The Best US Movies Movies to Watch

Unlike the other documentaries depicting “Hollywood’s smartest dumb blonde”, My Mom Jayne takes on a different approach to Jayne Mansfield. Already the title tells you that it’s from the perspective of one of her children– namely, her youngest daughter Mariska Hargitay– so naturally, it takes a more respectful depiction than what’s been shown of her peers. Hargitay and her siblings present a different kind of retrospective, reassembling the remaining fragments with a more personal touch and an unexpected family mystery. My Mom Jayne is such an excellent portrait of Jayne Mansfield, one that opens surprising layers to the person behind the bombshell persona.

John Candy: I Like Me takes a somewhat standard approach in remembering the titular comedian. The film pulls out old footage, brings together his loved ones, and they sing praises of what a good guy he was. Given his profession, there were also certain moments where the film explains some jokes, which kills some of the humor. However, it’s a testament to Candy that it doesn’t come across as totally boring, even for non-comedy buffs. Like looking through old photo albums, and rewatching an actor’s old work, John Candy: I Like Me genuinely likes the guy, celebrating the gentle soul and consummate performer that helped define his generation’s comedy.

Depicting the horrifying cycle of abuse in the state’s prison system, The Alabama Solution is tough to watch. It was already hard to reckon with the related news reports, but what makes this documentary necessary is the way filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman teamed up with activists inside to get a deeper look into the prisons themselves. We mean this literally. A third of the footage comes straight from smuggled phones by the inmates, compiled for more than a decade, with much higher stakes than other works that employed guerilla filmmaking. Piecing together their footage with case reviews, news releases, and the state government’s wasteful, lackluster response, The Alabama Solution reveals the need for a better approach.

With the anonymity of the internet, it’s hard to trust that the stranger on the other side would be a good person. There’s catfishers and scammers and trolls, oh my! Once in a while, however, you do meet someone cool. Bob Trevino Likes It was inspired by a real life friendship writer-director Tracie Laymon had, and that lends to how personal the entire film feels. Bob and Lily feel real. It’s in part to how Laymon introduces their loneliness in a world that doesn’t treat them right, but the tender, pseudo-parental chemistry formed between Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo carries the writing in such a realistic way. The kindness that they share feels transformative, and it’s genuinely moving to see them work towards caring for themselves because of it.

Sure, many of the tropes in this feel-good romcom would be familiar. Naveen, a shy Indian doctor, loves Jay, a white photographer, though of course, like in many gay and interracial romances, his family is reluctant to support them. However, writers Eric Randall and Madhuri Shekar take these tropes and weave them into something new. Like the oft-referenced Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, A Nice Indian Boy sets out to resolve the conflict by emotional honesty not just expressed by its characters but also by the unabashed sincerity the filmmakers have for their story. A Nice Indian Boy remains funny and sweet all the way through, without sacrificing any respect for all of the characters.

Come See Me in the Good Light takes a somewhat conventional approach in documenting poet Andrea Gibson’s battle against cancer, though that doesn’t mean it’s boring. It works because of the people this documentary follows. It won’t be surprising to hear that Gibson and their partner Megan Falley have the precise words to express this journey– They are poets, after all– but the way each conversation is arranged builds upon each other, easily capturing the context for some of Gibson’s works, as well as how their love transformed the both of them, in spite of all odds. Come See Me in the Good Light does exactly what it says in the title, transforming a familiar battle with illness into an uplifting inspiration of a life well lived.

Twinless starts off something like one of those quirky indies in the 2010s about awkwardly navigating grief and sharing that with someone, unexpectedly. Roman meets Dennis in a support group like The Fault in Our Stars, though with a sibling dynamic a la The Skeleton Twins, filling the void of losing their other half. It’s wholesome, it’s cute, and Dylan O’ Brien and James Sweeney have an instant chemistry that makes their friendship easy to root for. But after the twenty minute mark, this comedy veers into an unexpected direction. For the sake of spoilers, we won’t elaborate, but Twinless cleverly twists what could have been a millennial mumblecore drama into a clever, provocative Gen Z dark comedy that isn’t afraid to go there. Twinless is truly one of its kind.

Code 3 is a comedy about a crazy night out, though the craziness doesn’t stem from drunkenness, drugs, or bad decisions– it comes from the way anything can happen in the shift of a paramedic. And we mean, anything. That means the needle stabbing and projectile vomiting occurs organically. But the crazy night that happens isn’t presented for comedy’s sake only. At the heart of the humor is the understanding of how thankless the job can get, and how much strain the healthcare system is handling even without a pandemic. Code 3 acknowledges their troubles and rightfully honors their work.

Based on the 2011 novella of the same name, Train Dreams depicts the life of Robert Grainier in the first half of the 20th century. It’s a pretty ordinary life. Born without parents, and not quite sociable, Grainier lives a lonely existence, a loneliness that’s interrupted occasionally by talks with his fellow co-workers and the limited time he gets with his family. However, that doesn’t mean it’s boring. Joel Edgerton delivers one of his best performances that subtly depicts his inner world, while writer-director Clint Bentley pairs Grainier’s day-to-day with surreal dreams, feverish imaginings that captures Grainier’s deepest hopes for the people he’s lost. Train Dreams depicts an ordinary life with extraordinary sensitivity.

It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley depicts the life of a musician whose time was cut too short. It’s a tale you might have heard before. He fell in love with the guitar at a young age, busked in small cafes and downtown bars, and won over fans and record labels to create one excellent album, but died just before stardom. This documentary depicts this somewhat conventionally. That being said, while it lacks in original approach, it captures the emotions well, understanding what moved Buckley to his craft. Tackling the loss of his father, music as his refuge, and his conflicted thoughts about fame, It’s Never Over unpacks the artist in a deeply personal way.

Not everybody holds a good relationship with their sisters, but ideally, we get to reunite and repair things in a good time. Unfortunately, for some families, the only time they reunite is due to a parent nearly dying. This is the case in His Three Daughters, where the three sisters meet after years living apart. It’s a common plotline, mostly depicted in the feel-good, family friendly variation, but writer-director Azazel Jacobs makes the three sisters distinct by taking the easy assumptions many people would make about them, and naturally push them to reveal the opposite. Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen form a great trio, delivering equally excellent performances under the same roof.

For the longest time, television seemed to be the antithesis to reading– part of that belief still lingers to this day. However, just before the turn of the millennium, there was a show that didn’t find itself opposite to it, instead, it wanted to be its ally. That show was Reading Rainbow. Butterfly in the Sky tells its story. It’s quite nostalgic, as the show’s former cast and crew recall what it was like, and the way the film structured its sequences captures not just the show itself, but the cultural weight it represented, as it encouraged reading not just as a skill you need to learn, but as a way to interact with the wider world around us, which is worth protecting. Butterfly in the Sky believes in stories, and believes in the story that it wants to tell about Reading Rainbow.

The first things that grab your attention in Nickel Boys are its beauty and technicality. Director RaMell Ross, a large-format photographer, ensures every frame relays something deep, intimate, and moving. Then there’s how he takes these shots: we see things unfold through the POV of Elwood and Turner, students at an abusive reform school in Tallahassee, Florida. The year is 1962, and even though the civil rights movement inspires Elwood and his peers to stand up for themselves, the political climate is as skewed and violent as ever. Nickel Boys tells the unfortunately common story of how Black men, in particular, had to endure unimaginable abuse during the Jim Crow era in the South. What is uncommon, though, is the sensitivity and boundless inventiveness with which Ross tells this story. Yes, violence is unavoidable in a story like this, but Ross swaps trauma porn with something more effective and chilling—a mixture of silence, archival photographs, time jumps, and that immersive POV, which forces you to be in Elwood and Turner’s shoes. The world before them may be brutal, but inside, they hold space for beauty, fun, relationships, and wonder, manifested in the film in dreamy visual sequences. What Ross does is art in the highest form, an unforgettable balance between style and substance.

Continuing her fight to tell the world the truth about her sexual assault case, journalist Shiori Ito released Black Box Diaries. Like her book, it’s a powerful documentary. Filmed with actual CCTV evidence, with some witness accounts, and with recordings she made while investigating her case, Ito’s first foray into film is personal, vulnerable, and intimate, going through the events as it naturally unfolds. While it is depressing to witness the ways investigators, lawyers, politicians and other people have failed her, Black Box Diaries immediately reveals Ito’s resolve for the truth, and how taxing the toll was for survivors that chose to take the same path.

Before she captivated the film world with her performance in Scorcese’s crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone starred in Erica Tremblay’s feature film debut Fancy Dance, earlier in 2023. It’s a tragic drama, wherein Gladstone portrays Jax, a lesbian woman dealing with the government that failed to find her sister, and that currently seeks to transfer her niece’s custody to her white father. But it’s also an uplifting drama, one that celebrates the connection between Jax and her niece Roki, the Cayuga culture and language, and the connection with their community and tribe that continues to persist despite state disenfranchisement. Pacing issues do make the film a tad rushed, but nevertheless, Fancy Dance is a subtle and poignant debut, made much more grounded with the excellent lead performances.

Just based off its title, Mutt is already a film that tackles a state of in-between, and perhaps what makes it already precious is how honest and personal it can get, while remaining a good fictional story. This striking debut took Chilean-Serbian filmmaker Vuk Lungulov-Klotz more than six years to make, at least from the initial stages of the script as he was working through his own transition, how that felt and how he dealt with it in life and art. That said, Mutt is a film that stands on its own feet, without the need for any such context: the script, the performances, the frantic pacing of it, they are all top-level stuff. A generous, open film that has its trans protagonist be who they are, whatever that may be, and gives as much insight as it allows for curiosity and empathy. If Mutt is educational in any way, it is through it’s apt storytelling and truthfulness that bleeds through the screen; its significance for trans cinema cannot be overstated, but it is also once of the most accomplished debuts of 2023.

We Are the World is a charity single created for African famine relief. It was a smash success– it inspired plenty of other charity singles and already has a TV documentary about it. But The Greatest Night in Pop reveals new behind-the-scenes footage with a home video flair, intercut with interviews from those who were in the booth on that fateful day. The anecdotes about that night might have already been said elsewhere, but director Bao Nguyen manages to capture the energy in the room, peeking into the emotions of the various personalities that helped shape the song. It’s an intriguing, if straightforward documentary, and it’s certainly a treat watching the decade’s best voices collaborate to make this one track.

We’re familiar with dick jokes from stand-up comedians, especially male stand-up, but Jacqueline Novak’s 90-minute show about the blow job feels completely new. Get on Your Knees feels like casual storytelling from someone experienced yet distant enough to be a cool authority on it (say, your best friend’s older sister’s best friend), but funnier. It’s like a gossip session about a first experience, except the breathless, dizzying stream of thought is peppered with philosophical thought and points out the absurdity around the language and common attitudes about sex. And as she does so, and as she talks about self-conscious fumbling and unanswered questions, she strides back and forth, in an easy, self-assured way, the way we’d like to feel going into the act.

Exhibiting Forgiveness does what it says in the title. The plot moves when a repentant family member returns to the protagonist’s life to reconcile with them, and in doing so, there’s hope that things would work out between them. Many a depiction would often treat this moment as a simple hurdle to jump over, but like what he does in other mediums, writer-director Titus Kaphar reconfigures this moment with a lived-in understanding of what other depictions gloss over. Through contrasting the present day actions of Tarrell with harrowing flashbacks of the past, and through an incredible cast, Exhibiting Forgiveness paints a more honest, heartwrenching depiction of what it means to truly forgive a parent.

Places evoke certain emotions, but even the most rundown, cramped projects feel special when they’re home. We Grown Now is set in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing complex, an area that was notorious for its crime and poverty, but to Malik and Eric, it’s a place where they became friends. The friendship they share leads them to classic coming-of-age moments like skipping school, egging each other to ask their crush out, and having fun, but unlike other coming-of-age films, these moments aren’t as carefree and consequence-less in the place they live in. We Grown Now is a genuine, full picture of growing up in a rough neighborhood, with both the happiness and hardships the place has to offer.

If you’re expecting a documentary about the particular U2 concert in Sarajevo, to focus exclusively on U2, you’re not really going to get it in Kiss the Future. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s probably the best approach for this particular documentary, as it focuses more on the way Sarajevans found solidarity with each other through the music U2 made in response to the Northern Ireland troubles, and thus, of course, the film needed to focus as well on the Sarajevans’ conflict. Director Nenad Cicin-Sain got key viewpoints on the Bosnian War in Sarajevo, such as Christiane Amanpour, who covered the war, and former President Bill Clinton, but Kiss the Future shines when we hear from the people on the ground, from the Sarajevans that gone through this harrowing time.

There’s a degree of removal in Perpetrator which some viewers may find jarring: most visibly, in the performances, whose heightened sensitivity can seem unlikely for a horror film. That said, director Jennifer Reeder’s main conceit here is to entertain and make you think, and she doesn’t want you to get too comfortable. In the central concept of “Forevering,” a family curse spell that Jonny goes through, Reeder vests her character with metamorphic potential, and with that, ignites hope for a future that is better for women and for horror cinema as a whole. But the film is not overly intellectual. It’s rather intuitive in its world-building and celebrates horror’s final girl trope in a well-deserved way. A little gore, some slasher tropes, LGBTQ+ themes, and strong central characters make it a perfect pre-Halloween treat.

It’s hard not to watch The Unknown Country and think of Nomadland: along with similarities in their Terrence Malick-inspired visuals, both films follow lone women seeking catharsis on the road as they grieve profound losses. But Morrisa Maltz’s debut feature is a decidedly lower-key, more spiritual affair — and is all the better for it.

The film is light on plot exposition, but it’s clear from her soft melancholy that Tana (Lily Gladstone) has set off on this road trip following a personal loss, a meandering journey that takes her from freezing Minnesota to Oglala Lakota reservations in South Dakota and down through Texas. Along the way, she reunites with loved ones and crosses paths with total strangers, all of whom are played by charismatic non-professional actors whose real life stories earn as much of the spotlight as Tana’s impressionistically shot journey. These moments of documentary, Gladstone’s naturalistic performance, Andrew Hajek’s contemplative images of lush American landscapes, and the film’s aversion to outright drama enrich the fictional elements by grounding them in earthy reality. There aren’t many more emotionally rewarding ways to spend 80-ish minutes than watching this poignant meditation on the tangled richness of human lives and the land we live on.

Frybread Face and Me is a little indie gem: though rough around the edges, it’s full of charm and heart. Drawn from its director’s own childhood experiences, the movie charts a formative moment in the life of Benny, a city boy of Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo heritage who’s carted off to his grandmother’s ranch on a Navajo reservation for a summer. It’s suffused with all the specificity of real memories in a way that never distances us from it, only enfolding us closer into its nostalgic embrace. That effect largely comes from the tender bonds between Benny and his cousin Dawn (unsympathetically nicknamed Frybread Face and played by newcomer Charley Hogan), who acts as translator between him and their non-English-speaking grandmother (Sarah H. Natani, also a non-professional actor). Though he’s constantly berated by male family members for not being “masculine” enough, Benny finds unconditional acceptance from his grandmother and misfit camaraderie with Frybread, who also gives the film a dry comedic edge — a welcome touch in a usually saccharine genre. Ultimately, though, it’s the movie’s soft sweetness and intimate depths that are most distinctive: it’s so gently told, and with such genuine feeling behind it, that it’s impossible not to be swept away by its charms.

Aptly for a film partly set in a fortune cookie factory, Fremont deals with luck — specifically, the other side of good luck: survivor’s guilt. Donya (played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada) is a former translator for the US Army who fled her home city of Kabul on an emergency evacuation flight when the Taliban took over in 2021. Now living a safe, if drab, existence in the titular Californian town, insomniac Donya struggles to embrace her freedom, tormented by the knowledge that she lost some of her old colleagues to reprisal attacks and that her loved ones are still living under repressive rule in Afghanistan.

As Donya shuttles between her little apartment in Fremont, her job writing cryptic one-liners for a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, and appointments with her eccentric psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington), Fremont balances a moving study of her melancholy with deadpan humor. Despite its black-and-white cinematography and tight Academy ratio, this is no austere drama, but an endlessly warm and understated portrait of someone rediscovering themselves and all of life’s unexpected moments of connection, like chance romantic encounters and sudden tears at karaoke.

To be honest, when the film starts out with all the usual Italian soundtracks and shots of Italian food, it felt like Nonnas was going to be stereotypical. To a certain extent, it is, with all the familiar story beats we’ve seen in other biopics. However, there’s a sincere understanding of what makes this real life story work. It’s not just all beautiful shots of Italian food placed for set dressing– It’s a celebration of the food culture that continues to survive through the craft of these immigrant women. While technically a biopic about Joe Scaravella, director Stephen Chbosky and screenwriter Liz Maccie clearly recognize these women as the community that helped keep their culture alive. It’s a delight to see the talented ensemble– Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, and Brenda Vaccaro– let loose and have fun here. Nonnas isn’t the most unique biopic ever created, but it’s certainly warm and hearty enough to swallow.

South African director John Trengove follows-up his debut The Wound with another take on masculinity, this time set in the States. Manodrome stars Jesse Eisenberg and Adrien Brody as a newbie and a veteran in a support group for men who have been emasculated by women and feminism. That’s right, this is a film about incel culture, but one you haven’t seen before. In tandem with Taxi Driver, Fight Club, or Joker, Manodrome represents a new era for the incel movie, as it confronts all the terror and aggression feeding into the community head on. Ralphie (Eisenberg) insists that his girlfriend Sal (Odessa Young) keeps their unplanned baby and deep down the rabbit hole he goes. Mental health struggles that have no outlet, worries, disappointment, alienation: all these facets of Ralphie’s character come to the fore and bring him to the Manodrome clan, where Dad Dan (Brody) promises two miracles—absolution and acceptance—in exchange for celibacy. Trengove’s sophomore feature is a blood-curdling psychological thriller that is not afraid to go to extremes (content warning!) to show that incels are not, in fact, a dorky online minority of youngsters, but a real wound in the body of our patriarchal world.

It’s kind of amazing how Johnson, who writes, directs, and stars in this feature, narrowly escapes narrative holes by being so darn self-effacing and likable. The female lead Maddy (Anna Kendrick) should be denounced as a Manic Pixie Girl, but because of Johnson and Kendrick’s overflowing charm, you don’t question the flimsiness of her character until much later on. The game itself should not make sense, but because Johnson is so committed in his physical performance, and so arresting in his charisma, all is forgiven. Self Reliance is like a tasty souffle that looks great at the moment, but left for longer, poofs and deflates. As long as you don’t take it too seriously, the film should be a fun if forgettable ride.

Going to sleep is something we do every day, though, when we were kids, it certainly wasn’t easy. With family-friendly source material and a new (and adorable!) sleepytime ensemble, Orion and the Dark plays with this fact of childhood, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman transforms it into something more as the title characters journey into literal midnight dreams, tell stories-within-stories, and return back home with a poetic repetition. It still has some of his existential despair– after all, the overly imaginative Orion literally contemplates the possibility of death through his many, many anxieties– but it doesn’t just play with the classic childhood fear. Kaufman transforms the bedtime story, and the act of storytelling itself, as co-creation and connection between generations of filmmakers and viewers, with this film’s surprisingly layered writing.

It’s easy to classify Destroy All Neighbors as B-movie schlock; it unabashedly pays tribute to the low-budget comedy horror movies that pervaded the ‘80s. But it also feels too good for that. Elevated by funny bits, easy chemistry, solid production design, and a lightweight but easygoing script, Destroy All Neighbors never really wastes your time. It may confuse and drag at times, but there’s always an element that delights. As the straight man anchoring all the absurdity and gore surrounding him, Ray is also surprisingly likable. He connects easily to the colorful ensemble of characters in the film. 

Destroy All Neighbors is stylish, trippy, nonsensical, and quite commendable in its creativity (the practical effects and prosthetics are the highlight). In all, it’s harmless good fun, just beware of the overflowing blood and guts! 

In Suncoast, writer-director Laura Chinn takes the personal tragedy of losing her brother to cancer and weaves it into something meaningful. The film is a sensitive meditation on death and grief, but it isn’t all grim. It’s also a coming-of-age story, one that focuses on Doris (Nico Parker), a version of Chinn’s younger self aching for normal teen experiences. The film is at its best when it zeroes in on Doris’ interiority and examines the duality of having to deal with so much death while still wanting to live a vibrant life. The surprising friendship that blooms between her and the popular kids as she chases after this life is one of the best depictions of authentic teen dynamics in recent memory. But the film is at its weakest when it tries to be something it’s not—that is, your usual tear-jerker indie fare that’s rife with lessons from a magical stranger (in this case played genially, but unnecessarily, by Woody Harrelson) and grievances from a grief-stricken mother (played powerfully by Laura Linney). To be sure, Harrelson and Linney (especially) deliver top-notch performances, but they feel shoehorned in an otherwise pitch-perfect film about a girl finding her place in the real world.

Based on the novel from writer, producer, and lead Micaela Wittman, indie drama Remy & Arletta is deeply personal. It’s partly because it’s based directly on Wittman’s own personal coming-of-age story, but it’s also because of how confessional it feels. Many scenes feel like uncomfortable memories, like the way Remy hides her real home from Arletta, but when Arletta doesn’t give up on Remy, and tries to make it right before graduation, the film crafts a beautiful connection that was life-changing even if it was fleeting. Remy & Arletta might have felt cut short in terms of runtime and in terms of the friendship itself, but it’s nonetheless a thoughtful, earnest drama that captures how important that love must have been.

You don’t need to know a lot about baseball to appreciate The Saint of Second Chances. It has enough going on to keep you hooked from start to end, beginning with Jeff Daniels’ inimitable voice as the narrator and Charlie Day’s inspired casting as the younger Veeck, all the way down to the Veecks’ fascinating ties with American sports history and Mike’s inspiring and heartwarming second-chance philosophy. It all gets a bit too much at times, as if the filmmakers themselves were overwhelmed with their abundant material and creative decisions, but it’s executed with so much care and love that it seems as if this is the only way it could’ve come out: a wonderful mess.

We all learned that it’s good to have a free press, but most of us rarely consider why it’s good, why we should fight for it, and how to do so, in the first place. Bad Press tackles one such fight, specifically the battle for free press in the Muscogee Nation, and while it only tackles government control specifically, the documentary is a reminder of how fragile press freedom can be, broken in mere minutes, and how long and difficult it is to get it back. Has Bad Press figured out how to bring back free press? Perhaps, though the struggles were made much more murky with the way fake news outlets take advantage of the narrative, the way politicians keep their silence to maintain innocence, and the way the masses could have voted against it. But nonetheless, Bad Press was a necessary reminder of how much could have been lost.

It’s always tricky translating literature to screen. In Shortcomings’ case, it struggles to make its Berkeley and New York settings appear more lived-in than just a few postcard-like frames. You could also tell that the conversations it stirs up about things like representation and mixed-race relationships began in the early aughts, when the novel it was adapted from was first released. But those lapses are small and forgivable in the face of a lovely ensemble cast and a whipsmart script.

It also takes a special kind of skill to make a character as fiercely unlikeable as Ben (Min) watchable, to hold up a mirror to the audience and make them stay. Thankfully, it’s a skill that Tomine and first-time director Randall Park display with such grace. Ben, Alice (Sherry Cola), and Miko (Ally Maki) are flawed and often pathetic, but they’re also honest reflections of who we become when the demands of self-preservation and romantic openness clash. It’s a little unnerving to hear them verbalize what we’ve always feared about ourselves, but it’s also exhilarating, not to mention comforting, knowing that we’re not alone in feeling this way. Shortcomings works because it doesn’t confine itself to genre: it’s a character study first, and a romantic comedy second.

You don’t have to be a theater kid to enjoy this feel-good mockumentary set in a summer camp for junior thespians. While there are plenty of in-jokes here for those who might have spent a summer or two somewhere like AdirondACTS, Theater Camp also good-naturedly lampoons every instantly recognizable stereotype of theater kids and the classic failed-performer-turned-teacher. 

Amongst the note-perfect ensemble, particularly hilarious standouts include co-writer Ben Platt and co-director Molly Gordon as camp instructors and best friends Amos and Rebecca-Diane. Both are Juilliard rejects with codependency issues and a classic case of actorly self-indulgence — as encapsulated in the moment they accuse a young attendee of “doping” for using artificial tears during a performance (“Do you want to be the Lance Armstrong of theater?”). But even seasoned performers like Platt and Gordon can’t pull the spotlight away from the film’s absurdly talented young ensemble, who are just as game for poking fun at their passion: standouts include Luke Islam, Alexander Bello, and Minari’s Alan Kim as a pint-sized “aspiring agent” who skips dance class to make business calls. All this self-satirising never obscures the movie’s heart, though; what begins as a self-deprecating ribbing of theater-heads ultimately becomes a rousing love letter to those very same misfits.

As the third instalment in Paul Schrader’s “man in a room” trilogy after First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), Master Gardner rounds up the issues at stake in a most profound way. For anyone who’s seen a film either scripted by Schrader (such as Taxi Driver) or directed by him, there will be no surprises here: lost men, despairing men, men who are desperate to believe in something. But the salvation of love lurks around the corner and the new film makes no exception. An unconventional couple, Joel Edgerton and Quintessa Swindell (as Maya) make up the beating heart of this suspenseful drama with an emotional push and pull delivered in small doses. What could have been a kitschy, insensitive work blossoms into a treatise on how gentle the harshness of life can be. 

Silver Dollar Road isn’t a new story– it’s one of many that comes as a consequence of systematic Black land loss that continues to happen to this day. Director Raoul Peck tells it in a new way, completely focusing on the Reels family and hearing their story entirely, from the initial confusion to two of the homeowners’ incarceration, and remembering the good old days when they used to enjoy the land. The land dispute has escalated to years of harassment, imprisonment, and being taken advantage of from opportunistic legal counsel. While it could have benefitted from from detailed legal proceedings, Silver Dollar Road still powerfully depicts an intimate family story that outlines the systemic racism enabling Black land loss today.

Feminism has made plenty of strides in multiple areas, but even in the era of free love, talking about sex was difficult, and certain figures were dismissed just because of it. The Disappearance of Shere Hite reexamines the titular forgotten feminist figure that simply focused on the female orgasm, giving a second look at her immediate rise and fall in the American media, and the reasons for her leaving the country. With Dakota Johnson’s soft voice, an excellent selection of archival footage, and Hite’s deeply personal words, the film paints a portrait of a mild-mannered, self-possessed woman, but it also reveals the heartbreakingly repetitive vitriol that affects these open discussions today.

There’s a scene early in the documentary when present-day Michael J. Fox, who famously suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, swaggers along a street and greets a fan, only to stumble at that very moment and have people surround him with concern. Instead of giving into their pity or pretending nothing happened, he cooly tells the fan, “It was so nice meeting you, you knocked me off of my feet!”

This brief moment tells you all you need to know about the ‘80s icon—Fox refuses to be a victim. Still is his brilliant and admirable attempt at telling his well-known story on his own terms. It covers everything from his childhood and early work in Hollywood to his life-changing roles in Family Ties, Teen Wolf, and most memorably, Back to the Future. It also sheds light on Fox’s life as a husband, father, and Parkinson’s sufferer. Director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) does a genius job of using faceless reenactments and cuts from films and TV shows to accompany Fox’s narration, which pumps the film with a dynamism that matches Fox’s resilient spirit.

Urgent, clever, and exciting, Still is one of the rare celebrity biographies that serves a higher purpose than just recounting a famous person’s life. Anyone who understands the importance of constantly moving and evolving will appreciate this film’s existence.

You may not know the name of Errol Morris, but you must have seen either Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or The Night Manager, as films and TV have offered ripe adaptations of 20th century espionage novels under the disguise of simple entertainment. What you may not know is that the author of the books they are based on has been a spy himself, for most of his life. David John Moore Cornwell, better known as John le Carré (his pen name), is the subject of the latest work of detective-turned-filmmaker Errol Morris whose penchant for exploring the limits between fact and fiction has propelled the documentary form numerous times over the last decades. The film is a quasi-biographical doc with some exceptional reenactments that color Le Carré’s own tales to try and outmanoeuvre the viewer’s ceaseless desire to fix what one sees into either category: fact or fiction. With an ex-spy and a documentarian, you never know. 

Amongst the google searches for this one you’ll find “Is Slotherhouse a real film?” and that says a lot. When the first poster and trailer dropped, I suspected it the work of AI, but now that the film is out on streaming, we should be glad it exists. A ludicrous horror-comedy that hits all the right notes in gore, cringe, and puns, Slotherhouse is quintessential fun cinema. It may be set in a college where internalized misogyny is completely off the charts as young women bruise and batter each other’s egos in service of the queen bee Brianna (Sydney Craven) and may attempt just a tiny bit of character development to keep the ball rolling, but honestly, who cares? It’s a film that completely leans into the absurd, the over the top, the ridiculous, and it does it surprisingly well.

The director of one of the few esteemed horror sequels (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End) adapting H. P. Lovecraft? Yes please. Joe Lynch reimagines “The Thing on the Doorstep” with the tropes of 90s erotic films and a tribute to classic possession horror cinema, meriting all our admiration for his effort. Suitable Flesh (even the title is erotic!) is fun, daring, very dark, and very horny. Heather Graham (Boogie Nights) delivers a strong lead performance, but Judah Lewis’s (The Babysitter) sleazy Asa is what stands out here. Because of the horror’s nature, all the actors will have a go at playing a demonic version of their characters and it’s mostly good fun, but Lewis channels a certain scary nihilism that fits in very well with the film’s attitude towards sex and possession… Without revealing too much hereafter, I must say that the film takes the phrase “an out of body experience” to the next level, when relating it to sexual pleasure.

Based on the documentary short she helmed with actor Taylor Russell, Savannah Leaf’s Earth Mama is an intimate, unabashedly political, and decisively non-judgmental look at one mother’s determined attempts to regain custody of her two children. Gia (Tia Nomore) is struggling to work enough hours at her part-time photo studio job to pay for the home she needs before she can be reunited with her kids — struggling because the state also requires her to attend classes on topics like addiction recovery, which are eating into her time. What’s more, Gia is also heavily pregnant, and her looming due date sets a clock ticking on her efforts to satisfy her caseworker and decide what’s best for her new baby. 

There’s a depressingly cyclical nature to all this heartbreak, as testified to by the real people who sometimes pierce the drama to share their own experiences of the system Gia is navigating. Their contributions — along with Nomore’s lived-in performance and Leaf’s assured touch — deepen the urgency and emotion of the movie, which is as much a commentary on the dehumanizing bureaucracy of the social care system as it is Gia’s own particular story.

If you want a powerful, masterful rendition of the ill-fated space mission, go and watch Apollo 13 (1995). But the documentary more than half a century after the mission, and two decades after the feature film, is not half bad. Of course, being a documentary, Apollo 13: Survival is much more factual, but the true tale still manages to hold the tension, the high stakes, and the emotional pull of the actual spaceflight, with excellent editing stitching the never-before-seen archival footage and key interviews into an exciting, compelling account. That being said, older viewers that already watched the Tom Hanks drama would likely not find anything new in this film, but Apollo 13: Survival would be a decent documentary to those who have never heard of the spacecraft.

Who among us hasn’t committed a white lie to save a relationship? And who among us hasn’t yearned for the full and brutal truth? In You Hurt My Feelings, Nicole Holofcener digs into that paradox and delivers a film that is honest and funny in equal measure. Here, the writer-director doesn’t just use a hilarious situation to make relatable observations and clever witticisms; she also extracts the nuances of it. She is aware, for instance, that her well-to-do characters exist in a world where it’s possible to only care about this, and not much else. And she likewise knows that Beth’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) and Don’s (Tobias Menzies) trust issues are complicated by their age and respective mid-life career troubles. But rather than stay stuck in the specificity of those details, Holofcener uses her perceptive script to highlight the relatable and the universal. These characters hurt just the same—they’re plagued with the same insecurities and seek the same validation—and they express that hurt in the petty and unvarnished language everyone else does. Watching all this come to play is a comforting delight.

Aspiring writer-director Vita of My First Film is insufferable. When she starts out making her first feature, she’s pleasantly surprised by the people who came to help her, but the repetition of the shoot, the scene not matching the idea in her head, which she tries to put into image and word, but can’t quite make the vision clear, the anxiety and pressure to be a professional filmmaker blinding her from the concerns of her cast and crew all combine to an inevitable failure of her first feature, which also happens to inspired by Vita’s actual life. Vita is insufferable, but writer-director Zia Anger manages to make her real in an eclectic meta multimedia patchwork that won’t work for everyone, but uniquely depicts an experience filmmakers, aspiring or otherwise, haven’t wanted to talk about.

The Beatles is the greatest musical band ever created, or at least the one with the most success, most influence, and most impact in the industry. So, what do they do when that same band breaks up? Fans that have followed their careers since are likely to know what has happened, but the perspective Man on the Run presents is fascinating. Focusing entirely on Paul McCartney, this documentary clears up some of the mystery and confusion that surrounded him, the weight of the expectations and the disappointment of the fans over the break-up. Of course, the archive alone would already please fans. Filmmaker Morgan Neville simply takes that footage to celebrate McCartney’s reinvention.

The particulars of the scandal are enough to shock, enrage, and move anyone, but the directors of BS High also put Johnson in the hot seat and skewer the guy until they wring all ego and delusion out of him. The result is a compelling and terrifying look into a con man’s mind. Johnson alternates between justifying and denying his fraudulent ways and even tries to draw empathy from the audience by explaining his upbringing. But cleverly, the directors intercut his wild speeches with heartfelt testimonies from the real victims of this scam: the young recruits who were promised a better life if they played in Johnson’s team, only to be abused and marked for life. It’s impossible not to feel for the young men, who even up until the documentary’s end, wonder out loud how they could possibly move on from such a traumatic experience. 

There’s not much to analyze in The Wrath of Becky, which might sound like a jab, but for grindhouse thrillers such as this, it comes as a compliment. The story is lean, the action is on point, and the dialogue is whipsmart. There is little to distract from the main attraction, which is the creatively gruesome ways in which everyone tries to kill each other.

It’s so simple, in fact, that you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a standalone film, instead of a sequel to an earlier movie, simply titled Becky. Efficiently, parts of the first installment appear as flashbacks here, but they’re hardly needed to convince us of Becky’s ferocious might. Wilson already does an excellent job with minimal but evocative gestures. Seann William Scott, too, is surprisingly terrifying as the head of the Neo-Nazi group out to get Becky. It’s easy enough to paint the incel as a villain, but to portray him with such palpable terror is a challenge that Scott steps up to.

Sometimes, especially when you’ve gone without it for so long, you would do anything for a shred of respect. LaRoy, Texas depicts exactly that, with a store owner Ray being so unwilling to stand up for himself that his wife cheats on him with his brother, who steals from the family business. It’s a terrible situation to be in, of course, but it’s played out in a dry, comedic way, as detective-wannabe Skip pokes on the wound when trying his best to solve the case, and as each surprise reveals how terribly incompetent the small town deals with things. While it doesn’t quite compare to the neo-Westerns of Coen brothers it’s inspired by, LaRoy, Texas is both fun and tragic, and a promising debut for writer-director Shane Atkinson.

More psychological drama than bloody horror, The Passenger focuses on its two leads, Randy (Johnny Berchtold) and Benson (Kyle Gallner), and the odd bond they form while on the run. Randy is held hostage by the violent Benson, but Benson only asks that Randy confront his trauma and realize his potential. They’re not quite friends, but as two broken people taking part in a broken society, they share a fondness for each other that complicates the typical captor-captive narrative. It’s not as raw or gritty or even as dark as you’d expect, and there are moments when the film meanders only to end up at a dead end. But it has profound things to say about trauma, healing, and second chances, and those turns, while unexpected, are also wholly welcome in this unassumingly powerful film.  

Since the 1990s, Japan has offered the service of pretending to be one’s family, friend, or lover. Rental Family isn’t the first time the West has ever depicted this service, but at a time of increased isolation, division, and loneliness worldwide, the very concept directly addresses that need for perceived connection. Why is there a need to fake it, rather than to form it for real? With Hollywood’s own Brendan Fraser, this comedy-drama considers how that perception has been tied closely to the outcomes of one’s life, gently recognizing how difficult it is to balance it with other concerns. Rental Family doesn’t fully resolve its client characters, but like director Hikari’s previous work, it asks its audience to reconsider the notions surrounding the rental family service.

Erin Lee Carr, the director of Britney vs Spears, returns with a scoop. Ringleader is not just another pop culture doc, because it features a first-time interview with the young woman at the center of The Bling Ring robberies in Hollywood, Rachel Lee. But this is not the kind of film that tries to pick the brains of a perpetrator. Instead, the director positions herself as a journalist in front of her subject and questions her frankly, an approach resulting in amusing frankness. However, the rest of the doc feels too formulaic in the way it stitches together personal archive footage that is more or less neutral. Banking too much on exclusivity when it comes to the interview, already clouds it with expectations. One is led to ask whether Lee is good, bad, repentant or sociopathic and project onto her such qualities—a move which invites a similar fascination with celebrity life the film tries to untangle.

Funny, refreshing, and heartwarming, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah gives the seminal girlhood film Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. a Gen Z update. Stacy and her friends are constantly on social media and watch each other for potentially politically incorrect terms, but they also struggle with period pain, crushes, and falling out with former friends. It’s a confusing time in a kid’s life, and  You Are So Not Invited, like Are You There God? before it, honors that. It never condescends, never strays far from the child’s perspective. It’s jubilant and heartwarming, and (to me at least) it’s always fun to see real-life families play themselves in movies. Judd Apatow experimented with this structure in his semi-autobiographical films Knocked Up and This Is 40, which first gave us a glimpse into his daughter Maude Apatow’s acting prowess. I feel You Are So Not Invited will do the same to its young star Sunny Sandler, whose effortlessly funny and charming performance will surely carve a path for a promising career in the future.  

While it starts off slow and rocky, River Wild sails smoothly as soon as it hits the waters. The rafting on the rapids, the wild chases, the suspenseful silences—all are effectively shot and believably terrifying, even if they border on predictability at times. Real-life couple Meester and Brody are vulnerable and intense, adding some depth to an otherwise basic story. Killam is compelling too, especially during the action sequences, but I might have seen him in one-too-many comedy sketches to trust his sincerity here. It’s not the best outdoor thriller by a long shot, especially if you compare it to the superior 1994 original film starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon, but it is entertaining in its own right.

They Cloned Tyrone is a genre-bending gem. It combines Deep State conspiracy theories with sci-fi and social commentary, all while looking like a futuristic 1970s Blaxploitation film. It’s outrageous good fun and pleasing to look at (here is a film that knows how to properly light Black actors), but there are times when it feels too far fetched. The science can get wonky and its commentary on gentrification lacking, but all is forgiven when you have such a strong trio of leads. One of the smartest things They Cloned Tyrone does is pair Boyega with Teyonah Parris, who plays the call girl Yo-yo, and Jamie Foxx, who plays the pimp Slick Charles. They have a fun-loving no-nonsense chemistry about them that makes them easy to attach to and root for. They’re also just very funny, which might be expected of Foxx but it comes as a pleasant surprise for Parris, whose popular turns in Mad Men and WandaVision prove that she’s been severely underutilized as a comic.

A healthy mix of despair and self-deprecation has always been Bo Burnham’s signature, but Inside takes it to the next level. It’s a deconstructed film, rather than a simple one-night special; a one-man-show that constantly undercuts itself. Even more so, it sabotages its own immersive qualities and explores the depths of self-loathing by turning oneself into comedy material. Some may say, it’s a classic move, but the pandemic reality and Burnham’s unkempt look predispose us to embrace all the cringe (YouTube reactions), quirkiness, (the sock puppet), and frightening angst (suicide jokes) he puts forward. Emotional rawness and a polished DIY look fits the Netflix bill, but as far as the content goes, this one goes straight to the world heritage lockdown archives.