Johnny Oleksinski

It’s cinematic Mountain Dew. You’ll be wired for the entire 2½ hours.

Coco is packed with terrific original tunes such as “Remember Me” (by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez of “Frozen”) and “Proud Corazón” (co-written by Adrian Molina, the film’s co-director). But it’s not your average musical, in which characters wail their wants and feelings. That’s a refreshing change.

It’s a breathtakingly human film — about a bird and a bot.

As he did so ingeniously with “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the Spanish Civil War, del Toro explores fantasy, myth and childhood in a time of oppressive fascism; the specks of light that escape the darkness.

The final shot of Apatow’s movie is the iconic Staten Island Ferry, bringing to mind “Working Girl,” “Manhattan” and countless other New York City classics. The King of Staten Island joins that list.

Director Christopher Nolan’s seismic Oppenheimer is that rarest of things: a sophisticated and bracing movie that’s made for adults and makes nobody say, “I’ll wait till it’s on streaming.”

The tale is so bizarre that it’s sometimes comical, and often disturbing. The unrelentingly intense BlacKkKlansman can be very hard to watch.

The script by Matt Lieberman and Zak Penn is hysterical, but director Shawn Levy must’ve sold his soul to the devil to secure this cast.

It’s one of the funniest movies of the year.

It was always going to be an emotional experience watching the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper Hoffman make his acting debut. His father, an Oscar-winning genius, died in 2014...What we never could have imagined, though, is that Cooper’s freshman performance (he’s so green, his IMDB page doesn’t have a photo yet) would be one of the best of the year in what is easily the best film of 2021, Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant Licorice Pizza. This wonderful kid should be in the Oscar race, but we’re too predictably infatuated with big names. Let’s fix that.

Someway, somehow, it’s the funniest movie to hit theaters in a long time.

1917 is a modern war classic and one of the best movies of the year.

Scorsese is at the top of his game here. His film is never boring, and it explores some unexpectedly deep themes for mafiosos.

The match of larger-than-life actress to larger-than-life role is perfection.

The performance everybody will be soon talking about is Olivia Colman’s royal turn in the entrancing new drama, The Favourite.

Our blockbuster drought is over, thanks to a brilliant sequel set on a sweltering desert planet.

It’s Buckley who’s giving one of those rare turns that simply beggars belief. She swings back and forth from cast iron to porcelain. The actress is thunderous, playful, grounded and ethereal. She breaks your heart — not only when the worst befalls Agnes, but whenever she cracks a smile.

Good old reliable Marty pulls it off again, addictively unraveling a tale that’s almost too terrible to be true with panache, gusto and just the right amount of cultural respect.

Be you a fan of basketball or basket weaving, Air will snugly fit the tastes of just about anybody.

Issues millions of people face everyday are addressed cleverly and poignantly, and never without a hint of humor. Wilde isn’t really interested in sentimentality, either, and her movie hits harder for it.

Every aspect — acting, writing, special effects, score — is a notch above its superhero peers. In the best possible sense, you forget you’re watching just another Marvel movie.

Endlessly entertaining and frequently hysterical, “Anora” is one of the year’s best films and a formidable Oscar contender.

Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson and writers Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and David Callaham web-swing to such high heights by treating Miles Morales, our Spidey, as a complicated and hormonal New York teen who love-hates his parents and not just another cog in a franchise.

Dismiss “Cha Cha” as yet another heartwarming comedy at your peril because every single person in it has layers upon layers of complexity.

It’s gripping, visually mesmeric, boasts an exceptional, grounded script by Tony Kushner and is acted to the hilt.

Trust me — it’s been ages since you’ve seen actors have this much fun in a movie.

You’ll never look at Shia LaBeouf the same way after seeing Honey Boy, the affecting movie that’s inspired by his own life. If you run into him on the street, you’ll want to give the poor guy a hug.

Most thrilling are the stage sequences. Cooper often films Ally’s thousands of screaming fans from her point of view — putting us in her lucky shoes for a minute...It’s that feeling of exhilaration that makes A Star Is Born the best film of the year so far.

Writer and director Christopher McQuarrie borrows just the right amount of familiar spy tropes in his second “M:I” outing, and his film, while intelligent and witty, never becomes too self-serious or chatty. It’s the best night out at the movies so far this summer.

You’ll find that out in the film’s last — and best — moment, which belongs to Redmayne. Is it sentimental? You betcha. But it sure takes you back to the TV magic of President Bartlet.

Spending more than a decade pining for Pandora was worth it. Cameron has delivered the grandest movie since, well, “Avatar,” and with an over-three-hour runtime that never sags. What better way for struggling cinemas to regain their footing than with a gargantuan film that so celebrates the glory of the big screen?

What any of us wouldn’t give for a spontaneous night of rule breaking and lounge hopping with a genuine NY character, like Murray’s, again. Coppola’s funny and slyly emotional film, which should be cherished, is the closest we’ll get to that for a while.

To say I was never bored wouldn’t be quite right. Rather, I was always transfixed.

This re-imagining of Chucky’s origins manages to be both crazier and more level-headed than the original, in which the doll strolled around Chicago talking like a gangster from “Guys and Dolls.”

Directed by James Griffiths, this is the sort of hilarious heart-warmer that only comes around once or twice a year to offer a blessed break from darkness, snobbery and streaming schlock. It’s so easy to love, even if love doesn’t come easy for its characters.

Love and Thunder is an urgent reminder that in order for the MCU to keep going, in an entertaining, soulful way, creativity and innovation is required. You can’t just say “multiverse” 1,000 times and call it a movie.

The actress is absolute bliss in her new Italian drama, The Life Ahead.

“Heron” is not as perfect as some of Miyazaki’s past movies. The trippy story is dizzying by the end as too many characters are introduced too late and we navigate a thicket of hastily explained narrative elements. But it nonetheless leaves a powerful emotional effect if you let it wash over you.

Lets viewers uniquely into Springsteen’s creative process: Choosing a set list, adjusting tempos, collaborating with background singers. In short: Getting the band back together.

The hugely enjoyable second entry doesn’t lift the franchise to new artistic heights, a la The Empire Strikes Back, but Part II is every bit as good and scary as its predecessor, and the characters, especially the kids, go to deeper and braver places.

Anderson’s gorgeous stop-motion animated film is much more than just a transdermal patch for America’s cuteness addiction. Instead, he’s crafted a wicked smart satire of moronic local politicians that fits in snuggly with his eclectic oeuvre.

It’s one of the year’s sweetest films.

Plummer’s last-minute performance is smashing. In fact, the whole film is excellent.

No. 3, with a reported price tag of more than $400 million, is the most visually glorious of the trio, adding fresh and imaginative beings and environments that further flesh out one of the all-time great fantasy locales.

It is one that sweeps you up, though, in its beautifully detailed vision of an analog New York where stars eat at greasy spoons below 14th and future music legends pass the hat in basement clubs. Scrounging for their next meal.

It might sound like a gimmick, but it’s as good as any action-comedy you’re likely to see. Cage heightens his already big personality just the right amount to ensure that the film rises above a skit. We care a great deal about fictional Nicolas Cage.

Matsoukas also finds two first-rate performances in Kaluuya and Turner-Smith. Theirs is one of the more carefully paced romances in recent memory, and the subtle way their tension switches from fear to desire is masterful.

While Rentheads and Broadway fans will certainly connect to it on a deeper level than those who only know Idina Menzel as Elphaba, not Maureen, Tick, Tick is a terrific, moving, propulsive film on its own terms. It’s about New York, art, life and love.

Now that’s how you do a 1980s film sequel.

Directed with visual splendor by Wes Ball, the meaty film’s combo of flawless zoological effects (unlike this year’s inferior primate picture “Godzilla x Kong”), superbly crafted characters and a timeless story of emerging civilization and the fight for survival is remarkably riveting for what sets the groundwork of a whole new trilogy.

The fact that Fiennes went right from playing a cardinal in Best Picture-nominated “Conclave” to a nearly-naked hermit with a hobby that would raise Hannibal Lecter’s brow makes me wish we could send the actor’s brain out to be analyzed by scientists.

Director William Oldroyd’s mouthwatering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.

Fiennes is magnificent, and a scene involving him and Iron Maiden’s song “Number of the Beast” will go down as one of the most buzzed-about sequences of 2026. Were it written for a grisly horror movie, Alex Garland’s climax would fit snuggly into a Shakespearean comedy.

Panahi is keenly aware of his limitations — both governmental and budgetary — and has crafted a taut, intimate and blood-pumping story around them. Talk about great art being born out of impossible circumstances.

It’s the gargantuan and deeply satisfying Spider-Man: No Way Home in which the former Billy Elliot proves he’s more than a teen idol with a perfect American accent. This time, his Peter’s got gravitas, emotional oomph, brutality, believable love, an anguished scene in the rain! The movie is the actor’s best performance yet, in anything, Spandex or no.

Richard is flawed, never villainous or heroic, and rarely follows his own fervent advice to be humble. You leave in awe of what he accomplished, but not admiring the whole man. Few biopics dare to have layers anymore.

Also making a meal of a morsel is Chloë Sevigny as Paul’s mom. The actress probably has fewer than 20 lines, and still she brings depth and palpable regret to her scene.

The last time Guillermo del Toro directed a movie, 2017’s The Shape of Water, he won the Best Picture Oscar. His latest, Nightmare Alley, probably won’t, but it is nonetheless a far more entertaining and satisfying film than its overrated science-fiction predecessor.

Rental Family is a heartwarming jewel of a movie that is a dazzling showcase of Japan’s urban and natural beauty, instead of the usual depiction of hordes of tourists surrounded by skyscrapers and lit by LEDs.

With Frozen II, Disney has done the impossible: It’s made a terrific animated-musical sequel.

Twisters, the disaster movie starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, is an oddity in 2024: a reboot that’s actually worth your time.

Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 World War I novel, the German film on Netflix is unsparing in its portrayal of the horrors of battle. It’s sensory-overload, tough-though-rewarding viewing.

A movie that runs on jet fuel and confetti, Elvis is a tribute to Presley’s innovative spirit, deep passion for fusing blues, country and gospel music and the intense connection he had with his audience

In combining the old genre tropes with a potent message — the eternal recipe for a great horror film — the ever-entertaining director again shows he has something forceful to say, be it with boxers, superheroes or blood-suckin’ vampires.

Director Oliver Hermanus has as much restraint as his star (and for a modestly sized movie, impressively manages a visually believable 1950s Britain), and the viewer never feels emotionally manipulated.

Impressive throughout is the way Eisenberg balances reverence for his locations and belly-grabbing comedy, while using those elements to support each other.

The bonkers ending will be a talker. At first, I was skeptical, segued to disturbed, and then thoroughly creeped out. It’s a wild choice, however, one with a hint of precedent elsewhere in the series. And it serves to differentiate what is, admirably, a highly deferential film.

The well-known story beats are also given renewed vitality by the young actors, whom director Christopher Zalla expertly steers away from being typical overemoting movie kids.

[A] sublime drama, sprinkled with moments of lightness.

The lighthearted drama, about a road trip by two men — one white, one black — is unflinchingly optimistic.

You’re not dreaming. Billy Madison, Mr. Deeds, Happy Gilmore, Robbie Hart and the guy that sang “The Hanukkah Song” is doing the finest work of his career in Uncut Gems, a new crime comedy co-written and directed by Joshua and Benny Safdie. Pigs have flown, for Sandler is brilliant.

Director James Gray’s style harks back to classic space movies, such as “Alien” and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” that played around with the vastness of the stars, and made it seem like there was nowhere lonelier. Ad Astra also has an old-school visual panache, with deep-colored, dramatic lighting that’s regrettably fallen out of fashion.

Only an actress as caution-to-the-wind as Colman could connect so profoundly with a patio chair. Skarsgard’s sensitivity also helps.

French director Yann Demange doesn’t clean up the story or make a hurting neighborhood look pretty. The film stays foreboding, gritty and honest. Merritt’s no-frills style is the film’s greatest asset, while McConaughey brings an authentic paternal concern to his usual trailer-park persona.

Fraser, so good, takes what could be a joke, a flat tragedy, or even a lecture about weight and imbues it with gorgeous humanity.

Four tremendous films and nine years into the adrenaline-fueled, Reeves-led action series, director Chad Stahelski has yet to let his franchise noticeably dip in quality.

The tone of “Brittany,” and its emotional impact, reminds me of Amazon’s other heartfelt winner, “The Big Sick,” which netted Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon an Oscar nod for original screenplay. Colaizzo should get one, too.

It’s a perfect flick for families, but also a jolly time for anyone with a pulse.

Apollo 11 is foremost a tale of technology and humanity. It’s about a country that needed a figurative lift, and got it with a literal one.

There are a couple plot threads I found weird — particularly in the final push — that don’t land as powerfully as they intend to. But the resolution is immensely satisfying regardless of a few blips. It’s Payne’s finest work in years.

Banshees, reuniting Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell from “In Bruges,” is a scream from start to finish-erin.

Watching Chadwick Boseman in his final movie, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, is pure heartbreak.

Beyond simply embodying the quirks and look of a historical figure, Kaluuya’s passion makes you believe the masses would actually follow him.

This “Poppins” sequel has an entirely new score, with exactly none of the cherished songs from the great Julie Andrews movie. Once you accept that, you can move on — and enjoy the countless other joys this follow-up has to offer. It will be a jolly-er holiday with Mary Poppins Returns.

As Callas so devastatingly starts to lose it, “Maria” satisfyingly stirs our insides in the mysterious way an opera does.

The style and tone of writer-director Dan Scanlon’s movie has elements of DreamWorks’ “Shrek” and “How To Train Your Dragon” mixed with the siblings-with-secrets aspects of Disney’s “Frozen.” But Onward is better for the change-up. That stylistic and narrative departure gives us Pixar’s most heartfelt story in years.

The real find here is Gourav, who gives a pressure-cooker turn as Balram, a guy who can no longer smile and nod at his own oppression. He switches rapidly from sweet to deranged, gullible to Machiavellian, generous to bloodthirsty. This guy’s got more layers than spanakopita.

Impressively, however, director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.

Good for Lee for being a director of many ideas in a heartless Hollywood of sequels and franchises.

Saltburn has a brain, no doubt about it, but it also has a script that’s written in jet fuel.

Brilliant star Michael B. Jordan does double-duty in “III,” returning to play Adonis Creed and directing a film for the first time — the man is a champ at both athletics and aesthetics.

If you want to celebrate the life of legendary actor Brian Dennehy, who died last month at age 81, start with one of his final films: Driveways. His performance as a widowed veteran is right up there with his finest screen work, which makes his passing all the sadder.

What a gift Zeitlin has with children. He showed that special skill with “Beasts,” but does even more so here, with the kid ensemble being full of personality and entirely unrestrained. The freedom and unbridled joy they find on the island are infectious, like their movie.

During a moment in which movies tend to be either cynically corporate or bleaker than a black hole, “Project Hail Mary” dares to be about that once-great driver of drama: friendship.

The experience is akin to being blindfolded and thrown into a trunk — except fun!

Wladyka keeps the film lively with a sparkler aesthetic and a flair for musical storytelling.

Like Emerald Fennell’s shapeshifting mystery, “Challengers” is, at once, artful, addictive and deceptive. The salivating viewer believes it’s one thing, becomes sure it’s another and then leaves with a different theory altogether.

Running in the footsteps of the last two entries directed by Christopher McQuarrie, “Fallout” and “Dead Reckoning,” No. 8 is another high-voltage, gargantuanly envisioned test of Cruise’s bodily limits. Only this franchise can make wincing fun.