Matt Singer

As this legitimately clever story begins to unfold it initially seems like director Steven Soderbergh made a talkier, smaller-scale spiritual sequel to his Ocean’s 11 heist films. And if The Christophers was just a straight-forward thriller, and it would have been a nifty little entertainment. But screenwriter Ed Solomon repeatedly surprises us with one plot twist after another. He and Soderbergh really invest in Sklar and Lori’s twinned biographies of artistic passion and pain, until the film becomes far richer than a simple crime story.

The fate of the world, and Project Mary as a whole, ultimately rests on Ryan Gosling’s hunky shoulders. The movie might eventually evolve into a two-hander about a pair of mismatched scientists, but one of the buddies here doesn’t even have hands, and Gosling is the only human face on screen for half the runtime. That he manages to hold the audience’s attention, and occasionally makes them laugh and even cry when he has nothing and no one to play off of is a testament to his enormous star power and charisma.

A few clunky lines of dialogue aside, the movie mirrors the honorable thief at its center: Methodical, cool, and effective.

Between the two, I greatly prefer Wuthering Heights, which looks and sounds fantastic, peppers its torrid love story with a few moments of absurd humor — did I mention the veiny, fleshy wallpaper? — and carries itself with the assured confidence of its Byronic hero. (I’m a philistine, but I’m not a dummy.)

Still, the big finale redeems the middle section’s rocky patches with a very satisfying, very Raimi-esque conclusion.

Every time one of these Avatar movies comes out, everyone jokes about how they’re gussied-up cartoons and people online joke about how no one cares about them. Then the film actually arrives in theaters and it’s epic and exciting and gorgeous and heartbreaking. Would I be interested in a James Cameron motion picture not set on Pandora? Absolutely. But after Fire and Ash, which really might be my favorite of the Avatar films to date, I’m also okay if he just stays on Pandora forever.

You want to hate this guy for his arrogance and the way he repeatedly sabotages his own successful. But he’s played with such dynamic verve and genuine movie-star charisma by Timothée Chalamet that you can’t help but root for him anyway, especially as the stakes mount and he refuses his quest to become the world’s greatest table tennis player despite the mountain of evidence that he absolutely should.

This is not just a cheap rehash of the story beats of an earlier film. It is not a legacyquel that trots out a few beloved old characters to bestow their blessing on a new generation. It takes the core elements of this concept and reconfigures them into something new.

It’s so many different kinds of movies crammed together; a paranoid thriller, a stoner adventure, an issues movie of the sort that used to be the Hollywood studios’ bread and butter but rarely get made today in the world of IP and risk-averse corporations. That’s one more reason to see it, and another reason to marvel at the fact that it exists at all.

Washington and Rocky’s scenes are flat-out electric. Even when they’re just talking over the phone, there’s an intensity to their scenes sorely lacking from everything that precedes them. In fact, Rocky brings so much passion to his scenes that Washington actually has to level up his own game up to keep pace. The pair’s confrontations prove to be Highest 2 Lowest’s high points.

This Superman does something more impressive than make the audience believe a man can fly. It makes them care about the man doing the flying.

F1 never quite says “It’s not the car, it’s the driver” — but it comes awfully close on several occasions. And it makes it clear that when it comes to action movies, it’s not the subject, it’s the director. That strikes me as a pretty old fashioned notion, and a good one.

Yes, 28 Years Later is gory and violent and the zombie kills with that jerky Bullet Time iPhone rig are cool. But the film is also thoughtful, even contemplative at times.

Thunderbolts* is a nice reminder of what this company is capable of at its best. It looks good, it sounds good, and it really does turn its protagonist’s pain into an effective allegory about rejecting despair and apathy in favor of action and brotherhood.

The way Coogler resolves Sinners’ central ideas within a traditional horror story framework is truly masterful. He plays the audience like a fiddle. Or a blues guitar.

Stoller cooked up a solid premise, assembled a funny cast, gave them some good scenes to play and lines to deliver, and let them do their thing.

In an earlier era, Babygirl might feel less novel, and its unwillingness to push its story into truly uncomfortable territory might be a bigger issue. These days, when Hollywood has pretty much abandoned sexuality as a topic of serious discussion, the film can easily lay claim to the title of top dog.

I believe Mangold directed the Dylan movie he wanted to, and in some ways A Complete Unknown is interesting precisely because it is a willfully withholding portrait of an enigmatic star. Then again, it's hard to make a completely satisfying movie about a subject that its director seems to believe cannot be understood.

The reason to see this Nosferatu anyway is its handsomely detailed production, which is soaked in gothic atmosphere thanks to incredible design, cinematography, and that creepy Skarsgard performance.

All of Wicked’s best moments are still the ones from the stage. There are a lot of those great moments, though; certainly more than I expected. When Erivo’s Elphaba hits the soaring high notes in Wicked’s signature song, “Defying Gravity,” it’s enough to make you wish the wait for the second half of the film was only 15 minutes, instead of an entire year.

If Anora does well and enables Baker to keep making quirky films about the lives of richly-detailed working-class people, that’s great news. His is one of the truly unique voices in American film today.

When you have Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as your central stars, some things don’t need to be said out loud.

It’s as if remaking a John Woo movie finally gave John Woo permission to make a true John Woo movie again.

Back in the day, the endless comparisons between Shyamalan and Hitchcock felt like a bit of a trap themselves. With Trap, though, there’s no point trying to escape them.

On the whole, Inside Out 2 lacks the structural elegance of the first film, and it holds far fewer surprises for viewers on a narrative level. Still, whether you call them anxieties or fears, Inside Out 2’s depiction of tween insecurities is right on the money.

In another franchise, it would stand as a significant achievement. In this franchise, it almost qualifies as a disappointment.

It’s such a pure-hearted celebration of movie magic it makes you want to make your own film — or at least watch one.

The era Enter the Clones of Bruce chronicles wasn’t that long ago, and yet it feels entirely alien to our own.