Critics’ Conversation: The Great Film Performances of 2023
THR film reviewers delight in an assortment of deliciously unlikable lead turns, single out stars delivering career bests (a wild Emma Stone, a wily Natalie Portman) and celebrate new and rising talents from various corners of the globe.
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‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ Review: Women Come Clean in Estonian Oscar Entry’s Up-Close Look at a Purifying Ritual
Estonia’s Oscar submission is the debut feature by Anna Hints, who won the directing award in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition.
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‘The Walk’ Review: ‘Honeyland’ Director’s Effective Fusion of Political Urgency and Poetic Creativity
Tamara Kotevska’s second feature documentary interweaves refugee children’s stories with scenes from a project that uses the art of puppetry to raise awareness about young lives upended by war and persecution.
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‘The Stones and Brian Jones’ Review: Nick Broomfield Captures the Chaos and the Brilliance of a Gifted Musician’s Brief Life
The documentarian weaves together a vast range of archival material and new commentary from bandmate Bill Wyman in this portrait of Jones and the early years of The Rolling Stones.
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‘My Love Affair With Marriage’ Review: An Animator’s Tough and Zingy Musical Exploration of Womanhood
With a voice cast led by Dagmara Domińczyk, New York-based Latvian filmmaker Signe Baumane delves into traditional gender roles, the biochemistry of romance, and recent Eastern European history.
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‘Here’ Review: Belgian Drama’s Poetic Gaze Is Low-Key and Profoundly Affecting
A migrant worker meets a botanist who opens his eyes to a world of microscopic beauty in Bas Devos’ Brussels-set mood piece.
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‘The Teachers’ Lounge’ Review: Mistrust on Campus Spirals Out of Control in a Taut, Unconventional German Thriller
In Germany’s official Oscar entry, a young middle school teacher finds herself at the center of an expanding web of anger and suspicion.
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‘They Shot the Piano Player’ Review: A Deeply Felt Portrait of a Virtuoso Who Wandered Into the Crosshairs of a Police State
‘Chico & Rita’ helmers Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal reteam for another animated film, this time combining documentary material and invented sequences to tell the story of a beloved Brazilian musician.
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The Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 15 Best Films of the Fall FestsÂ
Career highs for Emma Stone and Nicolas Cage, a delicious Frederick Wiseman doc, a poignant gay ghost story and two knockout dramas about the refugee crisis in Europe are among THR critics’ 15 faves from Venice, Telluride and Toronto.
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‘Mother, Couch’ Review: Ewan McGregor and Ellen Burstyn Topline a Frustrating Absurdist Portrait of a Fractured Family
Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell and Lara Flynn Boyle also star in the story of three adult siblings converging on the furniture store from which their mother refuses to budge.
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‘The King Tide’ Review: Frances Fisher in an Unsettling Tale of Supernatural Powers and Poisonous Groupthink
Clayne Crawford and Aden Young also star in director Christian Sparkes’ Newfoundland-set psychological thriller.
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‘The Teacher’ Review: A Debut Feature’s Eye-Opening Dramatization of Life in Occupied Palestine
Saleh Bakri and Imogen Poots portray colleagues at a West Bank school who try to help a student recover from a crushing loss.
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