Category Archives: Movies

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Beyond The Visible – Hilma af Klint




NYT Critic’s Pick | Documentary, Biography | Directed by Halina Dyrschka
How the rediscovery of a Swedish abstract painter changed the course of art history.
By A.O. SCOTT

Selah and The Spades




NYT Critic’s Pick | R | Drama | Directed by Tayarisha Poe
New talent behind and in front of the camera elevates a familiar tale of high-school strife.
By TEO BUGBEE

A White, White Day




NYT Critic’s Pick | Drama | Directed by Hlynur Palmason
A man finds coping with his wife’s death hard enough — and then learns she’d been having an affair.
By GLENN KENNY

Butt Boy




NYT Critic’s Pick | Comedy, Sci-Fi, Thriller | Directed by Tyler Cornack
A search for missing children leads to a man with a strange impulse in this wildly polarizing film.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

NYT Critic’s Pick — The Catchup Edition

Crip Camp

NYT Critic’s Pick R Documentary Directed by James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham
This feel-good documentary recounts the ties of a Catskills summer camp to American disability rights activism in the 1970s.
By BEN KENIGSBERG

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

NYT Critic’s Pick PG-13 Drama Directed by Eliza Hittman
In this stirring drama, the director Eliza Hittman tells an intimate story that is also a potent argument about self-determination.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Human Nature

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Adam Bolt
Adam Bolt’s new documentary focuses on Crispr technology, which can edit genes, thus giving people the ability to change human, animal and plant life.
By KEN JAWOROWSKI

Bacurau

NYT Critic’s Pick Action, Adventure, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Western Directed by Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho
In this sensational genre whatsit, a town finds itself fighting for its very existence. (Good thing Sônia Braga lives there.)
By MANOHLA DARGIS

The Wild Goose Lake

NYT Critic’s Pick Crime, Drama Directed by Yi’nan Diao
This film is dark and moody like the old classics, but the director Diao Yinan has created a very contemporary crime drama.
By GLENN KENNY

Sorry We Missed You

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama Directed by Ken Loach
In this Ken Loach film, a British family that’s barely getting by faces the peril that is the gig economy.
By WESLEY MORRIS

First Cow

NYT Critic’s Pick PG-13 Drama Directed by Kelly Reichardt
Set in the mid-19th-century Oregon Territory, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film is a fable, a western, a buddy picture and a masterpiece.
By A.O. SCOTT

The Invisible Man

NYT Critic’s Pick R Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller Directed by Leigh Whannell
Elisabeth Moss stars in a scary update on the H.G. Wells classic that trades science-fiction shivers for #MeToo horror.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising

NYT Critic’s Pick PG-13Animation, Action, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Sci-Fi Directed by Kenji Nagasaki
This animated film distinguishes itself in the era of superhero supersaturation with bright, bold and surprisingly emotional filmmaking.
By TEO BUGBEE

Vitalina Varela

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama Directed by Pedro Costa
In the new drama from Pedro Costa, daylight, and hope, are hard to find.
By GLENN KENNY

Premature

NYT Critic’s Pick Unrated Drama, Romance Directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green
A romance threatens to derail a gifted teenager’s college plans in this sassy-sexy drama.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

The State Against Mandela and the Others

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Nicolas Champeaux, Gilles Porte
Nelson Mandela’s trial nearly 60 years ago was not filmed, but the words spoken still echo loudly.
By GLENN KENNY

You go to my head

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Thriller Directed by Dimitri de Clercq
A mysterious architect persuades an amnesiac that she’s his wife in this elusive romance set in the Sahara.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Buffaloed

NYT Critic’s Pick Comedy, Drama Directed by Tanya Wexler
Zoey Deutch’s pell-mell performance gives this debt-collection comedy the energy it needs.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

The Cordillera of Dreams

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Patricio Guzmán
An exiled filmmaker returns to Chile, contemplating fascism and eternity.
By GLENN KENNY

Cane River

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama, Romance Directed by Horace Jenkins
Horace B. Jenkins’s tale of forbidden romance in Louisiana, completed in 1982, opens at last.
By A.O. SCOTT

Taylor Swift: Miss Americana

NYT Critic’s Pick TV-MA Documentary Directed by Lana Wilson
In the Netflix documentary, we see a star that is self-critical, grown up and ready, perhaps, to deliver a message beyond the music.
By WESLEY MORRIS

The Assistant

NYT Critic’s Pick R Drama Directed by Kitty Green
Julia Garner is magnificent as a conflicted staffer to a serial sexual predator in this powerfully muted drama.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Incitement

NYT Critic’s Pick Thriller Directed by Yaron Zilberman
Yaron Zilberman’s film presents a discomfortingly close-range depiction of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin in the period leading up to the killing.
By BEN KENIGSBERG

The Traitor

NYT Critic’s Pick R Biography, Crime, Drama Directed by Marco Bellocchio
Marco Bellocchio’s film tells the story of Tommaso Buscetta, a Sicilian Mafioso who became Italy’s most notorious informer in the 1980s.
By A.O. SCOTT

Beanpole

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama, War Directed by Kantemir Balagov
Set in the aftermath of World War II, this dazzling movie centers on two friends who are each casualties of a historical trauma.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

I Wish I Knew

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary, History Directed by Zhangke Jia
In this elegiac documentary, the director Jia Zhangke explores Shanghai through its people, stories and soaring cranes.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Zombi Child

NYT Critic’s Pick Fantasy Directed by Bertrand Bonello
A new film about a schoolgirl’s erotic obsession examines the social hierarchies of midcentury Haiti and present-day France.
By GLENN KENNY

Color Out of Space

NYT Critic’s Pick Unrated Horror, Sci-Fi Directed by Richard Stanley
Nicolas Cage and Joely Richardson face an evil shade of lilac in this inventive sci-fi horror film directed by Richard Stanley.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

NY Times Critic's Pick Movie(s)

Ain’t none.

— Of Possible Interest —

‘Weathering With You’ Review: Letting the Sun Shine In


In the latest from the director of the hit anime “Your Name,” two teenagers find mysterious rays of hope amid catastrophe.
By Manohla Dargis

At last! At long last! Something to make the new Cats look like a masterpiece:

‘Dolittle’ Review: Baa, Humbug

Robert Downey Jr. plays the doctor turned animal whisperer in this dreary and misbegotten adventure.


He can sail with the animals: Robert Downey Jr., left, and Harry Collett, adventuring for a cure.
By Manohla Dargis

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Earth

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
In this sobering documentary, Nikolaus Geyrhalter looks at how humans are changing the planet one backhoe at a time.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Système K

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Renaud Barret
The poverty and chaos of Kinshasa drive an art scene that’s vivid, unrelenting and genuinely dangerous.
By GLENN KENNY

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Invisible Life

NYT Critic’s Pick R Drama Directed by Karim Aïnouz
Two sisters living in 1950s Brazil are kept apart by their father but can’t be spiritually separated.
By GLENN KENNY

Little Women

NYT Critic’s Pick PG Drama, Romance Directed by Greta Gerwig
Greta Gerwig refreshes a literary classic with the help of a dazzling cast that includes Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern and Meryl Streep.
By A.O. SCOTT

One Cut of the Dead

NYT Critic’s Pick Not Rated Comedy, Horror Directed by Shin’ichirô Ueda
A one-take movie stunt is justified in the Japanese director Shinichiro Ueda’s fast and furious backstage comedy.
By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

— Of Possible Interest —

Cats

PG Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Musical Directed by Tom Hooper
Tom Hooper’s movie is not a catastrophe. It’s not even an epic hairball.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

PG-13Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-Fi Directed by J.J. Abrams
Resistance is futile. Rey, Finn and Poe are back; so is Kylo Ren. No spoilers here.
By A.O. SCOTT

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Cunningham

NYT Critic’s Pick PG Documentary, Biography, Music Directed by Alla Kovgan
Alla Kovgan’s documentary about the great Merce Cunningham shows aspects of his choreography that can be difficult to convey on conventional film.
By BRIAN SEIBERT

— Of Possible Interest —

Jumanji: The Next Level

PG-13 Action, Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy Directed by Jake Kasdan
Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan return for this sequel, and they’ve got Danny DeVito and Danny Glover in tow.
By GLENN KENNY

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

NYT Critic’s Pick R Drama, Romance Directed by Céline Sciamma
In Céline Sciamma’s new film, Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant play an aristocrat and an artist falling in love in 18th-century France.
By A.O. SCOTT

The Aeronauts

NYT Critic’s Pick PG-13Action, Adventure, Biography, Drama, Romance Directed by Tom Harper
Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne reach for the skies in this charming Victorian ballooning adventure.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

In Fabric

NYT Critic’s Pick R Comedy, Horror Directed by Peter Strickland
Peter Strickland’s fourth feature is a horror story about, yes, a garment, but it’s his most engrossing work yet.
By GLENN KENNY

Midnight Family

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary, Action, Crime, Drama Directed by Luke Lorentzen
In this outstanding documentary, a family of emergency medical workers struggles both to save lives and to make a living.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

— Of Possible Interest —

Little Joe

Drama, Sci-Fi Directed by Jessica Hausner
Jessica Hausner’s new sci-fi film about a flower engineered to release a potent antidepressant evokes “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
By GLENN KENNY

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open

NYT Critic’s Pick Drama Directed by Kathleen Hepburn, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers
Two indigenous women collide in an urgent, intimate drama about race, motherhood and domestic abuse.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Les Misérables

NYT Critic’s Pick R Crime, Drama, Thriller Directed by Ladj Ly
In modern-day Montfermeil, the setting of Victor Hugo’s novel, the filmmaker Ladj Ly stages his own impassioned cry against oppression.
By GLENN KENNY

63 Up

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary Directed by Michael Apted
Michael Apted revisits the people who have grown up, and grown older, in this long-running, landmark documentary series.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

Queen & Slim

NYT Critic’s Pick R Drama Directed by Melina Matsoukas
Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith star in Melina Matsoukas’s dreamy but intense outlaw romance.
By A.O. SCOTT

— Of Possible Interest —

White Snake

Animation, Fantasy, Romance Directed by Amp Wong, Ji Zhao
Love is the answer, even when Romeo is a snake-catcher. Luckily, he’s not great at his job.
By KRISTEN YOONSOO KIM

NYT Critic’s Pick Movie(s)

Varda by Agnès

NYT Critic’s Pick Documentary, Biography Directed by Agnès Varda, Didier Rouget
In her last film, Agnès Varda sums up a six-decade career.
By A.O. SCOTT

Hala

NYT Critic’s Pick R Drama Directed by Minhal Baig
Geraldine Viswanathan is astonishingly resonant as a teenager testing the boundaries of faith, tradition and sexuality.
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

— Of Possible Interest —

Frozen II

PG Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical Directed by Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
The sisters and sidekicks from “Frozen” reconvene for another adventure with storms of feeling and a new power ballad.
By MANOHLA DARGIS

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

PG Biography, Drama Directed by Marielle Heller
Tom Hanks plays Mister Rogers, the beloved children’s television host, as he comes to the aid of a suffering magazine writer.
By A.O. SCOTT