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Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It takes some time to fall in love with 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) in “My Old Ass.” She’s young and self-involved, so focused on heading off to college in the big city that she’s kind of a jerk to everyone around her (especially her small-town cranberry-farming family). Maybe young adult audiences won’t think so. Canadian actor-turned-auteur Megan Park’s sweetly insightful coming-of-age comedy is intended for them — whereas adults might not have so much patience for the way Stella’s impulsive character takes for granted what are arguably her best years.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The U.S. government decided to make an example of Reality Winner, giving the former NSA translator a five-year prison sentence. So it’s only fair that director Susanna Fogel should be able to make an example of her, too — only this time, to very different ends.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Austin-based indie directors David and Nathan Zellner have spent more time thinking about Sasquatch than most filmmakers do musing about human beings. In 2011, they brought “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” to the Sundance Film Festival, a four-minute faux nature documentary in which a hirsute creature can be seen giving birth to an equally furry infant.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Writer-director Sean Wang is tough on himself in “Dìdi,” a fresh and funny summer-before-freshman-year flashback that provides an Asian American angle on that Sundanciest of indie-film genres: the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age movie. In what feels like a cross between Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” and Jonah Hill’s “mid90s” — courtesy of the young director’s teenage desire to make skate videos — Wang serves up some of his most wince-inducing adolescent memories, from an aborted first kiss to the realization that he’d been trying to downplay his Taiwanese heritage.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic On the most literal level, Sam and Andy Zuchero’s “Love Me” is about the relationship between a buoy adrift at sea and a satellite circling the earth. The eccentric rom-com takes place in a time after humans have gone extinct, when the surviving machines’ only references are a massive hard drive’s worth of data combed from search engines and social media sites.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Taking a one-for-us victory lap after one-for-them studio smash “Captain Marvel,” indie duo Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden blow a big, self-indulgent kiss to the late-’80s East Bay with “Freaky Tales.” Berkeley-born Fleck was all of 10 years old in early 1987, when this nostalgia-fueled anthology film is set, which explains the wide-eyed way he romanticizes the defining subcultures of the time (with Boden presumably doing her best to broaden the film’s incredibly specific, “you had to be there“ appeal). In four distinct but intertwining chapters — populated mostly with fresh faces, plus grizzled-but-gorgeous Pedro Pascal — “Freaky Tales” melds wildly different sectors of the city: There’s the rowdy-yet-respectful Gilman Street punk crowd; the revolutionary Oakland hip-hop scene (including Too $hort, whose raunchy rap anthem gives the film its name); the Warriors’ historic victory over the Lakers, in which local basketball legend Eric “Sleepy” Jones scored a record-setting 29 points in the fourth quarter; and a disturbing spike in neo-Nazi-linked hate crimes, which strangely serves to tie everything else together.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Hailing from the country that gave us such grim social critics as Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl (fittingly, the latter serves as a producer here), Vantablack Austrian satire “Veni Vidi Vici” opens with a senseless homicide. It’s a startling scene, no less upsetting than the Scorpio killing that kick-starts “Dirty Harry” — except that in this case, the incident is calibrated as the darkest sort of comedy.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If Ann Landers had it right, and hanging on to resentment amounts to letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head, then “Your Monster” is what happens when you kick open the door and let those feelings run amok. Drawing from personal experience, writer-director Caroline Lindy delivers a clumsy metaphor of a movie, in which a promising young actor named Laura Franco (“In the Heights” star Melissa Barrera) has her Broadway dreams derailed by a cancer diagnosis, only to discover a ferocious inner strength, courtesy of the beastly creature she finds hanging around her childhood home.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Taking from an elderly person is as bad as stealing from a child,” growls Jason Statham in “The Beekeeper,” reinforcing the image of “helpless” old people in need of defending. (He spends the rest of the movie knocking heads after scammers steal money from his gullible landlady.) With “Thelma,” writer-director Josh Margolin tries out a different approach, casting nonagenarian character actor June Squibb as an unlikely yet satisfying action star.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In “Poor Things,” Willem Dafoe plays God, bringing his devilish grin to the role of an ethically unbound surgeon who grafts body parts from one creature onto another, blending ducks and geese with dogs and goats — and, in the case of Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter, implanting a spare brain in the corpse of a drowned woman. The Dr. Frankenstein-like character is just the latest leap of faith for an actor who spoke to Variety, apropos of receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “The Beekeeper” is the best kind of bad movie — which is to say, it’s the sort that puts entertainment ahead of pretentiousness, embracing the laughter sure to accompany such an unapologetically stupid, ultra-violent premise. Starring Jason Statham in what feels like a parody of Jason Statham movies, this conspiracy-fueled action showcase tortures its central metaphor until it can only be seen as a joke, featuring the “Transporter” star as ruthless, retired government assassin-turned-benevolent beekeeper Adam Clay, who’s pushed back into berserker mode after a phishing attack targets the kindly old woman from whom he rents a barn.

Valerie Wu Intern The National Society of Film Critics has announced its awardees for 2023’s best achievements in film. This year marks the 58th annual awards, which are voted upon by the prestigious organization’s slate of film critics, including Variety‘s chief film critics Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic A hundred years ago, before email and social media found ways to slap us in the face with unsolicited obscenity on a daily basis, the quiet English town of Littlehampton was scandalized by an outburst of poison pen letters — a nasty case of epistolary terrorism that today might be lumped under the heading of “trolling.” Someone with lovely penmanship and a very salty vocabulary dashed off dozens (if not hundreds) of blisteringly offensive notes to members of the seaside community, igniting a police investigation and a series of trials breathlessly covered by the local press, then largely forgotten for almost a century. A bawdy black comedy that isn’t nearly as “outrageous” as it would have you believe, “Wicked Little Letters” offers a tongue-in-cheek retelling of those events for the Merchant Ivory set.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic It’s one thing to direct an episode of the sitcom on which you appeared for six seasons. “Schitt’s Creek” star Daniel Levy aced that exercise back in 2020, earning an Emmy for co-helming the series finale. But it’s an entirely different challenge to write and direct a smart, sensitive original feature in which you also play the lead character — a feat Levy deftly achieves with New Year’s tearjerker “Good Grief,” giving those unsatisfied with the rest of Netflix’s fluffy Christmas fare something substantial to kick off 2024.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In a world…where moviegoing isn’t what it once was…a great trailer gets audiences motivated to check out a film on opening weekend. But the very best previews are so much more than that: They hold up as short-form works of art in their own right. Keep in mind, marketing pros get just two and a half minutes to grab your attention and make their pitch.

Ethan Shanfeld Alexander Payne’s bittersweet Christmas dramedy “The Holdovers” is hitting Peacock on Dec. 29.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In a medium where stop-motion chickens organize elaborate escape plans, computer-generated ducks have to do a lot more than relocate to amuse us. Illumination’s “Migration” — about a fussy duck dad who reluctantly reconsiders his fear of flying — is a cartoon in search of a concept, where the most daring idea is hiring the Oscar-nominated co-director of 2012’s “Ernest & Celestine” and asking him to abandon that movie’s unique watercolor style in favor of a relatively standard digital approach.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Jake Johnson‘s survival comedy “Self Reliance” will play on the big screen for one day before it lands on Hulu. Neon is releasing the film in 225 North American theaters on Jan. 3 in partnership with the cinema chain AMC Theatres.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Wim Wenders describes himself as “a man of habits,” which helps to explain the respect he shows the routine-driven lead character of his latest narrative feature, “Perfect Days.” The gentle drama, which takes place in Japan (it was selected as the country’s official Oscar submission this year), focuses on a Tokyo craftsman who spends his days cleaning the city’s public toilets. Routine is central to Wenders’ life as well, and it’s thanks to one of Wenders’ rituals that he found the subject for a second feature film he premiered at Cannes last May: “Anselm,” a 3D portrait of the controversial German artist Anselm Kiefer more than 30 years in the making. Wenders first met Kiefer back in 1991, as the unconventional sculptor was preparing his biggest exhibition to date at the National Gallery in Berlin.

Caroline Brew editor If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Enter the arena again when “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” arrives on premium video on demand and premium electronic sell-through on Dec. 19 from Lionsgate.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Up, up and away! The Sundance Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 40th edition, which will take place in Park City, Utah, from Jan. 18–28, with the online component starting Jan.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Every few years, the Academy tweaks the rules for its animated feature category, with the net result that the nominees tend to skew ever more mainstream. That makes it tough for most of this year’s hopefuls: A record-setting number of animated features submitted (nearly three dozen, though the Academy is still finalizing its list).

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Are multiverses consistent with Christian theology? Personally, I have my doubts, but in Angel Studios’ religious-minded sci-fi thriller “The Shift,” the notion that there could be infinite parallel realities offers an original, outside-the-box model to test its main character’s faith. Here’s how it works: A churchgoing man named Kevin (Kristoffer Polaha) meets and marries his dream woman, Molly (Elizabeth Tabish), only to have his happy life whisked away from him by a steely-eyed stranger who calls himself “the Benefactor” (Neal McDonough).

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If John Woo had permitted the characters in “Silent Night” to speak, chances are that audiences would laugh them off the screen. Instead, the director gets right down to business, opening with a wordless chase sequence in which a sad dad (Joel Kinnaman) in a corny Christmas sweater sprints after a pair of speeding cars.

Caroline Brew editor Makoto Shinkai discussed his inspirations for establishing the tone of “Suzume” and how he approached themes of natural disaster in a conversation for Variety’s Artisans Screening Series moderated by Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge and translated by Mikey McNamara. Shinkai revealed that with “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” being grouped together as “Barbenheimer,” he expected “Barbie” to carry a similar seriousness to “Oppenheimer.” Thus, he was surprised to see how comedic the film was.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Perhaps if people talked less, animals would talk more,” observes one of the human characters in “Charlotte’s Web,” a kiddie classic that serves as both the butt of several jokes and an inspiration for Adam Sandler’s animated “Leo,” an endearing Netflix original that strikes just the right balance between heart and fart jokes. Basing the way Leo sounds on his squeaky-scratchy, slightly guttural impression of the late Hollywood agent Bernie Brillstein, Sandler voices a crusty old iguana who’s spent three-quarters of a century — practically his entire life — trapped in an elementary school classroom.

Joaquin Phoenix reportedly “walked out” of the premiere of his new film Napoleon earlier this week.The historical drama stars Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role as Napoleon Bonaparte, the military mastermind and Emperor of France. It spans 32 years from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to Napoleon’s death on St Helena in 1821, and explores significant battles as well as the romantic turmoil with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.Phoenix was spotted walking out of the film’s premiere in Paris on Tuesday (November 14) before it started.

Napoleon, with generally favourable reviews across the board.The historical drama stars Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role as Napoleon Bonaparte, the military mastermind and Emperor of France. It spans 32 years from the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 to Napoleon’s death on St Helena in 1821, and explores significant battles as well as the romantic turmoil with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais.Many have praised director Scott for crafting the kind of bombastic spectacle favoured in late ’50s and early ’60s Hollywood, noting in particular the technical and theatrical skill enacted for the sweeping, bloody battle scenes.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic A chyron that appears at the end of “Napoleon,” after two and a half hours of turgid spectacle and grime-encrusted showmanship, informs that France’s self-anointed emperor oversaw 61 battles, listing the six that director Ridley Scott opted to stage for our benefit … or for his own glory. The director’s motives are unclear, much like those of Napoleon Bonaparte as played by Joaquin Phoenix, who gives a mumbly and oddly anti-charismatic performance as the figure — short, slender and something of an outsider, owing to his Corsican birth — who came to rule France after the revolution.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Christmas comes early this year, as “Journey to Bethlehem” puts words (and music) in the mouths of all who bore witness to Jesus’ birth. Some of those tunes — like “Silent Night” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” — will sound familiar enough, though most of the songs — like most of the script — represents a fresh interpretation of believers’ original miracle, courtesy of Adam Anders, making a competent, if undistinguished directorial debut with the least edgy retelling of the nativity story around (which is essentially what the faith-based audience has been asking for).