Peter Travers

In Sofia Coppola’s bittersweet biopic, Elvis takes a backseat to Priscilla Presley—shining new star Cailee Spaeny—who met the King (a dangerously seductive Jacob Elordi) at 14, married him at 21 and finally escaped his Graceland pumpkin shell to become her own woman. Brava!

Paul Giamatti is absolute perfection as a Grinchy teacher who learns a hard lesson in empathy over a winter school break. All the actors shine in this exuberant movie gift from director Alexander Payne that has all the makings of a new holiday classic.

It's frustrating that a movie about a woman who dares so much has a script that dares so little. But Annette Bening’s body-and-soul acting as marathon swimmer Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster’s brilliance as her dynamo of a coach will have you cheering.

Out of a dark chapter of history about U.S. mistreatment of Native Americans, director Martin Scorsese crafts a new movie classic with stupendous acting from DiCaprio, DeNiro and newcomer Lily Gladstone. It's a great movie from our greatest filmmaker. See it now!

For Swifties and newbies, here's the musical event of the movie year. And, yes, you can dance to it as the pop princess uses her all-time top-grossing concert film to show off her talent for artistic reinvention and storytelling in song. What's not to like?

Prepare to be wowed by one of the best movies of the year, starring a sensational Sandra Hüller (heads up, Oscar) in Justine Triet’s spellbinding murder mystery that is really a forensic anatomy of a marriage told through the gripping story of a wife on trial for killing her husband.

With everything going for this dystopian thriller about humans being replaced by replicants, including two hottie Irish Oscar nominees in Saorise Ronan and Paul Mescal as young marrieds in crisis, this stifling sci-fi misfire hits theaters as an epic botch job.

Wild Bill Friedkin’s original 1973 take on demonic possession was thrillingly too much. This safe and sorry sequel from David Gordon Green is boringly too little. Believe this: If you let the marketing devils lure you into this one, you’re in for an unholy mess.

When a hedge fund promotes a she (Phoebe Dynevor) over a he (Alden Ehrenreich)—they’re engaged— gender politics becomes a powerhouse erotic thriller which newbie filmmaker Chloe Domont wants couples to leave arguing like hell. No worries. They wil

Technically amazing but conceptually old-hat, this sci-fi epic from Gareth Edwards makes a case for artificial intelligence through a bond between a protective human (John David Washington) and a dangerous human simulant packaged as an insanely adorable six-year-old girl. Discuss

Blending the hilarious and heartfelt, the tough and the tender, John Carney’s sweerheart of an Irish musical is something you’ll want to hold close.

Paul Dano excels in this fact-based tale of how little-guy investors actually took down billionaire Wall Street fat cats. What’s not to like about this slapstick tragedy with a windfall of laughs.

Director Kenneth Branagh again stars as Agatha Christie’s preening detective Hercule Poirot, moving Dame Agatha’s mystery from London to Venice and into the land of the supernatural. This all-star (yay Tina Fey!), wickedly entertaining shakeup does them both proud.

Are fascist dictators really vampires? That’s the shockingly funny premise behind director Pablo Lorrain’s look at Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror over Larrain’s native Chile. Flaws and all, this spellbinder speaks scarily to the undying nature of tyranny. You’ll laugh till it hurts.

Audience goodwill is really the only thing this third chapter of Greek family bonding has going for it as writer-director star-Nia Vardalos keeps pushing the same brand of ethnic humor. And I mean, really pushing, another reason this followup falls so painfully flat.

Hilary Swank looks like she’d rather be anywhere else than starring as a journalist and grief-stricken mother in this overblown, undercooked drug drama about America’s opioid crisis that makes its scant running time of 89 minutes feel like a torturous eternity.

Ignore the many problems in this violent revenge thriller and focus on the power and charisma of Denzel Washington who ends the third and final chapter in his Equalizer trilogy on a euphoric high. He’s a star, baby, and him you don’t want to miss.

It's basically a pricey home movie in which Adam Sandler spotlights his wife and two daughters. It's also an unexpectedly sweet and sassy surprise. Comic dynamo Sunny Sandler, his youngest, gives nepotism a good name as a Jewish girl on the cusp of womanhood.

The thrills in the first Latino superhero epic from DC Comics are mostly generic but the personal relationships between protagonist Jaime Reyes (a charming Xolo Maridueña) and his irresistibly rowdy and resilient relatives make all the difference. Viva la familia!

There’s nothing new about this queer romance between a president’s son and a prince of England except the way it skips the sorrow to favor the joy. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But for audiences eager to connect instead of divide at the movies, it's about time.

I didn’t have much hope for this umpteenth take on the 1980s comic-book relic about humanoid teen sewer rats, but Seth Rogen and his team of merry pranksters have turned this animated version into a giddy, goofball delight. Cowabunga, baby!

Barbie fever is everywhere, but this botch job about the Beanie Bables—another doll craze from last century—is no collector’s item as it runs off the rails and wastes a terrific cast led by Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Geraldine Viswanathan and Sarah Snook.

It could have been worse, but that’s no excuse for turning an exciting nine-minute theme-park ride into an overlong, star-stuffed 122 minute feature that is only fitfully funny and scary and soon wears out its welcome.

Even when Greta Gerwig trips up on her ambition to make this pretty-in-pink fantasia more than the fun party of summer, you cheer her refusal to play it safe as she turns Margot Robbie’s doubt-plagued Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s clueless Ken into a match made in movie heaven.

Christopher Nolan deserves every superlative for his brilliant take on J. Robert Oppenheimer (a flawless Cillian Murphy), the dark knight of the atomic age. This terrifying, transfixing three-hour epic emerges as a monumental achievement on the march into screen history.

So what if the plot is the usual tangle to set up stunts. Tom Cruise does the impossible and nobody does it better.

All your friends will be talking about this femcentric raunchfest and its fabulous Asian-American actors who are ready to lace every laugh with human complication.

The fifth and final chapter for our whip-cracking archaeologist suffers from the absence of Steven Spielberg and a workable script, but Harrison Ford—80 and still working deep and true—makes sure that Indy goes out in blaze of glory. One word: Respect.

This R-rated sex farce only plays at being dirty. Behind the carnal jokes lurks a Hallmark heart. But a never-friskier or funnier Lawrence, as a 30-ish Uber driver hired to seduce a college-bound kid (terrific newcomer Feldman) is well worth the price of admission. The rest gets a hard pass.

Mad trippy or catastrophic? This DC superhero epic is actually a mix of both, dragged down by exhausting multiverse hopping but flashy fun on the wings of captivating star Ezra Miller and the grumpy comic perfection of Michael Keaton as a Batman on the ropes.

Polarizing? Sure. But Wes Anderson is a film artist like no other. In defiance of realism, he builds dazzling, minimalist, all-star jewel boxes that are easy to spoof but impossible to equal. This Atomic-age fable about teen space nerds and their parents tinges laughs with genuine feeling.

Wait a hot minute here. Can a new Transformers movie actually be bearable? Let’s not get carried away, but a diverse cast and the absence of ham-handed former director Michael Bay qualify as a step in the right direction.

Heads up, Oscar. First-time director Celine Song crafts the best movie of the year so far by using her own life to explore the meaning of destiny as a South Korean playwright (the glorious Greta Lee) is torn between a past love (Teo Yoo) and her American husband (John Magaro).

This new animation classic, the first in a two-part sequel, is out to make history. Consider it done. In a word—wow! You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

Never snap judge a Nicole Holofcener film as a sitcom. Just watch how she steers Julia Louis-Dreyfus and a pitch-perfect cast to dig out the raw feelings colliding under the laughs to reveal a generosity toward human foibles, even when comic darts draw blood.

While it can’t match the effortless charm of the 1989 animated classic, this faint but overstuffed live-action echo fills the title role with shining new star Halle Bailey who gives this musical fable just the oomph it needs—a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.

With its pokey pace broken by bursts of violence and racial tension, the end of Paul Schrader’s man-in-a-room trilogy falls short of the master’s peak. But this mesmerizer is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours.

Only glints of the old whiplash magic remain in chapter 10 as thrills give way to thudding formula and paycheck acting—not you Jason Momoa—that slow down the action to forge the limping runt of the F&F litter.

A fantastic cast led by Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton tells the sad but true story of the flame-out of the world’s first smartphone and the manchildren who created it. This raucous workplace comedy (think The Office) puts an unexpected lump in your throat.

Jennifer Lopez and all the mothers out there deserve better than this gross, cringey gorefest about a military-trained assassin (JLo) who makes up to the pre-teen daughter she gave up at birth by instructing her in the fine art of killing bad guys. Happy Mother’s Day, indeed.

For all its backsliding into bleak—what’s with torturing Bradley Cooper’s talking raccoon—this spirited summer kickoff delivers the requisite thrill ride and ends the GOTG trilogy with the sweet sorrow of saying goodbye to Star Lord and his wacky space dorks. It’s been a trip.

Hollywood does gloriously right by Judy Blume’s groundbreaking 1970 novel about a pre-teen girl (a stellar Abby Ryder Fortson) in a tug-of-war with puberty and religion. Costars McAdams and Bates exemplify Blume’s refreshing candor. Call it totally irresistible.

This lively computer-animated take on the video game just opened and it’s already the biggest box-office smash of 2023. Despite lapses into dull and disposable, it’s also a gift for parents seeking family entertainment for the 5-year-old in all of us. Game on.

You’ll either love it or hate it as director Ari Aster tasks Joaquin Phoenix with his most challenging role yet: a total loser just trying to get home to his mama (Patti LuPone). It’s not for everyone, except audiences starved for originality in copycat Hollywood.

Before this frightfest chokes on its own relentlessly repetitive blood-splatter, Nicolas Cage proves fiercely funny as a modern-age Dracula whose malignant narcissism sends his errand boy Renfield (a soulful Nicholas Hoult) into therapy for co-dependency.

Director Ben Affleck slam dunks a movie about a basketball sneaker—the Air Jordan, no less— and it’s the first all-star Oscar contender of 2023, an outrageously entertaining classic in the making with Affleck, Matt Damon, Viola Davis and a cast of MVPs at the top of their game.

Ever since Knives Out snapped the whodunit back to wicked life, it’s harder to accept a lazy, dim-witted mystery that wastes the starshine of Sandler and Aniston on 89 minutes of sequel piffle. One of those new AI bots could have coughed up a script with more personality.

Video games make lousy movies, right? Not this time. Thanks to Chris Pine and a cast of merry pranksters, especially Hugh Grant and a chubwub dragon, the big-screen D&D cuts through the confusion and chaos to create a goofball fantasy even a non-gamer can love.

Wick-haters find only monotony in this carnival of carnage, but the rest of us will revel in the fourth chapter’s state-of-the-art action fireworks led by a hypnotically-Zen Keanu Reeves as the hitman who treats kung fu fighting like a dance tableau. Unmissable? Hell, yeah!

It’s frustrating that this immense, immersive true-crime story has been squeezed into a two-hour movie instead of a miniseries about the two women reporters—superbly played by Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon—who broke a notorious case the police could not.

The tossed-off charm of the original suffers from bloated sequelitis. Still, star Zachary Levi’s comic-book invitation to shake your sillies out will be hard to resist for underserved family audiences.

Oscar weekend is the perfect time to catch up with Edward Berger’s anti-war epic about young German soldiers dying in the trenches during WW1. The German-language film earned a wowza nine nominations, including Best Picture, and tragically its message never gets old.

Michael B. Jordan returns as star and now director to play Adonis Creed, the boxing champ who comes out of retirement to take on a fierce new contender (a dynamite Jonathan Majors). Even when the overcrowded plot stumbles, this clash of the titans is worth cheering.

A bear does cocaine and kills people. That’s it. Director Elizabeth Banks revels in deliciously cheap thrills, but then treats her overqualified actors (Keri Russell, the late Ray Liotta) like bear chewtoys while the overcrowded script drifts into hibernation.

The impossibly magnetic Idris Elba brings his iconic series TV character, London copper John Luther, to thunderous life on the big screen and suddenly all is right with the world. So what if the serial-killer plot can’t get a grip, Elba is pure pow.

Even though the ending fizzles out, the star power of Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan turns this tale of con artists on the hustle among Manhattan one-percenters into a sleek, sexy sophisticated thriller with twists that won’t quit.

The once playful runt of the Marvel litter has come down with a case of bloated excess and despite the ever-likable Paul Rudd as Ant-Man and a pow villain in Jonathan Majors, the third time is not the charm for a sequel that ignores its own cardinal rule -- less is more.

Despite the lusty efforts of Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault, stripper Mike’s final whirl is a pale, generic copy of the wow that was. The new focus on female empowerment is admirable, but gender politics are no substitute for naked, guiltless bliss.

M. Night Shyamalan can be too fuzzy, earnest and full of himself. But this doomsday thriller starring a never-better Dave Bautista as a modern horseman of the apocalypse confirms that the Sixth Sense maestro knows how to fill the screen with tension and squeeze.

This week’s shocking, out-of-nowhere Oscar nomination for British actress Andrea Riseborough as an alcoholic single mother from West Texas who squanders her $190,000 lottery win on booze turns an indie movie no one ever heard of into an absolute must-see. Prepare to be wowed!

Director Kenya Barris disastrously trades cutting social satire for romcom pablum when a Jewish podcaster (Jonah Hill) and his a Black fiancé (Lauren London) find their love imploding after her dad (Eddie Murphy) and his mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) plan a wedding across racial battle lines

A riveting Anna Kendrick brings her own experience with a psychologically abusive relationship to this tale of a young woman who learns to stand her non-violent ground against a male predator through female friendship. The result is quietly devastating.

Hugh Jackman acts his heart out as a parent unable to cope with his clinically depressed son, but even he can’t save this poor relation to The Father from descending into two hours of misery porn.

As always, Tom Hanks is in there pitching, but this time it’s mostly softballs. The cliched plot about a reformed grumpy old man is so obvious you can see it from outer space.

Christian Bale tries to solve a murder at West Point, circa 1830, with the help of young cadet Edgar Allen Poe (Harry Melling). But what should be a gothic mesmerizer ends up a dreary exercise to doom and gloom that’s an endurance test for audiences.

Move over Chucky, here’s the killer robot doll thriller we’ve been waiting for. This jolt of fun and fright stars a sensational Allison Wllliams as the inventor of a babysitting robot who takes her job to the homicidal hilt. The first banger hit of 2023 is right here.

Noah Baumbach thonors Don DeLillo’s virtuoso 1985 novel about the comic-absurdist chaos of consumerism with a too cautious respect. The result is his most constricted film which only breaks free when he allows costars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig to fly on their own wings.

A dynamite Naomi Ackie acts and lip-synchs her heart out as the legendary songbird, but Whitney deserved a much better movie than this patchwork, cobbled-together biopic that barely skims the professional highs and personal lows that made up her tragically short life.

Here’s the blast of wicked fun we need right now, using song and dance to enhance Dahl’s timeless tale of naughty children vs uncaring adults distilled in the war between bookish Matilda (Alisha Weir is a one-girl talent explosion) and Emma Thompson’s headmistress from hell.

There's about an hour of terrific movie in this love-hate look at lurid Old Hollywood. Too bad it’s trapped in three hours plus of self-indulgent bloat. Even the starshine of Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt dims as director Damien Chazelle rabidly bites the hand that feeds him.

Bill Nighy delivers a master class in acting as a stifled bureaucrat Brit who decides to seize the day before it's too late. Working in miniature to achieve major truths, this deeply human drama has the power to sneak up and knock you sideways.

Weigh the flimsy story against the eye-popping, jaw-dropping, shoot-the-works visuals that fill the screen to bursting and the choice is clear: James Cameron’s 3-D sequel to his biggest hit is the ultimate in-theater thrill ride. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

After the infamous slap that sidelined his career, Will Smith returns as a runaway slave in a sorry but noble misfire that offers the disgraced actor pitifully few chances to bring dimension to a real-life character the script traps in a swamp of misery-porn cliches.

Brendan Fraser is on the march to Oscar. That's how astonishing his acting is as a morbidly obese recluse in this deeply moving character study. Accusations that wearing a fatsuit diminishes his tour de force performances are nonsense. This is essential viewin

A love story about two pretty young cannibals won’t strike everyone as an appetizing dish. But you won’t be able to take your eyes off Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as they try to reconcile romance with killer impulses on a road trip through hell.

So what if it’s talky. Writer-director Sarah Polley’s vital film gathers together eight women—acted with heat and heart by a miraculous cast—to debate what to do about male sexual predators. Doing nothing is not an option in this unique and unforgettable landmark in the making.

You’ve never seen a Pinocchio like this one, a funny, touching and vital masterpiece from del Toro that uses stop-motion animation to create a world of beauty and terror to get lost in. The Oscar for best animated feature belongs right here.

Let’s give thanks for this wicked, whacked-out whodunit sequel. Daniel Craig is back as southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc and all is right with the world as a cast of merry pranksters (yay Janelle Monae) turns murder most foul into comic gold.

Foodie culture gets hilariously torched as a celebrity chef, acted to pretentious perfection by Ralph Fiennes, holds his customers, except for a deliciously defiant Anya Taylor-Joy, to the fire at his restaurant from hell. It’s all delectably unhinged.

Despite some pokey pacing, the fierce human drama of how two female reporters, superbly acted by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, persuaded women to go on the record about being sexually harassed by producer Harvey Weinstein is the year's most gripping detective story.

Bring out the Oscars for the year’s best movie, a personal best from Steven Spielberg about his own coming of age as a teen torn between his love for movies and family (Michelle Williams is incandescent as his troubled mom). You won’t forget this hilarious and heartfelt classic in the making.

It can’t top the original and the absence of the late Chadwick Boseman hurts real bad, but Ryan Coogler’s sequel proves to be more than cringey franchise building by putting women of color in charge (yay to Angela Bassett and Letitia Wright) and watching them fly.

Cheers to Scotland’s Charlotte Wells for making the best movie of the year by a first-time writer-director. And cheers to Paul Mescal and young Frankie Corio for bringing this heartfelt father-daughter story to such funny, touching and vital life.

Danielle Deadwyler gives the breakout performance of the year as an activist mother who used the 1955 lynching of her son Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) to galvanize the civil-rights movement. Director Chinonye Chukwu crafts this emotional powerhouse into essential viewing.

In a valiant effort to bring back the romcom, George Clooney and Julia Roberts sprinkle their stardust on a stale storyline that Rock Hudson and Doris Day might have found retro in the last century. Their hearts are in it, though, and that’s something.

Question for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson: What happened, dude? How did your passion project playing a Black DCEU posterboy for anger management become a humorless, chaotic bummer that leaves you holding the bag for an epic failure to launch?

Ignited by career-best performances from Farrell and Gleason, this new classic from son of Ireland Martin McDonagh brims over with dark comic magic and jolts of bloody scary hell. Fasten your seatbelts for a spellbinder that stands high with the best movies of the year.

After 44 years Jamie Lee Curtis bows out of her iconic role with slashing feminist fire, but if you believe blood-lusting Michael Myers is really hanging up his mask in this divisive scam of a Halloween ending then you don’t know how greed powers Hollywood’s gift for resurrection.

Start engraving the name Cate Blanchett on the Oscar for Best Actress. Her virtuoso performance as a classical music conductor blindsided by cancel culture is an absolute stunner in a Todd Field spellbinder that belongs on every list of the best movies of 2022.

David O. Russell strands an A-list cast —Bale! Robbie! Washington! De Niro!— in a pokey and problematic mystery romp. You can feel Russell’s cage-rattling intensity, but only in fits and starts as the convoluted conspiracy plot goes out in a fizzle.

Sigourney Weaver deserves awards attention for turning what could have been a cliched dramedy about a real-estate agent, who’s also a functioning alcoholic, into something funny, touching and vital. And cheers to Kevin Kline as the dazed dude who loves her.

Anything for Halloween? You bet. Lock up the children—the Sanderson Sisters are back in a bewitching sequel that returns Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy to the roles they created in 1993 just in time to put a funny-scary spell on you.

Ana de Armas is raw and riveting as Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik’s surreal journey through a star’s subconscious that leaves out the fun parts to cloak her life in abject misery. The nearly three hour result is hard to watch, but oddly impossible to forget.

All the drama seems to have happened off camera for director Olivia Wilde and stars Harry Styles and Florence Pugh. What's on screen is a glossy, repetitive retread of The Stepford Wives with a dash of The Truman Show and no discernible personality of its own.

There's nothing ground-breaking about this backstage murder mystery in 1953 London. Dig under the froth and you'll only find more froth. But thanks to the inspired lunacy of Rockwell and Ronan, it's a wicked fun whodunit that goes down easy.

A fierce and feeling Viola Davis headlines this historical epic about women warriors in 1823 West Africa and reminds us how indelible and truly inspiring it is to see these brave sisters doing it for themselves.

Queen Latifah and Ludacris drive right into a brick wall of action cliches.

Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, it didn’t work for me.