I believe Don Hertzfeldt’s short film Paper Trail is best experienced without any prior knowledge of what it’s about. Unfortunately, that also means I can’t really write about it without revealing too much. So, if you haven’t seen the film yet, please stop reading this and go watch it. However, if you don’t trust me and aren’t concerned about spoilers, then by all means, continue reading.

Watching Paper Trail feels like experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions, one that begins with curiosity and confusion. As blobs of color plop onto the screen and squiggly lines dance across it, you may find yourself wondering, “What exactly am I watching?” But once the realization sets in, that confusion dissipates and there’s an indescribable feeling that washes over you as Hertzfeldt’s intentions become clear.

As the squiggly lines gradually transform into doodles, it becomes evident that we’re watching a child learn and grow. We see him learning to write and spell as elementary school assignments flood the screen. There’s something deeply heartwarming about witnessing that transformation. His development feels universal, making the film’s opening moments resonate in a way that invites viewers to reflect on their own childhoods.

There’s a moment early in I Love Boosters where a fashion designer comments on a turquoise—or aquamarine, depending on who you ask—dress. She describes the color choice as “ballsy.” That word does more than describe a dress; it also perfectly encapsulates the film itself. Between this and his directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You (2018), it’s become abundantly clear that nobody is making movies quite like Boots Riley. His films refuse any inclination toward restraint. They’re audacious, anarchic, and unapologetically absurd. Every frame is filled to the brim with imagination and visual inventiveness. I swear, Boots Riley has more creativity in one of his fingernails than most people have in their entire bodies. Watching one of his films feels like witnessing someone operating on a creative wavelength that’s light-years ahead of everyone around them.

Spoiler-free review video of Curry Barker’s film Obsession starring Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, and Andy Richter.

Kyle Balda’s The Sheep Detectives delivers on the promise of its title. Based on Leonie Swann's 2005 novel Three Bags Full, the film is a detective story in which a flock of sheep sets out to solve a murder. Craig Mazin’s thoughtful screenplay delivers a steady mix of humor, heart, and surprises. However, the biggest surprise of all is how much emotional depth is hidden beneath all that wool.

Video review of Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) directed by Billie Eilish and James Cameron

As someone who’s spent most of her career working as a writer and is obsessed with movies, I couldn’t help but notice a recurring trend throughout the 2000s: the protagonists of so many movies—especially rom-coms—were writers, journalists, or worked for magazines. These characters did work they were proud of and somehow managed to afford lavish apartments in New York City, making journalism seem like the dream job. Even when The Devil Wears Prada (2006) pulled back the curtain on how exhausting and demanding that world could be beneath all the glamour, it still made surviving in the Big Apple on an assistant’s salary at a fashion magazine seem plausible. But perhaps times were different then.

Ronan Corrigan’s directorial debut, LifeHack, might just be the biggest surprise of the year for me. After seeing so many heist films over the years, it’s easy for new entries in the genre to feel stale or forgettable. Likewise, after a wave of recent screenlife films, the format itself no longer feels like a particularly novel concept. So surely a screenlife heist movie would, in theory, feel like a tired combination rather than something fresh or exciting, right? Instead, shifting the heist film into the digital world breathes new life into both genres, resulting in a shockingly riveting cinematic experience.

Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline plays like the country companion piece to his punk rock Dinner in America (2020). Like that film, Kyle Gallner once again stars as a troublemaker on the run. However, Carolina Caroline feels like a more mature entry in Rehmeier’s filmography, which is fitting, since one key difference is that this isn’t a coming-of-age story or a comedy like his last two films. This romantic crime thriller is a stylish tale of young lovers on the run that draws easy comparisons to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973). While it doesn’t reinvent the genre, the chemistry and commitment of its leads elevate the material, breathing new life into a classic formula. I’m not typically one to resort to superlatives in my reviews, but Carolina Caroline might just be the sexiest movie of the year.

Video review of Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, starring Adam Scott

Spoiler-free video review of Jorma Taccone’s Over Your Dead Body starring Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine, Timothy Olyphant, and Juliette Lewis.

Prison dramas tend to fall into a familiar rhythm, so much so that it can feel as if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. In a confined setting, the inevitable conflicts can quickly become predictable. As a result, any director stepping into the genre faces a challenge: they need to bring something new to the table or elevate the material enough to stand out from the crowd. That is no easy feat. Yet with Wasteman, Cal McMau delivers one of the most compelling prison dramas in recent memory.

There’s a reason so many works of queer fiction gravitate toward the horror genre. At its core, the genre is founded on fear—something the queer community is all too familiar with: the fear of not fitting in, of not being accepted, of being ostracized or forced to stifle the most authentic version of yourself.  Even homophobia is driven by fear, as its etymology suggests, positioning horror as a particularly fitting lens through which queer experiences can be explored. With his directorial debut, Leviticus, Adrian Chiarella channels these fears—both internalized and externalized—into something tangible, revealing that the true monster is not a creature, but anxiety and social rejection rooted in homophobia.

With his feature directorial debut, Cam (2018), director Daniel Goldhaber, along with screenwriter Isa Mazzei, incisively interrogated our relationship to technology and violence. With his sophomore feature, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022), Goldhaber demonstrated his ability to craft a suspenseful and stress-inducing thriller that relentlessly ramps up the tension. Now, with Faces of Death, Goldhaber has reunited with Mazzei and combined the greatest strengths of his previous films into a chilling, confrontational work about digital-age anxieties.

One of my favorite things about cinema is the fact that it combines multiple art forms into one. In doing so, film has the ability to appeal to multiple senses. Naturally, there are the visuals on screen and the accompanying music or audio. But great movies also make us feel something, maybe not in the literal sense, but in the emotional or psychological sense. What few films manage to do, however, is utilize our sense of smell. Smell-O-Vision first emerged in 1960 with Jack Cardiff’s Scent of Mystery. After an array of technical issues and negative reviews of the film, Smell-O-Vision failed to catch on. In 1981, John Waters parodied the concept of Smell-O-Vision with scratch-and-sniff Odorama cards to accompany his film Polyester. The scratch-and-sniff approach was replicated several times, including for the 2003 animated film Rugrats Go Wild. Now, the concept is back with a vengeance under the name Stink-O-Vision for Grace Glowicki’s new film, Dead Lover.

Spoiler-free video review of Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher’s Pizza Movie, starring Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone, Lulu Wilson, and Jack Martin.

Spoiler-free video review of Kristoffer Borgli’s film The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.

Arguably the most famous piece of writing advice is to “write what you know,” and writer-director Chandler Levack’s filmography exemplifies its efficacy. Her feature directorial debut, I Like Movies (2022), was partially inspired by her experience working at a video rental store as a teenager. Now, her sophomore feature, Mile End Kicks, draws from her time working as a music critic. There’s an undeniable passion for music that permeates the film, mirroring the admiration for cinema that runs throughout I Like Movies, which makes the two works feel thematically aligned. In fact, Mile End Kicks feels like the perfect companion to I Like Movies; during a Q&A, Levack even joked that she could have titled it I Like Music instead. By grounding her work in personal experience and distinct cultural moments, Levack successfully crafts films that feel astutely authentic and lived-in.

Spoiler-free video review of Meredith Alloway’s film Forbidden Fruits, starring Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Chamberlain.

After the controversy at the 79th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs), when John Davidson’s tics were audible, and a racial slur went uncensored in the broadcast, it became clear how widely misunderstood Tourette syndrome still is. Many viewers failed to recognize that Davidson’s tics are involuntary and do not reflect his character. This misunderstanding was compounded by the fact that I Swear, a film about Davidson that directly addresses these issues, had not yet been released in the United States before the ceremony. Although the film had already been released in the United Kingdom, where Robert Aramayo won the BAFTA for Best Lead Performance, U.S. audiences had not yet had the opportunity to engage with its perspective. As a result, many American viewers reacted with outrage to the incident, lacking the context the film might have provided. While Kirk Jones’s I Swear does not deviate from the traditional biopic structure, it is evident that Davidson’s story still needs to be told on a global scale, making the film especially urgent.

Spoiler-free video review of Rick Gomez’s film She Dances, starring Steven Zahn, Audrey Zahn, Mackenzie Ziegler, Sonequa Martin-Green, Ethan Hawke, and Rosemarie DeWitt.