Josh Larsen

A triumph of design, Raya and the Last Dragon is held back by a lackluster story, one cobbled together from various influences (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, an array of Southeast Asian cultures) and bent in service of a tortured—and somewhat confused—lesson about learning to trust.

Cooley High has the same youth-movie energy that defines some of the genre’s greats: American Graffiti, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. All of these films run on the mischievous, unfounded optimism that characterizes our teenage years. They make you nostalgic for naivete.

As a document of some of the top musical talent of the 1970s, The Last Waltz has a time-capsule quality that’s off the charts.

Robert Redford hovers like a ghost over A River Runs Through It—not so much as director (this is a sturdy if uninspired adaptation of Norman Maclean’s novella), but rather via his sacramental voiceover and the casting of a young Brad Pitt.

Before it strangely peters out, lost in its own conspiracies, The Shrouds registers as a mournful, if macabre, meditation on losing a loved one—as only writer-director David Cronenberg could manage.

This is a movie I was somewhat dreading—its premise just seems too possible in these fractious days—yet Garland managed to imbue Civil War with a solemnity and maturity that made me grateful for it. Let’s hope it remains a warning, not a weather vane.

Crawl lends credence to the claim that you should never give up on a director.

Wyler is smart enough to plant the camera fixed on Streisand, from the shoulders up, for her final number, “My Man.” Always willing to let his stars be the star, Wyler may have been the perfect choice to center her, for the first time, on the big screen.

Greene seems to have produced a respectful account of the experiment, allowing these men to find some form of catharsis without exploiting them.

The movie, for its part, is fairly lively. Especially arresting, from a visual standpoint, is an extended sequence in which Beau encounters members of an interactive theater troupe in a forest.

Garland and Mason don’t exactly generate sparks as a couple, and her histrionics in the dialogue scenes eventually overwhelm the picture. But early on, this has a a lot of Technicolor/CinemaScope magic.

Plan 9 from Outer Space may not be pure bliss to watch, but you certainly can feel the bliss that writer-director Edward D. Wood Jr. must have experienced while making it.

A curious comedy that neither looks back at Rear Window nor ahead to Vertigo, but rather exists in some goofy space all its own. It’s as if Hitchcock went on vacation, but kept working.

Watching Hold the Dark isn’t quite as interesting as ruminating on it afterwards, which is probably both a critique and a compliment.

Once Upon a Time in America paints a portrait of the United States as a land of shadows and violence, yet one that nevertheless has an irresistible, romantic pull. [2014 re-release]

Hoss (so riveting in Christian Petzold’s Phoenix) gives the strongest performance, arriving at the party with a goddess-like superiority that Hedda tragically chips away at as the night proceeds. Though not without a riveting fight.

We should never become accustomed to the horrors of war, so for all its familiarity (morally and formally), the movie still feels necessary.

Clearly May is invested in the material — she wrote it — and deserves credit for creating a fruitfully improvisational atmosphere. Yet she doesn’t leave a very distinct signature here, such as the social satire she brought to A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid.

I counted at least five different movies in 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s return to the zombie series they started with 28 Days Later back in 2002. Thankfully, each is brazenly, bizarrely, grotesquely compelling in its own way.

Widows largely works...not as a character study but as a consideration of corruption on a larger, societal scale.

If Neptune Frost plays like a visual album rather than a traditional movie (even a movie musical), it offers more substance than that description suggests.

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.

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.

Just when I was about to nod off, Top Gun: Maverick jostled me awake with a fresh approach to the sort of blockbuster entertainment that the original movie managed so expertly. Faint praise? Maybe. But also higher praise than I ever expected to be giving.

What’s really spooky about Candyman is that the movie is confused in almost exactly the way that the first film was. Maybe the material itself is haunted.

The Ross brothers—who handle the cinematography and editing in addition to directing duties—manage some indelible images, even as they stay as inconspicuous as possible.

Stray Dog is methodically paced, with long sequences of Murakami tailing a suspect or wandering crime-ridden alleys while undercover. He and Sato stake out another mark at a baseball game, which seems to go on forever. Yet if the movie drags, at times, it’s also enlivened by occasional visual flourishes.

Zhou is fantastic as the schoolteacher-turned-rebel-leader; clearly not content to keep her head down, she’s always peering out of windows to get the lay of the land, even before she officially joins the movement.