Richard Whittaker

Campion and her cast do an extraordinary job of bringing all these characters in midway through their own private traumas, and Dunst brings silent grace and sadness to a woman inherently doubting her own motivation.

Adapted by Katsuhiro Otomo from his sprawling, post-apocalyptic cyberpunk tale of government conspiracies, street gangs, and psychic powers that can save or destroy the world, it's still an all-time classic, and has never looked better.

In a way, Oppenheimer is like atomic physics: Each tiny spark interlocks to create a massive, breathtaking, terrifying, conflagration.

Frenetic as Babylon is, Chazelle himself remains clear-eyed. His view of Hollywood is romantic but not romanticized, a flaws-and-all look back at a party that was bound to end and be completely incapable of handling the crash. But oh, what a swell party it is.

That's the nuanced naturalism that makes Minari so captivating, so intimate: It doesn't tell a complicated story, instead letting the roots and branches of its family drama grow and become entwined with the audience's own stories.

At a time when so many people are struggling to find something of value in their lives, when people are fleeing jobs, cities, futures they thought they wanted, Cage has crafted a quiet soliloquy about grasping on to something that has meaning. In some ways, this is one of his most emotionally brutal films.

Funny, vibrant, insightful, tragic, achingly timely, and yet with an underlying message about empathy that is timeless, Blindspotting may be the summer's most essential movie.

Across the Spider-Verse isn't just mind-bending spectacle – although it definitely dazzles in every frame. It's mind-bending spectacle in service of a thrilling story about a teenager facing the horrifying possibility that he can't fix everything.

"Write hard. Aim low," Mank is told. Instead, Fincher filmed low, aimed for the brain, and hit a deadly shot.

The Northman lives and breathes like the old epics; not Old Hollywood's cartoonish depictions of warriors with horned helmets, but the ancient tales to which he pays deep respect.

Garland’s script is not just a warning about the ease in which an armed society slips into violence, but a love letter to journalism.

Scott subtly weaves those stories together by having every talking head be simply a voice, unified in their belief that this weekend was vital, an affirmation that it was OK to be young and broke.

The only term is relentless, and for a lot of viewers Uncut Gems’ third act has been stressful, even traumatic. My response was more one of sheer awe – of the Safdies’ brilliant balancing act, of Sandler’s swirling dance of a performance, and of Howard’s sprint through a minefield.

A new comedy classic whodunnit in the honored tradition of Clue, Werewolves Within finds the laughs in the jump scare, and brings back the uproarious joy of the "it's behind you!" creeping fright.

What's best about Markus and McFeely's script is that they understand the characters.

It's the final act that takes that final twist of the knife, as the thriller becomes a grand guignol horror, yet still based within the world and the rules established in that grounded opening.

What truly enthralls the viewer is Bi Gan’s journey through the history of cinema.

Like the weeping sores that spread on Eli’s body, the bloody gouges that Ben carves into his thumb with nervous scratching, and the haunted look in Daddy Wags’ eyes, Polinger delivers a troubling and heart-stopping lesson that such childhood horrors will always leave a mark.

The Voice of Hind Rajab is not just a reminder of the crimes against humanity being committed in Gaza. It’s a reminder that the constant smears against human rights organizations and aid agencies are vile slanders by people who want this to happen again and again and again.

While though the influence of 19th-century Russian literature has always been evident and admitted in Ishiguro's work, Living is even further removed from the The Death of Ivan Ilyich than Kurosawa's film. It is even smaller and more intimate, and much of its suppressed wonder comes from a career-best performance from Nighy.

Like its bloodline kin, it’s a perfectly scathing glance at power, money, and how the love of both can curdle the soul.

Pulsing up and down the arterial route of the B train from Brooklyn to the Bronx, Caught Stealing is a portrait of NYC at its most grimily charming.

It's an incisive, intriguing, and ultimately moving look at America's ongoing socioeconomic collapse: The whole "kids streaming their first slow dance" thing is just one aspect of this rich and nuanced drama.

Like Johnson’s Kerr, The Smashing Machine is a surprisingly gentle giant.

For two filmmakers best known for their comedic scripts like the Jump Street films and The Lego Movie, they know when to pull back on the humor and instead embrace the spectacle, and find their perfect proxy in Gosling.

Attempted but abandoned by filmmakers from George A. Romero to King regular Frank Darabont, six decades after completion and 40 years after publication, now it crosses the finish line as one of the best King adaptations.

Liu’s adaptation of Atticus Lish’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning 2014 novel wends its way through the contradictions and tragedies of love between two people who need more than just a bed warmed by another body. Preparation delicately brings them together and devastatingly gives every reason for them to fall apart.

The joy and grace of Weathering With You is in how Hina and Hodaka don't reject a world that rejects them.

It's the period details that really make The Black Phone ring. It's not the set dressing, or the costumes, or the hairstyles (although Jeremy Davies does sport a fantastic muttonchops-mullet merger as Gwen and Finney's alcoholic, abusive father). It's that grimy sense of the era, that way that kids felt left to their own devices. This is an Amblin adventure drenched in R-rated fear.

What Riddler is doing is nakedly political, and there’s a risk that the audience may fall for his persuasive, butcherous way. Yet in the rebuttal to the Riddler’s conundrum, Reeves give this Bruce Wayne something more meaningful than an origin story: He gives him redemption.

Weapons is such a deliriously twisted blast that, as soon as it’s complete, you’ll want to shake up the box and do it all again.

It's not simply about watching the destruction of lives and buildings, but of dreams and aspirations, and From Ground Zero quietly demands your empathy.

No one else could have made this version of The Monkey because of all those indefinable, immutable yet ethereal elements that make Perkins’ movies not just popcorn flicks but gourmet popcorn.

It's really a character study of a working-class stiff, of the kind that Raymond Carver would enjoy, who would work in a factory that sounds like the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, barely music but more rhythmical pops, fizzes, and growls.

It’s arguably Linklater’s best use of an ensemble – and that’s saying something. But great as each individual performance is, and broad as Linklater pulls his aspect ratio, Nouvelle Vague is really a close-up on Godard.

Of course, everything leads to the massive final battle, the pay-off we've been promised, and Wingard delivers.

Yet for all the bleakness, Better Man is one of the most visually inventive and uplifting films in recent years.

That energy placed into making the audience look and listen out to the edges of the film makes Beth's central placement even more vital and enthralling; and by moving to The Night House, Hall is finally given the space that every previous performance has shown she deserves.

Dune: Part Two is both horrifying and romantic, presenting a far, far future that is recognizable because people never change. While the war may be portrayed as a jaw-dropping spectacle, the answers to all those political and moral questions may leave the audience deeply uncomfortable. Herbert would be proud.

Under the gentle hand of Griffiths, The Ballad of Wallis Island is both hilarious and delicate, never even making the buffoonish Charles simply a figure of mockery.

Operatic, overblown, and yet still touching, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time may be a mouthful, but it's also full of heart.

First time writer-director Zoé Wittock takes an absurd idea and imbues it with such heart, soul, and beauty that you'll automatically look past the inherent ridiculousness. Instead, you'll simply absorb its glowing sense of wonder.

No Other Land is inherently hopeful. Even as the bulldozers rumble, and soldiers take the safety off around kids, and goons point cameras in Abraham’s face and threaten Facebook-fueled revenge, there’s hope that the juggernaut of oppression can be stopped.

In The Heights is unashamedly romantic, fearlessly thrilling, endlessly optimistic and given life and voice through sheer love of people, of place – of community.

There’s nothing erotic about this wheezing, rotting, carnivorous corpse, and Eggers rebuts the “sexy vampire” nonsense by depicting a supernatural abusive relationship. If you think that there’s anything sexy about how he rips the throats from babes, that’s on you.

While The Mitchells vs. the Machines has its points to make, it’s also deftly funny, and never didactic. You’ll care about the message because you’ll care about – and probably identify with – the Mitchells.

In a less interesting film, this would all be seen through the eyes of freshly radicalized documentarian Shawn (Scribner, black-ish), but Goldhaber amplifies the tension by keeping this an ensemble.

If Raiff's first film was about two neurotic characters learning to get out of their own heads, then Cha Cha Real Smooth is a tenderly bittersweet story about a couple learning to use theirs.

Grounded and sweet, delicately bawdy, and decidedly hilarious, CODA puts an effervescent and original spin on the coming-of-age comedy-drama.

It's an extraordinary, tiny, intimate, and deeply touching story of a childhood suddenly filled with that most fragile of gifts: hope.

While Kandahar is undoubtedly spectacular war cinema, it's also a weighty meditation on the seeming impossibility for some of walking away from conflict.

Soup to nuts, The Menu is satisfying and rich, yet lean and cutting.

Its core, depressing, and unavoidable question is simple: How did one of the most advanced and wealthiest countries on the planet so completely fail in its response?

The pleasures are in watching Maxine navigate through the bloodshed to the denouement she deserves, and watching West cut into the seductive allure of cinema.

Revenge proved that Fargeat can combine astonishing, lurid, hyperpsychosexualized visuals with incisive social commentary. Yet there’s a vibrant audaciousness to The Substance that’s matched and complemented by her cool examination of the cost of youth and beauty. She can swing between cerebral drama and body horror, but this is definitely not a Cronenberg knockoff.

What Wright makes us understand is that it's never really been that hard to understand Sparks. Plus, "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us" is a stone-cold classic.

So often in these big multi-villain events, the hero gets swallowed up, but here he defines the film. If this really is Holland’s last outing, then he leaves having kept true to the spirit of his Spidey.

The Life of Chuck is not so much about raging at the dying of the light but about how we embrace the inevitability of death and the wonder of what comes before. It’s blockbuster metaphysics, a twinkle in the eye of the infinite.

After Yang will resonate with anyone who has absorbed such emptiness into themselves, and found some comfort there.

After all, Street Gang absorbs what was truly important about the show: that not every lesson is going to be fun, but that doesn't mean everything is terrible. Most importantly, it taught small kids their ABCs and 123s, while showing them that a beat-up, diverse neighborhood just like theirs could be the best place on Earth.

Crowley doesn’t blink at the cradle-to-grave graphic intimacy of Payne’s script, and in Garfield and Pugh he finds a duo who understand the deceptions and devotions of a beautifully flawed relationship. Watch ’em and weep, kids.

One of the most extraordinary debuts of the year.

Art historian Thomas Negovan has excavated countless hours of rushes and raw footage from the archives to assemble a new film, hewing as close as possible to Vidal’s original story. In doing so, the debauchery, majesty, and brutality are finally revealed in all their unhinged glory.

The air of fear that still pervades every frame of It Was Just an Accident is undeniable and institutionalized, to the point that cops take cash or cards for bakhshish, the customary bribes required just to live in public.

Deep in the Heart is a reminder to everyone, whether they're raising cattle, walking through a state park, or just turning on a tap, that their actions have consequences for the state's beautiful biodiversity. It's an extraordinary document of the Lone Star State’s wildlife, and a remarkable call to action.

It proves that value of the journalist as record keeper of horrors.

As a narrative work, it undeniably drags: but then, that's not really its intent. This is a spectacle to be absorbed and analyzed.

At heart, The Souvenir Part II is a film about filmmaking as art, industry, and identity.

Onscreen, Lighton explores the imbalance between the two and gently leads the audience with sympathy and empathy to a perfect resolution that asks both to face their own dysfunction.

So many strands, and when the full tapestry is unfurled, its captivating, beautiful, thrilling, and entrancing patterns are revealed. Wolfwalkers stands proud as a new classic.

In its quiet, apolitical observation, 76 Days points to a complete failure – not only of the Trump administration to get a handle on this public health disaster, but of the American press.

Lowery’s version works because, like Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson’s rewriting of L.A. Confidential, it captures the nature and meaning of the story rather than getting caught up in individual events or plot beats.

Most importantly, Marder gives the audience one of the most illuminating glimpses into deaf culture to date. Working with actors who are deaf is only part of it: The rest is in details and understanding.

As the focus of the film, Navalny himself is a fascinating and complex figure, but Roher makes him explicable by focusing on his family, his recovery, his motivations and his growing realization that to change Russia for the better he has to risk his life.

Mass takes the high school shooting drama out of the exploitation rut into which it has fallen, and instead turned it back into a story of people. It's a simple achievement to name, but an extraordinary one in its impact.

Any workplace drama (and that’s what it is, more than a sports film) must fit you for the shoes of the laborer, and that’s exactly what Jockey does. It makes you understand why riders would subject themselves to so much pain and poverty in search of what one calls “that one minute where you feel like the most important thing in the world.”

If Villeneuve's grand and epic take evokes any earlier cinematic vision of Dune, it would be the first failed take, which would have seen director David Lean and writer Robert Bolt cross similar wastelands as they did in Lawrence of Arabia.

With a story built around the need to bring everyone, all the oddballs and weirdos and lost friends and new friends together with peace, understanding, and a lack of judgement, maybe now is the time we really, truly need Bill & Ted.

Rather than this being some random moral crusade, Flaherty’s understated anger is about how the very rehab process that helped him so much has been perverted into a system indistinguishable from how street dealers operate. It’s his furious curiosity that informs the film, and gives it such devastating insight.

Everyone has secrets, Hosoda posits, and the internet may play a role in our ability to process them, heal our wounds, and maybe find the person who can save us from ourselves. That he does that through a gorgeous SF-tinged version of a classic fairy tale is not simply a bonus (just those components would have made a memorable new version of Villeneuve's timeless story). It's a vital act of recontextualization, not ham-fisted revisionism.

While Pulse was a warning, Cloud seems more like a funeral bell, a despairing look at life on the online economic periphery.

This is an undeniable star-making performance for Madison, who finds the grace and charm and stupidity and selfishness and wild-eyed wonder of Mikey, a tough survivor who falls for the oldest fairy tale in the book.

Everyone who has been in a long-term relationship has gone through that moment when they wonder where they end and their partner begins. Adult connection horror Together takes that inner fear and makes it physical.

Even as Aatami survives completely ridiculous and clearly life-ending assaults, the magic of bloody-mindedness keeps the action … if not plausible, then never less than hilarious and gruesome.

There's a narrative of sorts in Mad God, but it's episodic and disconnected. It's less a story than an anthology built around exploration of an ecosystem.

Cameron makes you care for this place, for its residents, for its wildlife, and most especially for its whale analogs - a major element of the story, one that curtly reminds us that our own cetaceans may well be our intellectual equals.

The deep emotional success of The Iron Claw all relies on a remarkable cast – most especially the four brothers, at ease with each other but fatally at odds with themselves.

Diaz stays out of the way of her own lens, instead giving a portrait in context of Ressa's valiant struggle for truth, and her determination to simply do the job even as she becomes part of the story.

Trần’s script (very loosely adapted from Marcel Rouff’s 1924 novel La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, gourmet) isn’t simply an ode to the idea of food being the food of love. Instead, it’s an utterly charming and touching description of a tender relationship between two people in middle age.

Gu keeps her camera on how the community he helped build thrived and flourished without him, even as it acknowledged his role. As Asian Americans face increasing racism, its closing message about how immigrant communities – like the Cambodians who came over in 1975 with guns at their backs – help define America has only become more timely.

[DaCosta] may divert the series from its withering dissection of the green and pleasant land’s self-image, but her absurdist perspective on this inherently absurd franchise is still undeniably entertaining.

Cuartas tenderly catches the scenario at the end of the road, leaving only the question of who, if any, will be able to walk away. Not that their existence is tenable for anyone that crosses their paths, and Cuartas' script gives plenty of space for the core trio to explore their tragic roles in this disaster.

While Greengrass' Texas is a place where naivety can get you killed, he still finds a place for trust and healing, expressed through the growing interdependence of Kidd and the kid. Our trauma, News of the World tells us, is not something we can box away. We cannot simply turn the page and pretend it never happened. But we can decide which stories we continue to tell.

Lowery may have dealt with the uncanny in A Ghost Story, but the whole point of that film was the mundanity of the afterlife. This is a truly supernatural tale, and the storytelling transitions into his version of horror, abstract and oblique.

It’s an adept translation that is in turns bloody and cruel, insightful and hilarious, and, under the plentiful gore and uproarious laughter, a surprisingly touching drama. Just one with slapstick bloodbath tendencies.

Demián Rugna's debut feature, Terrified contains one of the most eerily disturbing scenes in recent cinema history, a moment involving an unwanted guest at a dinner table. His follow-up, When Evil Lurks, confirms that the Argentinian filmmaker knows exactly how to get under your skin.

Mugen Train plunges straight into the continuity that its huge fanbase wants, and that opening walk among the tombstones sets up that there will be no release from the historical horror aspects that have made the show such a massive success.

The resolution is purposefully yet powerfully enigmatic, in a fashion that transcends both the police procedural of the opening acts and the details of Tunisian political history.