Good

The review: Rick Famuyiwa’s The Wood goes in a different direction that a slew of 90s “hood” movies, instead showing the close relationship of three friends in two different [...]

The review: Mike Nichols gives us a happy marriage that suddenly slams on its breaks in Heartburn.* I’m not a fan of Jack Nicholson** and was surprised to find him a chilled-out, [...]

The review: After disliking Noah Centineo so intently in The Perfect Date, I was gun-shy of To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, but Michael Fimognari managed to include enough good [...]

The review: Jeff Bridges is a revelation in John Carpenter’s Starman—full of ticks and a dawning sense of his human self.* Karen Allen is also key to this film because her varying facial [...]

Overall: I came out of the Animated Shorts feeling defeated and depressed. Thank goodness for the wacky Hors Piste—a bonus feature, and the very brief Maestro. All of the shorts this year are [...]

The review: Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell is a little too clear about the director’s feelings about the media and the F.B.I.,* but what this film does well is ably recreate the [...]

The review: Sam Mendes’s 1917 is vacuuming up all the praise and it’s very good at being a tense war movie that is crafted as if it was filmed in one shot.* And yet, when we step a [...]

The review: Felix van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy follows the standard drug addict movie format;* the difference here is that the father-son relationship is the focus. I loved the [...]