Recent articles
October 17, 2026
‘Klara and the Sun’ Review: There’s No Life — Intelligent, Artificial or Otherwise — in Taika Waititi’s Calamitous Android Fantasy
Adapting a solemnly complex, questioning novel as a cockeyed child’s-eye comedy worked once before for Taika Waititi — which is to say that “Jojo Rabbit,” his crass, mawkish “anti-hate satire” abou...
variety.com
October 15, 2026
Iranian Auteur Majid Majidi Wins Top Prize at Busan Film Festival With ‘Midday Meal’
Veteran Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi has won Best Film at the 31st Busan International Film Festival for “Midday Meal,” his simple, starkly powerful contemporary parable about a rural schoolteach...
variety.com
October 15, 2026
‘To Be Ordinary’ Review: A Compassionate, Even-Handed Taiwanese Family Melodrama
A high-speed traffic accident leaves a college student in a wheelchair for life, but that’s merely the starting point of the narrative in “To Be Ordinary,” a sensitive, slowly enveloping film with ...
variety.com
October 14, 2026
‘Beach Fictions’ Review: Utterly Beguiling, Time-Tweaking Korean Romance Shows What a Day a Difference Makes
Fatalism, self-determination and imagination all gently wrestle for control of the narrative(s) in “Beach Fictions,” an enchanting and subtly profound diptych that follows one young woman through t...
variety.com
October 14, 2026
‘All About Corinne’ Review: Isabelle Huppert Stalks Sandrine Kiberlain in a Witty, Deliciously Acted French Industry Satire
As one of the select few French actresses who has earned definite-article status in her homeland — referred to routinely as La Huppert, alongside the likes of La Binoche and La Deneuve — it’s immed...
variety.com
October 13, 2026
‘Once Upon in the Middle East’ Review: China’s Oscar Entry Is a Breakneck Blockbuster That Mixes Food Porn With Wartime Devastation
Not since Zhang Yimou’s 2002 wuxia spectacle “Hero” has China landed an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature — and this dry spell surely won’t be broken with this year’s bombastic submis...
variety.com
October 12, 2026
‘Silver Express’ Review: Miki Tanaka’s Sensitive Debut Feature Explores Asexual and Aromantic Identity
There are films and series with asexual characters in them, but far fewer interested in the experiential questions about moving through society as asexual and aromantic, and considering that identi...
variety.com
October 12, 2026
‘The Sea Speaks His Name’ Review: Absorbing Indonesian Political Thriller Is an Ode to Disappeared Activists
In an age where some call themselves activists merely through social media posting, stories of the dangers, consequences and occasional, very hard-won rewards of boots-on-the-ground political activ...
variety.com
October 11, 2026
‘Wildwood’ Review: Laika’s Most Ambitious Feature to Date Is a Richly Textured, Transportive Fairytale Epic
“Enjoy handmade art before it’s gone forever.” Keen-eyed viewers may read these words fleetingly on screen in the early stages of “Wildwood,” amid a wealth of fast-passing sights and sight gags as ...
variety.com
October 11, 2026
‘Between Two Lovers’ Review: Nanako Hirose’s Contentious Family Drama Examines an Ill-Fated Throuple
The sophomore feature from Hirokazu Kore-eda protégé Nanako Hirose, “Between Two Lovers” tackles a variety of potential hot-button issues, from polyamorous relationships to same-sex parenting, in i...
variety.com
October 11, 2026
‘Midday Meal’ Review: Touching Iranian Drama Charts a Teacher’s Desperate Acts to Provide for His School
“Midday Meal” isn’t necessarily about the art of cooking, but it is in part about the rituals of food, rituals which become more precious with scarcity. But more than that, the new film from direct...
variety.com
October 11, 2026
‘The First Taste of Loneliness’ Review: A Sentimental but Affecting Study of Family Life After Bereavement
The most moving scene in “The First Taste of Loneliness” is not, in fact, its most tear-streaked. Gu You’s heartfelt family portrait opens on an extended, anguished scene of three women — a mother,...
variety.com
October 10, 2026
‘Ibuku’ Review: Dreamlike Indonesian Drama Is a Compelling Tale of Parental Redemption
The fraught relationship between an estranged mother and daughter takes centre stage in “Ibuku,” the fourth film from Indonesian writer-director Eddie Cahyono. Despite the first-person perspective ...
variety.com
October 10, 2026
‘Ray Gunn’ Review: Brad Bird’s Latest Animated Feature Is a Giddy Retro-Futurist Noir With More Energy Than Charm
“Welcome to the future,” we hear several times in “Ray Gunn” — not that the brave new world it presents is all that welcoming. Or, for that matter, particularly brave or new. The good news is we fi...
variety.com
October 8, 2026
‘Angel and the Badman’ Review: Zachary Levi Leads Angel Studios’ Fitfully Engaging Remake of a John Wayne Vehicle
Inevitably the Angel media company and streaming platform, rebranded from Angel Studios in 2025, has remade the 1947 John Wayne project “Angel and the Badman,” and not just for the angelic title. I...
variety.com
October 8, 2026
‘Animals’ Review: Ben Affleck Returns to the Director’s Chair for a Nasty, Compulsive Kidnapping Thriller
It’s for the best that “Animals,” actor Ben Affleck’s sixth outing behind the camera, is being released directly to Netflix — not that this slick, pacy serving of all-star pulp couldn’t or wouldn’t...
variety.com
October 7, 2026
‘Krux’ Review: A Potently Bleak Portrait of German Village Life at the Bitter End of WWII
We’re used to films about hope and rejuvenation in the final days of the Second World War, but there’s a more novel perspective to be found in “Krux” — set in an isolated village in northeast Germa...
variety.com
October 7, 2026
‘Satoko Always’ Review: A Trio of Women Find Their Inner Voice in Shuichi Okita’s Delightful Celebration of the Art of Writing
Three total strangers, with nothing in common except their name, are each inspired to take up writing in “Satoko Always,” writer-director Shuichi Okita’s surprising and inventive celebration of wom...
variety.com
October 7, 2026
‘The Social Reckoning’ Review: Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Social Network’ Follow-Up Is Missing More Than Just David Fincher
Prior to its 2010 release, a much-held suspicion about “The Social Network” was that it was too soon for a film about Facebook. In a way, it was. At a time when most of us were still avidly adding ...
variety.com
October 6, 2026
‘The Table: Day and Night’ Review: Café-Based Korean Romance With Kim Min-ha and Han Sun-hwa Is All Froth, No Kick
An artisanal café in a quiet yet fashionable Seoul neighborhood provides the setting for a quartet of seasonal vignettes in Kim Jong-kwan’s romantic anthology “The Table: Day and Night.” Opening th...
variety.com
October 3, 2026
‘April X’ Review: Connor Storrie Bides His Time in a Generic Sci-Fi Clone
It would be nice to say that Connor Storrie burns up the screen in “April X,” the star’s first film vehicle released since TV’s “Heated Rivalry” made him hot property, but it would be overstating t...
variety.com
October 2, 2026
‘Lady’ Review: Sian Clifford Lords It Over a Daffy English Class Satire
It’s easy to poke fun at the English upper classes, but that’s no reason not to do it. Amid continued social inequality in the U.K., the extreme wealth and societal remove of the aristocracy looks ...
variety.com
September 26, 2026
‘Ghost Song’ Review: Fatih Akin Doesn’t Find Top Form in This Supernatural Romance, but at Least It Has Beautiful Ghosts
Since hitting an artistic peak with the back-to-back festival triumphs “Head-On” and “Edge of Heaven” in the mid-2000s, German-Turkish auteur Fatih Akin has darted all over the map in genre, style ...
variety.com
September 25, 2026
‘Unabomber’ Review: A Portrait of the Terrorist as a Young Man, Given a Hokey TV-Movie Gloss
The Unabomber may be a figure of enduring public fascination, but it’s hard to see that extending to “Unabomber,” Netflix’s unimaginatively titled and prosaically assembled drama about how domestic...
variety.com
September 23, 2026
‘The Housewife’ Review: Naomi Watts Anchors a Watchable but Underpowered True Story of Hidden Nazism in Suburban Queens
Long before the relevant authorities do, you’ll figure out the secret that immigrant homemaker Hermine Ryan (née Braunsteiner) holds close to her chest in “The Housewife” — a giveaway that may be t...
variety.com
September 20, 2026
‘Magazine’ Review: Lily McInerny Scores Her Dream Internship in Alexandra Pechman’s Warmly Nostalgic Study of a Bygone Literary Scene
In an era when glamorous writing jobs have acquired the unreality of folklore, it feels fitting that Alexandra Pechman’s alluring and affectionate feature debut, “Magazine,” should portray its lite...
variety.com
September 19, 2026
‘The Smell of Apples’ Review: A Sun-Soaked but Chilling Child’s-Eye View of Apartheid-Era Privilege and Denial
Every surface period detail is present and correct to an eerie degree in “The Smell of Apples”: the gawkily short seasonal school uniforms, the ickily patterned kitchen tiles, the garden chairs lik...
variety.com
September 19, 2026
‘Vintage Violence’ Review: Cole Sprouse Heads Up a Hyper-Online Gonzo Freakout in Japan
Eugene Kotlyarenko has built a career on drawing upon his widely-viewed cinephilic base of knowledge to consider more contemporary forms of hyper-online, of-the-moment provocation, and “Vintage Vio...
variety.com
September 18, 2026
‘Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie’ Review: Alex Gibney Profiles the Controversial Author During His Harrowing Hospitalization
There’s nothing more distressing in “Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie’ than the unflinching closeups of the author’s wounded body in the days and weeks after August 12, 2022, when he w...
variety.com
September 16, 2026
‘Growth of the Soil’ Review: Norway’s Oscar Entry Is a Robustly Classical, Weatherbeaten Rural Epic
The wind deserves above-the-title billing in “Growth of the Soil” — even in the most serene scenes of Hans Petter Moland’s muscular period epic, you can hear it rattling and wheezing and moaning aw...
variety.com