Ross Bonaime

My Old Ass manages to show youth from two different perspectives in an endearing and sympathetic way and shows that Park is a remarkable talent that can capture intricate, hard-to-present ideas with ease.

Macdonald and Rice-Edwards take us back to the 1970s to explore these two but also show that two of the most important figures in music history were just a pair of flawed individuals trying their best to use their position of power to make the world a better place.

Sorry, Baby is a fantastic debut that has announced Victor as one of today's most exciting up-and-coming filmmakers.

The Actor is a film about discovering who you truly are, and it also reveals that Johnson is a captivating, promising filmmaker who hopefully won’t wait another decade to make his next film.

Are We Good? isn’t just an enthralling look at pain, loss, and how we handle unexpected grief; it’s also a reminder that life is always full of surprises — both good and bad — and that unexpected journey will certainly have you asking "WTF?" throughout.

Kotevska isn’t just telling a story of a farmer in a foreign land; she’s constructing a story that we can all relate to in our current world, in one of the finest documentaries you’ll see all year.

With Pugh and Garfield leading this tremendous love story, We Live in Time becomes one of the best movie romances in years, and proves that few filmmakers can present the power of love quite like Crowley can.

In just under two hours, Apatow and Berkeley truly do their best to cover every facet of Bamford, and it is an impressive document of her greatness.

Inside Out 2 takes complex ideas and emotions and turns them into a delightful animated adventure, and one of Pixar's best films in years.

The editing in Super/Man is perfectly handled, taking what could’ve been a straightforward documentary and turning a life into a collection of what makes us who we are—both the good and the bad.

Cregger shows with Weapons how perfectly he can balance horror and comedy in equal measure, always walking the line between these two in a film that is both unsettling and deeply funny. Because of this, Cregger has made what might end up becoming the best horror film of 2025.

Come See Me in the Good Light is a shattering, yet lovely documentary that’s easily one of the best of the year.

Walker-Silverman's film shows that all ends lead to new beginnings, and things can grow back stronger than ever. It's an important sentiment executed exquisitely and makes Rebuilding the film we need for our current times.

Love Lies Bleeding is an exhilarating experience that will make you groan, laugh, cringe, and swoon. This is a remarkable second film from Glass, showing her tremendous ability to build tension and create an entirely unpredictable thriller that won’t be easy to forget.

It’s entirely possible you won’t see a scarier movie this year than Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5.

With Bugonia, Lanthimos elevates an already fantastic concept, making an essential film about the world we live in and just how insane and hopeless it can feel at times.

James Mangold's A Complete Unknown explores the music of Bob Dylan with fantastic care and a great performance by Timothée Chalamet.

The Final Reckoning is stuffed, convoluted, and ludicrous at times. But it’s also mostly a great send-off to this universe, a deserved celebration for everything this series has accomplished, and one final (again, seemingly) showcase for Cruise as one of the greatest action stars of all time.

Bring Her Back captures the darkness and fear of losing someone, all while making one of the year’s best horror films. It’s that mixture, like with Talk to Me, that makes Danny and Michael Philippou two of the most exciting filmmakers in the genre.

It's a delightfully smart and ambitious story that is equally powerful for children and adults alike.

It'll get your heart pumping from the very beginning, rarely giving you time to breathe, and boasts a lead performance from an actor who's truly in command of his greatness.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie shows just how much life there still is in these characters and this world, and that they’re malleable enough to continue providing entertainment to every generation. The Day the Earth Blew Up is the welcome back that the Looney Tunes have long deserved.

The People's Joker is a bold vision, a mixture of a coming-of-age story and parody, infused with a transition story that is emotionally powerful and absolutely necessary.

The combination of Byrne's haunting, brilliant performance, and Mary Bronstein's unrelenting handling of tone here makes If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You one of the first must-watch films of 2025.

I Love Boosters is full of major swings and plenty of individual concepts that could take up an entire film, yet Riley balances everything this movie is trying to do quite well.

The way Leigh uses these characters to inform us of Pansy’s story is impeccably handled, a sign of a master storyteller that still has plenty to offer.

Paddington in Peru might not be at the same level as the first two films, but it’s still absolutely a worthwhile adventure. We’re still getting all the characters and ideas that we love, just packaged in a different way than we’re expecting. If anything, Paddington in Peru proves just how malleable this character is, and how well he can work in either quiet, simple stories or grand adventures.

With Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, Hinton shows the legacy that films can have and how time can benefit films that don’t receive the recognition they deserve.

With undertone, Tuason has created one of the few horror films that’s even more horrifying to hear than it is to see.

From its narrative that blends so many ideas exquisitely, to the gratifying characters and narrative arcs, to the absolutely stunning animation style, Arco is quite possibly the best animated film of the year.

Caught Stealing, on the surface, doesn’t look like what we expect from an Aronofsky film, and yet, once you dive deeper, it seems like the most obvious version of a dramedy crime-thriller that the director could make. The film isn’t afraid to get its hands dirty and go to some truly dark places, yet it always manages to come back to a place where this story becomes entertaining again.

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain is, without a doubt, one of the best and most touching animated films to come out this year, a remarkable example of what this style of storytelling can do.

Brian is an absolute blast and a hysterical coming-of-age story, centered on an impressive lead performance by Ben Wang, and an absolutely perfect handling of character and tone by Ropp and Scollins. Brian deserves to be amongst the great high school coming-of-age comedies that paved the way before it.

Considering how electric Stone’s work and life are, SLY LIVES! more than makes up for its standard documentary style through Stone’s gripping story, and Questlove’s exploration of the revolutionary music.

Saturday Night is a loving celebration of SNL that captures the spirit of trying to put on a live comedy show every week.

Three films in, Johnson continues to surprise and amaze with his ability to craft a masterful tale, one that hits everything we love about this series, while still finding new angles to approach in this world.

Louis-Dreyfus is subtly excruciating in her grief here, and it’s marvelous to watch her work in a story that allows her to play with such a range of feelings.

It ends up becoming one of the best DC films in years, and one of the best movies of the summer.

Perry’s work in Pavements is one of the wildest and unhinged approaches to a music documentary ever made, but the fact that he pulls it all together into something that isn’t a mess is a testament to Perry’s craft.

I Saw the TV Glow is bold, unhinged, extremely unusual, and also kind of magnificent—a daring step forward for Schoenbrun as a filmmaker, and a film that will certainly divide audiences not sure what the hell to make of it.

Deadpool & Wolverine is a shot in the arm that the MCU needed, and finally shows the full potential of Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool.

The Drama is a film that will stick in your mind long after you’ve left the theater.

Torres' humor might be too niche for some, but Problemista shows that it can be used to tell a compelling and heartfelt story for the masses.

After all these years, Left-Handed Girl is a terrific return to directing for Shih-Ching Tsou, who crafts a wonderful, often moving, and splendidly told story of three characters coming into their own.

Compared to his other recent work, Carney’s latest pulls back a bit on the music and leans more into the comedy side of things, yet Power Ballad maintains the heart and optimism that is brimming from all his films, and hopefully, it will get the attention it deserves.

Bong has some cache to make whatever he wants, and he uses this freedom to build a wild and intriguing world that is both humorous and politically charged.

Weird might not be the best biopic parody (Walk Hard still holds that crown), but it is an absolutely charming and often hilarious look at the world’s greatest parody musician, packed with an excellent cast that wants to pay tribute to this weird man. Weird dares to be stupid and succeeds because of it.

Bullet Train is knowingly absurd and has plenty of fun with the wild lengths it can go, and for the most part, that keeps Bullet Train on the rails.

Theater Camp isn’t without its weaknesses, but the hilarious cast—like their characters—are game for anything, and the jokes are flying fast and mostly landing.

Williams’ story of coming out and acceptance is both riveting and often touching, and Bernal gives quite possibly his best performance in this beautiful story of finding yourself and becoming who you were always supposed to be.

Sachs’ story comes to life thanks to these three excellent performances that aren't afraid to explore the selfishness and desires of passion, in a story that finds the power of shared pain and love.

When Jones and McNairy are playing off each other, Fairyland really finds the beauty of this story. Especially in the third act, as this relationship becomes more difficult and uncertain, both present themselves as people who struggle with the balance of doing what's right for themselves and doing what's right for each other.

In this David vs. Goliath battle, the film gives hope that change on a large scale could be possible and does this in a charming, entertaining narrative with a great cast from top to bottom.

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie can be a bit standard as far as biographical documentaries go, but when the subject is someone as much to watch as Fox is, it’s hard to care too much about the form when the content is so captivating.

Magazine Dreams is a difficult and challenging watch, bolstered by an incredible performance by Majors that could easily end up being one of the year's best.

This Much I Know to Be True might not dig as deep into the lives of Cave and Ellis as one might hope for a film billed as a documentary, but the performances captured here more than make up for that.

I Love You Dad has its heart in the right place with its cringey narrative and story of how much forgiveness those who love us truly deserve.

Wonka is a bit shaggy, with too many moving parts, but its spirit and its optimism—and a fantastic performance by Chalamet—make up for the film’s weaknesses.

Even if you’re not a fan of the music of Tucker or Carlile, The Return of Tanya Tucker: Featuring Brandi Carlile will have you hoping for the best for both of these incredible musicians.

Instead of having to explain this universe, The Secrets of Dumbledore can let us sit with these characters reckoning with the loves they’ve lost in quiet and gentle ways, create a captivating and often hilarious action sequence with a multitude of beasts, or explore the history of Dumbledore’s family with subtlety.

Structurally, Missing can often feel a bit too much like Searching at times, but by the end, it finds its own path in this intriguing way to tell a mystery.

In a career full of great performances, Swinton continues to do some of her finest work with Hogg, and Hogg once more proves that she’s one of the most remarkable personal storytellers in cinema today.

Woman of the Hour is a tight, smartly handled thriller that may stumble at times with its thematic ideas, but wins you over with its deft handling behind the camera.

The Little Mermaid might not match the greatness of the original, but it’s the rare remake that feels worthy of being part of our world.

Hardiman’s feature debut is ambitious, even if the overall structure doesn’t always work, and the mystery isn’t as engrossing as it maybe should be. Yet, for all its flaws, it makes up for it in style and its wild cast of characters.

At its very core, Knock at the Cabin works because it reminds of the early days of Shyamalan, when he felt like the next coming of Alfred Hitchcock, and his films would leave the audience talking for days after.

By focusing on the gray between the good and the bad, and with a scale and scope that the other films never quite had, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes might just be the most engrossing film in this series—and almost makes one wish there were more stories here to be told.

Miller’s modern fairly tale is full of beauty, love, and care, even if the film often focuses on the grand instead of the modest moments.

Dream Scenario is like a strange dream that doesn’t quite go in the direction you would’ve hoped, but still, you’re glad you got to experience that vision.

Simply put, Cocaine Bear is exactly what you want. It's a film that knows that it's ludicrous and relishes in the wildness of watching a cocaine-fueled bear go nuts on Blood Mountain.

The Marvels is the shortest film in the MCU so far, and it’s great that DaCosta has made a movie that is short, sweet, and yet, ends up being more impactful and playful than most Marvel films. In a universe that often feels suffocated by the amount of history, dense storytelling, and character awareness needed to enjoy these films, DaCosta figures out how to handle all of that in one of the most fun Marvel films in years. It’s kind of a marvel.

Like the relationship between Lynsey and James, Causeway is a film that slowly grows on you, a film that puts on a tough front—with its devastated characters and desire for escape—yet at its center is a tremendous about of heart, love, with its found families and shared pain.

By cutting back and simply sticking to the thrills and the madness of this situation and little else, Bay has made one of his best films in decades.

Black Adam isn’t a full-on course correction for the DCEU, but it is an encouraging new installment in this larger universe. Collet-Serra knows how to present this darkness and antihero in a way that’s effective, while also fleshing out one of the most promising additions to DC’s ever-expanding cadre of characters.

Ashford’s screenplay and Madden’s excellent direction all manage to take what could’ve easily been a fairly standard historical war drama and turn it into something more intricate, layered, and surprisingly powerful.

Eileen is an intriguing little story that shifts and alters the further it goes, playing with the audience, and giving them the opposite of what they’re expecting. Eileen isn’t going to be everyone's cup of tea—especially those who think they know exactly what they're getting themselves into—but Eileen is an admirable bit of defiance that is a joy to live inside for 90 minutes.

Little Richard: I Am Everything has to do a lot in its relatively short runtime, from exploring the origins of the musician, explaining both sides of his personality, and also diving into Richard’s influence on the future of music. Thankfully, Cortés’ documentary handles all this beautifully, and will make the viewer want to immediately learn more about Richard, his extremely fun work, and the life that impacted so many around him.

On paper, it already doesn’t seem like it makes sense as a Blomkamp film, and on the screen, he makes even less sense for this project. In the world of racing films, Gran Turismo is merely drafting near the back.

The Bob’s Burgers Movie isn’t exactly breaking new ground for this world and these characters, but instead, is showing how impeccably crafted and brilliant this world is when it's firing on all cylinders.

In a filmography that is full of impressive journeys through space, history, and staggering emotions, Armageddon Time feels like one of Gray’s most ambitious tales so far, even if it isn’t quite as effective in presenting its ideas as it should be.

As a documentary, Sorry/Not Sorry isn’t groundbreaking in terms of form or information, but it does feel important in the larger conversations that Suh and Montes are exploring, as C.K. isn’t the first nor will he be the last celebrity to have the pain they've caused unveiled to the world.

Hustle isn't breaking the mold of what a sports film can be, but it is yet another reminder of Sandler's gifts as a dramatic actor through an extremely charming and compelling story about a mentor trying to help another reach their potential.

Even though Sidney takes a fairly elementary look at Poitier’s career, it’s still extraordinary to see the contributions this man had on the world lined up in this way. Poitier left an indelible change on entertainment, the culture, and society at large, and Sidney makes us aware that this world wouldn’t be the same without Poitier.

By capturing Flipside in this way, Wilcha shows the weird, unbelievable nature of life and the surprises that make it such a beautiful mess.

I Want You Back largely relies on the overwhelming charm of its tremendous cast, and in particular, the magnificent dynamic between Slate and Day, but that’s all I Want You Back really needs.

Death on the Nile might have been a long time coming, but it’s one of the most alluring mysteries in years, and a great example of how Branagh can elevate iconic stories with grace and care.

Through We Feed People, Howard shows how impressive and powerful Andrés’ operation is, often covering large areas that need disaster relief. At certain points in We Feed People, even the Red Cross and Salvation Army are asking for help from Andrés in these truly awful times.

Fire Island is a strong update to Austen, full of charm, heart, and friendship, yet Booster's screenplay works best when it is not relying on the source material and having fun with this fun concept. With an excellent cast and a perfect blending of Ahn and Booster's talents, Fire Island is an extremely enjoyable trip.

Lucy and Desi isn’t breaking the mold in terms of biographical documentaries, but when put together in this package, the story of Ball and Arnaz has an impressive weight beyond just a collection of compelling anecdotes.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes explores the past while creating a new future, starting this fresh angle on the series to a rocky, but promising start.

Queer might not be everyone's vibe, especially when it gets wild in the final third, but there's something in the way that Guadagnino brings all these elements together and crafts his own story out of Burroughs' novel that continues his growth as an essential filmmaker of today.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point manages to bring to life a realistic portrayal of the holidays, in both its ups and downs, that few holiday films ever even try to accomplish.

Jim Henson Idea Man is an adoring look at this remarkable man that never slips into hagiography, yet, it’s a documentary that will only make you appreciate the multitudes that made Henson who he was.

Told from the perspective of a “presence” in a house, Soderbergh explores this type of horror story in a way that only he can, playing with the structure of similar films, screwing with our expectations for this type of film, and once more, testing himself while showing the untapped potential in the genre.

A little more full-throated absurdity and humor would've been a great step for the film to take. Ultimately, The Moment is a delightful spotlight for Charli XCX as an actor, and the concept itself finds some playful ways to expand on the lore of of her massively successful album. "brat" is dead. Love live "brat."

When the film gets going in its tremendous third act, complete with a moving surprise that reconfigures the entire film, IF becomes a magnificently emotional experience, cathartic and enchanting in equal measure, and just the type of original idea we need more of on this scale at the movies.

The Bad Guys 2 is a gorgeous, fun animated film that occasionally spreads itself too thin.

Alien Romulus has a promising beginning and end, but the middle gets a bit too muddled in nostalgia for this franchise.