. The ceremony extends backward into the work of preparing for it, through decisions about what can be spared and how far it must travel. Religious belief becomes easier to understand when its demands occupy the same bag as dinner. Across Invimona, supernatural protection belongs to everyday life. Settlements depend on chanters who repel...

The drive up to Bürglkopf comes with an instruction about where the camera must stop. As the mountain passes outside the car window, a telephone conversation establishes that Lisa Polster cannot film inside the return centre for asylum seekers she has come to investigate. Her documentary, Out of Sight, must therefore build its account from outside the grounds. Before we hear the residents describe their isolation, the production has encountered a restriction of its own. Polster responds by assembling the film around interviews, exterior views and encounters with the surrounding community. The centre, situated approximately 1,300 metres above sea level...

Chris Packham refuses to give the elephant’s trunk a short answer. Watching African savanna elephants at a Kenyan watering hole, he takes the question of how this animal came to exist back through the history of life, until CGI has replaced the elephant with a cell. The trunk will have to wait. What keeps this enormous excursion manageable is the animal we have already seen: however unfamiliar the territory becomes, there remains something specific to explain. Moving between living animals and reconstructed ancestors, Evolution lets us understand the elephant’s body as an accumulation of changes without having to retain every...

Ozzy Osbourne’s eyes disclose how much effort the voice requires. Seated on his black throne, he can no longer command the stage through movement, and the cinema image makes the strain in his face available for inspection. There is something uncomfortable about such proximity. Looking closely can become a form of taking. Yet his singing gives that scrutiny a purpose: the force of the performance emerges through the visible work of producing it. His expression asks for attention; the voice knows what to do with it. The stage accommodates this altered balance of power with considerable intelligence. A lighting truss...

Anna speaks to Maxim Bortnikov with a composure his circumstances hardly encourage. His spacesuit is failing, debris keeps obstructing his return to safety, and her guidance provides both a practical way forward and someone to listen to. Voiced by Anna Chipovskaya, the artificial intelligence in Oleg Urazaykin’s Free Fall makes technical instruction sound companionable. Their exchanges draw intimacy from an unequal arrangement: Maxim urgently needs help, and Anna gets to describe what help should involve. Maxim’s occasional refusal to follow her advice prevents reassurance from settling into easy trust. He needs her competence without always accepting her direction, a distinction...

You can afford to study the mutated brontosaurus from the gift-shop rafters. Its distorted body looks a little ridiculous once there is some distance between you and its mouth. Down below, it is a reason to panic. Up here, it belongs to the same strange attraction that sells dinosaur souvenirs. Terrible Lizards lets both responses exist, with your position in the room deciding which takes priority. Eventually, of course, you have to leave the rafters. Jordan accelerates into a sprint almost immediately, and generous control in the air lets you adjust a jump instead of helplessly watching it go wrong....
Russell’s grant interview in Breeder could belong to a different American film, one about a gifted young man waiting for...
Read moreDetailsKarl, the psychiatric nurse played by Rory Culkin, has room in his sympathies for a serial killer and rather less...
Read moreDetailsAgnes van Rhijn has a president coming to dinner and a sister who controls the money. The second arrangement considerably...
Read moreDetailsDeliberately letting a stalker spot Susan can be a practical way to clear a blocked route. In Remothered: Red Nun’s...
Read moreDetailsMichael Kavanagh has a useful way of describing his participation in a collapsing criminal enterprise: “Things happened, none of which...
Read moreDetailsCameras are rolling in Venice on “Upgraded 2,” the sequel to Amazon MGM Studios’ 2024 romantic comedy, with Camila Mendes back as lead and Leslie Bibb joining the cast. Filming began Oct. 21 and weaves the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest contemporary art fair, into the story. Locations include the...
Read moreDetails
2025 was exhausting. That's the word that keeps coming back. Another year of watching studios spend Scrooge McDuck money on ...

TV in 2025 gave us some genuinely great stuff—the kind of episodes that make you immediately grab your phone to ...

2025 was supposed to be the Year of GTA, the kind of calendar monopoly that turns every other release into ...

Television in 2025 asked us to choose between spectacle and substance, between the gravitational pull of massive franchises and the ...

Each December, the ritual repeats: critics and publications compile their year-end lists, ranking cinema's offerings with the confidence that suggests ...

There exists a peculiar alchemy in the best Christmas movies, a transformative quality that converts flickering light into shared memory. ...

Fantasy cinema is where imagination grows up to full scale and feeling takes on mythic weight. This list ranks thirty ...

Lights down, snacks within reach, and a screen ready to throw a little fear into the room: Halloween is a ...

Science fiction has always been a laboratory for ideas that feel too large for everyday life. It turns questions about ...

Compiling a list of the best horror movies is a precarious, perhaps foolish, endeavor. The metrics for "best" are slippery. ...

Human beings look for motion to quiet the mind, a charge of speed to drown out the static of the ...

Drama occupies cinema’s most elusive terrain. Horror grips with visceral shocks. Action thrills through spectacle and speed. But drama speaks ...
The opening episode of the BBC's nature documentary series Mammals takes us into the nighttime world inhabited by many furry ...
Read moreBefore the harvest god receives an offering in Banquet for Fools, somebody has to obtain the food and carry it to the shrine. Those provisions have weight, take effort to...
The drive up to Bürglkopf comes with an instruction about where the camera must stop. As the mountain passes outside the car window, a telephone conversation establishes that Lisa Polster...
Chris Packham refuses to give the elephant’s trunk a short answer. Watching African savanna elephants at a Kenyan watering hole, he takes the question of how this animal came to...
Ozzy Osbourne’s eyes disclose how much effort the voice requires. Seated on his black throne, he can no longer command the stage through movement, and the cinema image makes the...
Anna speaks to Maxim Bortnikov with a composure his circumstances hardly encourage. His spacesuit is failing, debris keeps obstructing his return to safety, and her guidance provides both a practical...
You can afford to study the mutated brontosaurus from the gift-shop rafters. Its distorted body looks a little ridiculous once there is some distance between you and its mouth. Down...
Sandra promises her friends a party at her new place before she has even viewed it. The address is in the Hollywood Hills, the rent is $300 a month, and...
Vitold Ashurak asks for photographs of ordinary life. Printed in colour and sent into prison, these amateur images carry the almost unbearable privilege of having been somewhere else. Someone could...
Cameras are rolling in Venice on “Upgraded 2,” the sequel to Amazon MGM Studios’ 2024 romantic comedy, with Camila Mendes back as lead and Leslie Bibb joining the cast. Filming...
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is steering the Oscars toward a worldwide audience, and CEO Bill Kramer says the 2020 best picture win for “Parasite” started it....
Before the harvest god receives an offering in Banquet for Fools, somebody has to obtain the food and carry it...
Read moreDetails









