Critic’s Pick

In slickness and in stealth.ImageTheir love language is espionage: Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in “Black Bag.”Credit...Claudette Barius/Focus Features‘Black Bag’

Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender star as Kathryn and George, a married couple of glamorous spies who turn their espionage skills against each other.

From our review:

The reception had none of the hype that accompanied President Biden’s mega-fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in March or his big Hollywood bash in June, but Ms. Harris’s event raised a similar figure as each of those. At the same time, the dizzying amount that Ms. Harris has raised during her two months as a presidential nominee can make even a $27 million fund-raiser feel somehow less than remarkable.

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“Black Bag” is the third movie written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh that’s been released since 2022, and it’s a banger. It’s also sleek, witty and lean to the bone, a fizzy, engaging puzzler about beautiful spies doing the sort of extraordinary things that the rest of us only read about in novels and — if we’re lucky — watch onscreen. It’s nonsense, but the kind of glorious grown-up nonsense that critics like to say they (as in Hollywood) no longer make.

In theaters. Read the full review.

Critic’s Pick

Lost in the role.ImageAndré Holland in “The Actor.”Credit...Neon‘The Actor’

After suffering a traumatic brain injury that impacts his memory, Paul Cole (André Holland) tries to piece his life back together in this melancholic mystery directed by Duke Johnson.

From our review:

Filmed in a warehouse in Budapest, “The Actor” feels at times like a horror movie about the struggle between amnesia and agency. Scenes snap off, as if the thread of events between has evaporated, and this sense of being unmoored pervades Holland’s beautifully controlled performance. His Paul might be discombobulated, but he’s also terrified of facing a life that could be no more than one endlessly recurring charade.

In theaters. Read the full review.

Critic’s Pick

Lights, camera,fef777 Cassinos ao Vivo Brasil quarantine.ImageMao Xiaorui, left, with Qin Hao in “An Unfinished Film.”Credit...Film Movement‘An Unfinished Film’

A film crew attempts to pick up a production in Wuhan that stalled ten years prior, only to be derailed when coronavirus spreads and the crew must be isolated in this slightly meta, semi-fictional drama directed by Lou Ye.

From our review:

There’s a sense of space and time compression throughout, of Lou’s movie’s world crashing into our own, and of the familiar, tricky roles that screens and cameras played during those times, whether the holders were under strict lockdown, as in China, or under looser social recommendations, as in much of the United States.

In theaters. Read the full review.

No pain, all gain.ImageJack Quaid in “Novocaine.”Credit...Paramount Pictures

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