Variety’s Review: “Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘Drive My Car’ is a sleek, streamlined slip of a thing that nonetheless, in the author’s signature style, packs an awful lot into its lean sentences. It’s a grief-stricken marriage story enfolded in a corrupted friendship study, related in turn via a separate tale of odd-couple companionship, all told in fewer than 40 pages…Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deft, wise, whisper-soft adaptation of ‘Drive My Car’ never feels like an overextension of its delicate material. Instead, it pursues a kind of cinematic stillness to match Murakami’s plain, serene prose, and takes things suitably slow — this is the kind of film where the opening credits arrive 40 minutes in — as it ponders just how much time can heal all wounds.”
The Power of the Dog
Photo : Everett Collection
Oscar Nominations: Picture, director, actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), supporting actor (Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee), supporting actress (Kirsten Dunst), adapted screenplay, cinematography, film editing, original score, production design and sound
Variety’s Review: “Campion’s eighth feature in 30 years, is a frontier Western made with a stately and austere poker-faced modernist classicism, and roiling undercurrents, that sometimes bring the earlier film to mind. It’s a movie in which Campion, who shot it in her native New Zealand, works with a full-scale, at times painterly precision and control. It’s also a socially conscious psychodrama that builds, over time, to a full boil.”
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actor (Denzel Washington), cinematography and production design
Variety’s Review: “It’s no surprise that in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that is Joel Coen’s first solo outing as a filmmaker, Coen very much approaches the material as the visual obsessive he is. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc — it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare. The surprise, at least to me (and I say this as a true believer in the Coen brothers’ aesthetic, even though I only like about half their films), is how sensual and ingenious and expressive and enveloping the film’s images are.”
The Lost Daughter
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actress (Olivia Colman), supporting actress (Jessie Buckley) and adapted screenplay
Variety’s Review: “In this remarkable directorial debut, Maggie Gyllenhaal challenges conventional thinking about motherhood, delivering her most subversive ideas as subtext…Gyllenhaal assumes an unfussy, practically invisible non-style that conveys the essential while privileging the performances. Working with French DP Hélène Louvart, she trusts in her ensemble, giving them rich reams of subtext to play, rather than putting words in their mouths.”
Parallel Mothers
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actress (Penelope Cruz) and score
Where to Stream: Not available to stream yet
Variety’s Review: “It’s a movie of high comedy— a giddy and ironic Pedro Almodóvarian stew of maternal diva melodrama. But ‘Parallel Mothers,’ while it keeps us hooked on what’s happening with a showman’s finesse, is not a comedy. It’s not an over-the-top Pedro party. It’s an unabashedly serious movie, one so straightforwardly sculpted and emotionally down-to-earth that there’s no distance between the audience and what’s happening onscreen.”
Spencer
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “Kristen Stewart, transforming herself, does a tremulously acerbic and precise recreation of the Di personality (the halting elegance, the shyness jostling with the coquettishness of fame). But that’s just the ground floor of her performance. She takes the audience on a flesh-and-blood journey in a movie that’s at once a diary, a soap opera, a horror film, and a rigorously speculative drawing-room biopic.”
The Worst Person in the World
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: International feature and original screenplay
Where to Stream: Not currently streaming, but will be available on Hulu at a later date
Encanto
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, score and song
Variety’s Review: “‘Encanto’ is a lively, lovely, lushly enveloping digitally animated musical fairy tale. It’s the 60th animated feature produced by the Walt Disney company, and to borrow a phrase from the old Disney TV series, it’s set in a wonderful world of color — a rapturously imagined, rainbow-gorgeous village tucked inside the misty green mountains of Colombia, where the members of the Madrigal family lead a magical existence.”
Flee
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, documentary and international feature
Variety’s Review: “Animation proves an ideal medium by which to both mask and reveal the identity of a gay man who escaped Afghanistan and reinvented himself… ‘Flee’ is an original artistic exploration of the way that trauma impacts one’s sense of self. Its shifting and somewhat unreliable form intuitively reflects how its subject has hidden the truth of his past from others over the years, including his partner, Kasper, and his longtime friend, the director.”
Luca
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘Luca,’ set in Italy in the ’50s, is modest to a fault, and at times it feels generic enough to be an animated feature from almost any studio. But it’s a visually beguiling small-town nostalgia trip, as well as a perfectly pleasant fish-out-of-water fable — literally, since it’s about a boy sea monster who longs to go ashore.”
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “Director Michael Rianda and writing partner Jeff Rowe are children of that pre-iPhone era, and together they’ve hatched a subversive delight that should appeal to Gen Y adults and tech-savvy kiddos alike. That’s because the tongue-in-cheek, ‘Terminator’-esque machine uprising isn’t really the hook here. Rianda and Rowe (also credited as co-director) based the characters on their own families, so the oh-so-relatable Mitchells are simultaneously universal and ultra-specific, but definitely not just some generic sitcom clan besieged by robots.”
Raya and the Last Dragon
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “The first major animated feature for a post-Trump era, ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ is as leftie a toon as Disney has ever made, though its core message of unity and come-togetherness should hardly seem political at all. Notably, it’s a movie with no villain, no love interest, no musical numbers and no talking animals — unless you count Awkwafina’s loquacious (and potentially world-saving) water dragon Sisu. Progressive as this formula-bending family movie may be, ‘Raya’ still feels every bit a Disney offering — one whose proactive princess ought to entertain and inspire kids to do more than passively await true love’s kiss.”
Cruella
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Costume and makeup and hairstyling
Variety’s Review: “What ‘Cruella’ is not — to the immense relief of many, I’m sure — is another ‘Maleficent.’ (Although who could top the casting of Angelina Jolie as Sleeping Beauty’s misunderstood nemesis?) Whereas that live-action Disney spinoff was an obnoxious eyesore that risked tarnishing the appeal of the original, director Craig Gillespie’s ‘Cruella’ proves ingeniously creative in its reimagining of the underlying IP.”
Cyrano
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Costumed design
Where to Stream: Not available to stream. Opening in theaters Feb. 25
Variety’s Review: “On those occasions when ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ is performed in English, it’s often stripped of its verse or played for laughter and farce, whereas Joe Wright’s splendid new adaptation presents ‘Cyrano’ as 21st-century MGM musical. By enlisting Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National to compose the songs — lovely, wistful pop ballads for which Matt Berninger and Carin Besser supplied the lyrics — ‘Cyrano’ restores the show’s sense of poetry. At the same time, Wright, back on form and evidently reinvigorated by the pandemic, once again displays the kind of radical creativity that made early-career stunners ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Atonement’ so electrifying in their time.”
Four Good Days
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘Four Good Days’ is based on a true story, and the way it plays out is both watchable and plausible. Yet the movie doesn’t shake us to our souls. When it comes to serious addiction, we’ve grown, as a society, far more sophisticated about the patterns of craving, narcissism, and deception that define the addict’s life.”
No Time to Die
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘No Time to Die” is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neoclassical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.”
Ascension
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘Ascension’ is Jessica Kingdon’s observational portrait of the economic growth of China, as well as the class divides that this expansion has exposed. The film debuted at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, where ‘Ascension’ debuted to rave reviews and awards for both best documentary and best new documentary filmmaker.
Attica
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘Attica,’ Stanley Nelson’s stirring, scalding documentary about the 1971 Attica prison uprising, is an essential film that can now stand as a definitive vision of that epochal event. Drawing from a staggering array of footage that has never been seen before, Nelson puts the event together, moment by moment, day by day, with a clarifying view of its place in history and an empathy that extends to every person onscreen: prisoners and guards, officials and relatives, politicians and observers, the reporters who came and recorded it all. We see every point-of-view; the presentation isn’t so much ‘incendiary’ as novelistic.”
Summer of Soul
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “Buried for 50 years, the spectacular filmed footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival reveals a musical moment — and a Black revolution — in full flower…It’s a music documentary like no other, because while it’s a joyful, cataclysmic, and soulfully seductive concert movie, what it’s really about is a key turning point in Black life in America.”
Writing With Fire
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Not streaming yet. Available to view on PBS beginning March 28
Variety’s Review: “In some months’ time, cub reporter Shyamkali will solo pilot a story that brings an accused rapist to justice. But right now she is sitting in the shade of a tree with her boss Meera, who has spiked a story of hers because she didn’t like ‘the angle.’ The steep learning curve she will nimbly ascend is one of three tales of personal and professional persistence that directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh tell in their accessible, engaging debut doc ‘Writing With Fire,’ through which they’ll also tell the story of the Khabar Lahariya newspaper, and of India, in a time of seismic change. Thomas and Ghosh have found their angle, and it’s a powerful one.”
The Hand of God
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “As you watch ‘The Hand of God,’ it’s easy to vibrate sympathetically with Fabietto, because he’s got a sly, pensive curiosity that you can tell will take him places. For most of the movie, however, the places he goes tend to involve his extended family, as well as the occasional scoundrel he hooks up with in town. And while it’s easy to feel that Sorrentino is pulling what you see directly out of his diary (the action is loose, quirky, anecdotal), you wish that he’d portrayed the other characters as he does his surrogate hero.”
Lunana A Yak in the Classroom
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “The trusty old tale of a city slicker teacher being posted to a school in the sticks is given a fresh coat of paint in the delightful Bhutanese comic drama ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.’ Gloriously filmed on staggeringly beautiful locations around the most remote school on Earth and wonderfully performed by a cast comprised almost exclusively of first-time actors, this big-hearted crowd-pleaser marks a bright debut for writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji.”
Coming 2 America
Photo : Everett Collection
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “While fans may appreciate that director Craig Brewer (‘Dolemite Is My Name’) hasn’t messed with the formula, the movie feels downright lazy on the heels of, say, the take-no-prisoners satire of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ which Amazon released in 2020.”
House of Gucci
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If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review: “‘House of Gucci’ has a transfixing backstabbing allure. It may be a drama about a crazy rich Euro chic Old World fashion dynasty, with a cast dominated by American actors scheming and emoting in gaudy Italian accents, but that doesn’t mean it’s some operatic piece of high camp.”
Free Guy
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If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review:“In ‘Free Guy’ — an inventive, much-better-than-you’d-expect 2020 summer tentpole that’s finally being released post-pandemic — Ryan Reynolds plays a video game character who doesn’t realize that his world isn’t real.”
Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
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If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Variety’s Review:“The most obscure Marvel Cinematic Universe character to get his own stand-alone movie to date, the comic book mega-company’s ‘Master of Kung Fu’ may not be a household name (not yet, at least), but you wouldn’t know that from ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ a flashy, Asian-led visual effects extravaganza that gives the second-tier hero the same over-the-top treatment that big-timers like Hulk and Thor typically get.”
Oscars 2022: Wanna Watch All the Nominees–Spider-Man: No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Oscar Nominations: 1–Visual effects
Where to Stream: Not streaming yet. Available to stream on Starz later this year. Playing in theaters.
Holland’s latest opus spins two decades and three iterations of the Spidey brand into a satisfying meta-adventure.
Don’t Look Up
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Drive My Car
Oscar Nominations: Picture, director, international feature and adapted screenplay
Where to Stream: HBO Max beginning March 2
Variety’s Review: “Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘Drive My Car’ is a sleek, streamlined slip of a thing that nonetheless, in the author’s signature style, packs an awful lot into its lean sentences. It’s a grief-stricken marriage story enfolded in a corrupted friendship study, related in turn via a separate tale of odd-couple companionship, all told in fewer than 40 pages…Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deft, wise, whisper-soft adaptation of ‘Drive My Car’ never feels like an overextension of its delicate material. Instead, it pursues a kind of cinematic stillness to match Murakami’s plain, serene prose, and takes things suitably slow — this is the kind of film where the opening credits arrive 40 minutes in — as it ponders just how much time can heal all wounds.”
The Power of the Dog
Oscar Nominations: Picture, director, actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), supporting actor (Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee), supporting actress (Kirsten Dunst), adapted screenplay, cinematography, film editing, original score, production design and sound
Where to Stream: Netflix
Variety’s Review: “Campion’s eighth feature in 30 years, is a frontier Western made with a stately and austere poker-faced modernist classicism, and roiling undercurrents, that sometimes bring the earlier film to mind. It’s a movie in which Campion, who shot it in her native New Zealand, works with a full-scale, at times painterly precision and control. It’s also a socially conscious psychodrama that builds, over time, to a full boil.”
The Tragedy of Macbeth
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actor (Denzel Washington), cinematography and production design
Where to Stream: Apple TV Plus
Variety’s Review: “It’s no surprise that in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that is Joel Coen’s first solo outing as a filmmaker, Coen very much approaches the material as the visual obsessive he is. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc — it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare. The surprise, at least to me (and I say this as a true believer in the Coen brothers’ aesthetic, even though I only like about half their films), is how sensual and ingenious and expressive and enveloping the film’s images are.”
The Lost Daughter
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actress (Olivia Colman), supporting actress (Jessie Buckley) and adapted screenplay
Where to Stream: Netflix
Variety’s Review: “In this remarkable directorial debut, Maggie Gyllenhaal challenges conventional thinking about motherhood, delivering her most subversive ideas as subtext…Gyllenhaal assumes an unfussy, practically invisible non-style that conveys the essential while privileging the performances. Working with French DP Hélène Louvart, she trusts in her ensemble, giving them rich reams of subtext to play, rather than putting words in their mouths.”
Parallel Mothers
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actress (Penelope Cruz) and score
Where to Stream: Not available to stream yet
Variety’s Review: “It’s a movie of high comedy— a giddy and ironic Pedro Almodóvarian stew of maternal diva melodrama. But ‘Parallel Mothers,’ while it keeps us hooked on what’s happening with a showman’s finesse, is not a comedy. It’s not an over-the-top Pedro party. It’s an unabashedly serious movie, one so straightforwardly sculpted and emotionally down-to-earth that there’s no distance between the audience and what’s happening onscreen.”
Spencer
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Actress (Kristen Stewart)
Where to Stream: Hulu
Variety’s Review: “Kristen Stewart, transforming herself, does a tremulously acerbic and precise recreation of the Di personality (the halting elegance, the shyness jostling with the coquettishness of fame). But that’s just the ground floor of her performance. She takes the audience on a flesh-and-blood journey in a movie that’s at once a diary, a soap opera, a horror film, and a rigorously speculative drawing-room biopic.”
The Worst Person in the World
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: International feature and original screenplay
Where to Stream: Not currently streaming, but will be available on Hulu at a later date
Encanto
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, score and song
Where to Stream: Disney Plus
Variety’s Review: “‘Encanto’ is a lively, lovely, lushly enveloping digitally animated musical fairy tale. It’s the 60th animated feature produced by the Walt Disney company, and to borrow a phrase from the old Disney TV series, it’s set in a wonderful world of color — a rapturously imagined, rainbow-gorgeous village tucked inside the misty green mountains of Colombia, where the members of the Madrigal family lead a magical existence.”
Flee
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature, documentary and international feature
Where to Stream: Hulu
Variety’s Review: “Animation proves an ideal medium by which to both mask and reveal the identity of a gay man who escaped Afghanistan and reinvented himself… ‘Flee’ is an original artistic exploration of the way that trauma impacts one’s sense of self. Its shifting and somewhat unreliable form intuitively reflects how its subject has hidden the truth of his past from others over the years, including his partner, Kasper, and his longtime friend, the director.”
Luca
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature
Where to Stream: Disney Plus
Variety’s Review: “‘Luca,’ set in Italy in the ’50s, is modest to a fault, and at times it feels generic enough to be an animated feature from almost any studio. But it’s a visually beguiling small-town nostalgia trip, as well as a perfectly pleasant fish-out-of-water fable — literally, since it’s about a boy sea monster who longs to go ashore.”
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature
Where to Stream: Netflix
Variety’s Review: “Director Michael Rianda and writing partner Jeff Rowe are children of that pre-iPhone era, and together they’ve hatched a subversive delight that should appeal to Gen Y adults and tech-savvy kiddos alike. That’s because the tongue-in-cheek, ‘Terminator’-esque machine uprising isn’t really the hook here. Rianda and Rowe (also credited as co-director) based the characters on their own families, so the oh-so-relatable Mitchells are simultaneously universal and ultra-specific, but definitely not just some generic sitcom clan besieged by robots.”
Raya and the Last Dragon
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Animated feature
Where to Stream: Disney Plus
Variety’s Review: “The first major animated feature for a post-Trump era, ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’ is as leftie a toon as Disney has ever made, though its core message of unity and come-togetherness should hardly seem political at all. Notably, it’s a movie with no villain, no love interest, no musical numbers and no talking animals — unless you count Awkwafina’s loquacious (and potentially world-saving) water dragon Sisu. Progressive as this formula-bending family movie may be, ‘Raya’ still feels every bit a Disney offering — one whose proactive princess ought to entertain and inspire kids to do more than passively await true love’s kiss.”
Cruella
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Costume and makeup and hairstyling
Where to Stream: Disney Plus
Variety’s Review: “What ‘Cruella’ is not — to the immense relief of many, I’m sure — is another ‘Maleficent.’ (Although who could top the casting of Angelina Jolie as Sleeping Beauty’s misunderstood nemesis?) Whereas that live-action Disney spinoff was an obnoxious eyesore that risked tarnishing the appeal of the original, director Craig Gillespie’s ‘Cruella’ proves ingeniously creative in its reimagining of the underlying IP.”
Cyrano
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Costumed design
Where to Stream: Not available to stream. Opening in theaters Feb. 25
Variety’s Review: “On those occasions when ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ is performed in English, it’s often stripped of its verse or played for laughter and farce, whereas Joe Wright’s splendid new adaptation presents ‘Cyrano’ as 21st-century MGM musical. By enlisting Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National to compose the songs — lovely, wistful pop ballads for which Matt Berninger and Carin Besser supplied the lyrics — ‘Cyrano’ restores the show’s sense of poetry. At the same time, Wright, back on form and evidently reinvigorated by the pandemic, once again displays the kind of radical creativity that made early-career stunners ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Atonement’ so electrifying in their time.”
Four Good Days
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Song
Where to Stream: Hulu
Variety’s Review: “‘Four Good Days’ is based on a true story, and the way it plays out is both watchable and plausible. Yet the movie doesn’t shake us to our souls. When it comes to serious addiction, we’ve grown, as a society, far more sophisticated about the patterns of craving, narcissism, and deception that define the addict’s life.”
No Time to Die
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Song, sound and visual effects
Where to Stream: Rent on Amazon or Apple
Variety’s Review: “‘No Time to Die” is a terrific movie: an up-to-the-minute, down-to-the-wire James Bond thriller with a satisfying neoclassical edge. It’s an unabashedly conventional Bond film that’s been made with high finesse and just the right touch of soul, as well as enough sleek surprise to keep you on edge.”
Ascension
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Paramount Plus (or Prime Video with Paramount Plus)
Variety’s Review: “‘Ascension’ is Jessica Kingdon’s observational portrait of the economic growth of China, as well as the class divides that this expansion has exposed. The film debuted at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, where ‘Ascension’ debuted to rave reviews and awards for both best documentary and best new documentary filmmaker.
Attica
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Showtime Anytime (or Hulu with Showtime)
Variety’s Review: “‘Attica,’ Stanley Nelson’s stirring, scalding documentary about the 1971 Attica prison uprising, is an essential film that can now stand as a definitive vision of that epochal event. Drawing from a staggering array of footage that has never been seen before, Nelson puts the event together, moment by moment, day by day, with a clarifying view of its place in history and an empathy that extends to every person onscreen: prisoners and guards, officials and relatives, politicians and observers, the reporters who came and recorded it all. We see every point-of-view; the presentation isn’t so much ‘incendiary’ as novelistic.”
Summer of Soul
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Hulu
Variety’s Review: “Buried for 50 years, the spectacular filmed footage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival reveals a musical moment — and a Black revolution — in full flower…It’s a music documentary like no other, because while it’s a joyful, cataclysmic, and soulfully seductive concert movie, what it’s really about is a key turning point in Black life in America.”
Writing With Fire
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Not streaming yet. Available to view on PBS beginning March 28
Variety’s Review: “In some months’ time, cub reporter Shyamkali will solo pilot a story that brings an accused rapist to justice. But right now she is sitting in the shade of a tree with her boss Meera, who has spiked a story of hers because she didn’t like ‘the angle.’ The steep learning curve she will nimbly ascend is one of three tales of personal and professional persistence that directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh tell in their accessible, engaging debut doc ‘Writing With Fire,’ through which they’ll also tell the story of the Khabar Lahariya newspaper, and of India, in a time of seismic change. Thomas and Ghosh have found their angle, and it’s a powerful one.”
The Hand of God
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: International feature
Where to Stream: Netflix
Variety’s Review: “As you watch ‘The Hand of God,’ it’s easy to vibrate sympathetically with Fabietto, because he’s got a sly, pensive curiosity that you can tell will take him places. For most of the movie, however, the places he goes tend to involve his extended family, as well as the occasional scoundrel he hooks up with in town. And while it’s easy to feel that Sorrentino is pulling what you see directly out of his diary (the action is loose, quirky, anecdotal), you wish that he’d portrayed the other characters as he does his surrogate hero.”
Lunana A Yak in the Classroom
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission.
Oscar Nominations: Documentary
Where to Stream: Rent on Amazon or Apple
Variety’s Review: “The trusty old tale of a city slicker teacher being posted to a school in the sticks is given a fresh coat of paint in the delightful Bhutanese comic drama ‘Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.’ Gloriously filmed on staggeringly beautiful locations around the most remote school on Earth and wonderfully performed by a cast comprised almost exclusively of first-time actors, this big-hearted crowd-pleaser marks a bright debut for writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji.”
Coming 2 America
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Oscar Nominations: Makeup and hairstyling
Where to Stream: Amazon Prime Video
Variety’s Review: “While fans may appreciate that director Craig Brewer (‘Dolemite Is My Name’) hasn’t messed with the formula, the movie feels downright lazy on the heels of, say, the take-no-prisoners satire of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ which Amazon released in 2020.”
House of Gucci
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Oscar Nominations: Makeup and hairstyling
Where to Stream: Buy on Amazon or Apple
Variety’s Review: “‘House of Gucci’ has a transfixing backstabbing allure. It may be a drama about a crazy rich Euro chic Old World fashion dynasty, with a cast dominated by American actors scheming and emoting in gaudy Italian accents, but that doesn’t mean it’s some operatic piece of high camp.”
Free Guy
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Oscar Nominations: Visual effects
Where to Stream: Disney Plus beginning Feb. 23
Variety’s Review: “In ‘Free Guy’ — an inventive, much-better-than-you’d-expect 2020 summer tentpole that’s finally being released post-pandemic — Ryan Reynolds plays a video game character who doesn’t realize that his world isn’t real.”
Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
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Oscar Nominations: Visual effects
Where to Stream: Disney Plus
Variety’s Review: “The most obscure Marvel Cinematic Universe character to get his own stand-alone movie to date, the comic book mega-company’s ‘Master of Kung Fu’ may not be a household name (not yet, at least), but you wouldn’t know that from ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,’ a flashy, Asian-led visual effects extravaganza that gives the second-tier hero the same over-the-top treatment that big-timers like Hulk and Thor typically get.”