EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER RIDES
On Swift Horses - Queer studio offering starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi.
Queer - Luca Guadagnino’s visual feast featuring a career best and awards buzz-worthy performance from Daniel Craig.
Emilia Pérez - This Cannes winning musical centers on four women striving for agency and justice. Runner-up for TIFF 24 People’s Choice Award.
TRIPS TO ANOTHER PLACE AND TIME
The Damned - Total immersion into the experience of Civil War soldiers is both a feature and a bug, at times boring and revelatory.
Conclave - Ralph Fiennes heads the archbishops in electing a new pope. Based on Robert Harris’s high-stakes drama.
The Return - A muscular Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus in a retelling of the conclusion of The Odyssey.
Harbin - This old-fashioned movie epic recounts Korea’s independence struggle against its Japanese conquerors.
INVENTIVE FILMS THAT ENTERTAIN OR CHALLENGE
Rich Flu - Smart script elevates clever conceit: a pandemic that wipes out the rich.
The Brutalist - This nearly 4-hour throwback to epic filmmaking tracks the life of an immigrant architect. Expect awards buzz for its lead, Adrian Brody.
Presence - Steven Soderbergh’s latest home movie is an upside down ghost story.
Pedro Páramo - Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto’s debut challenges with its braided storytelling of a magical realist classic.
ONES THAT MISSED THE MARK
Hold Your Breath - Committed performances by Sarah Paulson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and a strong ensemble, plus a script that subverts horror genre tropes, can’t elevate this paint-by-numbers offering.
The Life of Chuck - As nearly every year, the People's Choice awardee was sentimental and on the nose. Still, this movie’s linked story structure was more interesting than most.
Went Up the Hill - An examination of grief and loss marred by kludgy genre trappings.
JUST PLAIN BAD
Nutcrackers - Even Ben Stiller can’t redeem what is essentially a bad Hallmark-type Christmas movie.