David Sims

The director’s meticulousness overtakes some scenes, crowding out any real sense of dread; occasionally his characters seemed to be drowning in the gorgeous, complex sets they were moving through. Eggers always manages to freak me out, though, despite the occasional lapses into tedium—he knows just how to evoke the simple fear of the unknown.

Given its similarity to the original, Gloria Bell could have just been a curiosity—but the hilarious performances by Moore, Cera, and Turturro make Lelio’s return to his own material more than worth it.

Williams has always thrived on the audience’s sympathy as much as their admiration, and Better Man finds a wonderfully goofy way to represent that with its charming, if unevolved, simian star.

Even if Molly’s Game is a tad too long and a mite too exposition-heavy, its star alone is worth the price of admission.

Though Longlegs has plenty of atmospheric scares, it never descends into total surreality, instead charting a path right between vibes and rules.

Barbie never descends into a cheap girls-versus-boys final showdown; it just reckons with the different ways self-image gets sold to us, the weary, willing consumer, even as the world grows savvier and more cynical. That it does so through bright musical numbers, acidic quips, and the right scoop of sentimentalism is all the more impressive.

Apatow’s greatest skill is at dissecting relationships, and that should’ve made up most of The King of Staten Island’s running time. Yes, the film is a tale of a young man facing his demons, but it works best as the story of a ruptured family finally learning how to put things back together.

Mostly, Thunderbolts* is just a fun action movie about found family among a bunch of hard-bitten mercenaries. It may not be the most original idea; the first Avengers entry could be boiled down in the same way. But I’ll take an iteration done this competently over a new adventure featuring the Red Hulk.

Running only 84 minutes long and stuffed with chaotic plot twists, Drive-Away Dolls is a perfect winter trifle.

Perhaps this really is the last Jackass; regardless, the series has survived so long not just because of the extravagance it conjures, but because of the camaraderie it inspires.

As with all of his movies, Garland doesn’t provide easy answers. Though Civil War is told with blockbuster oomph, it often feels as frustratingly elliptical as a much smaller movie. Even so, I left the theater quite exhilarated.

Although Soderbergh’s approach has an artfulness to it; he’s telling a sweeping story while keeping the excitement mostly confined. The result, while self-contained, is gripping, quietly sexy, and robustly acted.

De Wilde and the screenwriter Eleanor Catton do not rush to a conclusion—and even though every frame of the film is as pretty as possible, they don’t spare the emotional wounds along the way.

Weathering With You sticks to its guns all the way to the finale. It’s a story of Japan’s younger generation figuring out its future, and of a repudiation of the past that goes hand in hand with hope.

Mother Mary takes a story that could be ripped from the gossip pages and transmutes it into a spooky campfire tale. It’s the furthest thing from the kind of mainstream-pop fame Mary seems to represent, but that dissonance is what makes Lowery’s storytelling so unique.

So many rom-coms rely on tiresome plot twists to keep their characters apart before getting them together, but all of the ups and downs in Bros’ romance feel emotionally necessary.

In reality, Skinamarink is just a 100-minute symphony of the vibes being very, very off, a crescendo of creeping dread that eventually overwhelms the viewer.

It’s a perfect bit of shlock.

How Scott is able to pump out these grandiose set pieces with such practiced ease (and a little CGI embellishment) is beyond me; he remains one of Hollywood’s finest craftsmen of action sequences, and I’ll miss him when he’s gone.

It would have been easy to inflate Last Breath’s action stakes to make them fun and absurd, but Parkinson’s nonfiction instincts as a filmmaker won’t really allow for that. I’m thankful for the meticulous realism that follows instead.

It’s a diverting, high-energy romp, packed with a charming ensemble and armed with an unsubtle disdain for the one percent.

Hereditary is a great scare-fest and a middling domestic saga, one that probably needed to be either 90 minutes long and brimming with terror, or three hours long and suffused with glacial, Bergman-esque dread. Aster has charted a middle path, and for a first film, it’s hard to fault the skill he’s shown in doing it.

The film is not gritty, unvarnished, or hard to watch; it’s an easygoing, charming work, buoyed by Blank’s excellent lead performance and suffused with snappy jokes and sparkling supporting turns.

The Nightingale isn’t an easy cinematic experience, but if you can handle it, it’s an unforgettable one.

Although the sequel’s running time is more sprawling and its narrative goals more diffuse than its predecessor’s, it shares the same strengths. Wakanda Forever is fueled by intricate world-building, stunningly designed sets and costumes, and an interest in the geopolitical implications of superheroism that’s far more nuanced than most Marvel movies allow.

It’s a sweet and engaging movie, but one that sacrifices some profundity in order to faithfully capture the world through a boy’s eyes.

Though Crazy Rich Asians is rightly being lauded for its groundbreaking nature (as the first studio film with an Asian cast set in the present day since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club), it’s also a charming throwback to the kind of story Hollywood doesn’t tell much anymore: the high-society comedy, rife with family drama, acidic one-liners, and indomitable female characters.

The real star of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women is Rebecca Hall, who’s an absolute dynamo as Elizabeth Holloway Marston.

Monos is an undeniable wonder, but one that enchants the most when its head is in the clouds.

Watching the bureaucracy shift from a source of frustration to comfort gives the film its arresting tension.

It’s a film looking to challenge America’s gauzy perception of the country’s most famous political family, loaded with all the bleakness that task requires.

Nouvelle Vague is a fairly straightforward making-of story—funny, considering how form-breaking Breathless was. But Linklater understands that his movie’s appeal lies in character-based humor.

Other films have skewered an industry that’s intent on bludgeoning audiences with their own fading memories, but only Chip ’n Dale actually gives those memories a new life.

Mudbound is beautifully shot, well-acted, and surprisingly sweeping for a movie with a relatively small budget of $10 million; if it’s guilty of anything, it’s perhaps trying to do too much at once, which is understandable given its novelistic scope.

The real fun in Ready or Not comes from the ways it subverts its time-tested story, balancing wry commentary and straightforward horror in its portrait of fumbling arrogance and curdled privilege.

It’s almost charming watching the film find various ways to use the limited confines of a suburban commuter train in service of a nervy action thriller.

As it is, Greta is more of a Terminator movie, with everyone doing their best to get out of Huppert’s way for 98 enjoyable minutes—though that’s still worth a recommendation in my book.

Affleck communicates all of the movie’s emotional breakthroughs via little choices—an angry swipe at an empty beer can when he’s being pressed on his drinking, or slowly curling into a ball when he admits the extent of his problem. It’s the kind of subtlety I’ve never seen Affleck demonstrate as a performer. The fact that he brings his real-life battles to the movie may be uncomfortable for some viewers, but the actor insists he approached the role carefully.

Presence, like much of the director’s recent work, is less an entrée than a charming apéritif, albeit with a couple of smart twists worth ruminating on.

Searching is a clever update on a housebound Hitchcock thriller like Rear Window, one that can make a series of Google searches play out like a high-wire action scene.

The most crucial aspect of the role-playing game is community—the fact that it’s played with friends and relies on teamwork. The writer-director Dan Scanlon’s clear grasp of that makes for a warm, gentle film that doesn’t try to merely dazzle the audience with wild fantasy visuals.

No doubt most Hollywood executives are as baffled as I am that Detective Pikachu made it to the big screen. But even more baffling, and heartening, is how well it all works.

Ant-Man and the Wasp bets on everything that worked about the first movie—it’s a light and sunny entry in the ongoing Marvel canon that gets by on the cast’s easygoing chemistry. And, of course, on all the shrinking and growing.

Sonny’s quest to prove his doubters wrong resembles the arc of many a sports drama. But Kosinski elevates that journey by capturing racing in all of its gorgeous, peculiar glory—there’s never been a portrait of Formula One quite like it.

If you’re buying a ticket hoping for a honed piece of cinema, you may be disappointed. Ambulance is instead a strong entry in Bay’s maximalist canon, his best assault on the senses since his underrated 2013 comic thriller, Pain & Gain.

To Eastwood, Jewell is a hero not just because he saved people’s lives, but also because he was an ordinary and imperfect man who rose to the occasion when the moment demanded it. That’s the story Richard Jewell should be telling, and it succeeds when it sticks to that path.

The film deploys its extreme imagery for a reason, interrogating notions of selfhood and agency through a plot where nefarious agents can tap directly into someone’s brain.

It’s the kind of dazzling-looking, all-ages adventure that’s become rare in Hollywood: a grown-up story that kids can also enjoy. Lord and Miller’s endeavor here should be easy to root for. But Project Hail Mary’s self-conscious grandeur does sometimes get in its own way.

Fyre is primarily a journalistic exhumation of the Fyre Festival’s ridiculous excesses. But via interviews with both dissatisfied ticket-buyers and nervy ex-employees, the movie also scrapes away the sheen of the flamboyant “influencer” lifestyle that McFarland leveraged to sell tickets and hook investors.

Though this latest project might feel like a trifle (it’s only 69 minutes long and was filmed at Cannes to take advantage of a press appearance Huppert was doing there), it’s also a clear statement of artistic intent.

It touches on all the usual clichés of this cinematic subgenre. It just manages to do so in the most fizzy, fun fashion, powered by an energetic lead performance from Taron Egerton that goes beyond mimicry.

The film is just different enough to stick out amid the studio’s backwards-looking slate, and Burton, for the first time in years, shows he hasn’t lost his love for the idiosyncratic.

The director, Chad Stahelski, has been with the series since its inception and is clearly working with his biggest budget yet, so he compensates for any story weakness by serving up a seven-course meal of set pieces.

Though Whannell started out as a writer, it’s clear that stylish direction is where his strengths truly lie. Luckily, The Invisible Man has more than enough of that to hold the viewer’s attention.

Swerving between thrill-a-minute action and intense, drawn-out suspense, Revenge has all the subtlety of a bazooka to the face, but it’s an arresting watch if you can stomach its most lurid moments of violence.

Despite the over-the-top performances and plot twists he juggles, Scott drives his ultimate message home—that wealth is tempting yet poisonous.

As a jolting piece of entertainment, Scream absolutely succeeds. It can’t reach the terrifying heights of Craven’s original, but none of the sequels could; each one always leaned a little more on meta-humor as the series went along.

It moves quickly but exhaustingly; if you’re tired of one trope, there’s always a new one waiting excitedly around the corner.

Chicago 7 is a particularly shiny rendering of history, but Sorkin wisely places the focus on America’s failings, even as he celebrates the people striving to fix them.

The landscape of cinema doesn’t have enough maximalist costumed epics, and I’ll always applaud Wright’s ambition even when he doesn’t pull off his entire vision.

It’s filled with colorful characters, innovative creature design, and some of the most spectacular sets in Laika’s history.

Cry Macho is almost like a Western paced at half speed, told with the deliberateness demanded by a 91-year-old movie star. That just helps underline its eulogistic narrative, one in which Mike is already a man out of time, and the more energetic Rafael tries to encourage him to enjoy the last act of his life rather than shuffle through it.

Eisenberg, Nivola, and a hilariously brusque Imogen Poots (as Sensei’s only female student) are more than up to the task of finding the comedy in scenes of nasty violence or brooding anxiety. Stearns, however, is less interested in balancing those tones than he is in exploiting their uneasy tension.

At heart, the film is mostly a buddy comedy, an odd-couple clash between an old-fashioned stick in the mud and his more easygoing replacement. That makes it a breeze to watch—one just wonders if a movie about the modern papacy should be so cheerful.

This film is the slightest story Coppola has ever produced; it only brushes up against deeper insights during its brief running time. But the movie offers such a rush of unintentional catharsis and pure diversion that its flaws are easy to forgive.

Where the film succeeds, it’s because Feig and Thompson have remembered to mix in a little sour with the sweet.

Freaky knows it’s a farce and winks at the silliest of slasher tropes, but that satirical edge doesn’t keep it from being one of the most purely enjoyable horror works I’ve seen in a long time.

On some of those fronts, the film wildly misfires, but for a wide studio release headlined by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Red Sparrow is an admirably bold effort.

Much of what does work is owed to Theron and Davis’s incredible performances.

It’s one of those projects that initially seems hokey beyond repair but quickly evolves into something genuinely unique. Serenity may not make it onto many critics’ top-10 lists come the end of 2019. But it’s certain to be one of the more unforgettable viewing experiences of the year.

The film is touching, sometimes saccharine, and other times bluntly honest, but it works best as a fascinating reminder that Rogers was trying to be more than a mascot of American politeness.

It’s that stealthy sense of guilt that turns Ella McCay into a rich, if often bewildering, document for me. Yes, it’s the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make much of anymore, but honestly, even back in the day, the industry rarely ever pushed out something this delightfully weird.

Van Groeningen isn’t too curious about what got Nic into drugs, nor how he finally pulled out of the spiral. Beautiful Boy largely exists in between those two stories and ends up feeling like a limited, grueling experience.