Aside from a mild commentary of mass shootings and late stage capitalism (the term even gets a shout-out), the story of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” hangs loosely around dopey characters and unsurprising plot developments. Still, it delivers plenty of blood spattered, gut-spilling gore to satisfy genre lover’s bloodlust, even if we’ve pretty much seen everything a chainsaw can do by now. The movie opens with a group of friends driving across the wide open plains of deep Texas....

Another unexpected top 10 entry: Scott Cooper’s horror thriller “Antlers,” another Searchlight Pictures holdover from its initial 2020 slate, which is trailing just behind “Last Night in Soho.” It’s the second horror-centric entry on the list from Searchlight, clocking in just above David Bruckner’s “The Night House,” which the studio released in August after debuting at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. (Of interest: “The Night House” stars “Passing” filmmaker Rebecca Hall, whose debut feature just enjoyed a brief theatrical run before heading to Netflix this week; too bad then that Netflix does not report box office numbers, as Hall might be in line for a two-fer....

Even 2020, with all its weirdness and pain, has played home to a thrilling assortment of films worth championing, the kind of films that would top any best-of list in any year. Such is the case with this year’s crop of “the best films,” as recognized by IndieWire’s own staff, who spend our literal lives consuming content (or, in more elegant terms, watching movies and TV shows). Below, IndieWire’s staff unpacks some of our favorite films of the year....

The experience of seeing a movie in a theater is singular, but moviegoing is not exactly an option for the time being for many people. In lieu of that theatrical experience, there’s a next-best alternative: Investing in your home theater. More specifically, ditching your old flatscreen TV for a brand new home projector. “Home theater” doesn’t necessarily mean an entire room with recliners and a popcorn machine, it’s simply the place where you plan to consume your entertainment....

“You try to find that grain of reality in everything, and that can be very hard to do,” VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet said in a panel discussion with IndieWire. “You could have a sentence that’s like, ‘We want the Boys to crash into this whale, but it needs to look as real as possible’ — or, ‘We want this giant dick monster to wrap around Mother’s Milk’s neck, but it has to feel real....

Showtime is billing “The Comey Rule” as “an immersive, behind-the-headlines account of the historically turbulent events surrounding the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, which divided a nation.” The miniseries’ official synopsis adds: “Rather than a biopic of one man, the series tells the story of two powerful figures, Comey and Trump, whose strikingly different personalities, ethics and loyalties put them on a collision course.” Jeff Daniels is leading “The Comey Rule” in the title role, but it’s Brendan Gleeson’s transformation into Donald Trump that will certainly bring a lot of buzz to the miniseries’ release in September....

Director Campos has excelled in mining the masculine and feminine in much smaller-scale movies like indies “Afterschool,” “Simon Killer,” and “Christine,” but that once nimble and focused approach — generally on films that chart an individual’s psychic unraveling into a murderer, sociopath, or suicide case — doesn’t translate successfully to a broader canvas. “The Devil All the Time” has to juggle so many characters that it becomes incoherent and basically boring onscreen, bobbing more along the logic of “here’s this person, and then this person, and then this person, and then that person again” than that of a complex but well-flowing ensemble tragedy where the fates of disparate characters border one another, and then lock into place....