In the lush historical tragedy, Mary Queen of Scots, Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie play the title character, and her cousin and nemesis Queen Elizabeth.
Natalie Portman plays a young Christian woman who is propelled to pop stardom following a mass shooting. Critic John Powers says Vox Lux is inventive — and exasperating.
Sure, this lush, blistering riff on pop stardom — and the many ways it intersects with a culture obsessed with both violence and celebrity — is over-the-top. That's the point.
Director Josie Rourke's epic, fiercely feminist period piece "does make a powerfully moving case for an uneasy dance between two powerful women hamstrung by male politics."
The first half is a tense, painfully real family drama about the lingering toll of opioid addiction; the second half lurches into thriller territory thick with stock types and cliches.
What could be more full of holiday spirit than zombies, you ask? The new zombie musical comedy Anna and the Apocalypse is here to upend your holiday movie expectations.
Critic Justin Chang says the immaculate staging of Alfonso Cuarón's new film is both an asset and a liability: "There's something curiously showy about the unshowiness of Roma."
The debt John McPhail's tuneful horror comedy owes to Shaun of the Dead proves too deep to clamber out of, but the songs are fun and Ella Hunt's feisty lead performance is charming.
In this haunting, lyrical Italian film, the true story of a horrific mob-related kidnapping is couched within "a love story [that unfolds] in a fairy tale more Grimm than Disney."