Joshua Rothkopf

The film gets so many exquisite details just right—the vacuous party guests, Hayek’s slightly self-righteous pose, the happy clink of the wine glasses—that it’s a letdown to realize the movie doesn’t have a proper ending. You take it home with you and argue about it.

The actors are what save it. Not only does Johnson build on his subversive 
persona of hulking, dim-witted likability, 
but he’s joined by Neighbors’ Zac Efron, today’s reigning king of the hazy one-liner.

A taut kidnapping drama, this ferocious Australian export leaves no doubt about the limitless potential of a handful of characters in close quarters.

An epic, often funny testament to creative fearlessness.

It Comes at Night is a film of tense gradations, a chamber piece set at the twilight of humanity.

As the film advances its more adventurous ideas about privacy, it suddenly feels like a lecture written by a twelve-year-old. Worse, The Circle ends precisely when it’s getting interesting; you’ll wonder if the production simply ran out of money. Movies about the dangers of rampant interconnectivity are welcome in this day and age, but let’s please make them a little more courageous.

A beautifully organized documentary (befitting its subject, urban planning), Matt Tyrnauer’s elegant profile sets up its iconic NYC showdown along geometric lines.

Built out of complex performances etched with economic flair, unobtrusive camera work and the faintest tinge of comic whimsy (the film’s score, by Japanese trumpeter Jun Miyake, is marvelous), Norman is an intimate film that simply has no drawbacks.

As Holocaust-era movies go (Chastain’s maternal saint begins to secretly hide Jews in her cellar), this one is neither too pretty nor too ugly—which might doom it to a particularly banal shade of detachment.

It’s definitely a horror movie but a wonderfully witty one, not for gentle souls.

The script shoehorns in more identity-grappling this time—half-baked and sub-Westworld though it is—and the squelchy synth score (by Black Swan’s Clint Mansell) supplies a playfulness that’s unearned by the visuals. Find a handy film geek to tell you all about how Ghost in the Shell was a massive influence on The Matrix. Better yet, just rewatch The Matrix.

The grandeur of this movie is off the charts. For a certain kind of old-school film fan, someone who believes in shapely, classical proportions and an epic yarn told over time, it will be the revelation of the year.

A swirly-girly sameness has taken over Malick’s flow; his movies aren’t supposed to feel like fashion spreads but they do, even as hushed narrators speak about their aching souls and lost loves.

For all its updated bluster, this update still can’t escape the shadow of 1933’s magical King Kong.

But mostly, knock it for reducing Ice Cube to the tired sneer he’s been successfully avoiding in recent films, especially in last year’s Barbershop: The Next Cut.

The main reason to commit to this movie’s tough story of orphan loneliness is the screenplay by Céline Sciamma, herself a major French talent devoted to tales of youthful resilience. (Her 2014 film "Girlhood" is breathtaking.)

In the film’s second half, the two characters have roughly swapped social positions — Mindy is about to get married — but their sexual attraction (never fully expressed) remains a palpable thing. Try this one.

A horror film with the power to put a rascally grin on the face of that great genre subverter John Carpenter (They Live), Get Out has more fun playing with half-buried racial tensions than with scaring us to death.

Visually ripe and located just around the corner from melodrama, A Cure for Wellness is a cousin to Guillermo del Toro’s recent "Crimson Peak," another thriller nostalgic for the deep-pocketed lushness of ’30s-era horror-branded studios like Universal, the makers of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein."

These beasts awaken something within the people, making them kinder and more playful. If Kedi did the same for audiences, that wouldn’t be so bad.

Call Me by Your Name has a choking emotional intensity that will be apparent to anyone who’s ever dared to reach out to another.

Director Showalter does a beautiful job of twining Nanjiani and Romano’s similar slump — you smile at what a perfect almost-father and son they already are — and he steers Hunter to a rapprochement of uncommon complexity and grace. And we thought we were watching a Judd Apatow film.

Alas, this is a film that builds to a backroom compromise on carbon emissions, not the most thrilling of dramatic structures. The serious issue of global warming won’t be minimized by a mediocre documentary, but it has yet to find a filmmaker inflamed with rage and visual passion.

The film plays like a Trump-state "Big Lebowski," as Ruth and Tony’s amateur sleuthing teases out a much deeper conviction, perfectly stated by its main character.

You must see Oklahoma City, if only to know the enemy. They’re not stuck at the airport.

There’s no denying the movie’s climactic gathering of females bent on saving the species.

Lowery is committing to nothing less than the scope of eternity; frankly, sometimes it feels as much. But by doing so, he does more to explore supernatural sadness than any thriller I can think of. He’s crafted something strange and wonderful, with a romantic metaphysics all its own.