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Immediately upon exiting “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s wine-backed passion project, I had a single, inescapable thought: I’m glad I got to watch Coppola’s “Chi-raq.” For some, that admittedly jarring comparison will be a total turnoff. After all, for Spike Lee, a maverick filmmaker who’s always been in a daunting dance with major studios, “Chi-raq” was…

For anyone who complained that Yorgos Lanthimos went soft with “Poor Things” and “The Favourite,” “Kinds of Kindness” revives the malicious tendencies that have run through even some of his best films. The movie reunites him with his early and frequent screenwriting collaborator Efthimis Filippou (“Dogtooth,” “The Killing of a Sacred Deer“), and the shift in…

The foundation of most comedy is the gulf between our belief that we can control our bodies, words, and relationships and the reality that, most of the time, they’re uncontrollable messes. “Babes” explores that gulf with exuberant joy, endearingly vulnerable characters, and performances filled with heart and charisma. Also with every possible bodily function and…

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson’s “Back to Black” invokes a single question, one fans of Amy Winehouse are sure to recognize: What kind of f*ckery is this? The Camden-bred superstar, played by Marisa Abela, was famously “just one of the girls.” Down to earth, charming, witty, and, when she opened her mouth, a dazzling performer with an…

2008’s “The Strangers” didn’t seem like the kind of film that would produce a series when it was released. But it’s about to explode into precisely that with the release of “The Strangers Trilogy,” three films directed by Renny Harlin that serve as sort of a remake but also a prequel to the Bryan Bertino…