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.

After winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021 with her sophomore feature Titane, it was no surprise that Julia Ducournau’s follow-up film, Alpha, would be one of the most anticipated films at the festival in 2025. What was surprising, however, was that the film was met with a wave of lackluster reviews upon its premiere. Was it possible that the daring auteur behind Titane and 2016’s Raw had directed her first misfire? While I agree with the criticism that this is perhaps her weakest film to date, I’m inclined to disagree with the notion that it is a bad film by any means.

Movies that set out to deliver satirical social critique often feel like they are trying too hard to be provocative. Their humor seems aimed more at stirring controversy or provoking a strong reaction from the audience than at actually making them laugh. Oscar Boyson’s Our Hero, Balthazar, however, is a rare film that strikes the right balance. It tackles themes of gun violence, performative activism, social media, incel culture, privilege, and toxic masculinity. It is a dark and daring film, but it never forgets to be funny, and its edginess feels genuine rather than forced. Most of the film’s humor is the kind that leaves audiences in limbo, unsure whether to laugh, cringe, or stare in disbelief that someone actually put these ideas on screen and somehow made them work.

Stephanie Laing’s Tow is a touching, based-on-a-true-story drama that sheds light on the realities of homelessness in America. The film is anchored by a dedicated performance from Rose Byrne, fresh off the success of last year’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, another film about an imperfect mother navigating a stressful situation. While Byrne and a few of the central performances bring some sincerity to the material, much of the supporting cast feels underdeveloped, with stilted performances and side characters that lack depth and nuance. Paired with a tone that often slips into cheesy sentimentality and a story that unfolds in largely predictable ways, Tow struggles to turn its powerful premise into a compelling drama.

Adapting a bestselling, award-winning novel into a film is no simple task, and audiences tend to scrutinize every detail to determine whether the movie does a beloved book justice. Fortunately, the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary has all the ingredients for success. With Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the directors’ chairs, a screenplay penned by Drew Goddard—who previously wrote the script for another Andy Weir adaptation, Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015)—and a star like Ryan Gosling at the forefront, the film seems destined to be as crowd-pleasing as its source material. The result is an astounding triumph, bringing Weir’s novel to the big screen with remarkable fidelity and transforming it into what will likely be one of the best films of the year.

Spoiler-free video review of Jan Komasa’s movie Heel (originally titled Good Boy) starring Stephen Graham, Anson Boon, and Andrea Riseborough.