New York Times Critic's Picks

New York Times Critic's Picks

Share
New York Times Critic's Picks
  • Long Day's Journey Into Night

    Movie

    Directed by Bi Gan • Arthouse • 2019 • China, France • Mandarin with English subtitles
    Starring Wei Tang, Jue Huang, Sylvia Chang

    Considered China's biggest arthouse hit of all time, Bi Gan's noir-tinged stunner follows a lost soul on a quest to find a missing woman from his past. Following lead...

  • Martin Eden

    Movie

    Directed by Pietro Marcello • Arthouse • 2020 • Italy • Italian with English subtitles
    Starring Luca Marinelli, Jessica Cressy, Denise Sardisco

    Winner of the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival and adapted from the 1909 novel by Jack London, "Martin Eden" follows a dashing young proleta...

  • Bacurau

    Movie

    Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles • Arthouse • 2019 • Brazil, France • English and Portuguese with English subtitles
    Starring Sonia Braga, Udo Kier, Bárbara Colen

    Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, "Bacurau" follows the inhabitants of a small Brazilian ...

  • Sweet Bean

    Movie

    Directed by Naomi Kawase • Drama • 2015 • Japan, Germany, France • Japanese with English subtitles
    Starring Kirin Kiki, Masatoshi Nagase, Etsuko Ichihara

    Shot during the height of cherry blossom season and selected to open the Un Certain Regard section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, this touc...

  • Bill Cunningham New York

    Movie

    Directed by Richard Press • Documentary • 2010 • US • English
    Featuring Bill Cunningham, Anna Wintour, Iris Apfel

    A delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of bicycle-riding octogenarian Bill Cunningham, the beloved 'New York Times' style photographer who was famous for his weekly columns "...

  • The Worst Ones

    Movie

    Directed by Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret • Arthouse • 2023 • France • French with English subtitles
    Starring Mallory Wanecque, Timéo Mahaut, Johan Heldenbergh

    Winner of the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, "The Worst Ones" captures a film within a film a...

  • Pasolini

    Movie

    Directed by Abel Ferrara • Drama • 2019 • France, Belgium, Italy • English, Italian, French with English subtitles • Mature Content
    Starring Willem Dafoe, Ninetto Davoli , Riccardo Scamarcio

    Abel Ferrara's "Pasolini"​ stars frequent collaborator Willem Dafoe as film director Pier Paolo Pasolini...

  • Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt

    Movie

    Directed by Ada Ushpiz • Documentary • 2015 • Israel, Canada • English, Hebrew, German with English subtitles
    Featuring Alison Darcy, Angela Winkler

    This spirited and thought-provoking documentary about German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt dives into rare, archival footage to offer a portrait...

  • On Broadway

    Movie

    Directed by Oren Jacoby • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman

    As theatergoers prepare for the return of Broadway after COVID, an all-star cast, including Hugh Jackman, Helen Mirren, James Corden, Viola Davis, and Ian McKellen, tell the story of th...

  • The Messenger

    Movie

    Directed by Su Rynard • Documentary • 2015 • France, Canada • English, German, Dutch, French with English subtitles
    Featuring Bill Evans, Erin Byne, Peter Marra

    For thousands of years, songbirds were regarded by mankind as messengers from the gods. Under threat from climate change, pesticides an...

  • The Competition

    Movie

    Directed by Claire Simon • Documentary • 2016 • France • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Alain Bergala, Emilie Deleuze, Xanae Bove

    Claire Simon, one of France’s leading documentarians, gives an enlightening all-access tour behind the scenes at France’s premiere film school, La Femis, dur...

  • The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future

    Movie

    Directed by Francisca Alegría • Arthouse • 2023 • Chile • Spanish with English subtitles
    Starring Leonor Varela, Mía Maestro, Alfredo Castro

    Singing cows, fish, and bees introduce a world of magical realism in this stunning Sundance hit. Long-dead Magdalena (Mía Maestro) surfaces in a polluted r...

  • In Balanchine's Classroom

    Movie

    Directed by Connie Hochman • Documentary • 2021 • US • English
    Featuring George Balanchine, Jacques d'Amboise, Merrill Ashley

    "In Balanchine's Classroom" takes us back to the glory years of George Balanchine's New York City Ballet through the remembrances of his former dancers and their quest to...

  • Fire in the Mountains

    Movie

    Directed by Ajitpal Singh • Drama • 2022 • India • Hindi with English subtitles
    Starring Vinamrata Rai, Chandan Bisht, Sonal Jha

    In a breathtakingly beautiful Himalayan community, a mother toils to save money to build a road in a Himalayan village to take her wheelchair-bound son for physiothera...

  • Dawson City: Frozen Time

    Movie

    Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Michael Gates, Kathy Jones-Gates

    Part fever dream, part historical record, this is the bizarre true story of some 533 silent film reels, buried for almost 50 years in a sub-arctic swimming pool, deep in the Yukon permafrost....

  • The Raft

    Movie

    Directed by Marcus Lindeen • Documentary • 2018 • Sweden • English, Swedish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Fe Seymour, Maria Bjornstam

    In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on an un...

  • Scarlet

    Movie

    Directed by Pietro Marcello • Arthouse • 2023 • France, Italy • French with English subtitles
    Starring Juliette Jouan, Raphaël Thiéry, Noémie Lvovsky

    Pietro Marcello follows his breakthrough "Martin Eden" with this enchanting period fable about a WWI veteran raising his daughter in rural France....

  • Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

    Movie

    Directed by Sophie Fiennes • Documentary • 2018 • UK, Ireland • English
    Featuring Grace Jones, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare

    Sophie Fiennes’s electrifying documentary is a journey through the public and private worlds of mega-icon Grace Jones that contrasts musical sequences with intimate perso...

  • Acasa, My Home

    Movie

    Directed by Radu Ciorniciuc • Documentary • 2020 • Romania, Germany • Romanian with English subtitles
    Featuring Gica Enache, Vali Enache, Rica Enache

    Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, this documentary follows a family with...

  • Fire at Sea

    Movie

    Directed by Gianfranco Rosi • Documentary • 2016 • Italy • Italian with English subtitles
    Featuring Samuele Pucillo, Mattias Cucina, Pietro Bartolo

    An Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, "Fire at Sea" takes pla...

  • The Son of Joseph

    Movie

    Directed by Eugene Green • Arthouse • 2017 • France, Belgium • French with English subtitles
    Starring Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Regnier, Fabrizio Rongione

    The American-born expatriate filmmaker Eugene Green exists in his own special artistic orbit and his film "The Son of Joseph" is perhaps his mo...

  • Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint

    Movie

    Directed by Halina Dyrschka • Documentary • 2019 • Germany • English, German, Swedish with English subtitles
    Featuring Johan af Klint, Julia Voss, Ulla af Klint

    The subject of a 2018 awe-inspiring retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term even ...

  • Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

    Movie

    Directed by Ric Burns • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Atul Gawande

    A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis, esteemed neurologist Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by famil...

  • Studio 54

    Movie

    Directed by Matt Tyrnauer • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Ian Schrager Steve Rubell, Norma Kamali

    A haven of hedonism, glitz, and glamour, the infamous New York nightclub Studio 54 was the ultimate escapist fantasy until it imploded in financial scandal. With unprecedented access a...