Love Story
Let’s get this out of the way: Love Story isn’t an accurate retelling of the marriage between John F. Kennedy…
Nickel Boys
Dir. RaMell Ross
The first things that grab your attention in Nickel Boys are its beauty and technicality. Director RaMell Ross, a large-format…
Four Daughters
Dir. Kaouther Ben Hania
Normally, a film like this would be a straightforward documentary with archival footage and key interviews with experts in the…
American Fiction
Dir. Cord Jefferson
On the one hand, American Fiction is a razor-sharp satire that pokes fun at the hypocrisy of the literary and…
Howards End
Is a TV adaptation necessary when we already have a novel and film version of Howards End? Probably not, but…
The Mission
Dir. Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss
In this documentary about John Allen Chau — the American Christian missionary reportedly killed when he tried to preach the…
Minari
Dir. Lee Isaac Chung
Minari is a film written and directed by Lee Isaac Chung, about a Korean-American family in search of the so-called…
Mildred Pierce
With the Hays code, the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s novel had to be changed to depict Mildred Pierce…
Love Affair
Dir. Leo McCarey
Has there ever been a romance film more iconic than Love Affair? Modern moviegoers might find the plot a tad…
12 Angry Men
Dir. William Friedkin
Even a director of William Friedkin’s caliber had his work cut out for him with this remake of the towering…
Spellbound
Dir. Jeffrey Blitz
There’s a natural competitive thrill to this chronicle of the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee and eight of its bright…
Top Hat
Dir. Mark Sandrich
Is there a film as transcendent as Top Hat? While the plot could have easily been resolved by a personal…
Tender Mercies
Dir. Bruce Beresford
Tender Mercies is mostly a musical drama. There’s no score at all, only performances of guitar-strung songs, mostly original, which…
Fargo
Taking the violence and offbeat comedy of the original movie and adding constantly expanding narratives on top of it, Noah…
Atlantic City
Dir. Louis Malle
At first glance, Atlantic City is indistinguishable from most other crime films. It’s led by a charming gangster (Burt Lancaster)…
Of Mice and Men
Dir. Gary Sinise
It’s not fair to say if you’ve read the book, you’ve seen the movie, but it’s also not wholly untrue.…
The Brutalist
Dir. Brady Corbet
Just a few minutes in, you can already feel the immensity of The Brutalist. The rousing score stirs you. The…
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Dir. Héctor Babenco
Sometimes, all you need to make a good movie is to get two vastly different characters and force them to…
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Dir. Richard Brooks
Given the Hays Code, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has toned down an important part from the original play,…
Missing
Dir. Nicholas D. Johnson & Will Merrick
When Big Tech and trolls have all but villainized the internet, it’s hard to forget that good can come out…
Quiz Show
Dir. Robert Redford
Long before we became accustomed to oxymorons like “scripted reality” shows, there was a time when viewers could expect to…
Belfast
Dir. Kenneth Branagh
Belfast stars Outlander’s Caitríona Balfe as the mother of a working-class Northern Irish family during The Troubles. Religious tension and…
The Last Picture Show
Dir. Peter Bogdanovich
These days, most coming-of-age films tend to have a comic or hopeful tone to them. It’s hard being a teenager,…