Joshua Rothkopf

A film this well-made and cut (the pacy editing by Aden Hakimi calls back to the elder Romero’s own cutting of his major titles) shouldn’t be relegated to just one kind of audience. Anyone who appreciates horror should find something to smile at here.

This isn’t the kind of puzzle thriller in which all the elements click into place with a thudding literalism that compliments an attentive eye. It’s one that accommodates the vagaries of human behavior, leaving punishment aside as a secondary concern.

Superfans aren’t necessarily going to love this. It’s a movie made with affection, but also with the wisdom that visionaries can sometimes be jerks.

The potent image-making and performative ferocity turns what could have been a crime thriller into a near-metaphysical showdown.

A miraculously subtle piece of work.

This is a film that seems to know a lot about future psychology. May we never know such mournfulness outside of an ambitious summer blockbuster.

Once you let go of the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there is much to enjoy in “Megalopolis,” especially its cast members, leaning into their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement.

The takeaway isn’t exhilaration; the unease is what makes Garland’s film valuable. You watch it with your jaw hanging open.

If I call the movie a love story, don’t laugh. Torres has made it with love in his heart.

Villeneuve has made good on one of the great Hollywood gambles in recent memory, delivering a two-part epic of literary nuance, timely significance and maybe even the promise of another film or two.

Not only has a real filmmaker emerged with A Real Pain, with both the sensitivity and boldness that could launch a career, but Eisenberg has never let himself be this exposed as a performer.

The Killer is an opportunity for America’s most stylish director to reboot, to get back to basics, to come in under two hours.

Saw X may not be the best one to start off with, but it’s hard to imagine a better one to end with.

In its colorful, Godardian way, Return to Seoul becomes a quest movie, but not the one you're expecting — it's the opposite of sentimental or overly therapized.

At least Mia Goth, herself recently reborn as indie horror's new scream queen with Pearl, understands the assignment, getting more unhinged with every scene (her character starts off with vigorous flirting and a brusque handjob, and goes from there).

Obliquely related to her recent movies, Hogg's latest is either her slyest joke to date, or another swerve in an especially fecund career phase.

A team of screenwriters more creative than Pat Casey and Josh Miller (best known for two manic Sonic the Hedgehog movies) might have done more with the backstory, and director Tommy Wirkola's beatdowns never transcend the merely serviceable. But there's no denying the joy in a child's eyes when she sees Santa's weapon of choice, a sledgehammer hefted with brutal artistry, and squeals its name: "Skullcrusher!"

Unlike The Father, which expanded Zeller's stage source material with maze-like complexity, The Son pins us in for an endgame that you wish had more of a takeaway than a gut punch.

Union's sour presence suggests the tougher film that could have been, bookending the movie with a double dose of viciousness; theirs is a relationship that won't be solved by a crisp uniform. If this is Bratton's calling card — and it should be — her scenes are the ones that suggest the real promise to come.

A global celebrity during America's earliest conversations about civil rights, Armstrong preferred to keep his dissatisfactions to himself, becoming a symbol of change rather than a spokesperson of it. That tension comes to vivid life in Jenkins's worthy account, sure to be appreciated by those who come in on solid footing

You'll forgive the movie its cluttered shagginess because its universe is so strange — even an icy puddle is rendered exquisitely.

Though any honest summation can't do it justice, Charlotte Wells's tender feature debut is the kind of revelation that movie fans dream of finding: not a wow so much as a guaranteed piece of emotional ravishment.

Co-scripting with her director, Goth is the standout, displaying a verbal vigor and earthiness she's been unable to tap so far (not even in movies like Nymphomaniac and A Cure for Wellness).

Give yourself over to the movie's absorbing sense of process and rehearsal, complete with notes of humor that never quite puncture into mockery, and you'll have a better time with it.

It may not be slavishly devoted to the facts (this isn't your typical birth-to-deather), but as with Todd Haynes's glam fantasia Velvet Goldmine, the movie achieves something trickier and more valuable, mining shocking intimacy from sweeping cultural changes.

Pruning would hamper the unencumbered risk-taking on display, which extends to some atmospheric animation (as it did with Morgen's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and instantly vaults the effort to the top of the Bowie docs. The music itself, gorgeously remixed by Bowie's longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti, has never sounded better or stranger, with isolations of instrumental passages that stick in mind.

A nuanced exploration of situational ethics tinged with guilt, it's a small, near-perfect New York story.

For its whole running time, X has ideas on its mind. Like the doubled-edged title itself, both an evocation of the grungy rating this movie might have received in 1979 and something more suggestive ("You've got that X factor," Wayne says of Maxine's allure), it indicates a film that feels unpinned, ominous, and potentially unforgettable.

An extraordinary blend of personal reflection and inspired craft, Flee is a harrowing child’s-eye adventure that lends lyricism to the plight of migrants while showing there’s always a new way to make a documentary.

There's a deeper idea here — really! — and it's one that only gets more obvious with time, something to do with arrested boyhood and the gleeful self-ruination of one's own body.

The movie also gets deeper and more emotional as it goes, becoming a metaphor for restless empathy and non-binary points of view. You Won't Be Alone is a fitting title, bearing the ominous warning of a juicy thriller, but also a subtle sense of compassion. It's a big world and you won't be alone, if you let the witches in.

Doubling down on COVID-era listlessness and QAnon paranoia, the impressively fidgety, crammed-to-bursting Something in the Dirt ends up with something like: Please let my life make sense. It's an understandable wish in an uncertain moment.

Diallo, an inspired stylist with bold things to say, strikes the balance between thrills and ills in a way that's wholly her own.

The romance of the documentary emerges out of its deep, unfaked appreciation for nature: long, uninterrupted stretches where these self-described "weirdos" go off on their own to explore alien worlds like astronauts in their protective gear.

While the new movie is laced with Easter eggs and homages to the late master, it doesn't build its sequences with the same meat-and-potatoes solidity as Craven did. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett don't have those chops yet.

Affleck and Clooney make sense as collaborators; both of them became directors to get out of the way of their public images. Hopefully, the next time they decide to work together, they'll lean even further into the intimacies of a setting like the Dickens, a universe unto itself.

It's a moviegoing experience, sure — and if you need to hear it, one of the best of the year. But it's really a call to compassion, which makes it transcendent.

Resurrections does eclipse its predecessors for full-on, kick-you-in-the-heart romance: Reeves and Moss, comfortable with silences, lean into an adult intimacy, so rare in blockbusters, that's more thrilling than any roof jump (though those are pretty terrific too). Their motorbiking through an exploding city, one of them clutching the other, could be the most defiantly sexy scene of a young year.

Quiet, unforced and delicate, Pig provides a forum for Nicolas Cage, one of our most dazzling showmen, to get serious and burrow more deeply into his talent than he has in years.

Ballour’s presence makes Fayyad’s film inspiring, even as we cringe for her safety with every overhead explosion.

Little Women sometimes plays like a comedy, one that includes a crumpled cry over a bad haircut and several kitchen interludes that feel like Christmas miracles. Yet it’s Alcott’s visionary attitude, well-struck by Gerwig, that stays with you the longest: the loneliness of female liberty.

It’s made with so much love, care and enthusiasm—plus no small amount of risk—you thrill to think that they’re just getting started.

Philippe earns his keep, not only by mounting a crisp, elegant production well above the standard of your typical video-lensed making-of, but by skewing toward anecdotes that most corporate clients would frown upon.

After a while, you adjust, or rather, you get tired of probing the slightly-off evidence of your eyes and the headache it produces. There’s a lot of fun to distract you.

Breathtakingly risky but valid under scrutiny ... Jojo Rabbit isn’t perfect; sometimes it strains to reconcile Waititi’s more relaxed beats (“Let everything happen to you,” is a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gets big play) with his visual fussiness. But he’s legitimately breaking new ground. It will find an audience that gets it.

Waves shudders with ambition and nervy style; it never quite relaxes out of its harrowing first hour but the longer it stretches out, the more humane it feels.

Kids train for guerrilla fighting in a gorgeously atmospheric film that feels like a transmission from the future.

Even as it drifts into narrative indiscipline, you appreciate the movie’s attempt to make sense of a troubled, beclowned present.

Featuring powerhouse performances by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, Noah Baumbach's divorce drama is a bruising tour-de-force.

Though its come-on is playful, this documentary sinks into some swampy subjects, including racism, secret biowarfare and political assassination.

The idea that we would want even a few of these draggy, didactic scenes (the poorly paced French plantation sequence plays better with self-satisfied critics than with audiences) may remind you of one of Marlon Brando’s immortal lines, the one about an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill.

A savage yet evolved slice of Swedish folk-horror, Ari Aster's hallucinatory follow-up to Hereditary proves him a horror director with no peer.

Enveloping you in its vintage folds, Peter Strickland's hypnotic horror film turns fashion into a death sentence.

Actor-turned-director Olivia Wilde (shockingly, this is her behind-the-camera feature debut) shows off something rarer than technique or comic timing. She’s got loads of compassion and has somehow managed to make a high-school movie without villains.

Mikkelsen is endlessly compelling.

We’re here for the rigorously conceived, blessedly coherent action showdowns, the work of director Chad Stahelski.

Endgame often pays tribute to itself, which makes it as fascinating as it is self-serious. It taps into a live wire of doomy tragedy and phoenix-like rebirth that comics do so well.

As dark spells go, Lane’s is complex, one that will lead viewers down a surprisingly benevolent path.

Feeling anything in a DC Universe installment is, in itself, evidence of filmmaking that’s superheroic (that overall bluish-gray glumness is completely gone). So imagine the shock to also encounter a nuanced, funny script, a richly developed surrogate family, a visual appreciation of Philadelphia and its heroic Rocky iconography, and not one but two expert jokes involving a strip club.

Moore makes it all play like the classic club remix it is.

While it’s unspooling, The Souvenir feels like the only film in the world—the only one that matters.

Like Barry Jenkins similarly set Medicine for Melancholy, The Last Black Man in San Francisco supplies positivity to the struggle.

Subtly, the film draws you into the science. You’ll be nervously eyeballing ticking velocity numbers in the corner of the screen. But always, Apollo 11 is about people working together in a single-minded spirit of peaceful ambition.

Merchant never loses our interest: He’s made a sparkly, strutting film that doesn’t apologize for or look down upon its heroes. A “soap opera in spandex” is what Hutch calls pro wrestling to his trainees, and the movie follows suit. Who doesn’t love a melodrama in tights once in a while?

The happy surprise, however, is that McKay has seasoned the meat in satisfying ways, salting it with wince-sharp performances and an almost experimental style of editing that creates an apocalyptic whirlwind. For those reasons alone, Vice feels particularly timely.

Emily Blunt is hypnotically charming in the year's sweetest surprise—a big-hearted contact high.

Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali are masterful in this rousing period piece, alternating belly laughs with an unflinching view of a nation at war with itself.

Free Solo is about getting dangerously close to the edge, where some people feel most alive. We get to experience that thrill secondhand, and that’s enough.

The Old Man & the Gun plays like a long-winded joke with a sneaky punchline that warms you belatedly, like a shot of bourbon.

impressively, the movie compensates with some fascinating father-son Drago tensions, the Russian oligarchs swarming, redemption at hand.

Worthy is a marvel, transitioning from pasty wallflower to a glowering, unencumbered threat.

Feels like the kind of movie that would have been designed for Meryl Streep or Sigourney Weaver back in the day, ragged yet sumptuous, filled with moments for devastating monologues yet never so obvious as to be self-aggrandizing.

Gay conversion therapy gets the indictment it deserves, from an insightful script based on a you-are-there tell-all, and an outstanding cast.

Two struggling souls come together to pull off a hoax on a world that's rejected them, in this powerhouse showcase for Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant.

Parents will feel heard by this movie in a way that few other films have tried. Everyone else should go for the kid, who's a rocket taking off. You want to be able to say you were there when it happened.

It’s a lot of plot for one sitting, but Widows will remind you of how massively entertaining crime movies can be, especially when they’re animated by the spirit of cool-headed capability, on and offscreen.

A punk call-to-arms about being yourself, this Joan Jett documentary vibrates with attitude and a true spirit of independence.

How filmmaker Robert Greene got an entire town to ham it up remains a mystery, but his gift for inviting self-interrogation (also on display in his equally fascinating Kate Plays Christine, a 2016 hybrid about an actor’s plunge into the life of a suicidal newscaster) marks him as an innovator who may become a future Errol Morris.

What makes The Favourite work are its women—who rule, both literally within the movie and outwardly, dominating our enjoyment.

The subtle pleasure of watching Tyrel comes from raising an eyebrow at every inferred (implied?) slight.

What makes Moore’s latest so ferocious—and pound for pound his most effective piece of journalism—is the way it pivots to a meaty central subject that isn’t Trump but has prescient echoes.

Let those who come to the theater counting American flags get incensed over nothing. They’ll miss something more provocative: a moment when the nation pursued excellence and, in turn, was celebrated for how smart it could be, and how big it could dream.

What elevates Halloween beyond mere fan service is the presence of Jamie Lee Curtis, whose willowy Laurie Strode has been converted, Sarah Connor–style, into a shotgun-toting shut-in with more than a hint of crazy about her.

It’s only hours afterward that Guadagnino’s film will cohere for you and yield its buried treasures: the bonds of secret sorority, the strength of a line of dancers moving like a single organism, the present rippling with the muscle memory of the past. It’s so good, it’s scary.

Calling the new A Star Is Born a “valentine” from its star, Lady Gaga, to her fans sounds a bit coy and delicate, so let’s call it what it really is: a hot French kiss (with full-on tongue), filled with passion, tears and a staggering amount of chutzpah.

What makes this latest installment such a riot — apart from having more money than usual, thereby allowing the practical special effects to achieve a splattery early–Peter Jackson glee — is its original script by "Brawl in Cell Block 99’s" S. Craig Zahler.

The ambition of Under the Silver Lake is worth cherishing. It will either evaporate into nothingness or cohere into something you’ll want to hug for being so wonderfully weird.

Finding reciprocity—in the eyes of the law, your partner, your colleagues—is the essence of this documentary, one that comes at a moment that desperately lacks it.

Everyone rises to the occasion of a special project of subtle significance: a comedy about nothing less than the proper way to say goodbye to the past.

The film’s languorous, tangential flow isn’t for everyone, but you’ll be surprised by how easily you can roll with it, especially if you tune into Zama’s cringe-funny frequency.

A wonderfully crude film (we're talking "Superbad" levels of raunchiness), but one in which the overall vibe is sweet: kids patiently waiting for their parents to grow up already.

Thoroughbreds plunges you into an ice-cold bath of amorality, but debuting writer-director Cory Finley has such a command of details—the perfectly soigné clothes and hairdos, the lavish Connecticut living rooms and attentive gardening staffs—that you’ll laugh your way through the shivers.

Garland’s creeping pace lulls you on an almost molecular level; he’s made something akin to an end-of-the-world film, but one in which the changes afoot might not be wholly bad, title be damned.

Pfeiffer is nothing short of heartbreaking in a part that requires her to be completely unvarnished.

Handsomely mounted by Creed director Ryan Coogler and starring an enviable slate of black actors that makes cameoing comics godhead Stan Lee almost seem lost, the film is provocative and satisfying in ways that are long overdue, like its ornate, culturally dense production design and the deeper subtexts of honor, compassion and destiny.

They get at the essence of Vertigo, haunting us via ghostly transmissions.

Deceptively hidden under layers of gorgeous surfaces, Paul Thomas Anderson’s borderline-sick romance waltzes toward a riveting tale of obsession.

David Scarpa’s nail-biter of a screenplay—based on John Pearson’s 1995 account Painfully Rich, adapted with a free dramatic license—amps up the tension with phoned-in demands and impulsive raids by knuckleheaded local police, yet it never loses the bitter, fascinating taste of imperious wealth.