Andrea Riseborough did some terrific work in 2018, but my pick for her finest role is the title character in Nancy, an impressive indie debut from Christina Choe. Nancy has a lonely life as the sole caregiver for her ill mother (Ann Dowd). She works as a temp, spinning stories to her coworkers about her […]

Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle is much like the game itself — quiet, and engrossing. Kelly Macdonald has long been one of our finest yet underrated actresses, always bringing an acute sensitivity to her roles, and she is pitch perfect as Agnes, a mousy, demure Christian housewife with a velvety voice and dowdy clothes. Her humdrum life […]

This British film set on the island of Jersey is a stunning feature debut by Michael Pearce. Jessie Buckley plays Moll, a young woman with a history of antisocial behavior. Her wealthy family is protective but judgmental. Molly ditches her own birthday party to go drinking, and when a drunken lout tries assaulting her, Pascal […]

“Whiteness can incinerate a family with the heat equal to a bomb,” intones narrator Travis Wilkerson, the filmmaker and subject of Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? “Give it enough time and whiteness will incinerate the world.” On its face, the documentary serves as a recounting of Wilkerson’s journey to determine the veracity of […]

In a year that gave us The 15:17 to Paris and Gotti, the claim that the most heinous cinematic crime committed in 2018 was the trailer to Alpha is a bold one. However, it’s a bold one I stand by, because whoever made the decision that this brutal and beautiful survival drama should be marketed […]

Rather than acting as a release valve on the past few years, 2018 continued to increase the pressure, as American culture grows steadily more hostile and volatile. During such turbulent times, satiric genre films that hold up a mirror to society are typically not favorably received — the closer to the bone the cut is, […]

If there was ever something to make me realize that pasty dudes talking about movies on Twitter wasn’t indicative of the rest of the world, it would be how few people know about, and have seen, Jim Cummings’ Thunder Road, a movie with so much spunk and fervor that it feels straight out of the […]

The Mark Duplass-produced Unlovable is a refreshingly honest depiction of a woman’s road to recovery from sex addiction, based on writer and star Charlene deGuzman’s own struggles. DeGuzman radiates with effervescence as the aptly named Joy, a thoroughly unique heroine with childlike pigtails who loves cuddly stuffed animals and wearing kooky, brightly colored outfits with […]

Two teenage girls, one a self-admitted sociopath, the other a spoiled schemer, conspire to commit murder in Cory Finley’s brilliantly incisive Thoroughbreds. It’s hard to tell whether the fragile Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and the self-assured Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) are ever truly friends, or whether they’re ever showing each other their true emotions. Part of what’s […]

This year saw a phoenix-like rebirth of the elemental spirit we call Nicolas Cage, with the actor rising from the ashes of Z-grade Redbox fare into the gonzo genre freakout of Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy. A few months before his much heralded return, however, us Cage disciples witnessed his second coming early, with his performance in […]

In the midst of his Elisabeth Moss trilogy (consisting of Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth, and Her Smell), indie auteur Alex Ross Perry marshaled his largest ensemble to date in Golden Exits. A contemporary comedy/drama centered on a cluster of self-centered Brooklynites, the film finds Perry pairing off his characters in different combinations, subtly […]

In an alternate (and, frankly, better) universe, Augustine Frizzell’s Never Goin’ Back would have been one of the biggest comedy hits of 2018, with star-making performances from Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone. Instead, Frizzell’s hilarious, heartfelt, and often beautiful stoner comedy barely made it into theaters before being relegated to the furthest reaches of Amazon […]