Critic’s Pick
Dancing with demons.
‘Sinners’
Michael B. Jordan stars as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, who return to their hometown and open a juke joint.
From our review:
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is a big-screen exultation — a passionate, effusive praise song about life and love, including the love of movies. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it is a genre-defying, mind-bending fantasia overflowing with great performances, dancing vampires and a lot of ideas about love and history.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
A happy marriage of comedy and drama.
‘The Wedding Banquet’
Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran and Han Gi-chan play queer friends planning a sham marriage to solve their problems. Then one of their grandparents (Yuh-Jung Youn) arrives to throw a traditional wedding.
From our review:
“The Wedding Banquet” is so charming, and then so unexpectedly moving, that its strengths eventually outweigh the bits of mess. Much of the credit is due several of the cast members, especially Gladstone, who is both centered and luminously funny, and Youn, whose version of this archetype we think we know — the no-nonsense Chinese grandmother set in her ways — sparkles and surprises.
In theaters. Read the full review.
The never-ending nostalgia.
‘The Legend of Ochi’
A young girl (Helena Zengel) befriends a misunderstood creature in this throwback adventure movie directed by Isaiah Saxon.
From our review:
It is not hard to spot the derivative nature of this plot, with all its classic ’80s movie elements: the creatures the humans would rather kill than understand; the divorced parents; the disaffected young person; the hero’s journey. I don’t mean that in a bad way, though: “The Legend of Ochi” is designed to pay tribute to a kind of movie that rarely gets made anymore.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A tomb with a view.
‘The Shrouds’
After the death of his wife (Diane Kruger), Karsh (Vincent Cassel) invents a burial shroud that allows loved ones to view the decaying corpse in the latest from David Cronenberg.
From our review:
Amid scenes that are plain baffling (we expect those from Cronenberg), there are plot switchbacks and red herrings that don’t add up. Still, the movie keeps returning to reality and fantasy, fetishism and desire, and the moment when love becomes obsession becomes stalking.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Critic’s Pick
A classic fairy tale gets a nasty face-lift.
‘The Ugly Stepsister’
This reimagining of the Cinderella story follows Elvira (Lea Myren) as she undergoes a series of brutal beauty treatments in order to charm the Prince.
From our review:
Like last year’s “The Substance,” this fleshy folk horror forces us to look — in unsparing, often revolting close-up — at the physical agony of aesthetic conformity. Yet the movie, adapted by the Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt from the Cinderella story, is the opposite of didactic: Slyly funny and visually captivating (the luscious cinematography is by Marcel Zyskind), its scenes move with ease from gross to gorgeous, and from grotesque to magical.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Schemes of her father.
‘Invention’
In this experimental film directed by Courtney Stephens that blends fiction and nonfiction, a young woman (Callie Hernandez) inherits a bizarre healing machine from her father.
From our review:
Video clips of Hernandez’s real father pitching treatments on TV and theorizing on how “cells are like your cellphone” are interspersed throughout. … Periodically, Stephens will cut to moments in which she and the actors break the fourth wall. Whether these meta elements should mean much to those who weren’t involved may be beside the point. “Invention” is committed to finding its own wavelength.
In theaters. Read the full review.
A French biopic missing that je ne sais quoi.
‘The President’s Wife’
Catherine Deneuve stars as the former French first lady Bernadette Chirac in this highly fictionalized biopic directed by Léa Domenach.
From our review:
Bernadette teams up with her chief of staff, Bernard Niquet (Denis Podalydès), to revamp her political career. The duo’s scheming and easy rapport make up much of the film’s brisk humor, which at times can be a bit too culturally specific to resonate fully with non-French viewers. And while Deneuve brings a wonderful blend of neuroses and feigned indifference to her character, the film’s pop-feminist through line dulls the comedy, creating a more conventionally celebratory portrait.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Pop star romance with off-the-charts style.
‘Queens of Drama’
This musical romance directed by Alexis Langlois follows two singers as they compete for superstardom and fall into a tumultuous love affair.
From our review:
With playful visual flourishes, a willfully garish palette and winks galore (including one to the French feminist writer Monique Wittig), Langlois’s debut has stylistic ambition for days. But it’s not as genre-fluent as “Love Lies Bleeding” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” or as swoon inducing as its volatile couple deserves.
In theaters. Read the full review.
Compiled by Kellina Moore.
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