Richard Roeper

With Brooks’ close friend Rob Reiner serving as director and interviewer, the HBO documentary Albert Brooks: Defending My Life serves as a wonderful Greatest Hits retrospective of Brooks’ invaluable contributions to the entertainment world, as well as a brief but insightful look at Brooks’ upbringing, which provides some therapist couch-worthy insights into his motivations and his particular brand of comedy.

The world didn’t need yet another Cinderella story, but the one we got is one of the best versions ever put on film.

This is a bold and unique slice of storytelling that serves up some genuine scares and bone-chilling fright moments while pointing a finger at a culture that alternately glorifies, worships and sexualizes young women and revels in stereotyping them and tearing them down.

Before this movie, Lake Bell seemed to have a nice and comfortable career path ahead of her. She was an actress who always provided a spark, whether the vehicle was mundane or first-rate. Now, she’s a name that provokes keen anticipation. Can’t wait to see what Lake Bell the filmmaker does next.

BS High directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe do a splendid job of alternating between present-day interviews with Johnson as well as a number of former Bishop Sycamore players, who will break your heart as they talk about the realization the dream Johnson was selling to them was almost all illusion.

We’ll leave it at that, with kudos to director Hobkinson for taking a no-frills approach to material that is wild enough as is, and praise for the investigators who painstakingly pieced together a truly fractured puzzle and eventually delivered justice.

Them That Follow is a harrowing and chilling deep dive into an isolated community in the Appalachian mountains.

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria takes a sitcom of a premise and imbues it with depth, intelligence and numerous sweet, melancholy moments that feel just … right.

The Bling Ring is a sly, often hilarious and at times sobering look at the 21st century fascination with celebrities.

Even though we’re trafficking in mostly melancholy territory about lost souls trying to regain their footing, it says something about the tender artistry of the filmmaking, and the beautiful work by the actors, that I’m actually keen to spend more time with these characters and see this story unfold from different perspectives.

I’m not entirely convinced the ending is the perfect landing to everything that transpired before, but Arrival is not a linear adventure of the mind, and it is a film probably best seen twice.

Coco is full of life, especially when we’re hanging out the with the dead.

With horrific wars raging in other parts of the world, and with politically charged violence part of the fabric of this country, “Civil War” will hit home no matter where you live.

Jason Bourne is the best action thriller of the year so far, with a half-dozen terrific chase sequences and fight scenes.

Rossi and Plaza make for a sizzling team; we believe every syllable of their dialogue, every development in their relationship. It’s almost criminal, how good these two are together.

The nice thing about Paper Towns is it’s as much about the friendship between Quentin, Radar and Ben as it is about Quentin’s love for Margo, and his quest to find her after she disappears yet again.

This is a quiet film, moving at its own pace, reflecting life with such realism it’s as if we’re invisible guests in Gloria Bell’s life. And yet there’s something thrilling about watching such a great actress hitting all the right notes every step of the way.

The Voices is a deeply warped, darkly funny and thoroughly depraved horror comedy... and whether you find this sort of thing walk-out-of-the-theater distasteful or wickedly subversive, I’m fairly confident we won’t see another movie like it for quite some time.

Writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz’s Hands of Stone is a rousing, well-filmed and solid (if at times overly generous to Duran) biopic with a bounty of charismatic performances, two of the sexier scenes of the year, some welcome laughs and a few above average fight sequences.

The Drop is filled with many such small, near-perfect moments where there’s so much more going on beyond the simple exchanges of dialogue.

Gerety delivers a performance that is simply great.

Thanks to the first-class special effects, a star-packed cast, screenwriters who know just when to inject some self-aware comic relief without getting too jokey and director Bryan Singer’s skilled and sometimes electrifying visuals, X-Men: Days of Future Past is flat-out big-time, big summer movie fun.

The gifted writer-director Michael Glover Smith (“Mercury in Retrograde,” “Rendezvous in Chicago”) continues to grow as a filmmaker, as he expertly moves around the pieces on the chessboard over the course of a story told over three days and filled with potentially life-changing confrontations, revelations and realizations.

In less skilled hands, this could have come across as cynical and manipulative material, but Pollono is such a skilled wordsmith and the cast is so universally excellent, Small Engine Repair becomes a viewing experience you won’t easily shake off, not today and not for a long time.

This is a solid example of the Sobering Comedy, where we laugh consistently at the madness onscreen, all the while lamenting how it’s rooted in real-world reality.

The astonishing thing about Gilbert is the behind-the-curtain record it provides of the real Gilbert Gottfried.

Chappaquiddick does a remarkably economical job of encapsulating the madness of that week without overwhelming us with historical detail. The story moves from moment to moment, day to day, with clarity and great dramatic effect — and (rightfully) condemns Kennedy’s actions without turning him into a monster.

All Eyez On Me is enthralling, exhilarating and at times maddening.

Hostiles is not for the faint of heart, but it winds up being about having a heart in a world that seems almost without hope.

Stolakis skillfully interweaves present-day interviews with archival footage of these prominent figures in the movement — all of whom have renounced their roles and are now living as out gays or bisexuals.

Director Garret Price was right. This is no period-piece dark comedy. On many levels, it’s a horror film.

Though the subject matter is intense and shocking, the intuitively sensitive and subtle Polley teams with a brilliant ensemble cast to tell the story with grace and empathy and even some much-needed doses of earned humor. It’s a film you won’t soon forget.

This is one terrifically twisted parental play date.

This is one of the most moving films of 2016. Every 20 minutes or so, it grabs you and puts a lump in your throat.

For every moment of inspiration and hope in the teen-political documentary Boys State, when you find yourself thinking, By gosh, the kids are all right, there are at least two jaw-dropping instances of 16- and 17-year-olds compromising their values with such cynicism you weep for our future.

While the overall tone of Moana is uplifting, the story makes room for some pretty deep insights.

With explorations of themes ranging from identity to forgiveness to corruption and fear and self-love, “Emelia Pérez” is one of the most creative and striking films of the year.

Labor Day is an admittedly strange hybrid. Rarely have I seen such outrageous plot points executed with such lovely grace.

With First Reformed, Schrader delivers his most impactful work in years, with Ethan Hawke’s haunting and brilliant work as Ernst Toller joining the ranks of great lead performances in Schrader films. This is an inescapably memorable and at times almost unbearably sorrowful piece of work.

Working with an economical running time of 100 minutes and a relatively modest budget, Hart infuses Fast Color with genuinely moving drama, an engrossing, supernatural-sci-fi mystery and some pretty darn impressive special effects.

It’s a tribute to the amazing and fantastically perplexing and singularly mind-blowing Hulu film “In & of Itself” that even though a few of the feats performed by magician/actor/storyteller/performance artist Derek DelGaudio in his one man-show could be explained away by the use of special effects (which DelGaudio does NOT employ, as far as we can tell), most of it just seems ... Magical.

This is one of the most shocking and one of the best movies of the year.

Her works as a real romance, and as a commentary on the ways technology connects everyone to the world but also isolates us from legitimate, warm human contact.

With a combination of bone-dry wit and blood-drenched horror, writer-director Dan Gilroy’s Velvet Buzzsaw skewers some of the most pretentious denizens of the art world you’d ever want NOT to meet — and does so with precision and flair and pitch-black humor.

This brutal, bloody, dark and at times gruesomely funny thriller isn’t some David Fincher-esque mood piece where all the clues come together at the end. It’s more like a modern-day, Georgia version of a spaghetti Western.

Even though “The Idea of You” adheres to many of the time-tested elements of the Rom-Com Playbook, the premise is a bit tricky and could have turned cringey in the wrong hands. Instead, the potential “ick” factor is played for just the right combination of cringe humor and legit insights about how even in 2024, we tend to be more shocked and judgmental about age-gap romances when it’s the woman who is older.

It’s impressive how well director Malcolm D. Lee (working from a script by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver) balances the serious material with the bawdy, freewheeling comedy pieces.

This is one of the better musical biopics of the last 20 years.

This is a Noah for the 21st century, one of the most dazzling and unforgettable biblical epics ever put on film.

Thanks to Downey’s genius, Iron Man 3 is equally terrific, whether Tony’s fending off an army of villains or bantering with a kid in a shed on a cold, snowy night.

It’s one of the most visually striking and leanest versions of “the Scottish play” ever put on film, with blockbuster performances from Oscar winners Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington as Lady and Lord Macbeth, and a brilliant supporting cast.

The real star of the film is writer-director Jordan Peele, who has created a work that addresses the myriad levels of racism, pays homage to some great horror films, carves out its own creative path, has a distinctive visual style — and is flat-out funny as well.

It’s the kind of film that grabs you from the opening sequences and holds you in its grimy grip all the way through the closing credits, when the s- - - is still hitting the fan.

Filmmakers Cristina Constantini and Kareem Tabsch have fashioned an illuminating and insightful documentary/biography.

This is a dark and brutal cautionary tale that traffics in any number of familiar scary-movie touchstones, but does so in consistently clever and entertaining fashion.

Against all odds, the billion-dollar “Fast & Furious” franchise is actually picking up momentum, with “FF6” clocking in as the fastest, funniest and most outlandish chapter yet.

Like that damn disembodied hand, Talk to Me will keep you in its grips throughout.

Skate or Die is culled from more than 100 hours of footage shot by Ferguson in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and with a great assist from editor Zebediah Smith, the end result is an 84-minute, journalistically impressive documentary that knows how to get out of its own way and let the story and the subject matter come to three-dimensional life in a stylistically appropriate fast-paced fashion.

Dying Laughing is a movie about stand-up with no performance footage. It’s like a documentary about baseball with no game footage — but it’s great and it’s valuable and it’s wonderful, because we love seeing and hearing these all-time greats talk about what they do with such passion and candor.

The dialogue is peppered with funny one-liners that occasionally sound a little too spot-on (we can almost see the dialogue leaping off the page), but Helms and Harrison have slipped so seamlessly into their characters and are so good at making every line reading seem real and spontaneous, we stay involved.

Even if you’ve somehow never even heard of the story upon which this film is based, it’s a crackling good lawman tale.

A wildly entertaining, over-the-top, blood-soaked, noir-Western from director/co-writer Scott Wiper that’s filled with stunning visuals of the breathtaking and sometimes foreboding countryside (with Morehead, Kentucky, standing in for West Virginia) and searing performances from the ensemble cast.

Wiig manages to make Alice funny as hell, endearing, sad and sometimes a little frightening. There’s not an ounce of condescension or preciousness in the performance.

Tenet reaches for cinematic greatness and, though it doesn’t quite reach that lofty goal, it’s the kind of film that reminds us of the magic of the moviegoing experience.

This is a smart movie about complicated people in search of something approaching inner peace.

With the ensemble cast doing superb work, The Blackening is a horror comedy that packs a serious punch.

Clouds of Sils Maria is an expertly filmed insider’s look at the film business, the trappings of fame and the unstoppable, sometimes bone-chilling march of time. It’s complex and wickedly funny and dark, and it features the best ensemble acting of any film I’ve seen so far this year.

With God Forbid, Corben serves up a neon potpourri of slick visuals, quick cuts, clever re-creation techniques, needle drops such as “Jesus Piece” by The Game, the use of archival footage and sit-down interviews to tell the incredible but true story of one of the most stunning sex/religious/political scandals in of this century. (And let’s face it, that’s saying a lot.)

It was a feel-good story that turned horribly tragic.

Director Garret Price (“Woodstock 99"), who is clearly a fan of the music, nimbly weaves in current-time interviews with Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins and various session greats and producers with archival footage.

For every sobering note, Becoming has a dozen uplifting moments.

Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a frenetic, rough-edged, unapologetic tribute to the Lampoon, featuring some amazing archival footage, nifty bits of animation and dozens of straightforward talking-head interviews that crackle and pop.

Suffice to say Tragedy Girls has great fun with myriad horror movie tropes.

It’s one of the most endearing romantic comedies in recent memory, with some laugh-out-loud dialogue, gorgeous photography and uniformly charming performances from the entire cast.

A well-paced, nicely directed, post-apocalyptic love story with a terrific sense of humor and the, um, guts to be unabashedly romantic and unapologetically optimistic.

[A] comprehensive and expertly rendered documentary.

[An] uplifting and inspirational and just plain cool documentary.

Logan Lucky is great fun and one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year.

This is a tense, nerve-wracking thriller of the mind, with first-rate performances by Bateman, Hall and Edgerton — a tightly spun thriller with a wicked sense of humor and a wonderfully warped take on long-range karma.

This is a wall-to-wall smile of a movie: big of heart and large in scale, lavishly staged, beautifully photographed and brimming with show-stopping musical numbers.

There’s no trace of Hollywood glamour or gloss to the story, no hint of actor-y flourishes in the deeply resonant performances. Just a lean, finely crafted, memorably real story announcing the presence of a major new filmmaking talent — and a young actor with the promise of limitless potential.

While this period-piece, existential fantasy adventure doesn’t rank with the absolute finest entries in Miyazaki’s iconic canon, it’s still one of the most inventive and creative films, animated or otherwise, of the year.

The courtroom scenes are unapologetically over-the-top and sometimes excruciatingly exact in the details of the murder, but you won’t soon forget Franco’s expertly nuanced performance. It’s as good as any work I’ve seen in a film in 2015, and True Story is one of the better movies to come along this year.

Writer-director Martin does a stellar job of balancing sketch-comedy style laughs with genuinely touching moments.

Toni Morrison is an absolutely beautiful wordsmith and a beautiful force on multiple fronts, and if this documentary is an unabashed love letter to her life and work, I say: Why. Not.

“Between Two Ferns” is filled with hilarious alternate-universe moments.

Just when we thought Keanu Reeves was destined for a career of mostly forgettable films piling up in our straight-to-video cues, the guy is headlining a bona fide, first-class action franchise. Whoa.

In this haunting, darkly funny and elegiac mood piece, Cranston once again displays a nearly unparalleled ability to make us like and care about men who are selfish and impetuous and reckless — yet still seem to have a core of decency buried deep within.

Working from Justin Lader’s smart script, Moss and Duplass expertly portray a very typical couple going through a rocky time — and they’re just as effective when the weirdness kicks in during their getaway weekend.

To Be Takei is a celebration of a man of great resilience, infectious humor, a voracious appetite for the richness of the human experience, and the best laugh in the history of laughing.

With clever and assured direction filled with striking visuals by the Dutch actor-writer-filmmaker Halina Reijn (adapting Sarah DeLappe’s screenplay, which is based on a story by Kristen Roupenian) and a cast of talented and great-looking young actors throwing themselves into the wonderfully twisted material, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” plays like a slasher-film update of “And Then There Were None,” with a dash of the classic “Twilight Episode” episode titled “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” sprinkled in.

Firth is brilliant. He’s playing a veteran super spy in a very violent but very silly movie, but even when Harry is explaining why there’s a dead stuffed dog in his bathroom, Firth gives a disciplined, serious performance.

Liev Schreiber is outstanding as the hulking, rough-edged, amiable and charismatic Wepner.

With crisp and assured direction from Byron Howard and Jared Bush (with lead screenwriter Charise Castro Smith co-directing), a bounty of catchy new songs by the ubiquitous treasure that is one Lin-Manuel Miranda and fantastic voice work from the ensemble cast, Encanto is a magical and warmhearted journey with lovely messaging about the importance of family, some genuinely funny set pieces and those stunning visuals that fill every corner of the screen.

In the middle of all the wince-inducing, limb-bending, bone-crunching, face-exploding bloodshed, Vaughn turns in a legitimately great performance that ranks among the finest work he’s ever done.

In the alternately exhilarating and heartbreaking documentary Whitney, the Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald (“Touching the Void,” “The Last King of Scotland”) does a magnificent job of taking us through the paces of Houston’s life and times.

This is one of the most entertaining movies of the year.

For all its influences and roots in similar types of comedies, Emergency is an original work, very much of its time.