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There’s a Lord of the Flies element to In the Loop, Iannucci’s feature-length expansion of the series, which aired as seven half-hour parts and two hour-long specials (with new installments on the way; a proposed U.S. TV remake went no further than a pilot directed by Christopher Guest in 2007). Like Golding’s novel and Peter Brook’s 1963 film adaptation, In the Loop brutally sends a lamb to the slaughter under extreme circumstances in a hermetic world—not that the ostensible protagonist, low-level British Government minister Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), has the brains or guts of Golding’s Piggy....

Little Women (Greta Gerwig, 2019) by Devika Girish “It’s an adaptation so rich, so attentive to its source, and yet so thrillingly personal, that the combination of maker and material feels like an alignment of stars. ” Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019) by Ela Bittencourt “Beanpole is a war film in the deepest sense since it depicts the devastation wrought by conflict, without a single battle scene.” The Week Of (Robert Smigel, 2018) by Nellie Killian “It’s a gaspingly funny, disarmingly sweet ensemble comedy that includes a Greek chorus of hard-of-hearing aunties, an extended storyline about stolen valor, and a reverse heist that involves getting a large number of live bats into City Hall....

With more sequels, remakes, and cheap imitations than any other genre, horror is arguably all washed up, at least when it comes to innovation. So it feels particularly good to report that American Mary is a truly singular specimen. Jen and Sylvia Soska’s follow-up to their endearingly lo-fi Dead Hooker in a Trunk (09) is smart, gory but never gratuitous, and gloriously female-friendly. (The 30-year-old Canadian “Twisted Twins,” who do everything including write, act, direct, produce, set decorate, and perform stunts, have received the Eli Roth stamp of approval—but Roth only wishes he could make something half so distinctive!...

The German Doctor takes as its horror film premise the ultimate Jewish nightmare. The Third Reich has fallen, but evil’s remnants still reverberate across the globe, seeking refuge in sympathetic corners of the world, in this case postwar Argentina. Lucía Puenzo’s sturdy historical drama centers on a tight-knit family that slowly discovers that Josef Mengele, one of the SS’s most notorious officers, is a guest at their rural Patagonian hotel, and that despite ample warning signs, and a wary dad, they have let a monster into their lives....

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2021) In a recent interview, Darren Lynn Bousman—the director of Saw II, III, and IV—declared the dawn of a new kind of Saw movie for “grown-ups.” “This time around, the violence, and gore, serve the story . . . story and character came first above all else.” Bousman’s supposedly upgraded reboot, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, promises a thematically meatier version of the notoriously sleazy gorefest....

The year is 1961. In four years, child-actress Patty McCormack has grown from Bad Seed to good egg, playing Janet Sommers, an unusually thoughtful teen, who is weirdly surrounded by like-minded sorts. Have the pod people taken over the school in The Explosive Generation (Netflix + Redbox Instant + Epix; quality: fine), the tireless Buzz Kulik’s debut feature as director? (You might be wondering how a movie set at a school that could be called “Goody-Goody High” fits the bill for this column, but super-perky can be just as creepy as super-wicked, can’t it?...

For our latest episode from the shores of the Riviera, critics Mark Asch, Miriam Bale, and Kevin B. Lee join FC Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish for a discussion of their recent festival viewing, through which they trace a thematic thread of performance. They touch on Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts, and more....

This week, we’ll talk about some of the major shifts and changes that happened over the last ten years, and some of the decade’s pivotal movies. It’s also an opportunity to talk about the big picture in movies, which probably means having a healthy skepticism about thinking in terms of decades altogether. Joining FC Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold for this discussion are longtime contributing editor Amy Taubin; FC regular Michael Koresky, who is co-editor of the Reverse Shot book, Martin Scorsese: He Is Cinema; and Nick Pinkerton, who’s written a number of essays for us looking at the big picture....

The filmmaker and photographer RaMell Ross shares this excerpt from an artist statement in a conversation with Jason Fox, the editor of nonfiction journal World Records, in a new audio series called Trust Issues. Produced by World Records, the series explores how images can both bring us together and alienate us from each other. The first episode, featuring RaMell, focuses on the historical role of nonfiction cinema in teaching us to see, inhabit, and police race....

In order to compete with the arrival of television in the Fifties, Hollywood made movies bigger with CinemaScope, Cinerama, and enhancements like 3-D. In order to reach the mobile device generation in the second decade of the 21st century, Hollywood is making movies smaller so they can be viewed on tablets, smartphones, and “mini” screens on other portable media players—collectively referred to as “handheld devices.” Here is a brief rundown on the most prominent methods by which movies can find way their way onto handheld devices....