Recent articles
August 31, 2026
‘Sacred Creatures’ Review: Slippery Canadian-Italian Satire Follows the Cult and Collapse of a Questionable Guru
As the great Aretha Franklin taught us, it’s usually a backhanded approach to begin a critique with praise for the gowns. Or gown, in the case of “Sacred Creatures,” a microbudget hothouse drama ot...
variety.com
August 30, 2026
‘Call My Agent! The Movie’ Review: Love-Hate Energy Keeps the Gang Together in a Fast, Funny Feature-Length Return
The rare reboot pitch that that can actually be greeted with “this again!” rather than “this again?,” “Call My Agent! The Movie” makes sense of its rote title in two ways. First, and most obviously...
variety.com
August 30, 2026
’17’ Review: Harrowing Teen Pregnancy Drama from Macedonia Could Be the Feel-Bad Movie of the Year
From the first frame, Kosara Mitić’s “17” refuses to pull any punches, plunging us immediately into the traumatic moment when a hookup between high-school student Sara (Eva Kostić) and two boys tak...
variety.com
August 30, 2026
‘Sea of Glass’ Review: A Widow’s Coastal Healing Retreat Turns Into a Stately, Moody Greek Tragedy
There are Greek waves aplenty lapping at the forlorn beachside setting of “Sea of Glass,” though they’re not especially weird ones. Amid a national cinema that has become internationally recognized...
variety.com
August 29, 2026
‘Borges and Me’ Review: Gentle, Nostalgic Literary Road Movie Is More Perky Than Poetic
American author Jay Parini’s 2020 memoir “Borges and Me: An Encounter” read as a charming extension of an anecdote any writer would dine out on for the rest of their life: the tale of how Parini, a...
variety.com
August 28, 2026
‘The Whisper Man’ Review: Diverting Netflix Serial Killer Chiller Doesn’t Demand Much of Robert De Niro
“The Whisper Man” is the first — and surely not the last — film to be adapted from the airport oeuvre of British crime novelist Steve Mosby, who since 2019 has written four books (including the sou...
variety.com
August 26, 2026
‘The Dog Stars’ Review: Jacob Elordi’s Sensitive Survivalist Can’t Sustain a Dreary Dystopian Adventure
It’s the end of the world as we know it in “The Dog Stars,” and everyone feels — well, not fine exactly, but, you know, fine? Alive, hanging in there, taking it one day at a time. Things could be b...
variety.com
August 24, 2026
‘Small Things’ Review: Zvonimir Jurić’s Island-Set Chamber Drama Unfolds a Quietly Devastating Family Reunion
In the opening of “Small Things,” Zvonimir Jurić’s elegant and understated chamber drama, the giggling grandchildren of an elder patriarch (Bosnian film and theater veteran Izudin Bajrović) show th...
variety.com
August 22, 2026
‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ Review: Wholesome, Harmless Family Movie Aims to Give Enid Blyton the Paddington Treatment
If the children’s books of Enid Blyton have fallen out of fashion in classrooms and libraries — largely due to the racism and regressive gender politics throughout the British author’s oeuvre — the...
variety.com
August 22, 2026
‘Everything That’s Wrong With You’ Review: A Luminous Two-Hander from Slovenia About Online Pals Navigating the Waters of IRL Friendship
Anyone with a scrolling habit will know that social media can be a soothing place for the downbeat and lonely. Yet the intimacy you can strike up with strangers rubs up against the uncomfortable fa...
variety.com
August 21, 2026
‘The Marching Band’ Review: Brothers From Opposite Worlds Are United by Music in a Finely Tuned French Crowdpleaser
“The Marching Band” blasts through more story in its first 12 minutes than many films now manage in two hours. In those first 720 seconds we meet Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), a well-heeled classica...
variety.com
August 21, 2026
‘Good People’ Review: Milcho Manchevski’s Haunting Documentary Revisits the Kočani Nightclub Fire Through Survivors’ Eyes
On March 16, 2025, a fire broke out at the Pulse nightclub in the small North Macedonian town of Kočani, injuring hundreds and killing 63 people due to burn damage, smoke inhalation and other physi...
variety.com
August 20, 2026
‘Hot Spot’ Review: Eighties Cyberpunk Kitsch Is the Future in Agnieszka Smoczynka’s Peculiar Post-Apocalyptic Vision
In “Hot Spot,” the future of law enforcement looks somewhat different from what “RoboCop” predicted in 1987. With his bleach-blond, frizzy-permed mullet, giant hoop earrings, cuban-heeled Beatle bo...
variety.com
August 17, 2026
‘Supporting Role’ Review: Dato Bakhtadze Captivates in a Nocturnal Odyssey Through Tbilisi
A nocturnal odyssey through the spectral streets of Tbilisi is conjured with mesmerizing effect in Georgian writer-director Ana Urushadze’s “Supporting Role.” On the heavy heels of Niaz (Dato Bakht...
variety.com
August 17, 2026
‘Snapshot’ Review: A Nifty Calling-Card Debut Refashions the Jack the Ripper Story as Found-Footage Horror
Found footage may be a fairly stale gimmick in horror these days, but the low-budget British indie “Snapshot” finds a way to freshen up the idea — and if that largely amounts to layering another te...
variety.com
August 16, 2026
‘Mission’ Review: An All-In George MacKay Performance Anchors a Fevered Mental Illness Portrait
Back in 2013, actor George MacKay and director Paul Wright paired up for “For Those in Peril,” an atmospheric study of youthful alienation, trauma and psychological collapse in small-town Scotland ...
variety.com
August 15, 2026
‘The State of Us’ Review: A Pair of Spirited Performances Lift a Familiar Yorkshire Tearjerker
The weather being what it is in Yorkshire, a sunroof is not a top priority for most car buyers in that English county — but the tired hatchback driven by young slacker Frankie (Samuel Bottomley) ha...
variety.com
August 15, 2026
Florin Şerban’s ‘You Don’t Belong Here’ Wins Golden Leopard at Locarno, as Monica Bellucci and Kim Minhee Take Acting Awards
Romanian director Florin Şerban’s “You Don’t Belong Here,” a study of anti-Roma racism, has taken the Golden Lion for best film in the International Competition at the Locarno Film Festival, along ...
variety.com
August 15, 2026
‘Nowhere to Lay My Eyes’ Review: Kim Minhee Once More Gives a Melancholy Masterclass in a Hong Sangsoo Miniature
The death-and-taxes certainty of Hong Sangsoo’s filmography — comparable to Woody Allen’s prime career run in its regularity, consistency and recurrence of ideas and actors across a gently varying ...
variety.com
August 14, 2026
‘Objet a’ Review: Ann Oren’s Wickedly Kinky Curiosity Eroticizes Everything From Mushrooms to Mushroom Cuts
“Objet a” was Lacan’s term for the lack, the absence, that sets our desires into motion; an object-cause rather than a physical object. If it were the latter, a more apt title for Ann Oren’s delici...
variety.com
August 14, 2026
‘You Don’t Belong Here’ Review: A Potentially Involving Story Is Weakened by Airless Dialogue and a Misguided Finale
Florin Şerban’s “You Don’t Belong Here” opens with great promise and finishes with a stupefyingly misguided coda: The lengthy minutes in between are rigorously filmed and sharply observed, but woul...
variety.com
August 13, 2026
‘Far From the Trees’ Review: A Richly Contemplative Journey of Physical and Mental Meanderings, Beautifully Combining 4K Digital with Super 16
Language and sounds trigger idyllic childhood recollections in Meritxell Colell Aparicio’s deeply personal, contemplative drama “Far From the Trees,” a handsome reverie blending 4K, Super16mm and a...
variety.com
August 13, 2026
‘The Wrong Girls’ Review: Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat Are a Good Time in Dylan Meyer’s Shaggy Stoner Comedy
Debut writer-director Dylan Meyer practically achieves liftoff with her absurdist stoner comedy “The Wrong Girls,” starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat. If Method Man and Red Man once posited ...
variety.com
August 12, 2026
‘Don’t Say Good Luck’ Review: Sunny Sandler and Melanie Lynskey Give Genuine Soul to Netflix’s Mother-Daughter Heartbreaker
There’s a high probability that you’ve seen Sunny Sandler on screen before: Thanks to the patronage of her ceaselessly prolific dad, Adam, the 17-year-old has amassed 26 film credits to date. In “D...
variety.com
August 12, 2026
‘Wandering Trees’ Review: Iconoclastic Director Salvatore Mereu Tries a Newly Minted Fairyale, but Only Fitfully Finds Magic
In fairy tales, we never question why the beautiful princess is marrying a horrible prince: Part of the pact readers make with such stories is that we accept these situations at face value. In real...
variety.com
August 12, 2026
‘The Brink of War’ Review: Reagan and Gorbachev Engage in Unengaging Verbal Battle
There was a time when talky slabs of recent political history like “The Brink of War,” carried by skilled name actors who aren’t quite stars, were largely the preserve of Emmy-chasing TV networks. ...
variety.com
August 10, 2026
‘Hearing’ Review: Lê Bảo Continues His Sensory Exploration With an Arresting Study in Silence
In Vietnamese director Lê Bảo’s new film, an extended family confronts various rifts and estrangements in its ranks; years of silence must give way, slowly and haltingly, to communication. That the...
variety.com
August 10, 2026
‘Brave New Love’ Review: Infidelity Isn’t the End in an Unusual, Open-Minded Marital Drama
“I would never fall in love if I was in a good relationship.” So says one participant in the women’s church group where Copenhagen-based wife and mother Kate (Kathrine Thorborg Johansen) confesses ...
variety.com
August 9, 2026
‘Our Time Will Come’ Review: Two Orphans Journey to Accra to Find Their Kin in an Emotionally Absorbing Ghanaian Drama
Elements of “Oliver Twist” are given a West African update in “Our Time Will Come,” an atmospheric and emotionally absorbing feature debut from writer-director Amartei Armar, who thankfully cares t...
variety.com
August 9, 2026
‘Donkey Princess’ Review: A Princess Escapes the Kingdom, but Not the Patriarchy, in an Inventive, Shape-Shifting Fairytale
Chilean duo Cristobal León and Joaquín Cociña made a dream nightmare debut with “The Wolf House,” a stop-motion fantasy that turned heads both with its wholly original design — incorporating clayma...
variety.com