2020s

Accusations of abhorrent crudity may be fairly lobbed at the subject matter of Blonde, but certainly not at Andrew Dominik’s talents as a provocative, implicating filmmaker, solemnly studying Norma Jean and Marilyn Monroe as dual identities in perpetual conflict, and disturbingly manifesting their world as a surreal, existential nightmare psychologically fusing them together.

Bodies Bodies Bodies delivers a perverse thrill in seeing its ensemble of cynical, two-faced narcissists tear themselves down over the course of one bloody, wild party, as Helina Reijn offers the darkly comedic, neon-tinted murder mystery a Gen Z twist, exposing the fraught insecurities and secrets that lie beneath their insincerity.

There is no need to complicate the simple concept of an extra-terrestrial hunting humans for sport, as Dan Trachtenberg smartly chooses to build Prey on the primal relationship between a hunter and its quarry, offering an assorted blend of genres that creatively brings the Predator franchise’s sci-fi conventions to one Comanche village and its scenic…

The awareness of storytelling conventions that one lonely scholar brings to her meeting with a Djinn in Three Thousand Years of Longing offers George Miller’s self-conscious metanarrative great passion for its artistic traditions, crafting an uneven yet vivid collage of fairy tale motifs greater than the sum of its mythological fragments.

There may be some rustiness on David Cronenberg’s part in returning to body horror filmmaking after two decades, but his blend of film noir and science-fiction in Crimes of the Future nevertheless makes for an intriguingly grim contemplation of bodily autonomy, artificial evolution, and artistic expression, seeking to reveal the primal anarchy in humanity’s raw,…

Steven Soderbergh updates classic thriller conventions with pandemic-related concerns in Kimi, using its vigorous camerawork and tightly wound plotting to deliver a gripping take on cyber-age insecurities, twisting our most personal social anxieties into a cynical vision of a tech-driven society where privacy is void and the most frightening prospect of all is simply leaving…