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February 14, 2026
‘Mouse’ Review: A Touching Bond Forms Between a North Little Rock Teen and Her Late Friend’s Mom
A mousy teenager with curly hair and a face full of acne, Minnie is the farthest thing from cool — even if the actress who plays her, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, has charisma to spare. Minnie is pra...
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February 10, 2026
More Than Just a Restoration, ‘Mysterious Skin’ Gets a Full-Blown Rejuvenation, Which Allowed Gregg Araki to Perfect the Queer Classic
It’s been 21 years since Gregg Araki debuted his masterpiece, “Mysterious Skin.” That’s older than the apocalypse-defying adolescent characters in nearly every one of his movies — and ample time fo...
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February 9, 2026
‘Wuthering Heights’ Review: Intense as Her Two Leads’ Chemistry May Be, Emerald Fennell Knows to Leave Them Wanting Moor
Research the ratings history of “Wuthering Heights” via the Motion Picture Academy, and you’ll see a progression in how Emily Brontë’s novel has been treated on-screen, evolving from tame to tawdry...
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February 8, 2026
‘Marianne’ Review: Isabelle Huppert’s One-Woman Conceptual Art Project Sparks Deep Thoughts and Profound Annoyance
Well, that’s a wrap. As I look back on my two-decade tenure at Variety, I’m incredibly proud of the 2,000-plus reviews that the publication (and you, my readers) have entrusted me with. It’s the gr...
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February 4, 2026
‘See You When I See You’ Review: Cooper Raiff Deals With His Sister’s Death in a Too-Familiar Traumedy From Director Jay Duplass
In 2017, “The Big Sick” was the big sale of the Sundance Film Festival (beaten one week later by “Mudbound”). Those were the days, when streamers were spending big to acquire quality independent mo...
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January 29, 2026
‘Once Upon a Time in Harlem’ Review: Cultural Time-Capsule Doc Invites Us to a Once-in-a-Lifetime Party
In the documentary “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” the legendary photographer James Van Der Zee eyes the grand piano sitting in the living room of Duke Ellington’s townhouse. We hear a voice nudge hi...
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January 27, 2026
‘The Weight’ Review: Ethan Hawke Carries an Intermittently Exciting, if Sometimes Arduous Throwback to ‘Deliverance’-Era Action Movies
Ethan Hawke is having a moment, the way fellow Newton boy Matthew McConaughey did a few years back. Onscreen since age 14 — yet taken for granted far too long — the undeniable talent behind those c...
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January 27, 2026
‘Soul Patrol’ Review: Sundance Documentary Serves Up the Elegant, Elegiac Vietnam War History We Need
When Vietnam veteran Ed Emanuel wrote the memoir “Soul Patrol” (2003), the gesture could have been likened to that of a marooned man sending out a message in a bottle. Although he’s had a decades-l...
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January 27, 2026
‘Chasing Summer’ Review: Iliza Shlesinger Captures the Traps and Temptations in an Overachiever’s Humiliating Return Home
Texas is a big place that can feel so small sometimes. Just ask comedian Iliza Shlesinger, who clearly gets it. Born in New York, but raised in the suburbs of Dallas Fort Worth, she made her break ...
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January 26, 2026
‘Send Help’ Review: Rachel McAdams Thrives on a Desert Island in Sam Raimi’s Twisted Survival Thriller
Three years ago, a movie called “Triangle of Sadness” won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In that vicious social satire from “The Square” director Ruben Östlund, a cruise ship full of i...
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January 26, 2026
‘Wicker’ Review: Olivia Colman Orders a Man Made of Wood in a Bawdy Fable Perfectly Suited for Anyone Tempted to Marry Their AI Chatbot
In Ursula Wills-Jones’ 2008 short story “The Wicker Husband” (not to be confused with the “The Wicker Man”), an unpleasant fisherwoman in an unenlightened medieval town asks the local basketmaker t...
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January 26, 2026
‘Union County’ Review: Will Poulter and Noah Centineo Integrate Seamlessly With a Cast of Recovering Addicts in Low-Key Opioid Portrait
Adam Meeks studied film at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts, where one can imagine the true-to-his-roots filmmaker learning alongside eclectic classmates. Manhattan must have felt like a stark break...
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January 25, 2026
‘The Gallerist’ Review: Natalie Portman Plays a Desperate Miami Art Dealer Whose Latest Show Is About to Make a Killing
How can you tell if an art show is a success? If a piece sells, the curator typically places a little red dot beside it, letting collectors know that work is no longer available. By the end of dire...
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January 24, 2026
‘Josephine’ Review: An 8-Year-Old Girl Grapples With Matters Beyond Her Understanding in Beth de Araújo’s Shattering Sundance Drama
SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains mild spoilers. For decades, the Motion Picture Association’s film ratings system — devised by the American studios to advise parents and avoid censorshi...
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January 24, 2026
‘I Want Your Sex’ Review: Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman Are Hot for One Another in Gregg Araki’s Unapologetically Randy Rom-Com
Sure, the devil wears Prada, but what does an aggressive contemporary artist wear to work? How about a see-through dress and stiletto heels? Kinky costumes are just a fraction of the fun in Gregg A...
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January 23, 2026
‘The Oldest Person in the World’ Review: Sam Green Shares a Life-Changing Decade of Thinking About Mortality in Myriad Ways
If life is a contest, the way the folks at Guinness World Records seem to treat it, how exactly does one win? Is it by amassing the most assets? The most wisdom? Some might argue that success comes...
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January 23, 2026
‘The History of Concrete’ Review: John Wilson Constructs an Entire Film Around a Subject No One Cares About
With “The History of Concrete,” John Wilson takes the least interesting subject imaginable — the dull gray composite used for sidewalks, overpasses and pretentious art films like “The Brutalist” — ...
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January 22, 2026
‘The Rip’ Review: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Impressive Reunion Rivals Films They Made for Big Studios
Both the good guys and the bad guys work for the Miami-Dade Police Department in “The Rip,” which reunites “Good Will Hunting” buds Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for a dark, trust-no-one heist movie t...
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January 13, 2026
‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ Review: Ralph Fiennes Commands a Shocking Successor to Last Year’s Most Welcome Revival
From a distance, the Bone Temple looks like some kind of Satanic shrine, conceived to keep wandering mortals away. More primitive than Stonehenge, more ominous than an elephant graveyard, this stru...
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January 7, 2026
‘Under the Flags, the Sun’ Review: Chilling Archive-Driven Doc Tracks the Rise and Fall of South America’s Longest Dictatorship
Nestled — or hidden — in between Brazil and Argentina, the country of Paraguay is mostly absent from the global consciousness. An enigma of a nation for most, it bears a turbulent history not forge...
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December 30, 2025
‘Dandelion’s Odyssey’ Review: A Dialogue-Free Animated Epic Journey Floats With Wondrous Inventiveness
Adrift in the wind, the protagonists of Japanese director Momoko Seto’s French-produced 3D animated curio “Dandelion’s Odyssey” embark on an epic botanical journey into outer space and away from th...
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December 30, 2025
‘Cause of Death: Unknown’ Review: Iran’s Surprisingly Daring Official Oscar Entry Sees an Ensemble Cast Conflicted by a Moral Conundrum
This year, there are two films vying for the best international feature film Oscar which are set in Iran, following a group of people, mostly strangers to each other, traveling in a van with a pers...
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December 23, 2025
‘Anaconda’ Review: High-Concept Cover Version Flips Genres, Revisiting Killer-Snake ‘Classic’ With Scant Laughs and Zero Scares
With “Anaconda,” the Hollywood studio system comes closer than ever to devouring its own tail. In 1997, Sony Pictures made “Anaconda,” a notoriously insipid creature feature starring Jennifer Lopez...
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December 22, 2025
The Worst Movies of 2025
Bad movies are no fun, but they’re fun to talk about. And, in a way, they’re important to talk about. There’s a school of thought that says a best of the year list is something hallowed and meaning...
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December 17, 2025
‘Sanatorium’ Review: Irish Filmmaker Provides a Striking Glimpse Inside a Ukrainian Health Facility
Gar O’Rourke joins the likes of Frederick Wiseman with an immersive observational documentary that takes a sensitive look at a community attempting to relax under conditions of growing unease. Thou...
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December 15, 2025
Rob Reiner Remembered: One of Hollywood’s Great Comic Voices Meets a Tragic End
It’s a sad day in Hollywood — an unthinkable, upsetting and all-around shocking day — when filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle could have been stabbed to death in their own home, allegedly b...
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December 11, 2025
‘Dust Bunny’ Review: Mads Mikkelsen Is a Reluctant Hero in Morbidly Fantastical Shoot-’em-Up
Terrified of a seemingly imaginary creature under her bed, yet unfazed when street rats crawl around her while she hides under a dumpster, young Aurora (Sophie Sloan) has learned to be precociously...
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December 10, 2025
‘Ella McCay’ Review: James L. Brooks’ Latest Misfire Is Too Enamored With Its Characters to Recognize Their Flaws
Bill Clinton was elected governor at an impressively young 31. Sarah Huckabee Sanders achieved the same feat when she was 40. In “Ella McCay,” the title character ascends to her state’s highest sea...
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December 10, 2025
The Best Movies of 2025
Movies are the great escape. “Optimistic endings, passionate romances,” sings the incarcerated dreamer of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” who looks to old Hollywood movies as an oasis of beauty and fai...
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December 5, 2025
‘The Stories’ Review: An Improbable Connection Between Two People From Different Worlds Reveals Egypt’s Recent History
Ahmed (Amir El-Masry) belongs to an Egyptian family accustomed to defeat. The soccer team they root for can’t win a single match, no matter how they follow their household-specific superstitions. A...
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