Chris Nashawaty

Two of the chapters stand with some of the best work the merry-prankster filmmakers have ever done, while the rest are varying degrees of… fine.

Top Gun has always been more than just an action flick about a cocky young fighter pilot who feels the need for speed.

There’s no denying that Bisbee ’17 has some moments of deep elegiac power or, for that matter, that Greene’s ambition is boundless. But by the end, I often felt like his blurring of the past and the present was an experiment that was easier to admire than be swept up by.

If it sounds like Hologram is basically about a middle-aged white guy getting his groove back in the Middle East, well, yes, it is that. But if you squint hard enough, it’s also a little bit more.

With his follow-up, It Comes at Night, Shults has conjured another master class in anxiety, claustrophobia, and dread. He’s a natural-born filmmaker.

Everett’s utterly fantastic performance as Wilde slightly exceeds his grasp as a first-time filmmaker.

Never mind the director’s still-prodigious work ethic, the big-screen adaptation of Ernest Cline’s giddily overstuffed, ’80s-saturated best-seller is, in a way, a movie that couldn’t be more bespoke to Spielberg. After all, so many of that decade’s most indelible touchstones poured directly from his brain. It’s the perfect marriage of fabulist and fable.

In the best scene, which comes late in the film, James holds his dying mother and shares a vision of their future that they both know she’ll never get to see.

It’s not Toy Story or Inside Out or even Nemo. What it is is a perfectly enjoyable family film that’s comforting, familiar, and a bit slight, like one of those serviceable Lion King spin-offs that Disney used to ship straight to DVD back in the ‘90s.

Engrossingly intimate documentary.

It's a deeply touching story about survival, perseverance, and hope.

It’s festooned with so many triumph-of-the-underdog clichés (including a climax you can see driving down the Garden State Parkway from a mile away), it’s like déja-vu with a breakbeat. The most remarkable thing about the film is how little you’ll actually mind by the end.

The Love Witch is so thin that if it turned sideways it would be invisible. It’s like a Bewitched episode stretched out to two hours. But boy, is it gorgeous to look at.

Charlie McDowell's romantic brainteaser is disarmingly clever — too clever to spoil. But it's also repetitive and a bit too Spike Jonze lite.

Damián Szifron’s Wild Tales almost feels too audacious, too crazy, and, in some ways, too slight for the Oscars.

As entertaining as The Lego Movie 2 ends up being — and let’s be clear, it’s still better than 99 percent of its competition — there’s something missing: that white-hot spark of insane creativity and out-of-the-box novelty that made the first Lego Movie such an unexpected, revolutionary surprise. Everything is still awesome. Just a little bit less so.

Directed by another great character actor, John Carroll Lynch (Zodiac, American Horror Story), Lucky is an elegiac and ultimately affirming meditation on mortality, regret, and smiling through hardship. You couldn’t ask for a more poignant swan song from a more singular artist.

Roman J. Israel, Esq. doesn’t quite have the same frayed-wire electricity as "Nightcrawler," but what it does have on its side is Denzel Washington.

At its heart (and it’s a big corny heart, for sure), the film’s message is one of unconditional love and embracing family wherever you find it. It’s hard to argue with. Especially when it’s served up with such spiky laughter-through-tears sweetness.

"Virgin" is also one of the few Reagan-era romps that could put a lump in your throat, as loser Gary (Lawrence Monoson) watches his skeevy best friend (Steve Antin) steal his dream girl. Thank-fully, the Cars keep things fizzy by shaking it up on the soundtrack.

Hoult brings a quiet, romantic intensity to the young Tolkien (pronounced ‘Tolkeen’, who knew?), Lily Collins does a lot with a little as his first love Edith, and the Hobbit horde will gobble up all of the easter-egg references peppered throughout the movie.

Over 95 minutes, Blindspotting builds tension like a simmering cauldron on the verge of boiling over. Its themes of racial prejudice, class conflict, friendship and loyalty find a voice that’s both disarmingly funny and heartbreakingly tragic.

Ex Machina is beautiful and ominous and features another delicately nuanced performance from Isaac, who’s quickly making a habit of them. But in the end, for all of Garland’s ambition, his reach winds up exceeding his grasp. The film is as synthetic as Ava.

The film belongs to Green — maybe the only actress ever to "graduate" from being a Bertolucci muse to a bloodthirsty action-flick dominatrix.

So let me just say that this latest rah-rah red-meat installment is the biggest and best surprise of the series. It has its flaws, but it's mostly a big, dumb, gruntingly monosyllabic hoot.

It’s cartoonish, fast-paced, a bit cheesy, and ridiculously dumb fun.

It's a Marvel spectacle that manages to deftly balance razzle-dazzle, feel-it-in-your-gut slingshot moments of flight and believable human relationships. There's psychological weight to go with all of the gravity-defying, webslinging weightlessness.

Although the film does hint at Apfel’s creeping sense of mortality as she donates her clothes for posterity, it never gets deep enough under her skin.