New York Times Critics' Picks

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  • The World Before Your Feet

    Directed by Jeremy Workman • Documentary • With Matt Green • 2018 • 95 minutes

    There are 8,000 miles of sidewalks, paths and roads in New York City and for the past six years Matt Green has been walking them all--every street, block, pedestrian overpass and park lane. A five borough journey that...

  • Augustine (Alice Winocour)

    Directed by Alice Winocour • Drama • With Vincent Lindon, Soko, Chiara Mastroianni • 2013 • 102 minutes

    The powerful and darkly sensual drama Augustine is based on the true story of the unusual relationship that developed between Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, the pioneering 19th century French neurol...

  • Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)

    Directed by Jem Cohen • Drama • With Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robert “Bobby” Sommer, Ela Piplits • 2012 • 106 minutes

    When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city,...

  • Tales of the Night

    Directed by Michel Ocelot • Animation • With Julien Béramis, Marine Griset, Michel Elias, Olivier Claverie • 2011 • 84 minutes

    Every night, a girl, a boy and an elderly technician meet in a little cinema, sharing tales that capture their fancy. Together, they act out magnificent fables from arou...

  • Lolita (Adrian Lyne)

    Directed by Adrian Lyne • Drama • With Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella • 1997 • 137 minutes

    Humbert, a brilliant professor of French literature in New England, rents a room from a lonely widow, Charlotte, who falls in love with him. She is a giddy and talkative la...

  • Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin (Werner Herzog)

    Directed by Werner Herzog • Documentary • With Werner Herzog • 2020 • 89 minutes

    Werner Herzog turns the camera on himself and his decades-long friendship with the late author Bruce Chatwin, a kindred spirit whose quest for ecstatic truth carried him to all corners of the globe. Herzog’s deeply ...

  • Meru

    Directed by Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi • Documentary • With Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin, Renan Ozturk, Jon Krakauer • 2015 • 90 minutes

    In the high-stakes pursuit of big-wall climbing, the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru may be the ultimate prize. Sitting 21,000 feet above the sacred Ganges Ri...

  • Geographies of Solitude

    Directed by Jacquelyn Mills • Documentary • 2022 • 103 minutes

    An immersion into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island, a remote sliver of land in the Northwest Atlantic, the film follows Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived there for over 40 years collecting, cleaning and doc...

  • Cane River

    Directed by Horace B. Jenkins • Drama • With Tommye Myrick, Richard Romain, Carol Sutton • 1982 • 104 minutes

    Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, CANE RIVER is a racially-charged love s...

  • Transit

    Directed by Christian Petzold • Drama • With Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer • 2019 • 102 minutes

    In Christian Petzold’s brilliant and haunting modern-day adaptation of Anna Seghers’s 1942 novel, Transit Visa, Georg, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski, Happy End), flees to Marseille assuming the identi...

  • Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell)

    Directed by John Cameron Mitchell • Drama • With Sook-Yin Lee, Paul Dawson, Justin Vivian Bond • 2006 • 101 minutes

    NSFW. Contains nudity and graphic depictions of sex.

    John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic an...

  • Quiet City

    Directed by Aaron Katz • Drama • With Joe Swanberg, Cris Lankenau, Erin Fisher • 2007 • 78 minutes

    Jamie is lost. She’s come to New York to visit her friend Samantha, but Samantha is nowhere to be found, and now Jamie is alone in the city. Charlie just quit his job, and isn’t sure where he’s goi...

  • A New Old Play

    Directed by QIU Jiongjiong • Drama • With Tao Gu, Yi Sicheng • 2022 • 180 minutes

    Jiongjiong Qiu’s visually magnificent new film is a unique hybrid of fiction, historical reminiscence, and experimental theatre. Its overview of China from the 1930s to the 1980s is filtered through Qiu Yu, a Sichu...

  • Under the Sun

    Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2015 • 110 minutes

    After years of negotiation the Russian director Vitaly Mansky was invited by the North Korean government to make a film about one girl and her family, in the year she prepares to join the Children's Union, on the 'Day of the Shining St...

  • My Imaginary Country

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 2022 • 83 minutes

    One day, without warning, a revolution exploded. It was the event that master documentarian Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for all his life: a million and a half people in the streets of Santiago, Chile, demanding justice, education...

  • Redlegs

    Directed by Brandon Harris • Drama • With Andrew Katz, Evan Louison, Nathan Ramos • 2012 • 67 minutes

    A comedic drama set amongst grieving twenty-something man-boys in the industrial Midwest whose black friend was recently murdered in a historically troubled part of Cincinnati, Ohio.

  • Red Hollywood

    Directed by Thom Andersen & Noel Burch • Documentary • With Billy Woodberry, Paul Jarrico, Alfred Lewis Levitt, Abraham Polonsky, Ayn Rand • 2014 • 118 minutes

    A fascinating documentary by Thom Andersen (director of Los Angeles Plays Itself) and Noel Burch (author of To The Distant Observer), Re...

  • Two Lottery Tickets

    Directed by Paul Negoescu • Drama • With Dorian Boguta, Dragos Bucur, Alexandru Papadopol • 2016 • 86 minutes

    Sile, an underemployed carpenter who spends most afternoons at the pub, convinces his buddy Dinel to play the lottery one hot afternoon. After borrowing a few Euro from Pompiliu, the loc...

  • The Innocents

    Directed by Anne Fontaine • Drama • With Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza • 2016 • 115 minutes

    Warsaw, December 1945: the second World War is finally over and French Red Cross doctor Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked...

  • El Mar La Mar

    Directed by Joshua Bonnetta & J.P. Sniadecki • Documentary • 2017 • 94 minutes

    An immersive and enthralling journey through the Sonoran Desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, EL MAR LA MAR weaves together harrowing oral histories from the area with hand-processed 16mm images of flora, fauna and items...

  • La Moustache

    Directed by Emmanuel Carrère • Drama • With Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric • 2005 • 86 minutes

    Marc Thiriez (Vincent Lindon) is an architect who's worn a mustache for many years. Now approaching middle age, he decides to shave it off, naturally expecting others to notice. But ...

  • Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time

    Directed by Lili Horvát • Drama • With Natasa Stork, Viktor Bodó • 2021 • 94 minutes

    After 20 years in the United States, a Hungarian neurosurgeon returns to Budapest for a romantic rendezvous with a fellow doctor she met at a conference. When the love of her life is nowhere to be seen, she trac...

  • Embrace of the Serpent

    Directed by Ciro Guerra • Drama • With Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolívar, Jan Bijvoet • 2015 • 125 minutes

    At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning b...

  • Beanpole

    Directed by Kantemir Balagov • Drama • With Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Andrey Bykov • 2019 • 137 minutes

    In post-WWII Leningrad, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), intensely bonded after fighting side by side as an...