Moira Macdonald

The Intervention feels confident and accomplished: The cast immediately seems to bond as a group, with each playing a distinctive, recognizable character. And as the camera becomes a discreet ninth guest, you quickly find that you care about these people.

Fred Rogers is gone and the world is a much scarier place; this film, like a gift, briefly transports us back to the calm we felt long ago.

Disobedience unfolds quietly but passionately, with a generosity of spirit toward its three central characters.

Like all of Kore-eda’s films, After the Storm ends with a jolt; not in the filmmaking, but in the way you realize that you were completely lost in the lives of these people and that, as the lights go up, you’ll miss them.

Sometimes, a movie can just make you feel better, and that’s no small gift.

Pike shows us both the strength and the quietly growing fear, as Marie becomes a jittery shadow, her voice getting thicker, more desperate.

King Richard, though perhaps a tad overlong, is as irresistible as the young legends at its center; you watch with pleasure, thinking of the many future champions it might inspire.

Though Wright can’t quite sustain the tension through the final half-hour, Last Night in Soho is full of dark pleasures.

Marshall is a handsome, old-fashioned film about a real-life hero, with a message of equality and justice that always bears repeating.

It’s a lovely, inspiring picture of a crucial institution; one which, as an employee describes, serves as “a warm, welcoming place that’s committed to education and committed to nurturing everyone’s passions and curiosities.”

The Barbie world was a grown-up one — wildly sanitized and outfit-focused and unrealistic, but grown-up nonetheless — and, for a kid, an irresistible place to visit. Greta Gerwig’s exuberantly pink new movie “Barbie” both understands that thrill and has sly fun with it.

The Fabelmans is a movie about being seen — and about learning to see.

In only his second movie as a director, Peele is already a master of tone, and Us is full of memorable, vivid touches.

There’s so much that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever does right that it’s frustrating to blame it for the one flaw it can’t help. But you watch it wondering about the movie that never got made, the story that never got finished, the life cut short too soon. Maybe, in a few years, this franchise can make a truly fresh start; this movie efficiently and skillfully lays the groundwork for that. It takes time, as wise Wakandans remind us, to move on.

By the end, you look at the musician’s faces — particularly Ma’s beaming smile — and find a truth: through music, we can always find our way home.

The Irishman is long, to be sure, but it’s never less than compelling — Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino and Pesci, all in their mid-to-late-70s, are each carrying a lifetime of work, with practiced ease.

Not every moment in the film works perfectly — Matsoukas, on occasion, slips the actors’ dialogue into internal monologue voice-over, which mostly just seems confusing — but Queen & Slim has a remarkable power. You watch it recognizing the world you know, and wishing you didn’t.

You have undoubtedly seen many films that cover, generally, about the same territory as Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River.... But you probably haven’t seen one quite like “Wind River,” a movie less interested in examining the crime than in uncovering the icicle of grief at its core.

Cooper, carrying the movie from start to finish, has a final, devastating close-up that’ll haunt you for quite a while. Darkness has enveloped this man; he won’t wake from his own nightmare.

The drama of Mike Mills’ 20th Century Women takes place in Annette Bening’s masterful pauses.

Feels utterly fresh for our times.

Beginning with its enigmatic title and concluding with a haunting, strange ending, “Evil Does Not Exist” is filmmaking more interested in creating a mood than telling a taut story — but what a mood it is.

It’s a sweet, faintly screwball, faintly Shakespearean look at love, families and what happens when a well-made plan goes just a bit awry.

The fashion alone, designed by the great Jenny Beavan (an Oscar winner for “A Room with a View” and “Mad Max: Fury Road”), is worth the ticket price; if that doesn’t do it for you, there’s also slyly brilliant work from the two Emmas — Stone and Thompson — working hard to upstage the gorgeous outfits in which they’re swathed.

An enjoyably lighthearted crowd-pleaser with a serious message at its core.

Bailey gives a glowing performance of effortless starshine; her singing voice has both sweetness and power, and her smile is the sort on which dreams dance.

Jackie is mesmerizing; a familiar story told from an entirely different angle. It’s voyeuristic, to be sure — the scenes of Jackie alone in her White House bedroom, after the shooting, feel almost unbearably intimate — but you can’t look away.

It feels odd to be evaluating a dog’s performance, but Bing (the canine actor playing Apollo) definitely broke the heart of this cat person multiple times during the film. It’s a pleasure watching him and Watts connect, and to watch a film about so little and yet so very much.