Matt Donato

With tighter scripting, this’d be a masterpiece. As is? Christopher Nolan has produced a damn-fine picture that goes against most of what his catalog has become renowned for in a good, streamlined way.

Delightful, inventive and deeply affecting, Inside Out embodies the very best of what Pixar has to offer.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is striking, stunning, visually hypnotizing, thrilling - everything "epic" about the famed franchise rolled into a tremendously overcharged start to Rian Johnson's Star Wars career.

Black Panther proves how representation can rejuvenate even the oldest superhero origin arcs, allowing Marvel a victory that still feels every bit a Ryan Coogler film.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout is cocked, locked and ready to blow you away with more than just Henry Cavill's forearms.

Prepare to be turned-ghost pale by horrors of the mind, body and soul, unlike you’ve experienced in quite some time.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is a celebration of limitless creativity that honors comic book runs of the same freeing mentality.

This is a movie about life. Bigger than love. Bigger than hope. Bigger than anything. Just life, and all its attempts to wear you down – and how you’ll never let it.

Baby Driver proves why we should never doubt Edgar Wright's vision, because few filmmakers can back their ambition with such quality thrills.

Get Out marries racial satire with a terrifying finale, one that tears down blinders that some may have kept conveniently in place. Don’t listen to those who say horror movies are defined by physical scares. Plots based on real-life fears typically make for the most horrifying scenarios.

The Lure is powerful enough to cast an obsessive spell on anyone watching.

A Ghost Story leads you down a path that allows for personal reflection, which will either sooth lost souls or scare them away.

Under The Shadow marries haunted horrors with period-piece importance for a deliciously dark ghost story.

It's a melting pot of experiences from comical to romantic to thrilling to richly ruminative. Everything flows together gracefully in step through a delicate and beautiful dance that speaks to the ever-changing beast that is New York City.

The Love Witch is a seductive 60s time-capsule that calls back to the technicolor charms of early genre filmmaking.

It's a hilarious low-low-budget, rough-around-the-edges oddity that makes me very happy, and I hope someday it'll make you feel the same crisp beaver-beatin' joy.

While War for the Planet of the Apes's third act is a bit hairy, the sequel helps cement the franchise as one of the more exciting mainstream properties worth watching.

This is an irreplicable experience that speaks volumes about following your dreams despite the challenges that await. The reward will always be worthwhile, even if it’s just about the friends you make and NPC cops you massacre along the way.

John Krasinski orchestrates a loud and ferocious symphony of sonic scares that will assert A Quiet Place as one of the year's most terrorizing films.

Bell and Allen employ big ambitions in a confined area, treating stranger-danger paranoias with an elevated supernatural presentation that’s frightening—maybe a bit overlong—but undeniably effective.

Arrival challenges viewers to a brainier sci-fi conundrum than they're used to, which makes for an intellectual breath of fresh air.

This is a masterpiece of woven ancestral roots and the importance of “familia,” confident in song and poetic in vision.

Jackie is Natalie Portman's show, and she never wastes an opportunity to dazzle as JFK's glamorous grieving widow.

Us is an impressive and astonishingly hair-triggered sophomore feature squarely positioned to decimate genre audiences. It’s purposefully vague, but jam-packed with more memorable genre imagery and inquisitive discussion starters than most braindead by-the-book cinematic offerings beholden to formulaic blueprints.

Visually, Moana shines like a diamond at night.

Lowlife is a dirt-nasty nonlinear debut for Ryan Prows, sewn together from vengeful, spite-driven tales of urban survival.

Amy Seimetz plays by her own rules like this is the last film she’ll ever make (it won’t be, no shot). She Dies Tomorrow ponders self-fulfillment with agency and riveting execution. Seimetz’s fearlessness is what sells every ounce of this uncontrollable narrative’s every zig and zag. From tone to philosophy to composition, this is Seimetz’s soul on celluloid.

Ti West is back with a violent vengeance, slicing and dicing through likable characters that light up the screen throughout their doomed and debaucherous overnight shoot. West is operating on another level — even the slightest editing cut cranks fear factors another notch higher.