Alex Abad-Santos

Coogler and his talented cast and team tell a story that dazzles, one that dares its audience to dream of a world unrestrained by our own stifling reality, without ignoring how the pain of the real world informs those joyful dreams.

With its risky visual storytelling and tender script, Into the Spider-Verse earns the greatest honor that one can bestow on a Spider-Man movie: It somehow makes you want to see more Spider-Man movies. Including at least a few more for Miles Morales alone.

Throughout Beyoncé’s career, it’s been made to appear that this woman is something closer to deity than one of us. She is the closest thing to perfection, a once-in-a-lifetime talent. But what’s made her so spectacular to us is, privately, exhausting. Renaissance is the merging of the two, showing us the sheer amount of determination and work it takes to produce a show like Renaissance, and the toll it takes on the very human woman behind it all.

It challenges ideas about great power and responsibility, stories about the worlds we live in and the things we’re searching for, and our concepts of heroism and morality. And it does so with a gorgeous, imaginative animated style that makes each world seem limitless.

Gorgeous, absolutely charming.

The Flash existing as a completed movie is an achievement in and of itself. That it’s kinda good and has fun moments is a feat.

The most shocking thing about Avengers: Endgame is that there are several moments within this colossal movie that feel like a Marvel miracle. These are the pockets of time when what you watch on screen sends a shock of joy jumping through your skin, making your eyes go wide and watery at the spectacle.

The violence and fights in Wonder Woman are intriguing not just because they’re stunning but also because of how emotional they are.

Though the movie isn’t perfect, particularly in how it underuses some characters and gifted actors, those complaints are easily overridden by distinct moments where charm, oddity, and spectacle collide to create the kind of soul-soaring magic that Marvel at its best is capable of.

Tom Holland masterfully channels Peter’s teenage angst, which could easily come off as melodramatic or superficial, and infuses it with respect. Watts’s artful work makes you realize how often we don’t take teenagers’ anxieties, joys, and fears seriously. Peter’s life in Homecoming is a frustrating, jagged journey toward figuring out what kind of person he is.

Booster and Ahn understand that the world their characters live in isn’t always generous or kind. Their wistful film also shows that despite gay life’s cruelties, it doesn’t ever mean it’s lacking in love.

The film’s use of neon candy pinks, its star’s striking choice of nail polish, the soundtrack, the casting, the drama imbued in every shot, no matter whether it’s an extreme close-up of just-smacked bubblegum or a wide shot of a bleak overpass, or our electrifying heroine (played by Carey Mulligan) — it all works in unison to deliver a mesmerizing film wrapped around Fennell’s savage idea.

M3gan takes the idea of a kid knowing too much about the world and grafts it to an extreme premise, stretching it to the point of absurdity. But the kernel of fear that it begins with isn’t as alien as it seems.

Reeves has created the best iteration of Batman in years, in a film that examines the humanity behind the character. And it’s one that I would like to see again and again.

Shazam’s tale of orphans and wizardry is not perfect — Sivana is a stylish but ultimately forgettable menace — but it’s pretty close.

Yet that prickly view of fatherhood is what I kept coming back to as the fizz of the movie faded away. It makes Ant-Man and the Wasp feel like something more distinct than just the Ant-Man sequel, and helps it stand out from the other two movies Marvel put out this year.

Whereas Crowley left no one off the hook in his scathing play, creating a purposely painful experience, this remake seems to lack the same purpose of frightening accountability. The flourishes that made the original work so risky and raw feel more like polished, glimmering performance in the adaptation.

Throw in the earnest sweetness of Peter and MJ’s growing friendship, and Far From Home leaves us on as strong of a high as the low that its first act takes us to. That warm and fuzzy feeling makes it impossible not to think of how great a movie Far From Home could’ve been had it not tripped over its own feet in setting the stage, or unspooled itself from that tangled-up beginning.

For the most part, though, Deep Water has abandoned thought and logic for horny, unhinged vibes. It’s so much beautiful fun.

Infinity War boasts the most breathtaking, audacious moment in superhero movie history, one that rocketed through my brain and tore apart everything I thought I knew about the past 10 years of Marvel moviemaking. For the first time in a while, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Even if Black Widow is years late and can feel retroactive in parts, Nat’s own (very good) movie asserts the character’s legacy in the MCU and what she meant to the franchise as a whole.

A superhero movie so tightly made and brilliantly entertaining that even Deadpool himself would have trouble finding fault with it.

I was hoping for something higher, further, faster, and more.

When I say that Guardians Vol. 3 is the best Marvel film since Endgame, however, I mean it as a genuine compliment: The movie is great and not just the best house on a bad block.

Ocean’s 8, at its most endearing, is a slick, glamorous romp that makes you yearn for three more hours with its impossibly charismatic crew.

It’s frustrating, though, to see a movie so tight and entertaining in its action and so gangly in exposition. The result is a rambunctious female-driven revenge thriller, filled with tentpole moments of crackling verve that is knit together by flimsy exposition and voiceovers.

Lightyear itself is a sweet musing on the value of friendship, an origin story that gives the titular character a sense of purpose, and a zippy ride through an often-gorgeous cosmic world.

Large adult sad boys who want to take over the world and launch it into an apocalypse is something we’ve seen before (see: Loki in Avengers, Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Luther and Doomsday in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Steppenwolf in Justice League). This formulaic story is something fit for the other guys. The more time spent on it, the less time WW1984 spends being wondrous.