Film

Kirsten Johnson's new Netflix documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, tells the story of moving her dad out of his home in Seattle and into her apartment in New York. It also enacts her father's death from imagined accidents, like getting hit in the head by a falling air conditioner or tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.

Johnson has worked as a cinematographer for over 50 documentaries, and has directed seven movies, including Cameraperson and the short film The Above. She says her father laughed when she pitched the idea to him.

This year, Radha Blank became the second Black woman to earn that prize for her first feature, The Forty-Year-Old Version. It was a worthy winner, not just because it's a terrific movie, but also because it's specifically about the challenges of making meaningful, personal art from an underrepresented perspective.

Tehran, is a new eight-episode Israeli show premiering on Apple TV+. A big hit in Israel earlier this year, this thriller about a spy mission gone wrong isn't merely suspenseful. It's a glimpse of how one ancient culture portrays another ancient culture — particularly one that's currently its avowed enemy.

Justin Chang says the film is based on a densely plotted 2011 novel by the Ohio-born author Donald Ray Pollock, and it's grim in ways that can be both exciting and a little wearying: so many twists and betrayals, so many horrific acts of violence.

The relationship at the center of Kaufman's new Netflix film might not be long for the world, but the main characters are nevertheless awfully hard to get out of your mind.

Film critic Justin Chang reviews the new live-action film version of Mulan.

TCM's ambitious 14-hour series showcases the work of female filmmakers from around the globe, and provides hundreds of examples of both artistic and technical achievement.

Tesla unfolds as a series of funny-sad vignettes from the life of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who has often been relegated to a historical footnote — as the younger, hipper rival to Thomas Edison.

John Powers says the Coup 53, an exhilarating new historical documentary unfolds with the pace and complexity of a thriller.

Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau paint a nuanced portrait of the U.S. immigration system — including ICE agents, immigrants, activists and smugglers — in their 6-part Netflix documentary series.

Justin Chang reviews the new documentary that he says is both inspiring and dispiriting about a program that teaches boys about representative democracy.

With The Old Guard, Prince-Bythewood becomes the first Black woman to direct an adaptation of a comic book.

This mordantly funny horror film opens on a young woman who awakens with a terrifying premonition of doom. She Dies Tomorrow feels surprisingly in tune with our present moment of unease.

Justin Chang review two new independent horror films.

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti play misfit wedding guests who are forced to repeat the same day over and over again in a fiendishly clever comedy reminiscent of Groundhog Day.

Welsh actor Matthew Rhys plays the title role in the new HBO series, Perry Mason. His version of the iconic criminal defense attorney is younger and more hardboiled than the one Raymond Burr played in the popular TV show from the '50s and '60s. The new series focuses on Mason as a divorced private investigator in the early 1930s in Los Angeles — before he became a lawyer.

Th new documentary by David France follows a group of Russian activists and their efforts to rescue LGBTQ youth persecution in the Chechen Republic.

Steve Carell stars as a Democratic strategist running for mayor of a small Midwestern town in a film that feels exasperatingly out of step with the present moment.

Saturday Night Live's Pete Davidson lost his firefighter father in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City. Davidson explores the loss of his father in the new dramatic comedy, The King of Staten Island. In it, he plays Scott, a fictionalized version of himself who's grieving after his father dies fighting a hotel fire. Director Judd Apatow calls the film a "hopeful story about somebody who starts opening up and getting support."

Four African American soldiers return to Vietnam in Spike Lee's new film.