Peter Travers

In the most purely pleasurable movie so far this year, Ryan Gosling has a blast as a science guy who rockets into space to save all our asses with jolts, jokes and smarts that won’t quit.

Shallow, sycophantic and absent a single unguarded moment, Melania is a near-two-hour infomercial disguised as a documentary. What’s the movie actually worth as entertainment? I’ll start the bidding at two cents.

In his final film, James Van der Beek raises the bar on a standard-issue thriller through the sheer force of his talent and magnetism.

Maika Monroe brings battered heart and soul to a Colleen Hoover soap opera that renders “big” emotions with the small details that make them count.

Even when it hops off course, this animated gem is funny and fierce in all the right places. Pixar is back, baby. Haters deserve a good squishing.

Cillian Murphy’s gangster icon Tommy Shelby makes his big-screen debut in a standalone film that can’t stand up against the great series that spawned it. For all its entertaining fan service, it’s an unnecessary coda to an unforgettable TV classic.

Despite Christian Bale and a wow Jessie Buckley as Frankenstein and his missus, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s big swing at remaking a horror classic is a hot, unholy mess. One caveat: no one who still values artistic risk should dream of missing it.

In Morgan Neville’s intimate and insightful musical doc, Paul McCartney finds his musical wings without the Beatles but with wife Linda riding shotgun and teaching him about hard to reach places in the heart.

Forget the biopic imitations, the found concert footage in this music doc soars with 100 essential minutes of The King back on his throne and thrillingly alive on stage and off. I’d call that a must-see.

Seven is not a lucky number for this amateurish return to the well of a once hella horror franchise that drops the ball on gore, giggles and a reason to care. Its disposable, defanged thrills feel like chatgpt prompts fed the wrong info about what constitutes scary.

Watching Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds is usually time well spent, but this woebegone wintery love story makes you want to jump into an Amsterdam canal.

This medieval borefest drags down the talents of Sophie Turner and Kit Harington, but can be commended for one thing: truth in advertising. It’s dreadful to the max.

In this sadly stunted comic thriller, a delightfully depraved Glen Powell must kill seven of his family members to inherit $28 billion. Would you? By the end, the film’s lockstep quality commits the worst crime of all by killing our interest.

Sam Rockwell excels as a wild man from the future in this deceptively profound satire that holds up a dark mirror to the dangerous game we’re playing with AI. A true film for its time.

This hoop dreams animation romp from producer Steph Curry isn’t NBA quality, but it gets the job done for family fun. The inclusivity messaging abut teamwork is laid on thick, but still worthwhile for immature audiences of all ages.

Margot Robbie and Jacob Eloridi get steamy in Emerald Fennell’s overheated but undercooked take on Emily Brontë’s classic Gothic romance in which they suck each other’s faces with a wild, porny abandon that would shock Victorians. No complaints here.

Chris Hemsworth leads a starry cast in a heist drama that fascinates even through a veil of familiarity. Near the end, a standout Halle Berry flashes a smile of sweet satisfaction. My guess is that you’ll feel the same way.

The bloodsucking Count is back again, but this time in a strangely bloodless love story that even wickedly seductive fangboy Caleb Landry Jones can’t save from the cliché stockpile.

See this romcom for the soft side of Kevin James as a jilted groom in Roma and Italian scenery that’s gorgeous in any language. That’s the only way to come out ahead.

The visuals dazzle, the plotting not so much in this gender-switched take on “Hamlet” as a warrior princess revenge epic from Japanese anime master Mamoru Hosoda.

In this queer BDSM romdomcom with a core of sweetness, Alexander Sarsgård and Harry Melling bring passion and compassion to a taboo subject rare in mainstream cinema. It’s about time.

This lean, mean, R-rated action machine is way better than you might think since Momoa and Bautista take the time, between fights and jokes, to examine the bruised places in the hearts of these half brothers. You feel for them, and that makes all the difference.

I kept smiling watching this fractured family drama. A bizarre reaction for an Icelandic movie about the end of a marriage. But it’s the high spirits that stay with you in Hlynur Pálmason's charmer about the intangibles of love.

A sexy tennis bum (Sam Riley) and a married woman (Stacy Martin) meet at a luxury resort and stir up murderous thoughts in a too cryptic thriller from German director Jan-Ole Gerster that recalls Hitchcock and Antonioni while revealing a tormented mind of its own.

Props to Charli xcx for grabbing her brat moment at Sundance. The dance-pop princess shows real acting potential, even though this misbegotten mockumentary gives her few chances to show her range.

Looking for fun and a chance to scream bloody murder, then send for this terrific horror comedy in which Rachel McAdams crash lands on a desert island with her bullying boss (Dylan O’Brien) and decides to painfully alter his jerk DNA. Despite a divisive ending, I smell a hit.

In this slow but touching biopic, Claire Foy excels as an academic who buries her grief about her father’s death by caring for a predator goshawk, so both can relearn to fly.

Maika Monroe plays a drug dealer facing off with her rodeo champ dad Troy Kotsur in a by-the-numbers thriller minus any real thrills. It’s the hints of a better film—fiercer, funnier, more attuned to a woman’s point of view—that nag at you.