Stephanie Zacharek

At the center of this clever pinwheel of a story—Moore co-wrote the script with Johnathan McClain—is Rylance, whose economy of motion and emotion is a marvel.

Deep Water comes dressed up as an ‘80s-style erotic thriller, a genre that I, for one, would love to see revived. But it’s so tepid, so lacking in heat or even a pulse, that it’s about as sexy as a clogged artery.

The Adam Project should be fun, but it’s sabotaged by its unwieldy ambitions. Forget the complexities of time travel, of wormholes and the laws of physics. This movie can barely get from point A to point B without tripping over itself.

After Yang invites us to think about big questions that might normally invite melancholy. Yet somehow, Kogonada pulls off the opposite effect. His movie makes us feel less alone, part of a network we can’t fully comprehend from our place on Earth.

The Batman is a moderately well-made film, with some appealing performances, most notably from its star, Robert Pattinson, and from its cryptically glamorous Catwoman, Zoë Kravitz. And it looks like a movie, which used to be something you didn’t even have to say: The Batman may be dark, literally—its doomy, underlit ambience comes courtesy of cinematographer Greig Fraser—but at least it’s pleasurably cinematic, a picture that creeps to the edges of the big screen with an operatic flourish.

Big Gold Brick may be a bit too enamored with its own quirkiness, but everything Garcia does, no matter how outlandish, feels perfectly natural.

Joe Wright’s well-intentioned adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s stage musical (itself drawn from Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac) can’t survive its own petulant, self-centered love object, Roxanne (Haley Bennett).

Even if you’ve never had the pleasure of eating in an Automat, Hurwitz brings the experience to life.

Not everything in Dog works—you can sometimes see its directors scrambling to find the right tone, and not quite succeeding. And the movie is not wholly free of hokum. But watching Tatum is pure pleasure.

There’s nothing cuddly about the were-creatures of The Cursed. But there’s no question that they get the job done.

When did everything, including our expectations, get shrunk so small? We can ask more of romantic comedies, and there’s no shame in yearning for spectacle and glamour, too: J. Lo rising from a foamy faux ocean like a showbiz deep-sea goddess, anyone?

The Worst Person in the World is a comedy, not a drama. But it’s ruthless in the way the best comedies can be.

I’d argue that the Jackass movies, including this one, are mostly filled with joy.

This is a film made with tenderness, more an exploration than a definitive statement, and a reminder that awkward sex isn’t necessarily bad sex: if anything, it’s the ultimate proof of our bewildering, imperfect humanness.

If the movie is handsome in an oak-paneled-office way, there’s life in it too. You feel there’s something at stake for the two young would-be heroes, as there is for the world.

As usual for Farhadi’s films, A Hero is beautiful to look at. Even the interior scenes are brushed with a golden light, and sometimes that light feels like a benediction. But as humanist works go, A Hero demands extra measures of patience on the viewer’s part.

The spies in The 355 approach their work, and the work of being a woman, with grim determination. Rarely has a spy thriller so much resembled a pile of ironing.

To see this movie in the theater is a special, shuddering pleasure, a tilting-at-windmills affirmation of what movies, seen big, can mean. This is movie as black magic. To give yourself over to it feels a little dangerous. It also feels great.

The Hand of God is a lovely film, occasionally oddball in the best way, and astute in the way it handles tragedy and loss.

This an unnervingly compassionate portrait of a truly bad egg.

The Tender Bar is generally a sweet, affectionate film, it deflates whenever J.R. isn’t in Manhasset—because that means there’s no Ben Affleck.

At its best, it’s a chronicle of how a great team made a great show—and proof that the “behind every great man is a great woman” aphorism can work the other way around, too.

Red Rocket isn’t the warmest of Baker’s films; it has a flinty edge that makes it hard to embrace. But as movie characters go, Rex’s Mikey, a magnetic egomaniac, is an extraordinary creation.

McKay keeps piling on the sardonic observations, and the outlandishly ill-behaved characters, long after the movie has crumpled under their weight.

This, possibly, is the best kind of movie, the stealth achievement that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

Licorice Pizza feels pleased with how casual and effortless it is, which is the exact opposite of being casual and effortless.

The movie is tender like a rainstorm: only in the aftermath, after you’ve allowed time for its ideas to settle, does its full picture become clear. It’s the kind of movie that makes everything feel washed clean, a gentle nudge of encouragement suggesting that no matter how tired you feel, you can move on in the world.

No matter how she got there, Gaga’s performance in House of Gucci is both tremendous fun and ultimately touching, likely despite any technique rather than because of it.