Josh Larsen

This is as much Looney Tunes as Chaplin or Keaton—what with the manic pacing and animated flourishes, like question marks over characters’ heads—but in truth it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Kudos to her and her team for finding a way—through imaginative production design and backup dancers who essentially serve as supporting characters—to make her music feel both intimate and anthemic, something like a diary entry meant not to be hidden under a bed, but chanted by the masses.

Crawford is riveting in the lead, tapping into David’s impotence and barely suppressed rage while also making him sadly sympathetic—especially in the sweetly sincere moments where he tries to maintain a genuine connection with his children.

Part poetry slam, part dance performance, part survivalist nightmare, Night of Kings imagines narrative as a saving grace, even in the darkest place.

It’s propaganda, yet of the most artistic variety.

It becomes more interesting as it goes along (and gets slightly darker), even if it never entirely works as a cohesive project.

It’s no small thing to move millions of hearts, over many years, with the story of a possible murderer (and, in Red’s case, a real one) who gets a second chance. The Shawshank Redemption managed a small miracle in doing just that.

In Grand Theft Hamlet, high art collides with low expectations, resulting in something like a renewed faith in humanity.

Rye Lane may verge on corny at times in much of its humor and certainly its ending, but thanks to Jonsson and Oparah, you’re rooting for these two in every moment.

A model for breezy, bantering filmmaking of the criminal kind, To Catch a Thief has the feel of being made while on a getaway vacation.

Paris is Burning crackles because of its subjects, almost all of whom are natural performers in some way.

Full of nuance and understanding, C’mon C’mon meets a family in crisis and proceeds to hold them in its gentle hands.

The moral burden of wealth weighs heavily on Knives Out, a dexterously cunning, immensely entertaining whodunit that has more than catching the killer on its mind.

There’s no denying that Cage and Travolta are having a blast with what is essentially an acting thought experiment. They’re both fantastic.

Brilliant in terms of its overall structure, Kuritzkes’ script also manages crackerjack individual scenes that stack up one upon the other, like little chamber dramas within a larger opus.

This is, in many ways, a deeply thoughtful film—about loneliness, grief, anger, and finding something to truly care about. And Cage gives a performance that embodies all of those things.

It’s probably unwise to come to Leone looking for too much in the way of feminism. Instead, Once Upon a Time in the West offers quintessential examples of the things he was better known for, including another blustery Ennio Morricone score. Visually, he mostly vacillates between extreme close-ups of intense faces and vast widescreen compositions, a technique that is lurching but also luridly beautiful.

If The Holdovers is about anything, it’s about the hard, hard work of small acts of kindness.

It’s a given that the sound design would be a crucial element in a film about a drummer who suddenly loses his hearing, but Sound of Metal is so artfully crafted on that front that it nearly develops a new way of experiencing a movie.

Da 5 Bloods may be mid-tier Spike for me, but man did we need it in June of 2020.

For all its pointed critique, The Last Black Man in San Francisco also offers a fair amount of whimsy.

As wonderful as Fantastic Mr. Fox is, Isle of Dogs represents a leap forward for Anderson and his extensive team of stop-motion animators.

Superman is a bastion of blockbuster innocence, a movie that’s a studio product, certainly, but also something that could have grown from one of Smallville’s sun-kissed cornfields.

Ophuls’ technique is often on the nose, but it’s still exhilarating.

This is a movie that’s honest about night coming on, but it also reminds us of the small things that will get you through that night, until the morning dawns.

Dazed and Confused distinguishes itself because it looks upon its characters with understanding—understanding that their foibles come from the fact that they’re at a stage of life when they’re still trying to figure life out.

Despite the strong lead performance and these immersive aesthetics, Madeline remains frustratingly at a distance. Even as the movie puts us inside her head, it somehow fails to illuminate her.

The Northman throws a few wrinkles into its vengeance story, but doesn’t offer up much food for thought. This is mostly a visual extravaganza of gritty historical detail, mythic imagination, and brutally horrific violence.