All of Us Strangers (2023)

Half of All of Us Strangers is a grown man eating dinner with his parents, who died when he was twelve, and the movie never explains how that’s possible. Andrew Scott plays Adam, a lonely screenwriter in a near-empty London tower block. One day he heads out to his childhood home in the suburbs, and Mum and Dad are waiting inside, not a day older than the year he lost them. Claire Foy and Jamie Bell play them with enormous warmth. Adam comes out to his mum decades late, and he asks his dad why he stayed quiet while kids bullied him, and both scenes really hurt. Paul Mescal is Harry, the neighbor who knocks one night, gets sent away, then turns up again by the lift. The dreamy middle drifts, and the rules stay foggy on purpose. It holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A 9.0 because it treats grief like someone you can still talk to. $404 says by bedtime you’re craving one very specific dish from the restaurant your family went to when you were a kid.

What works: Andrew Scott gives a quiet, devastating lead performance, and Claire Foy and Jamie Bell make every kitchen-table conversation feel like a second chance.

What doesn’t: The film never sets rules for the visits, and the hazy, dreamlike middle stretch will lose anyone who wants the logic spelled out.

Who it’s for: Anyone who has ever wished for one more conversation with someone they lost, and fans of slow, aching romances.