Alissa Wilkinson

While the movie finds its setting in a particular moment in Leningrad, it also feels very universal — a movie about being young and disaffected and passionate and in love, and watching all that change as you grow older. Summer, after all, never lasts forever.

Pope Francis — A Man of His Word isn’t likely to convert any of Francis’s critics, but it might just convince the indifferent that he has something to say to our world.

It’s a work of unspeakable beauty, one that doesn’t leave you when the film ends, and its deceptively simple focus on a love story can’t mask its cinematic achievement.

BlacKkKlansman isn’t wrong about the evils of white supremacy. But it’s pretty sure you, out in the audience, aren’t going to get it unless it spells out the message in blinking neon lights. And even then, the film seems to fear you might miss the point.

Arctic doesn’t employ too many fancy tricks or frills: It’s just a simple, straight-ahead survival drama that lets Mikkelsen showcase his considerable acting chops, leaving viewers as impressed with his stamina as we are with his character’s.

It’s funny. It’s uncomfortable. And it feels real and lived-in, right to the bone.

There’s a potentially funny movie in here somewhere. But it lumbers along, wasting some of its greatest assets and, in the end, overstaying its welcome.

Even when he’s in a mediocre movie (and he often is), LaBeouf is a magnetic onscreen presence. There’s a naturalism and complexity to his McEnroe that keeps him from being turned into a caricature. It’s hard not to want more of him.

It’s both a blindingly predictable pastiche of an action movie — absolutely nothing happens here that you haven’t seen in a movie before, with the possible exception of some crass sign-language humor from a giant gorilla — and weirdly charming.

A Quiet Place is the best kind of horror movie. It toys with how we hear the world around us, in ways that are startling and creative and tense.

For the most part, it works. Blockers isn’t groundbreaking or particularly memorable. As comedies go, it’s pretty standard fare. But its characters and performances keep it light on its feet, even when the writing gets clunky.

Ready Player One is set in a dystopian future. But it seems to have no idea how dystopian it really is.

What’s most interesting about Pacific Rim: Uprising isn’t the movie itself — it’s how the cause of the impending apocalypse has evolved from the first to the second film, and how that maps onto apocalyptic stories more generally.

Isle of Dogs, though carefully crafted, doesn’t have much to say — and that’s what’s frustrating about the movie. Anderson has always been one of the most stylistically distinctive American directors, but at times it’s felt as if his fussiness was a way to wallpaper over a lack of new narrative ideas. Isle of Dogs doesn’t suggest an evolution.

For all of Tomb Raider’s strengths, it would still be a stretch to call it a good movie. It’s diverting, a good way to spend a couple of hours, but it’s hamstrung by something that’s unavoidable: The whole central concept — raiding tombs — is just, well, not that interesting.

For as much as DuVernay’s film is a lovely and good-hearted movie that delivers lots of eye-popping, imaginative awe, its status as an adaptation necessarily raises the question: Was A Wrinkle in Time the right source material through which to tell this story?

It’s a beautiful and haunting film, and another examination of what makes us human from Garland.

A quintessentially Aardman-esque stew of slapstick, homage, and wordplay so wry it barely (but always) misses being groan-worthy, Early Man is a gentle and modest reflection on how we have, from the very beginning, always needed to treat one another with kindness in order to survive.

The Cloverfield Paradox has a great cast and an interesting setup, but it feels extremely — almost painfully — derivative of other science fiction films. It’s not nearly as good as its predecessors.

Wherever it falls on the quality spectrum, the bigger, more concerning story here is that Proud Mary’s journey into the movie marketplace is a good example of how Hollywood still fundamentally doesn’t understand what to do with many movies starring black actors.

For Anderson purists and couture aficionados, Phantom Thread is still a feast. But for many others, it’s likely to feel, at times, like it’s gotten a bit too bound up in its own stitching.

The new third entry in the series isn’t interested in character development or logical storylines or anything resembling innovation. It’s lazy and limp and profoundly weird, and not in any meaningful way a “good movie.”

The overstuffed Downsizing doesn’t totally work, but when it does, it’s fascinating.

Bright pulls off the uncommon (and not at all admirable) hat trick of being confusing, boring, and vaguely insulting about the matters it wants to appear smart on. The movie is a case of reading the room very wrongly, then slapping a lot of violence and muddled mythology on top as a means of distraction.

I left All the Money in the World wondering why this was a movie at all. It’s a series of events that happened, to be sure. And Getty is an important and interesting figure from the middle of the 20th century. But those facts don’t make for a good movie.

The Greatest Showman is not, in any traditional sense of the phrase, a biographical motion picture about P.T. Barnum. It is a high-energy, breathless fantasy. Employing sleight of hand, some fast talking, and a lot of tall tales, it exaggerates the legend until the illusion takes on a life of its own, turning into the promised “fever dream” that, while admittedly stuffed with some truly excellent musical setpieces, has something sinister at its core.

There are images in this movie that provoke awe and delight, and creatures that feel lifted out of half-remembered childhood dreams. And though it briefly appears to lose steam in the middle, that’s short-lived, with a third act harboring sequences that feel like a maestro conducting a concerto the size of the cosmos.

The movie is a pure delight — a funny, fast-paced, heartfelt story of a friendship and a weird dream. Impressively, it will satisfy fans of The Room while remaining completely accessible to those who’ve never seen it.