Richard Roeper

A strong and steady drama from writer-director-actor Joel Edgerton, featuring yet another effective and authentic performance by Lucas Hedges as a teenager in crisis.

Writer-director Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Hostiles) is an enormously gifted storyteller who infuses nearly every moment of this movie with a sense of despair and hopelessness, as some genuinely goodhearted but in most cases deeply damaged souls struggle mightily to battle a mythical, flesh-eating creature from the deep woods while also dealing with real-world trauma that’s equally frightening.

As we’re enjoying the beautiful cinematography and the fine acting and the dark humor, Benjamin Dickinson is delivering a signature work announcing his arrival as a filmmaker to watch for years to come.

Leave the World Behind is a bold and tricky endeavor that pays off in just about perfect fashion. You might never think of “Friends” in the same way again.

Trainwreck is my favorite romantic comedy of the year, and despite (or maybe because of) all its sharp edges and cynical set pieces, it’s a movie you want to wrap your arms around, or at least give a high five.

I loved the spirit and the heart of this film.

It’s yet another instantly immersive, richly layered and beautifully shot chapter in one of the most impressive directing careers of our time.

Even though the Chicago-born and Wheaton-raised Belushi’s life story and legacy has been examined time and again, the documentary simply titled Belushi is a work of great value.

Thanks in large part to Munn’s elegant, authentic, grounded and moving performance, we’re rooting hard for Violet to find some inner peace.

There’s life, there’s TV — and there are movies about TV, and though Being the Ricardos is a work of drama, it has the essence of truth.

Director and co-writer Clint Bentley’s sun-dappled, beautifully photographed, rough-and-tumble backstretch drama “Jockey” gets the rollercoaster life and often tough times of the jockey and the horse racing world just right.

Woody is still capable of writing and directing one of the liveliest, funniest and sharpest movies of the year.

Whereas so many of these films end with the big game/fight/match and a freeze-frame moment of glory before the credits roll, The Fire Inside is finding another gear.

This is essential viewing for any Bears fan, and for that matter any football fan.

Director Chris McKay keeps things zipping along, alternating between smart and often hilarious rapid-fire exchanges of dialogue, and big, big, BIG action sequences that fill every inch of the screen with brightly colored, fantastically kinetic action.

From the get-go, we have a pretty good sense of where The Water Man will take us, and while there are a few small surprises along the way, the real delight is the journey itself and how the real bond of a family is stronger than any monsters lurking in the dark.

Jones and Murray are wonderful together; many of the best scenes in On the Rocks are when it’s just the two of them, verbally fencing.

It is a straightforward and of course inspirational and at times profoundly moving tale, and even though we can predict just about every note it will strike before the opening credits roll, Green and screenwriter John Pollono and the outstanding cast elevate the material and make it something special and memorable.

The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift is sharp and funny, and contains knowing insights about misogyny in the workplace and the shifting dynamic between a toxic male boss and an overlooked and mistreated female employee. Mostly, though, “Send Help” is about paying your ticket for an R-rated, Sam Raimi thrill ride with projectile vomiting, flying ropes of blood, and a handful of scenes that fly so off the rails that you wonder if we’re in the middle of a dream sequence, or the mayhem is real.

Director Michael Barnett’s “Changing the Game” is an expertly crafted, empathetic, journalistically sound documentary following three strong, bright, likable and admirably accessible and forthcoming transgender teen athletes.

The fantastically nostalgic, consistently funny, mischief-laden and genuinely touching 8-Bit Christmas (now on HBO Max) reminds me of A Christmas Story — with a touch of the storytelling device employed in A Princess Bride.

One of the many graceful touches in Welcome to Marwen is the total lack of pity or condescension in either world.

Director Haynes has a knack for framing his characters with just the right touch. There are no throwaway shots in this film.

In Abel Ferrara’s lurid, sometimes grotesque, train-wreck-watchable Welcome to New York, Depardieu almost literally fills the screen as an enormous bear of a man with insatiable appetites for money, sex and power.

It’s a fantastically over-the-top, drive-in B-movie for the streaming generation.

You need to see this one on the biggest screen possible, and let it wash over you as if you had stepped inside the most incredible video game experience ever created — one in which events in the manufactured universe can have lasting and serious real-world consequences.

It’s a new twist on the period-piece slasher movie, smart and strange and fantastically depraved. I kinda loved it.

The 1971 version of The Beguiled was blunt and overheated and a little bit nuts. The 2017 edition is more sophisticated and nuanced — but it’s still a little bit nuts.