Siddhant Adlakha

Its efforts at social commentary mostly fall flat, but its thrilling moments and Gyllenhaal’s intense performance largely make up for that.

Painstakingly hand-painted frame by frame, the film is visually dazzling, veering between styles and time periods to create a living, breathing continuum of Indian art. It’s mesmerizing — but given its haphazard narrative, the film’s delights begin and end at its aesthetics.

At 174 minutes long, with nested flashbacks overflowing with exposition, the movie has lengthy stretches that can feel like a chore. However, each extraneous segment eventually converges in some of the most exhilarating and cathartic on-screen violence Indian cinema has to offer.

Lin-Manuel Miranda tries to turn Jonathan Larson’s one-man show into a traditional musical, but ends up getting stuck halfway in between. However, Andrew Garfield delivers a tremendous, running-on-fumes performance as the real-life Broadway mainstay, whose impending 30th birthday pushes him to his creative and emotional brink.

Titley consistently anchors her unfolding chronicle to the kind of backstage emotional truths often hidden from the audience, and in the process, she crafts something halfway between sensationalist exposé and intimate confessional — a remedy to reality TV based on its own format — co-authored by her subjects

While its chaotic new cast serves a clear purpose, Inside Out 2 is more metaphor than meaning. It explains plenty about the confusing emotions associated with puberty, often in intelligent ways, but it rarely lets them be felt or experienced, the way its predecessor did.

Bob Odenkirk’s presence helps create a sense of gravitas even when the film is straightforward, adding soulful dimensions to a fairly simple character in whose hands guns and explosives are as much tools of violence as they are instruments of a righteousness long lost to moral compromise.

Based on the scrappy Japanese zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead, Michel Hazanavicius’ Final Cut is a more polished version — for better and for worse — but it’s just as fun and self-reflexive, while also leaning into its remake status for a few added laughs.

Isaiah Saxon’s adventure fairytale ends up unique and beautiful, much like the adorable animatronic foundling of its title.

It takes Death on the Nile far longer than it should to reach its most impactful moments, but actor-director Kenneth Branagh cares deeply enough about Detective Poirot to make it work.

Downton Abbey: A New Era starts out as a wistful return to the familiar before shedding its skin and letting the series’ nauseating ugliness come frothing to the surface. It goes from funny and charming to jaw-droppingly grim at the drop of a hat — a wild tonal whiplash that’s absolutely worth a watch. It’s a concentrated dose of Downton Abbey.

Last Night in Soho’s biggest strengths and weaknesses come from the same place: its attempts to replicate much better psychological horror from decades past. However, despite everything that doesn’t work, its musical energy keeps it fun.

Ford v Ferrari's James Mangold takes his hands off the steering wheel for A Complete Unknown, resulting in a Bob Dylan biopic that takes unpredictable turns. Rather than connecting the dots between how the world influenced him (and how he influenced it in turn), the film frames his enormous musical sea changes as personal drama for his peers. It’s formally straightforward, but its focus on the characters in Dylan’s life – rather than the musician himself, played by Timothée Chalamet – turn him into an enigma, for better or worse.

What the characters can or cannot do in response, and the catharsis they’re prevented from attaining, are both key parts of their story, and of life in the West Bank at large — a reality Nabulsi conveys in stark, realistic hues, despite her first-feature growing pains.

A super-charged genre throwback that obscures its meaning but has an alluring visual texture, Divinity is completely unique in its conception of sci-fi dystopia, for better and for worse.

A sense of tangible intellect looms just beneath its surface — not only Rob’s supposed genius, but the movie’s own identity as political cinema. But it never quite unearths this, even though “Rob Peace” establishes Ejiofor as a director with a knack for dramatic storytelling, in a way his previous film could not.

Richard Linklater’s animated Apollo fantasy is scattered, but sweet.

While often more intellectually stimulating than emotionally engaging, Santosh lays bare the dark heart of communal divisions in modern India.

The best Disney live-action remake in a decade (not that that’s a particularly high bar to clear), Snow White adapts the broad strokes of the 1937 original, while fleshing out its themes of kindness. Rachel Zegler crafts a remarkable, melodic version of the classic princess who leads with her heart, even if her CGI co-stars are difficult on the eyes.

A passionate, well-intentioned deviation in style, Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist doesn’t quite hit the mark with its meditations on nature. However, in its best moments, it’s another entrancing dramatic piece from the Japanese maestro, whose strengths lie less in observing natural environments, and more in observing people’s nature.

A self-reflexive love letter to Hollywood stunt work, The Fall Guy is the perfect vehicle for Ryan Gosling’s comedic timing – not to mention, his romantic charm alongside an equally dialed-in Emily Blunt.

Outside of watching modern Trump characteristics being absorbed from the worst influences around him, it rarely has the insight you’d hope for from a biopic centered on one of the defining political figures of the 21st century.

Tim Burton allows the cast of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to have fun, even if they're all off in separate movies that barely overlap. Its story is intentionally robbed of dramatic weight, but this makes way for the goofy, imaginative practical effects of Burton's early days, resulting in a small-scale legacy sequel that doesn't take itself too seriously (because it doesn’t need to).

The Bob’s Burgers Movie is a glorified episode of the series, but that’s hardly a bad thing.

The camera’s non-interventionist nature becomes vital. The visual approach embodies the Beinin family’s loss of control, and the growing uncertainty around them and what they believe.

Hatching is a scattered body-horror romp with the best child performance this year.

As ugly as it is amusing, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy takes the kind of tonal swings you rarely see from a Hollywood studio.

Like Kana, it’s gloomy, purposeless and hard to love — but that only makes the film, and its lead, feel more pulsating alive.