The week in film: Emma Stone shines in Poor Things, plus the greatest gangster movies

Poor Things review: Emma Stone comes to life in a feminist masterpiece

Director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer) is not what one might call a conventional filmmaker, crafting his films with deadpan line delivery that enhances the surreal quality of their premises to lay bare fundamental truths of the human experience. His previous collaboration with screenwriter Tony McNamara, The Favourite, was perhaps as grounded as Lanthimos gets, but his penchant for distorted wide angles and understanding complicated, hopelessly entangled relationships made the film a highlight of his filmography. Now the creative duo have reunited for an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s superb 1992 novel Poor Things, resulting in a film that is simultaneously Lanthimos’ strangest—no small feat in its own right—but also perhaps his most humanist. Read More

The 20 greatest gangster movies of all time, ranked

Gangster movies are loaded with inherently alluring qualities: the vicarious thrill of watching an antihero buck the establishment and take what they want with impunity; the glamorous trappings as a funhouse mirror version of the American Dream; the familial metaphors of dynastic crime families; the antisocial buzz of viscerally violent acts; even the straight-and-narrow validation of watching an amoral figure fall from ill-gotten grace. Read More

Wonka Review: Timothée Chalamet concocts a delightfully infectious confection

The point of co-writer/director Paul King’s musically oriented origin story Wonka isn’t to answer the question of how a budding candy maker became the mercurial, withdrawn weirdo we met in the pages of Roald Dahl’s book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and on screen in both 1971’s Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and 2006’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Rather, it’s to tell a character-enriching backstory capturing a time when Willy Wonka’s initial big dreams changed the world for the better. That’s a smart path considering the former narrative track, seeing a beloved Willy Wonka morph into a world-weary, workaholic recluse, would be a flat-out bummer. Read More

Hayao Miyazaki movies, ranked from “nice and chill” to “this will ruin your day”

At this year’s Golden Globes, when accepting his award for Pinocchio, Guillermo del Toro defended the art of animation by arguing that it is “a medium” and not “a genre for kids” (an argument he stands by so much that it’s now his Twitter bio). Few filmmakers who illustrate (so to speak) that truth as clearly as Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki—one of the world’s most esteemed directors, animation or otherwise, and one who del Toro recently compared to Mozart and Van Gogh. Read More

15 Best Director contenders for the 2024 Oscars

Our preview of this year’s awards season has already touched on the contenders for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. Now it’s time to turn to the directors behind the acclaimed films gaining momentum at this stage of the race. There’s a wide mix of talent in the directing pool this year, including big names like Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, and Ridley Scott, plus sophomore filmmakers like Bradley Cooper and Emerald Fennell looking for gold with their second films. Read More

The Boy And The Heron review: Hayao Miyazaki plays the hits

Watching Hayao Miyazaki’s un-retirement animated feature The Boy And The Heron is a little like watching Bob Dylan play the hits live: you have some idea of what you’ll get, even if it’s all jumbled up into a wholly new combination and style. Released in Japan under the title of How Do You Live, after a 1937 novel it’s mostly not based on, The Boy And The Heron neither had nor needed trailers there, or much promotion save a single poster design. Miyazaki-savvy audiences came with a degree of confidence in what they would get, as can American aficionados of Studio Ghibli. Read More

Dan Levy goes on a new journey in Good Grief trailer

Ever since 2020, the amount of unprocessed grief we’ve all had to carry within us is almost hard to comprehend. Still, Dan Levy is giving it his best shot in his feature-length directorial debut, Good Grief. Read More

Everything you need to know about Wonka

A year ago we couldn’t have said definitively whether Wonka would be a delightful musical extravaganza or a total disaster. Either outcome seemed plausible. After all, was anyone actually clamoring for yet another version of the mysterious, magical chocolatier from Roald Dahl’s beloved book series? And one played by Timothée Chalamet, no less? But now that the film’s opening is less than two weeks away and early reviews are in, the full picture is coming together on what to expect. Read More

Origin Review: Ava DuVernay’s ambitious study of grief and growth

There’s a scene nearly halfway through Origin where the protagonist is advised by her confidant to simplify her new book’s sharp-but-unwieldy premise or risk losing potential readers. It reads like similar feedback given to writer-director Ava DuVernay in her development of this riveting feature, which gives voice to Isabel Wilkerson’s personal and professional struggles while writing her compelling novel Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Achieving a breakthrough for the character and audience members alike, the astute filmmaker drills into the dramatic core and lets the film’s magnitude push the picture’s heartrending sentiments to the fore. Read More

James Cameron weighs in on water, historical accuracy, and Barbie

James Cameron is still in the deep end. During a career that has reached from the ocean floor to deep space (and an ocean floor in deep space), the Oscar-winning director has grabbed audiences with his romantic, hopeful visions of the future and the past, creating worlds so convincing people will swear they’re real. With the $2.3 billion box office of Avatar: The Way Of Water and three more Pandora-based installments on the way, Cameron’s only getting started. Since 1997, he has been working with his producing partner, Jon Landau, and together they’ve made some of the most successful movies ever, defying expectations and cultural trends by creating endearing works of pop romance with virtuosic story sense and a mastery of cutting-edge visual effects. Read More