2020s

Rebecca Hall’s shallow focus and hazy black-and-white cinematography in Passing takes a dreamy hold over this interrogation of racial assimilation in 1920s New York, bringing together two old African-American childhood friends whose strikingly divergent lives lead to a reunion over thorny questions of identity and prejudice.

No doubt there are plot points in Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar which don’t quite cohere with everything else, but with a screwball commitment to absurdly inventive visual gags and dialogue, the inspired collaboration between Josh Greenbaum, Kristen Wiig, and Anne Mumolo pushes the film’s narrative logic in hilariously unexpected directions.

Perhaps there is a leaner version of Drive My Car out there than the three-hour version Ryusuke Hamaguchi presents us with, but that would simply not do justice to the long journeys of healing lived by the complex characters at its heart, delicately forming a quiet limbo of endless self-reflection for those whose loved ones…

The personal evocations of Kenneth Branagh’s own childhood in Belfast endows this memory piece with a certain level of authenticity, but it is also the emotional nuance that he finds through his elegant camerawork and staging that fully consumes us in young Buddy’s journey, giving endless thanks to those who planted seeds of growth within…

Through the volatile performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the imposingly austere sets, and ghostly greyscale cinematography, virtually every minute of The Tragedy of Macbeth feels as if it is teetering on the brink of mortality, attacking existential questions of destiny, chaos, and violence with an artistic precision that remains remarkably in tune with…