Welcome to my coverage of 2022’s Sundance Film Festival! Once again, Sundance has gone all-virtual usual, this time due to a resurgent COVID variant. This year’s festival sees a variety of exciting offerings, including a harrowing Midnight slate. Other highlights include Joachim Trier’s conclusion to his “Oslo Trilogy” The Worst Person in the World, a new sci-fi tale from Kogonada, and a twisted thriller starring Rebecca Hall. Below, you’ll find my entire coverage, including a dispatch of capsule reviews. All reviews in viewing order…

Ghostface is back and meaner than ever. The first entry in the franchise without Wes Craven at the helm, Scream combines a fresh cast with legacy characters for a bloody, ruthless whodunnit. Its winking genre-savviness isn’t quite as skewering or clever as it thinks it is, but Scream’s latest stewards of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett carve out a new brand of brutality while paying humble respect to the spirit of Wes Craven. It feels good to be back in Woodsboro. Minor spoilers ahead…

2021. Another year down, COVID is still raging, and things are looking pretty grim for movie theaters out there. The pandemic has transformed the cinematic landscape into a tempest of uncertainty, with only the most gargantuan of tentpoles being sure things at the box office. But just because profitability is scarce doesn’t mean movies are dead. Just to name a few gems, this year saw lush Arthurian legend come to life, a new freewheeling Paul Thomas Anderson flick, Ridley Scott in his element, fresh bloodcurdling horrors, and another jaunt into the Matrix. Movies have still got it. Here’s my list of the best movies of 2021.

A bare-knuckle haymaker across the dome of our obsession with nostalgia and Hollywood’s reboot complex, The Matrix Resurrections is ambitious, sci-fi metafiction sure to be divisive. Tackling themes of creator vs. destroyer, revival, and the illusion of choice in a brand new context, it’s Lana Wachowski’s meditation on why she didn’t want do another Matrix movie…via another Matrix movie - and it’s great. Minor spoilers ahead…

The eagerly-anticipated Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland’s third solo outing as the web-slinging superhero, is the shaggiest and certainly the most stylistically inert of the MCU Spideys. Overstuffed and frenetic, the film cracks open the Marvel Multiverse with sledgehammer pandering. It’s anything but artful, but there’s no denying the power of its crossover charms; even more impressively, No Way Home tackles heroic compassion in a way that finally strikes true to the heart of Spider-Man. Minor spoilers ahead…

Long-delayed and eagerly anticipated, Paul Verhoeven’s incisive take on “nunsploitation” is finally here. There will be many to point out Benedetta’s racy sex scenes and its high lesbian camp, but the film is so much more than that. A provocative clapback against Puritanism, Catholic hypocrisy, and the shackles we place upon women’s bodies, Benedetta once again proves Verhoeven’s directorial mettle as cinema’s resident satirist. Minor spoilers ahead…

Leave it to Steven Spielberg to spin a stage-to-screen retread into dazzling, cinematic gold. Pulling out all the stops of his meticulous craft, Spielberg - along with frequent collaborator Tony Kushner - have wrought a beautiful update to the legendary 1957 musical and its equally regarded 1961 film adaptation. 2021’s West Side Story wisely retains its original orchestrations while injecting depth into its conflicts and modern verve into its visuals, mining multiple star-making performances out of its sprawling cast. Minor spoilers ahead…

Kristen Stewart - in a wrenching, career-best performance - disappears into the role of Diana, Princess of Wales in Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, a haunting gauntlet of psychological horror in the guise of a biopic. Forgoing historical specificity in favor of evocation and the hazy purgatory between dream and nightmare, Spencer rebukes the royal mythos with a portrait of an unraveling spirit. Minor spoilers ahead…

The Marvel Cinematic Universe tries something a little different with Chloé Zhao’s Eternals, injecting the filmmaker’s trademark humanist drama into cosmic-level superheroics. There are plenty of things to like with this new approach, but much of it fights tooth and nail with the dullest iteration of Marvel formula; Eternals’ weighty themes are lost in a story that is lopsided, overstuffed, and brutally overlong. Minor spoilers ahead…

Edgar Wright’s decades-long tour of genres makes a no-frills horror pitstop in Last Night in Soho. A collision between past and present painted with the brush of giallo and other era-appropriate terrors, the film is a lush and arresting thriller…until it isn’t. Last Night in Soho soars in its first half with Wright’s signature craftsmanship and a pair of great performances from Thomasin Mackenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy, but its final act is undone by its over-polish, toothlessness, and muddled pastiche. Minor spoilers ahead…

It’s that time of year again. With Spooky Season in full swing, I’m once again counting down a collection of under-the-radar horror gems you can stream right now. Scrolling through all your streaming services for the perfect Halloween movie night can be a daunting task, especially if they’re spitting out the same recommendations time and time again. For this list, we’re skipping right past the old favorites, the classics, and the genre mainstays for some deeper cuts - truly scary and unnerving horror movies that just might have escaped your attention, all a click away.

After multiple COVID-related delays and years of anticipation, Dune is finally here. Capturing the majesty and scope of Frank Herbert’s tome of myth, Denis Villeneuve’s vision is faithfully immense, transportive, and most importantly, accessible. Like its title states, this is very much a Part One, so any review or evaluation rests upon provision, but it’s difficult to defy the gravitational pull of Dune’s meticulous world-building and gorgeous craft, even as it keeps its characters in the shadows of its sprawling grandeur. Minor spoilers ahead…

Jane Campion’s first film in over a decade, The Power of the Dog, is making waves at the New York Film Festival. A simmering domestic drama amidst the rolling mountains of cowboy country, Campion’s welcome return to cinema delivers poetry in motion and Benedict Cumberbatch’s career-best performance. Upending the rawhide masculinity of turn-of-the-century Montana, The Power of the Dog’s seeping venom sneaks up on you in an arresting slow burn. Minor spoilers ahead…

The fourth installment of the found footage anthology series, V/H/S, hits Shudder today. A collection of four short horror vignettes sandwiched within a sinister frame narrative, V/H/S/94 continues the tradition of its predecessors delivering nasty - and uneven - chills. Running the gamut of sewer-dwelling cryptids, haunted wakes, and outrageous mad scientists, there’s a little something for everyone within the creepy walls of V/H/S/94. Minor spoilers ahead…

After a decade-and-a-half and five films, Daniel Craig’s tenure in 007’s tuxedo is coming to an end. With No Time to Die, franchise newcomer Cary Joji Fukunaga bids farewell to the latest iteration of James Bond with a stylish, overstuffed finale. It’s a gorgeously realized endcap with hard-hitting action and some gutsy, emotional choices, but the shadow of Spectre - the worst of the Craig Bonds - and a weak villain hamstring the film. Minor spoilers ahead…

The New York Film Festival lineup is full of winners this year, but even in a field of remarkable cinema, Julia Ducournau’s Titane stands out. A film that contains multitudes, Ducournau’s followup to 2016’s Raw navigates the horrorscapes of the New Flesh, exploring gender, sex, violence, and the enveloping desire for human connection. Titane is shocking, sweet, and shockingly sweet - one of the year’s best films. Minor spoilers ahead…

My coverage of this year’s New York Film Festival begins with Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. An abridged, yet faithful, adaptation of William Shakespeare’s famed play, Coen’s black and white stunner gives captivating reason for its own existence. With stark, gorgeous visuals and dynamic performances, The Tragedy of Macbeth finds crevices and spaces unexplored in a familiar story. Minor spoilers ahead…

As hard as it might be to believe, 2021’s New York Film Festival marks my first ever in-person film festival as accredited press. After two years of covering film festivals virtually, it’ll be an exhilarating new experience to finally take in NYFF the way it was meant to be: with packed crowds at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. This year’s lineup is killer: the highly anticipated Dune, and new films from legends such as Jane Campion, Paul Verhoeven, Wes Anderson, and this year’s Palme d’Or Winner Julia Ducournau. Below, you can find my entire coverage - all the reviews and dispatches - from the festival…