Blake Goble

The script feels like a great writers-room comedy, where only the leanest and meanest bits stay, and the most startling and intriguing ideas persist. It functions comedically and historically — the jokes have something to say about power.

This is a kitchen-sink hymn for the indomitable spirit of the common man.

Inside Out is a superlative work of inspired imagination, one that may very well stay in your mind for a very long time.

Profound and illusory, Silence shows Martin Scorsese at the confessional, in sensationally cinematic style, delivering perhaps his most intimate work to date.

BlacKkKlansman is a well-formed and compelling work of pulp escapism.

I Am Not Your Negro is the kind of documentary that could open ears, eyes, and hearts with its moving agony and historical empathy.

It’s a harrowing moral fable, a political fable, and above all, a deft lament.

Guided more by emotion and imagery than by any conventional plot, A Bigger Splash is a wicked, mysterious, ceaselessly sexy, and experiential carnal summer whirl.

Navigating the nexus of hype, commerce, ego, and bullshit that drives the modern art scene, The Square is almost too perfect in its cunning simplicity. The art world’s always been easy to drag, what with its interiority, weirdos, and frustrating games of pin-the-tail-on-the-thesis. But rarely are these ideas lampooned so beautifully.

By minimalizing his loftier techniques and tendencies of the past with brusque pacing and grand photography, Nolan has assembled the leanest and most impassioned film of his career.

The film possesses a quiet, considered tension that draws the viewer in.

Here’s a cocktail so potent that it may just snap even the most tired and cynical viewers out of apathy.

Arnaud Desplechin delivers a thrilling reminiscence that romanticizes and believes in youth’s ungraceful but intense splendors.

The slow build of Da 5 Bloods leads to as powerful a finale as any you’ll find in Lee’s arsenal. And it’s one that should hit rather hard as it arrives in the middle of a summer where race will be discussed at volumes.

It’s beyond playful. Wonderful and whimsical, for that matter. Fun to look at and completely immersive. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, and humane, as well. It’s even a tad sagely in its universally appealing lessons of manners, sympathy, and open-mindedness.

In a word, Another Round is intoxicating. Vinterberg elevates what could have been a mope-fest with a magnificently defiant tone and a powerhouse performance from Mikkelsen.

It’s Hollyweird love letter material, but it’s glittered with Tarantino’s signature wise-ass attitude. Here he’s part historian, and part aging, experimental auteur.

Perhaps the film’s most striking quality is its restraint. Thematically and stylistically, it’s a film of quiet medium shots, long takes, and clear but evasive words. Every choice is tiny, but humane and usually deliberate.

Patton tells a tighter, less well-heard, and necessary tale of being gay in an era where that could still destroy a career (which to be frank, is still an issue that should be better addressed…), nestled carefully within a re-read of an oft-maligned horror sequel. He’s a deeply appealing subject.

You know the formula and frankly, it’s one of the best-working ones Hollywood still has: a fun-for-the-whole-family film. In a current market crowded with franchises and pricey theatrics, Toy Story 4 feels like a warm and welcome aside, spinning an epic yarn from an intimate vantage with all the amenities of Pixar’s supremely talented creators and animators.

One critic’s ‘too much’ may be another’s ‘so much to unpack’. But that’s the thing. The style, the lament, the punchy rhythm and breathless momentum of The Other Side may be hefty, but it certainly makes a dent.

A Cure for Wellness feels like a return to form for the director. It’s not hard to imagine how Verbinski might have come up with a baffling horror film about the pressures of work/health balance. His latest film is rich with invention, intrigue, and a mind-melting liveliness that’s impossible to ignore.

Transit is a walkabout potobiler that ruminates more often than it feels compelled to run. It’s brutal, stark, dry, compelling, rich, and all the other drastic hyperbole that one can only bestow upon a genre-bending experiment like this one.

While it deals in the traditional melodramatics, straight from the ‘ol Hollywood emotion factory, Tillman Jr.’s aim seems true. The Hate U Give feels so Right Damn Now that you could leave the theater and see its stories on the nightly news.

Phoenix is a death-defying melodrama of rare emotional obsession.

Little Men is a summer breeze, with rich melodrama and an easygoing mood, built up around two great kids and their troubled families that says more than any after-school special. It’s an episode of actual experience, presented in lovingly natural, minimalist strokes.

Queen of Katwe shows that a film doesn’t have to give up on the tenets of genre, but has the potential to win big if it can enliven them in new ways.

Running the gamut from grotesque to goofy to genuinely scary, Alison Klayman has assembled a compelling and tight look into the inner workings of modern politics in the Trumpian key.