Dominick Suzanne-Mayer

The Handmaiden is film at its most exhilarating by a director at the height of his powers, and it’s the kind of singular rarity that must be savored when it comes around.

It’s a transcendent love story, and a work of overwhelming empathy.

In Andrea Arnold’s sublime film American Honey, freedom is relative, but every once in a while it can feel so damn good that the whole world disappears around it.

Apollo 11 is a great documentary, and its greatness can largely be attributed to the stunning archival scenes compiled within it. It’s impossible for anybody who wasn’t there to truly understand what it felt like to see Apollo 11 complete its travels, but for at least 93 endlessly arresting minutes, Apollo 11 does its very best to put you right there.

It’s at once subtle and outlandish, sensual and thoughtful, outrageously unconventional and yet one of its director’s most confidently assembled features.

Ejiofor is truly incredible from start to finish. McQueen’s approach to Solomon’s struggle is seamless, eschewing onscreen titles or obvious discussions of lapsed time or virtually anything that could briefly detach a viewer from their immersion into Solomon’s real-life nightmare.

There’s a lot of depth to Rushmore, but lingering in those depths for too long does a disservice to how consistently funny it also is.

Like so much of Linklater’s best work, the film is profound through its being deliberately unassuming. It’s sincere without being dopey, honest without being mean, optimistic without being oblivious of how hard the future can be.

You Were Never Really Here is a masterpiece of form and performance, but somehow, its accomplishments in sound and aural texture manage to dwarf even those other accolades.

It’s a perfect marriage of direction, performances, and writing, the kind of comedy that people eagerly wait for. Its solutions aren’t easy, and its paths unusual, but it’s a love story that completely earns its emotional peaks, and the kind of comedy that makes you wish every single one of them were this great.

It’s about how reality invades our dreams, and how the people we trust teach us to be less trusting as we get older. Tan plays these themes out with a rare emotional honesty, never allowing the fact that it’s a deeply personal work to prevent her from indicting herself alongside any of the other key players involved.

The film exudes pure humanity in every frame, in all of its messiness and splendor and tragedy, and much of that raw emotion is owed to the performances.

A Ghost Story is filmmaking that challenges and exhilarates, a potent reminder of how many new places film can still be taken even after a century of people working in the medium.

The Invitation is supremely well-crafted.

The Lure somehow manages to seamlessly assemble a film equal parts hilarious, affecting, and grisly while trading and warping aesthetics and tones by the scene.

City of Ghosts is far less about the region’s troubled history than about the now, the daily abuses that continue to grow in severity as politics are talked elsewhere.

This is despairing filmmaking, but also the kind that arrests the eye from its first moments. Lee has made something rare here: a portrait of poverty that treats its subjects not as victims or as aggressors, but simply as pawns of a far grander social scheme than any of them can possibly comprehend.

There’s not an ounce of wasted motion to be found throughout Cold War. Pawlikowski moves at a fleet pace, trusting in his audience to fill in the gaps that the film’s understated storytelling leaves along the way.

Your Name is the kind of film that’s all the more striking for how easily it could have gone awry, but Shinkai has accomplished something unique and genuinely special here.

Three Billboards may be a film chiefly concerned with rage, and pain, but it’s also one of the best dark comedies of recent vintage, and one of the better dramas as well. While some of McDonagh’s narrative threads do time out in unexpected and even unresolved ways, the film’s highs are exemplary.

Kogonada matches the inquisitive eye of his two leads, finding the splendor in the everyday, the unusual in the unlikeliest places, and the need for connection that runs beneath all things.

It’s the rare Marvel sequel that manages to expand on what came before in new and rewarding ways, while also striking its own distinct tone even as some of its narrative devices skew familiar.

A simple story told well can still be effective if the emotional resonance underneath it comes through. In Kubo, it absolutely does, thanks to the uniformly excellent voice performances.

The Souvenir‘s power is deceptive, in a way; it’s only at the film’s end, at the moment of its bracing final image, that its ideas and genre subversions come fully into focus.

There’s talent in every corner of the film, and it elevates Black Panther beyond so many of its superhero contemporaries even as it exhibits some formulaic tendencies. It’s a sterling example of formula done exceedingly well, however, particularly in the ways it uses the familiarity of that formula to tell a new kind of story.

It’s a warmly empathetic documentary, the kind that simply observes instead of attempting to sound one kind of rallying cry or another.

Fails is unsurprisingly exceptional given his relationship to the material, shaping the film’s overall tone as he goes along, portraying a kind of existential tour guide for a place that at once still stands, is being torn down every day, and never quite existed at all.

The terrors put forth by the film are at once specific to the era of its production and timeless in their direct connection to the American experience.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about Mudbound is its emotional honesty, Rees rarely sidestepping the inner lives of her characters and never diminishing their own battles to live in an unlivable time, however wrongheaded they might be.

It’s a simple story of children who have to figure out, at too young an age, what kind of people they’ll be. And in its pervasive sense of hope, Barras seems to suggest that they can be anybody they want. There’s always still time, as long as love remains in the world.

At times, László Nemes’ film induces the sensation of drowning, slowly. Not the kind where you’re pulled under by the riptide, but the kind where you’ve been treading water for so long that the body starts to betray you in tiny increments, and any life preserver must be met with utter desperation.

It’s a striking debut, and the kind of outing that will invariably leave audiences wanting to see more from Lynch behind the camera in the future. But Lucky is a showcase for Stanton above all things.

Kuso is a hallucinatory, scatological, grotesque, and occasionally hysterical work of utter mania, the kind of wild cinema that cuts through the noise of all safer, more marketable filmmaking.

Whose Streets? humanizes Ferguson, but not for the benefit of skeptics. It’s a rallying cry for those who understand their pain and those driven by that same pain to affect real and lasting change.

True Romance is for the most part a delightful relic of its era.

There’s a breathless sense of discovery and play that makes the film seem new, even as it’s tap-dancing through the imprints of so many sci-fi stories throughout the years. Simply put, superhero movies don’t often carry this sense of possibility anymore.

War for the Planet of the Apes is a formidable conclusion (if indeed it is) to one of the more well-considered modern series to date. This is a film of difficult, lingering questions and painful revelations.

If Raw is hardly subtle in its depiction of burgeoning womanhood, from the social to the sexual, Ducournau delivers the film’s parable with a candor that suits it perfectly.

What They Had is an indie drama of a familiar cut, delivered so well that you’ll forgive its smaller inconsistencies.

It’s not the savage darkness of Okja that lingers most after it ends, or even the political allusions. It’s the story of Mija and Okja, trying to make sense of a frightening world where good people and animals alike die each day, and the only thing that can usually prevent this from happening is more money.

Eight Days a Week will be of most value to die-hard and casual fans of the band alike, but it’s also a reasonably effective primer on them for anyone who might not yet be initiated.

Unlike in some of the filmmaker’s past work, however, Youth foregrounds the performance over the spectacle; Keitel turns in some of his finest work in years as the aging, fiery Mick, and Caine delivers a performance composed of untold multitudes.

Endgame manages to effectively deliver reunions alongside farewells, fan service alongside the kind of storytelling which needs to occur in order for the whole billion-dollar machine to keep a’grinding, and a handful of sincere, honest-to-God surprises that make the grandeur of the whole thing feel justified.

Furious 7 is at turns a celebration and a farewell, a film that goes for broke in using its many seemingly forgettable bits of established canon to tie together all of the films and pay its respects.

Boy Erased finds its best stuff when it matches the unabashed earnestness of Jared, and of Hedges’ performance. The film isn’t so much preaching to the converted as begging the ones who aren’t yet to finally come over and stand on the right side of history.

It’s a marvel of filmmaking created from nothing (and one of the more meaningful uses of 3D in recent memory as well), and Favreau stages one scenic tableau after the next with uncommon skill.

It’s the kind of wholly fun, satisfying late-summer fare that audiences will crave as the season winds down on its face, but like much of the director’s more recent output, it’s operating on several more thoughtful levels at the same time.

It’s intelligent, frequently resonant, and even wryly funny at points in its own weary way. This is sci-fi which trusts its audience to fill in the blanks and do just a little bit of the heavy lifting, and it’s better off for it.

Throughout Piercing, it’s never clear who’s getting played, at least except for the audience. Those with the stomach for what Pesce and his stars have to offer will likely give over to the rush of it, as the film plays fast and loose with expectations at every turn.

Last Days in the Desert explores Jesus in his most mortal phase, and McGregor’s exhausted performance is essential to its success.

This is punishing filmmaking, both in its sense of overwhelming despair and in its all-too-physical violence, but what sets Apostle apart from being an especially well-shot exploitation feature is its interest in the ideals behind the violence we perform on one another.

Though Colossal does occasionally waver, most often due to its recurring tendency to hastily discard characters before their stories feel complete, it’s also a genuinely touching film that works phenomenally well for the most part, bolstered by the lingering sense of regret that hangs over the film’s funniest and most wrenching sequences alike.

Mandy is destined to live forever as a cult favorite, but what’s going to set it apart from so many others is the way in which Cosmatos sustains the emotional stakes of Red’s quest through the entire film.

Queen & Slim is a traditional road movie with decidedly untraditional inclinations, a romance framed against stark realities. But it’s equally a political act, a film whose very existence demands questions about the ways stories like it are typically told, from whose perspective, and perhaps most valuably of all, for what audience.

As the film’s scope reduces, it builds in horrific momentum.

It’s a dizzying, sadistic feature, and may well be Aronofsky’s most biting work since Requiem for a Dream, but it’s also concerned with some deeply painful and humane material. Where that film aimed for repulsion of a literal bent, however, Mother! is far more concerned with horrors of the allegorical variety.

In one sense, here’s a sequel to a ‘90s classic that trades heavily on audiences’ appreciation for that previous film. In another, here’s a film that uses that fact in service of an insightful, affecting commentary on how there’s no choice in life but to either move forward or to not.

Brigsby Bear offers a touching and daringly unconventional reminder of how no approach to filmmaking is inherently bad with the right mind at the helm.

A Star is Born isn’t a new love story, or even an especially unique one. But it’s a traditional love story told supremely well, and sometimes that’s exactly what audiences go to the movies to see.

As with so many Laika films, you’ll come for the breathtaking animation, and you’ll leave both enchanted and surprised by the big, beating heart beneath it.

Chapter 2 is a hyper-violent piece of pulp action cinema through and through, but it’s also an exemplar of how to make such a film with style and intelligence.

If Lo and Behold is more just a collection of interviews on a series of themes than a cohesive piece of storytelling, it’s still a fascinating endeavor into how the Internet went from personal to unimaginably broad and how it could either continue to expand or perhaps even return to that infant phase again.

By firmly rooting all of the film’s sprawling drama in a singular conflict, directors Joe and Anthony Russo manage to do what many superhero films have struggled with in recent years: find a truly effective reason to pit superpower against superpower.

Peele is a talented director of action as well as horror, and Get Out is always far from boring even in its more familiar scenes.

Good Time is a film of trembling anxiety, and while the score and the Safdies’ terrific direction both aid this, it’s Pattinson’s outstanding performance that pins even the most outlandish occurrences to a deep sense of emotion.

As both an utterly mad true story and as a document of the boundless reach of the cinema across borders and cultures and even ideologies, The Lovers and the Despot is wild, valuable viewing for all.

There’s a strangeness to certain passages of Sisters that bolsters it through its seedy saloons and cacophonous firefights, and it constitutes the best the film has to offer.

As many note throughout the doc, the best moments that film as a medium has to offer are found in the smallest details. And when you find something truly great, as with this scene, you can just keep looking and looking until you spiral into the same void on which the grisly sequence ends.

The film maintains a hum of stoic, nerve-trembling anxiety that carries through to its finale.

It’s exhausting, but it’s also frequently effective. It’s surface-level with its emotional beats, but a number of them still land, largely thanks to the continuously all-in performances of the series’ endlessly patient stars. It’s an event that advertises itself as an event in every way, while somehow still managing to justify the immense hype around it.

If the film often takes an aggressive approach to driving this central thesis home, Shin Godzilla manages to negotiate a difficult balance between delivering the monster movie thrills promised by its central creature and a film that utilizes those thrills in service of something more substantial.

Menashe offers an affectingly intimate glance into a world largely unknown to those outside of it, one where faith is omnipresent over every facet of daily life and the troubled society outside is no concern of the neighborhood’s residents.

It’s less an attack on big business (though such sentiments are certainly present) than a call for a rational assessment of proven facts. If it does occasionally dabble in hero worship of its subject, it also makes the effective case that somebody has to keep showing up when nobody else can be bothered.

Filmworker makes a compelling argument that the Kubrick who lives in cinematic legend may not have become the man he’s remembered for being without Vitali around.

Grass Is Greener may ultimately be preaching to the chorus, but its simple messaging could draw in people who enjoy getting high, but aren’t fully aware of the broader political implications. As uses for streaming services go, there are far worse ways to burn down an afternoon.

It’s a film with no easy answers, and rightly, Hood doesn’t strain to offer them. If the film’s attempts at barbed satire don’t land as well as its graver moments, it’s nevertheless an effective look at the new kind of war.

This is a story with a message, and perhaps an overlong one, but the triumphant staging of the film’s action sequences often tends to erase any lingering doubts of its purpose before long.

While the connections Knappenberger draws between private and government corruption are sometimes belabored, they’re also accurate, and a stark reminder of the increasing popularity of “bought” news.

Beatriz at Dinner has an ear for the microaggressions that tend to constitute so much modern racism, and these moments tend to play better than the broader attempts at cultural commentary.

Even allowing for its recognizable traits, Moana is as much a treat to watch as any recent Disney outing.

There’s a depth to the city that shows how far the form has come in a short time, and Zootopia is better off for it, especially when it still ultimately doesn’t break away from the familiar Disney formula as much as some of the studio’s other recent films have managed.

There are moments of true terror to be found among the silence and the encroaching existential dread in which the film deals most prominently.

Indignation resonates at times with the tension of things said and unsaid, regretted and forgotten.

The romantic comedy beats are familiar enough, but the ways in which the film attacks them gives it a subversive shade that nicely compliments an otherwise straightforward fish-out-of-water story.

By the time Whitney reaches the point it inevitably must, Macdonald’s film stands as an archive of how preventable Houston’s passing truly was.

Malcolm D. Lee’s stab at a Bridesmaids-esque journey of debauchery is funny, sometimes uproariously so, but its greatest strength isn’t in the filthiest stuff. It’s in the rapport between four women who’ve worked hard to remain friends, even as the natural progression of time continuously pulls them further and further away from one another.

For a film where not much ultimately happens, per se, Cronies is a thoughtful reflection on nostalgia and how the sins of the past affect the present.

It’s not reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but The Meg is a perfect outing for a balmy late-summer evening at the movies. It’s a little preposterous, a little moving, and a lot entertaining.

The Edge of Seventeen has more than enough earnestness of heart to make up for its structural shortcomings. It’s a teen film with an uncommonly honest ear for interactions.

While Finley’s film may be slim on any truly insightful commentary about what makes Amanda and Lily tick, that’s almost beside the point. Instead, this is a film about the fine lines separating civility from chaos, and how it only takes a tiny push to send you across when you’re close enough to it.

It’s a feel-good story enlivened by the fact that there’s no overly sentimentalized hokum to be found.

Sunset is difficult filmmaking, the kind which almost seems impenetrable at times. But if you’re willing to meet Nemes on his level, the film’s rich textures will eventually prove themselves beguiling.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing about the film is what comes after, when you stop to realize how darkly comic and sickly fun the film was after you’re done reeling from all the impaling and dismemberment.

There’s no linear path to being “okay,” or to overcoming grief, and Band Aid is ultimately as much about how people have to do these things on their own as it is about a couple doing it together.

Support the Girls is the kind of film that sneaks up on you as it’s going along.

Given the sheer volume of jokes on hand, it’s impressive how often LEGO Batman successfully lands its punchlines.

Raiders!, as a documentary, is much like Zala and Strompolos’ film in that it’s rough around the edges at points, but so utterly sincere that it’s hard to deny after a while.

While the charm of Always Be My Maybe can and should be attributed to its performers, there’s a real sweetness in its reframing of the romantic comedy as the struggle of two people who already have fulfilling lives, attempting to add to them by rediscovering lost pieces of themselves in each other.