Alex Harrison

In the moment, I thought it was very successful, and quite moving. In retrospect, however, the lens that we're forced to view the film through cheapens what we actually spent most of our time watching. Omaha can't really be seen the same way twice, but it's well worth it for that first viewing experience – and for John Magaro's performance, which will surely be some of the most quietly powerful work of the year.

Blue Heron is the kind of movie that begs to be written about at length. For now, I'll have to be content with assuring you that this is one of the year's best movies. If it comes to a theater near you, don't miss it.

Writer-director Lee Cronin holds onto the essential mythology while bringing in elements from a host of other influences, including the Evil Dead series, The Exorcist, and Hereditary, to try and shake up what mummies can be on screen. Discovering the true nature of this film's mummy, and what it's capable of, is part of the fun. The result isn't quite a 28 Days Later moment – one way to understand the film's full title is that this feels like one filmmaker's interpretation of a classic monster, rather than a new template for others to follow – but it's definitely the scariest a mummy movie has been in years.

As it tells a thrilling story, engineered with expert precision to keep you hanging on every turn, it embarks on a truly fascinating thought experiment about the nature of identity in relationships: who we are to other people, how easily that can change, and how disruptive it can be when it does. This film is rooted (to steal one of its laugh lines) in "double empathy," exploring when and why we condemn others without itself condemning any of its characters. It may be an entertaining conversation piece, but make no mistake, The Drama is also one of the best movies you'll see this year.

The film may not always conquer its genre's tendency toward oversimplification, but what complexity makes it to the screen is enough to come away from it with something to chew on.

Ignore the publicity bluster, and you'll find at the core of Song Sung Blue the same modest dream to entertain that drives the Sardinas. Is it one of the best films of the year? Certainly not. But a good time at the movies? You betcha.

Wicked: For Good does stumble at various points. The much-touted new songs by returning songwriter Stephen Schwartz are superfluous, and there's a laughably regrettable decision near the end involving Jeff Goldblum that only avoids disaster by being very brief. But all the same magic that powered the first film is still at work in this one.

Edgar Wright and Glen Powell are consummate entertainers, and they made this dystopian Stephen King movie as fun and guilt-free as they could.

Fixed is fun while it lasts, more so than you might expect going in. Its most lasting effect on me might be a longing for more traditional, hand-drawn, 2D animation from our major studios, and anyone who might feel similarly shouldn't let this movie pass them by.

One of Dreams' strengths is that its dramatic devices pair well with its interests.

That exquisite balance of art and entertainment is exactly what makes each Bong Joon-ho film a gift to be savored – here's hoping his next one doesn't take quite so long to reach us.

Companion wants to surprise you, but has no real interest in trying to outsmart you.

It's artful, atmospheric, and observant; a slice-of-life film told in a hushed tone. It's dedicated to recreating a specific time and place and dropping us into it. There's a gentle steadiness to the way it moves.

It's a strong, engaging story that showcases some striking animation, and if I am to return to the wider world of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, this seems to me an ideal way to go about it.

Flow makes us think and feel in equal measure.

Joker: Folie à Deux is not always fully thought through. This is why the original was often misread in the first place. This film is full of quality craftwork, performances, and images. There's much here to appreciate, especially visually, and I enjoyed my time with it. But I'd recommend not asking much more of it than that.

It's as rewarding as it is challenging.

The Brutalist is a colossal achievement, balancing intimacy and scale at every level of craft. At 3 hours, 35 minutes, it asks a lot from its viewers. Every second is well spent.

Wolfs isn't just funny, it's funny in all the different ways it needs to be.

Kurzel's film can be watched at face value, and anyone inclined to like this type of movie will enjoy it. But as it chugs along, it also shows us what hate can look like and what it can do. Like Husk's story, it is a warning, and it leaves us with the chilling sense that the events depicted haven't, or maybe can't, come to an end.

The cast deserves real credit for that, Biscayart especially. His physical expressiveness is truly extraordinary, and without his performance to transition us to the final act, Kill the Jockey doesn't succeed.

Truly, all of Babygirl is fascinating to watch. There's such clear perspective in the filmmaking, and even though I've dwelt on Reijn's more thoughtful touches, the defining trait for many might be a wicked sense of humor. Laughter came easy and often for me and the audience I saw it with – sometimes with the characters, sometimes at them, but always with the movie. It's as if we're being reminded that, however serious the themes, this is supposed to be fun. And it is. But be prepared to find yourself grappling with a whole lot more.

Beetlejuice and Delia are deployed just the right amount, each injecting the movie with their own flavor of chaos whenever things risk feeling stale.

The characters are animated with such clarity of expression, and the film is edited so expertly, that lines just aren't necessary.

If Infested suffers from anything, it's that Vaniček makes its characters and themes too real, and the monsters can't keep up.

The movie is so interested in archeology (the credits dedicate it "to all archeologists, custodians of every end") that it becomes an analogue for the viewing experience. Rohrwacher asks us to interpret La Chimera the way archaeologists interpret fragments of the past.

Late Night with the Devil is tremendously fun.

Problemista invokes the simplicity of myth without ever letting its characters become simplistic.

Thankfully for us, though, a film is not a meal. We can watch The Taste of Things as many times as we'd like.

Tótem's camera is always studying the actors, exploratory and intrusive in the manner of a child's perceptive gaze.

Perhaps, Kaurismäki's movie suggests, disaffection is a valid response to this reality we live in. So, when these two people meet and sparks fly, it becomes all the more meaningful.

If entertainment is all you're looking for, you'll find it, and you'll even have the fun of debating the accents and VFX as you leave the theater. But there's also a lot more to find beneath its surface pleasures, making it a worthy Christmas capstone for what has been a very good year for adults at the movies.

This is not a biopic of an artist so much as a human artwork, capturing the many questions he provokes and the contradictory answers that define him.

It's a journey as much defined by tedium as tension, but to paraphrase the assassin, if you can't handle a little boredom, this might not be the film for you.

Savor Hit Man, however you come across it - it's not every day the movies entertain us in this way at this level of execution anymore.

A lot happens, story-wise, but if the film had just followed Sylvia and Saul learning how to be around each other, it would've been enough.

While not flawless in execution, it's daringly creative — the kind of movie that will inevitably cause those who see it to start talking about other movies as a way of understanding

It's a lighthearted, empathetic film that multiple generations of family can see together and all find something worth taking with them.

It is a richly layered work of art.

If One Fine Morning offers no great revelations, it is full of echoes, parallels, and sparks that leave the viewer activated beyond its runtime, perhaps engaging with the world a little more thoughtfully than they were before watching.

Viewers willing to give it the same, almost spellbound focus the protagonist gives this case will find it a compelling meditation on things as wide-ranging as racial otherness, fraught mother-daughter relationships, and the real-world slipperiness of concepts like truth and justice.

There is a modest feeling to There There, and the emotional impact of its actual content might display the limits of this extreme methodology, but its (smartly brisk) runtime is hardly too steep a price to see a small movie explore such big questions with such clarity.

Beautiful, moving, and sporting a compelling metaphor for parenthood, Twomey's film is heartfelt in the way that Pixar and Ghibli films are, making it a worthy pick for a family movie night.

Equal parts creepy, funny, and impressive, Wendell & Wild (despite being inexplicably rated PG-13) is an ideal watch for the whole family this Halloween.

Robinson's film is not without things to say, and the combination of a dialed-up Mendes and a dialed-in Hawke make receiving that message a fun, engrossing experience. It is, in other words, exactly what it set out to be, and with any luck, it'll be named alongside the titles it so admires on many a teen movie listicle to come.

Roberts' film succeeds where much contemporary coverage failed because of how invested it is in the difference between laughing with him, as the audience is taught to do, and laughing at him.