Theory vs. practice. Creation vs. destruction. Christopher Nolan’s paradoxically sprawling, intimate Oppenheimer is a stunning deconstruction of the “great man” biopic. Navigating the vast gulf between science and empathy, Nolan’s latest - and perhaps best - delivers a harrowing drama about the moral cost of unleashing upon the world the most horrible weapon it has ever known. Minor spoilers ahead…

With Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Tom Cruise’s crusade for analog supremacy finally becomes text and the results are unbelievable - the last movie star, fighting God and gravity in one of the best action movies ever made. Barreling through sequence after exhilarating sequence of some of the most nerve-jangling stuntwork you’ve ever seen, Ethan Hunt and his IMF team return to face their most dangerous foe yet to reach an immutable truth: there is nothing like walking into, and out of, a Mission: Impossible movie. Minor spoilers ahead…

My favorite horror movie, 2008’s Australian cult sleeper - Lake Mungo - is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. Within the walls of a mockumentary, dread and sorrow percolate into a devastating crescendo as the Palmer family grapples with the specter of death, and there’s nothing quite like it. A terrifying haunted house yarn that belies its tragic, shattering underbelly, Lake Mungo is a masterwork of grainy apparitions, mounting unease, and quiet restraint. Minor spoilers ahead…

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is astounding. Delivering a multiverse story in service of its characters rather than the other way around, directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson elevate this Spider-sequel with jaw-dropping craft and a keen deconstruction of the wall crawler’s metafiction. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the closest a movie has ever come to the joy of reading a great comic book, splash pages and all.

Almost two decades after Zhang Yimou’s masterwork To Live, Chinese author Yu Hua’s prose returns to Cannes in a different mode through Wei Shujun’s Only The River Flows, the filmmaker’s third consecutive feature to premiere at Cannes since 2020. Eschewing the sweeping canvas of To Live for a mesmerizing, intractable noir, Only The River Flows centers on a mysterious murder in a riverside town, the lackadaisical bureaucracy surrounding the case, and the detective obsessed with solving the killing.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, Ilo Ilo, won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity. Flash forward to exactly a decade later, Chen makes his triumphant return to Cannes (in the Un Certain Regard section) with The Breaking Ice, a moving, humanist snapshot of China’s lost youths told through a ships-in-the-night friendship.

Colors! Personality! Stakes! James Gunn closes out the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy with the wildly vivid Vol. 3. Crafting an intimate farewell against the fabric of Marvel cosmic, Gunn brings something that rarely finds its way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe: finality. It’s one last hurrah as the Guardians race against the clock to save a grievously injured teammate, touring through James Gunn’s warped imagination in a surprisingly personal goodbye. Like many superhero movies, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is overlong and stuffed to the brim with talented-but-shortchanged actors, but it helps that this is the best looking Marvel movie of the last ten years. Minor spoilers ahead…

John Wick has always been the action franchise of the decade, but Chad Stahelski’s Chapter 4 is next level: the type of exhilarating, metal-as-hell ballet of bullets that blows the doors off action filmmaking. There hasn’t been a take-your-breath-away feast for genre fans like this since Mad Max: Fury Road or The Raid. Minor spoilers ahead…

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that I still wanted to cover. Here are the capsule reviews for 2023’s SXSW: Tetris, Furies, If You Were the Last, and Late Night With the Devil. Minor Spoilers Ahead…

Every single Evil Dead movie is a bloody, gruesome delight, and now the tradition continues with Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise. A decade after a deadly-serious reboot turned the franchise on its head, this new installment finds a bond between sisters shredded by a disgusting waltz of Deadites, guts, and gore. Alyssa Sutherland brings her A-game as a twisted, cackling fiend: a physical performance for the ages. Minor spoilers ahead…

SXSW’s opening night finds its curtain-raiser in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Bucking the reputation of its much-maligned predecessor from 2000, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s take on the tabletop role-playing game finds a fleet balancing act between fantasy and comedy. A nimble adventure anchored by winsome performances and a surprising trove of practical effects, Honor Among Thieves eschews the gravity of cinematic universes and franchise-building with goofy, digestible fun. Minor spoilers ahead…

Michael B. Jordan marks his confident and kinetic directorial debut with Creed III. Carving a propulsive parallel to Adonis Creed’s journey to cement his legacy, Jordan sheds the Rocky franchise DNA by charting his own path of blistering performances, formal verve, and anime-inspired showdowns. An electrifying tempest of fists and sweat, Creed III fully transcends what could have been a journeyman effort. Jonathan Majors is astonishing. Minor spoilers ahead…

I'm late as usual, but I spent more time than ever on my annual passion project edit: A Year in Film. It took over 75 hours of work across three months, but it's finally done and — for the first time — in 4K. The film industry came roaring back in 2022: Big budget blockbusters came out to play in full force, first-time filmmakers brought their A-game, and old masters returned with a vengeance. It was an absolute delight to journey through the year’s cinema, and I hope you'll join me as I take you through 2022 one more time. With feeling.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe spins its wheels at full-tilt with the muddled, lethargic Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Jettisoning the fleet caper energy of its predecessors for more tedious teases of what’s coming next, the launch of the MCU’s Phase Five lands with an uninspired whimper. Jonathan Majors as Kang carries this lumbering sci-fi epic with suitable menace, but Quantumania forgets everything special — and charming — about its titular hero. Minor spoilers ahead…

Crackling with confident, formal prowess and visual electricity, M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin is the director’s best film since 2004’s The Village. A family’s impossible choice framed by ratcheting tension and blistering performances, Shyamalan’s latest nerve-jangler is a chamber piece artfully designed to quicken pulses and break hearts. There isn’t a single wasted shot in Knock at the Cabin’s firecracker, 100-minute runtime: it’s astonishing to watch. Minor spoilers ahead…

Brandon Cronenberg follows up his 2020 sci-fi stunner Possessor with another carnival of grotesque delights in Infinity Pool. Conducting a brand new phantasmagoria of bloody satire and goopy violence, the younger Cronenberg pushes stars Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth to uproarious new extremes. It’s a sick blast. Minor spoilers ahead…

Kyle Edward Ball delivers one of the scariest movies of the decade with a lo-fi stunner that reaches into the crevices of vestigial instinct. Uncanny in its ability to bottle the ineffable childhood dread of past-your-bedtime nightmares, Skinamarink mines a whole new mode of horror from its swirling grain, sinister corners, and dark spaces. Minor spoilers ahead…

After two-plus years floundering in the pandemic, it seems that the film industry is finally regaining its legs. This year, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water blasted off, the Daniels’ multiverse-hopping stunner Everything Everywhere All at Once was the sleeper hit of the year, and old masters in their late eras such as Steven Spielberg and David Cronenberg returned in top form. It might have been harder than ever to whittle down a top ten in 2022, but it was an absolute delight to journey through the year’s cinema. Here are my 10 favorite movies of 2022, along with some honorable mentions: