Alonso Duralde

This is a film that dares to be about something while still delivering as a piece of straightforward entertainment.

One of this generation’s most interesting filmmakers still has plenty to say and an impressive dexterity at saying it.

What makes Mistress America so lovely — and so of a piece with “Frances Ha,” my favorite film of 2013 — is its balance of compassion and scrutiny: Baumbach and Gerwig don’t let these characters get away with their shortcomings, but neither does the film condemn these people or present them as irredeemable.

The act of writing has tended to be flagrantly non-cinematic, but with these last two films, Davies proves that the internal life of the mind can indeed be explored and portrayed in a visual medium. With every scene a stanza, Benediction is a lyrical triumph.

Bathtubs Over Broadway is pure pleasure, both in its exploration of a hidden and uniquely American corner of show business and its portrait of the charmingly nerdy Young and his singular path toward rescuing this sub-sub-sub-genre while many of its executors are still alive to tell their stories.

The miracle of Superman is that, in 2025, it’s a superhero movie that inspires genuine delight.

This is a documentary that feels confident and intentional at every turn. It’s a story we need to know now, and it’s an essential warning for future generations.

Hers is a lot of life to try to capture in one movie, but Jane Fonda in Five Acts certainly covers her emotional arc with thoroughness and compassion.

Ridley is simply extraordinary, and she and MacKay give us a younger, lustier Ophelia and Hamlet than we usually get on the big screen.

A stronger structure underpinning these emotions run amok would have benefitted the film, but then what would feelings be without a little messiness? For many viewers, giving their own Joy and Sadness a workout will be enough to make Inside Out a valuable experience.

Across the Spider-Verse is a breathtaking whirligig of a superhero saga, spanning multiple realities without ever losing its emotional tether.

Sweet and sharp and exciting and hilarious, Big Hero 6 comes to the rescue of what's become a dreaded movie trope — the origin story — and launches the superhero tale to pleasurable new heights.

Begin Again is as uncynical and unironic a film as I've seen in a while, which will no doubt be a turn-off to many. But like a catchy summer jam, it doesn't need to apologize for being exactly what it is, nor do its fans have to feel guilty for getting it stuck in their heads.

The Book of Life manages to be genuinely surprising and engrossing.

Get on Up belongs, as it must, to Boseman, who delivers the kind of charisma, showmanship, sex appeal, and tireless energy that allows us to believe him as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

The jokes are consistently hilarious, with enough variety to tickle the funny bones of old salts and young fishies alike.

Ultimately, Ordinary Love is a celebration not just of this functional, delightfully average relationship, but also of life itself, risking and wrestling with loss not in spite of the fact it’s shared with others, but precisely because of that fact.

The action climaxes with a truly impressive finale, one that employs time going in multiple directions that’s like nothing I’ve ever seen in a movie before. The effects shots here aren’t just visually impressive; they actually let the narrative go to places it couldn’t without this level of, you’ll pardon the expression, wizardry.

By necessity, Inside Out 2 goes to even more complicated places than its predecessor, but it does so with real understanding, illustrating the ways that leaving childhood behind and forming the earliest stages of what will become an adult identity can be both liberating and terrifying, exhilarating and mortifying.

Nobody is more violent lark than probing satire, but between Bob Odenkirk’s smartly underplayed performance, the surprises in the screenplay by Derek Kolstad (the “John Wick” series) and the puckishly brutal direction of Ilya Naishuller (“Hardcore Henry”), it’s a wonderfully paced and consistently clever action movie that ups the ante of a genre that’s been dominated by Liam Neeson clones.

Skyscraper doesn’t change the action-movie game the way “Die Hard” did, but it’s a solidly entertaining summer diversion best enjoyed on the biggest theater — or even better, drive-in — screen you can find. And if you’re afraid of heights, make sure there’s an armrest — or even better, an arm — that you can grab.

Green operates in a smarter mode of storytelling, giving the audience the benefit of the doubt that they'll notice the details, and he's clearly whispered Pacino into giving a nuanced and human-sized turn.

If having pure fun at a “Star Wars” movie is wrong, I don’t want to be right. So for me, The Last Jedi falls right behind “The Empire Strikes Back” and maybe the original film in providing the thrills and the heartbreak, the heroism and villainy, and the romance and betrayal that makes these films such a treat even for those of us who can’t name all the planets or the alien species or even the Empire’s flunkies.

As did King before him, Wilson revels in whimsy without drowning in it, and he finds the franchise’s sweet spot of cleverness, poignancy, elaborate physical comedy, witty wordplay, goofy musicality, and just the right amount of sentiment.

Director Tom Hooper shakes things up a bit with The Danish Girl, proving that he’s capable of making a movie that’s both steeped in awards-season prestige and in possession of a pulse.

Deadpool is one of those movies that’s all the more successful for how easily it could have gone so very wrong. It’s suffused with an arch, self-aware wit...yet it takes its romance and revenge storylines just seriously enough to keep us engaged.

Marshall deserves credit for knowing how to shoot and cut (alongside editor Wyatt Smith, “Thor: The Dark World”) a musical number, and his work here ranks much closer to his success with “Chicago” than to his dismal “Nine.”

The Perfect Candidate feels like a film that both represents a new era for women in the Muslim world and also one that will help push that movement forward.