Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s New York Film Festival. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Mary Bronstein’s blistering Rose Bryne Showcase, Park Chan-wook’s return to bloody comedy of errors, and Kelly Reichardt’s subdued anti-heist film. Here are the capsule reviews for No Other Choice, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and The Mastermind.

Better to be a corpse and dream than to live forever and not. And movies are how we dream. Bi Gan’s behemoth is an ode to the artform and a lamentation of our times, carving a path through image-making history.Resurrection is a fever-dream time capsule of the last century of cinema, a hundred-year fugue state disguised as a five-part anthology of dreamers and desire. Somewhere between somnolent and peculiar, it's confirmation that the Chinese filmmaker is one of the strangest, most vital visionaries working today. Minor spoilers ahead…

Lav Diaz's reputation for inaccessibility has always been a matter of runtime, not comprehension — his films are classical narratives told at a geological pace, patient rather than opaque. It's fitting, then, that Magellan, at a comparatively brisk two and a half hours, is simultaneously his most "accessible" work and his least conventional: less a story than a series of tableaus, an art installation masquerading as a costume epic. Gael García Bernal anchors a docu-drama about the birth of an empire, and the result is one of the year's most quietly devastating history lessons. Minor spoilers ahead…

A 16mm stunner through a Tarot-inspired, heightened-reality Louisiana, Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys is a luscious, filthy homage to lost artforms and the best film out of SXSW this year: a modern day “trashterpiece.” Minor spoilers ahead…

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Paul Feig’s long-awaited sequel Another Simple Favor, Michael Bay’s kinetic foray into documentaries, and Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s gross-out “metaphorror” flick. Here are the capsule reviews for A Simple Favor 2, We Are Storror, Together, and Death of a Unicorn.

As with typical Christopher Landon fare, Drop is by-and-large a lighter version of a movie you’ve already seen with its glaring flaws plastered over by an immensely likable lead. Here, Meghann Fahy navigates a first date that plunges into a paranoid nightmare, terrorized by anonymous drops that threaten her family. With a winnowing bag of tricks and a bottle-episode location that feels more limiting than creative, Drop works as well as it does solely upon Fahy’s winning performance and frantic interiority. Minor spoilers ahead…

The speed-dating, line-dancing, “dudes rock” surprise of the year, Gavin O’Connor’s The Accountant 2 detonates its predecessor’s satisfying, yet tonally confused, drama into something much more assured — and better yet, much more outrageous. A buddy comedy in the place you would least expect it, The Accountant 2 finds strikes the perfect balance of Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal’s bickering within a web of ludicrous criminal intrigue. Minor spoilers ahead…

Digging up turpitude from the deep recesses of dark web opportunism, Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms is a serial killer thriller that finds power in its restraint and shocking prescience: an evil — yet vital — film to understand the stranglehold of postmodern, screen-abetted detachment. Juliette Gariépy’s chilling performance is a roundhouse kick to the teeth to dismantle our culture of macabre obsession, parasocial madness, and growing numbness. Minor spoilers ahead…

David Cronenberg handles his own grief the only he can: through a talky, corpse-voyeur, techno-conspiracy non-thriller. Way ahead of its time, strangely comforting, and wildly funny, The Shrouds extends the legendary filmmaker’s polarizing late oeuvre into deeply personal territory. Minor spoilers ahead…

Mike Leigh returns after six years away from the director’s chair with Hard Truths, a work of pure alchemy transforming misanthropic comedy into a brutal downer. Reuniting with his Secrets and Lies star, Leigh excavates the nooks and crannies of a small-scale drama with a towering deftness on the things left unspoken: Marianne Jean-Baptiste is absolutely titanic in what is likely the best performance of 2024. Minor spoilers ahead…

Meet the new Kiyoshi Kurosawa, same as the old Kiyoshi Kurosawa (complimentary). Cloud continues the director’s scalpel-focused scrutiny of our tech-abetted isolation, this time aiming at the grisly terminus of gig economy malaise. Minor spoilers ahead…

Once again transmogrifying old-school exploitation into her own feminist styling of New French Extremity, Coralie Fargeat trades in the empowered bloodletting of 2018’s Revenge for body horror. The Substance is one-note, obscene, and about as subtle as a sledgehammer — and it also happens to be one of the best movies of the year. Minor spoilers ahead…

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, Kiyoshi Kurosawa like you’ve never seen him before, and Steven Soderbergh’s haunted house flick are just some of the highlights at 2024’s TIFF. Here are the capsule reviews for Presence, Cloud, Nightbitch, Anora, The Shadow Strays, and Conclave.

M. Night Shyamalan once again elevates the B-movie with formal lunacy, an all-timer performance, and a touch of the personal. Starting as a silly powder keg of suspense, Trap slowly evolves into a sinister transfiguration of spaces and a meditation on a universal fear: being a bad father. With off-the-charts thematic tension and the best work of Josh Hartnett’s career, Trap is Shyamalan’s answer to Wes Craven’s Red Eye — and just as fun. Minor spoilers ahead…

The hype of Oz Perkins’ Longlegs being “so scary your heart will explode” is certainly misplaced. What starts as a shaky, ineffectual Kurosawa pastiche evolves into a uniquely American take on ambient terror; believe it or not, Longlegs isn’t about jump scares or even Nicolas Cage’s wacked-out satanist, it’s about the malaise of the human condition tucked away in the cracks of modern apathy. Minor spoilers ahead…

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is probably not what you’re expecting. Trading in Fury Road’s unstoppable octane for an exhilarating mode of mythmaking, George Miller deconstructs the very nature of legends in a brutal, mournful revenge epic. Fury Road was one of the best films of the previous decade. Furiosa is even better.

Live action anime tennis and the best sports movie since Creed, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers crackles with electricity and searing chemistry among its three leads. Even without its misleading marketing’s emphasis on sex — there’s barely any in the film — Challengers synthesizes eroticism and kineticism through the art of tennis, and into one of the best films of the year so far. Minor spoilers ahead…