Bryan Bishop

Cam focuses less on the real ways technology can be weaponized, and more on how vulnerable people can feel when their online identities are ripped away from them.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a raucous, smart, self-referential adventure. The comics-inspired visuals are stunning, and the emotional coming-of-age story is relevant and inspiring, even as it acknowledges the many Spider-Man movies that have come before it.

The film hinges on Sophie Thatcher’s performance as Cee. In her feature-film debut, she brings a combination of determination and youthful naïveté to her performance that is essential to the entire movie working.

It’s big, nerve-wracking, and utterly ridiculous at times — but it is a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

Where the original film poked fun at games, this time, the subject of critique is the company’s own legacy. And it’s a smarter, more entertaining film for it.

The result is unlikely to be as influential as Argento’s movie, and it will test some viewers’ patience, but it’s still a bold, hypnotic work, an example of the richness that today’s generation of filmmakers are bringing to the horror genre.

Christopher Robin doesn’t just use nostalgia as a salve; it uses it as a way to mourn things that we’ve lost in our lives and as a way to unpack how our actions can hurt those around us. It’s a feel-good movie that really doesn’t think there’s a whole lot to feel good about much of the time.

Where Stranger Things goes for subtle, Summer goes for on-the-nose. Where the Netflix show offers nuanced, empathetic characters, this film gives us cardboard cutouts with performances to match.

It’s frustrating that a movie that seems so improbable actually got made, only to fall so incredibly short.

The Predator comes across like it’s too timid to fully commit in any one direction, perhaps for fear of alienating some potential segment of the fanbase, and ends up feeling like the least inspiring combination of all possible elements instead.

The 2018 Halloween isn’t an entirely successful film, and it won’t provide an easy template for a new generation of revitalized slasher flicks. But it does serve as a fitting coda to a story that began 40 years ago.

It’s a strong film, directed with confidence and a trust that the audience will be able to keep up, no matter how convoluted the narrative becomes.

It’s a breathtaking piece of filmmaking that’s filled with some of the most intense portrayals of spaceflight ever put on-screen. But for all its technical wonder, First Man’s focus on Armstrong’s relentless stoicism ends up feeling more like a hindrance than a revelation. It’s an epic, ambitious film, but it ends just shy of true greatness.

Cooper’s A Star is Born is unquestionably a film born out of our current era and modern struggles with addiction. In that way, it serves as a potent reminder that even the most familiar stories can be used to examine the issues and concerns of a given moment.

It’s a train wreck of a movie, mixing and matching wildly dissonant tones, bizarre plot contrivances, and a truly unique lead performance.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout merges the franchise’s big-budget spectacle with an utterly ferocious style of action filmmaking that far surpasses what McQuarrie executed in either Rogue Nation or Jack Reacher.

Normally, the creatures lend this series a built-in sense of awe and wonder. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom strips that majesty away and turns the focus on the human characters, who are markedly unengaging.

Solo is a swashbuckling success, a space adventure that pays homage to the DNA of the original films while carving out its own unique space in the canon. It’s a sheer delight, but it also has the courage to explore the darker aspects of a character who could have all too easily been polished to an inoffensive, family-friendly Disney sheen.

The result isn't as novel as the original, or as effortlessly kinetic, but it is nevertheless a joke-packed action film that continues to deliver on the character's potential, while opening up the door to an even bigger series of sarcastic superhero adventures.

After years of movies where even the most mediocre heroes appeared to be invulnerable and indomitable, it’s an arresting jolt — and exactly the film the franchise needed.

It’s gripping, funny, and full of spectacle, but it also feels like a turning point, one where the studio has finally recognized that its movies can be about more than just selling the next installment. In the process, the studio has ended up with one of the most enthralling entries in its entire universe.

Bright is a series of disconnected action vignettes that work as standalone sequences, but don’t hang together in any kind of meaningful way. It’s impossible to not think of Suicide Squad’s similar failings as Bright barrels from one dark, noisy scene to the next.

It’s an enthusiastic, hilarious reboot of the idea of what a Marvel movie can actually be, resulting in an effervescent, delightfully self-aware ride that was the most fun I’d had in a superhero movie in years.

Despite its flaws, one thing about Blade Runner 2049 is most welcome: it is trying to be about something. It is trying to be deep, rich, and complex. We’ve grown so used to lowest-common-denominator blockbuster cinema that it’s almost shocking to watch a big science-fiction movie, featuring these kinds of stars, swinging for the fences in this way. It’s hard not to be impressed by, and a bit grateful for, the ambition and care evident in every frame.

Molly’s Game is the best of Sorkin, with many of his problematic tendencies removed, resulting in a tremendously entertaining film that turns the prolific writer into a filmmaking double-threat in one fell swoop.

It’s a scattered film, making too many vital points at once. By neglecting to bring them together into one single story, Clooney undercuts them all.

Franco has created a movie that is not just hilarious, accessible, and an incredible amount of fun in its own right, but it had me more eager to revisit Wiseau’s train wreck than ever before.

It is undeniably effective in setting mood and tone, and it’s the kind of film that will leave audiences talking no matter what they think of it. If the sole purpose of art is to create an emotional response, Mother! is a masterpiece.

It’s a meticulous piece of filmmaking, so honed and refined in execution that it becomes nearly unbearable at times.

The scares are some of the best the entire series has to offer, and on that criteria alone it can probably be considered a success. But there’s no escaping the fact that as a standalone film, Covenant is wanting, neither truly making its own thematic points nor carving out its own unique place in the legacy of the franchise.

Thankfully, Vol. 2 does come together in the end with a powerful emotional payoff, but that’s only after it becomes a computer-generated action-fest with the fate of the universe hanging in the balance again.

Gray’s prosaic style robs Fate of the Furious of any real sense of self-awareness or humor, which could never be said about Lin or Wan’s installments.

Baby Driver is exhilarating, fantastically entertaining, and mildly frustrating, all at the same time.

It’s at turns terrifying, hilarious, and uneven, but succeeds in doing its most important job: showing off a range of distinct directorial voices.

Marjorie Prime is superbly acted, and it’s certainly interesting. Hamm strikes a wonderful balance as a talking re-creation that feels almost human, and the rest of the cast is equally nuanced.

A Cure for Wellness is a beautifully shot film full of interesting ideas, but it dumbs itself down at every possible turn.

Palmer’s performance is honest and brave (particularly given that she’s often just performing scenes alone), and Shortland deftly switches between locked-door thriller mode and more nuanced character work.

The results aren’t flawless, but Split is nevertheless a tense, exciting thriller anchored by a stunning performance by James McAvoy. And it may just restore Shyamalan fans’ belief in the power of the twist ending.

The film soars when it abandons all pretense of being a space opera, and fully embraces the bombastic modern action movie that’s at its core, giving it a unique identity that does indeed stand apart from other entries in the series.

Doctor Strange is at its most entertaining when it’s unapologetically different from anything Marvel has done before.

There’s no question that Deepwater Horizon delivers thrills, but you may feel awfully empty afterward.

The issues that Snowden raises are without question some of the biggest issues of our times — but a movie this safe won’t leave anybody thinking about them.

Wingard and Barrett add a creepy body horror element to the mix early on, and thanks to the forceful sound design there’s a greater sense of some massive, physical thing in the forest than the first film ever had — but Blair Witch is at its best when it’s honoring what has come before.

The extraordinary success of Arrival is that it combines its bravura style and grand sci-fi questions with tremendous emotional intelligence and a heart so full it’s ready to burst.

J.A. Bayona has created an unforgettable, emotional experience with A Monster Calls, one that lets us grapple with our most basic human fears and worries, while lighting a beacon of hope that can shine through that darkness.

Fuqua's film is ultimately a reminder of why the genre was once so wildly popular in the first place.

If only there was as much thought put into the characters as there was the visuals. For all of his convoluted backstory, Kubo is a remarkably unconflicted character, and barely faces a moment of internal turmoil throughout the entire film.

While it may not be entirely successful, it’s a film filled with clever insights, driven by the kind of sharp filmmaking voice that can push the genre forward.

Linklater is in many ways a kind of movie secret agent, making films that are unconventional in form and function, but so effortlessly entertaining that the audience may not ever realize that’s what they’re seeing. Everybody Wants Some!! still pulls that trick off, but despite its laughs and moments of fun it can’t help but feel like a step back.

This is a movie more about friendship and acceptance than anything else, and Pee-wee seeing so much of himself in someone like Manganiello is a ridiculously silly motor that gets the story moving quickly.

Filled with flashes of visual beauty and a fistful of interesting ideas, Knight of Cups is — like much of Malick’s most recent work — something that asks to be experienced rather than understood, but by pushing his experimental inclinations further than ever before, he’s ended up with something that’s strangely bereft of poetry or emotional resonance, resulting in a movie that may be off-putting to all but the most ardent Malick die-hards.

The film barrels through a variety of emotional colors: scares, laughs, moments of emotional vulnerability, and it’s a testament to director Dan Trachtenberg that the pieces fit so seamlessly together.

Eggers’ filmmaking is bold, confident, and endlessly patient, luring the viewer into a world that is seductive in its barren beauty and measured pace.

Concussion may start off as a stirring conspiracy thriller with the best performance from Will Smith in years, but it's hard to care when it's wrapped in a two-hour after school special.

Abrams and his collaborators have made a movie that feels resoundingly fresh and new by paying tribute to a style and story that is decades old.

The movie is engrossing, with Sevigny delivering a fierce performance that inspires empathy in spite of — or perhaps because of — the awful things the audience knows Lizzie will eventually do.

I Think We’re Alone Now is a tone poem of a movie, telling its story with lush, vivid imagery, and quiet, nuanced performances. Its slow, methodical pacing may not appeal to all moviegoers, and the film’s final act doesn’t entirely work. But it’s nevertheless a beautiful meditation on loneliness and the walls we put up to deal with grief and loss.

Search is shockingly effective, not just in creating a sense of constant, palpable tension, but also in the way it pulls off authentic, effective emotional beats.