Joshua Rothkopf

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

Black Adam is what happens when artists say they want to go dark but don't really have the stomach for it. Cue scenes of humorless mid-air wrestling, shake vigorously, wait for the sequel.

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.

Before it lumbers to its big showdown — halfheartedly, with all the excitement of a third installment of a third reboot cycle — Halloween Ends is an unusually Michael Myers-free affair. Where's the big guy?

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.

Even with the original cast on board, there's surprisingly little chemistry or humor, and the movie makes repeated pit stops to stress family values.

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.

A remake could have been fun if it had been made with vision, or at least an appreciation of the original. If that's grade-A beef, call this one a rancid veggie burger.

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.

Mostly, though, as TV newscasters inform us, civilization has taken a serious nosedive — definitely the case when a well-financed Emmerich disaster flick can't even get its dumb-fun groove on.

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.

A Twilight Zone–worthy premise, subtly sold by ace make-up effects, makes for a decent-enough thriller, intriguing in the moment but ultimately too timid to say anything meaningful about ageing.

Course-correcting to some degree with the return of its most inspired director, Justin Lin’s latest F&F instalment is a little too plastic at times, but back on track.

Cats may flop but it will be found by a likeminded audience, maybe the same one that rescued The Greatest Showman. Don’t be the sourpuss to tell these people they’re wrong.