Blending the hilarious and heartfelt, the tough and the tender, John Carney’s sweerheart of an Irish musical is something you’ll want to hold close.

Wick-haters find only monotony in this carnival of carnage, but the rest of us will revel in the fourth chapter’s state-of-the-art action fireworks led by a hypnotically-Zen Keanu Reeves as the hitman who treats kung fu fighting like a dance tableau. Unmissable? Hell, yeah!

Bertrand Bonello’s exhilarating cinematic challenge stars a never-better Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as lovers across space and time who fight to embrace the beast of their dangerous emotions while artificial intelligence threatens to eradicate it.

Are you ready to party? Here's the musical blast we need right now to cure our pandemic blues. Corny? You bet. But an all-star cast, led by Streep, Kidman and Corden, wears its unruly heart on its sleeve as Ryan’s Murphy’s plea for tolerance sings, dances and laughs our troubles away.

The gloriously unhinged filmmaker James Gunn keeps Margot Robbie, John Cena and a top cast of crazies firing on all cylinders and turns a botch job original that was the worst movie of 2016 into the dazzling, down-and-dirty whirlwind it was always meant to be.

Zendaya shines like a true movie star, and she and costars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist will blow you away as tennis pros in Luca Guadagnino’s swoony, sexy romantic triangle that finds hilarious and hardcore erotic mischief off the court and on.

Brendan Fraser is on the march to Oscar. That's how astonishing his acting is as a morbidly obese recluse in this deeply moving character study. Accusations that wearing a fatsuit diminishes his tour de force performances are nonsense. This is essential viewin

It’s not in the same league as such Pixar classics as ‘WALL-E’ and the ‘Toy Story’ quartet, but there’s no denying the pure enchantment of the visual, comic and subtextual dazzle in this tale of two sea monsters trying to pass for human boys in 1960’s Italy.

Bill Nighy delivers a master class in acting as a stifled bureaucrat Brit who decides to seize the day before it's too late. Working in miniature to achieve major truths, this deeply human drama has the power to sneak up and knock you sideways.

Dakota Johnson is aces as a late bloomer coming out in her 30s. The touchingly personal script by Lauren Pomerantz is funny as hell, but it’s her delicacy of feeling that sneaks up and floors you. Something special is going on here. Treasure it.

The sequel is still unapologetically rah-rah about American imperialism, but who cares? Thirty-six years after the original, Tom Cruise is having the time of his life, the in-flight thrills are off the charts and—hot damn!—you won’t find more blazing action anywhere.

Dive head first into this pulpy, erotic crime thriller starring a fireball Kristen Stewart as a gym manager in hot love with a young bodybuilder (a sensational Katy M. O'Brian), Directed in a fever by the great Rose Glass, the film is a grenade of image and sound ready to blow.

The year’s first surefire blockbuster is a sequel that outdoes Denis Villeneuve’s first epic 2021 sand opera. OK, it’s long and sad-faced solemn, but Chalamet and Zendaya are destiny-kissed lovers to die for, Austin Butler makes a hissable new villain and the spectacle is off the charts.

In filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s diabolically funny takedown of toxic masculinity, Carey Mulligan gives a dynamite performance that should make her a frontrunner in the Oscar race for Best Actress.

The massacre of the Israel team at the 1972 Munich Olympics becomes an absolutely riveting docudrama on journalistic ethics as seen entirely through the control room of ABC Sports doing live coverage. Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro and Leonie Benesch will pin you to your seat.

Harrowing to watch, but impossible to shake, this emotional powerhouse catches two sets of parents, brilliantly played by Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs, Reed Birney and an Oscar-worthy Ann Dowd, in the traumatic aftermath of a school shooting.

What would make a 30-ish woman have sex with a 12-year-old boy? Expect director Todd Haynes to throw you thrillingly off balance with peak acting from Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as the lovers and Natalie Portman as the actress eager to go Hollywood with their squirmy moral tale.

A shockingly funny sendup of our money-trumps-morals culture starring a dynamite Rosamund Pike who outdoes her ‘Gone Girl’ evil by partnering in crime with the great Peter Dinklage for the most delicious, decadent treat of the new movie year.

Despite some pokey pacing, the fierce human drama of how two female reporters, superbly acted by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, persuaded women to go on the record about being sexually harassed by producer Harvey Weinstein is the year's most gripping detective story.

All your friends will be talking about this femcentric raunchfest and its fabulous Asian-American actors who are ready to lace every laugh with human complication.

In Sofia Coppola’s bittersweet biopic, Elvis takes a backseat to Priscilla Presley—shining new star Cailee Spaeny—who met the King (a dangerously seductive Jacob Elordi) at 14, married him at 21 and finally escaped his Graceland pumpkin shell to become her own woman. Brava!

Repeating his historic Oscar wins for Parasite is off the table for Bong Joon-ho. It's not happening. But together with his up-for-anything star Robert Pattinson in multiple roles, Bong turns this scattershot sci-fi space opera into a buoyant social satire that really stings

OK, Steven Soderbergh’s sleek, sexy spy thriller is sometimes too cool for school. But oh the twisted, erotic mischief dished out by dynamos Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbinder as married spies, still hot for each other but wondering if the other is a mole for the wrong side.

This French bonbon, Woody Allen’s best reviewed film in years, is no career landmark. But its blend of humor and homicide shows Allen, 88, still moving forward, creating the kind of film he made his name on, the kind that makes you laugh till it hurts. And that's a stroke of luck indeed

The endlessly inventive Wes Anderson and a cast of all-stars use all the tools of cinema to give a big, fat, loving smooch to, of all things, print journalism and the gifted eccentrics who practice it. Too fussy? Maybe. But what an exuberant gift of a memory piece.

Bob Odenkirk aces his first role as an action star in this wild, twisty ride. He’s such a canny, captivating actor that even when the plot gets silly you're willing to follow him anywhere.

Aaron Schimberg’s head-twisting, heart-piercing psychological thriller stars a never-better Sebastian Stan as a facially disfigured actor who has an operation to remove his scars and finds he can't hide the gloomy, self-loathing introvert that lingers in his DNA.

When a hedge fund promotes a she (Phoebe Dynevor) over a he (Alden Ehrenreich)—they’re engaged— gender politics becomes a powerhouse erotic thriller which newbie filmmaker Chloe Domont wants couples to leave arguing like hell. No worries. They wil

A sequel always loses the advantage of surprise, but Krasinski eases us out of Covid lockdown by crafting the perfect thriller to get summer audiences back into movie theaters where everything is dark and everyone can hear you scream.

Sure it’s hokey, but this fact-based crowdpleaser starring a terrific Toni Collette as a struggling Welsh villager who risks everything on a racehorse she breeds and raises is an underdog story that works like a charm.

Get out your handkerchiefs. Directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, Sophia Loren, 86, returns to the screen after a decade to play a Holocaust survivor who raises the children of prostitutes. There is not a single false note in Loren’s magnificent performance. Just sit back and behold.

Kristen Stewart is so good as Princes Diana—it’s the performance of her life—that the Academy should start engraving her name on the Best Actress Oscar.

Here’s the blast of wicked fun we need right now, using song and dance to enhance Dahl’s timeless tale of naughty children vs uncaring adults distilled in the war between bookish Matilda (Alisha Weir is a one-girl talent explosion) and Emma Thompson’s headmistress from hell.

An inner-city western featuring Black cowboys in a real-life setting deserves celebrating and the dynamite teamwork of Idris Elba and young Caleb McLaughlin heads off the father-son cliches in the script to keep you riveted.

Director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson see the Caped Crusader as more film-noir detective than comic-book hero in their mesmerizing mindbender that aims high even when it misses the mark. It’s a grenade of pure cinema ready to blow.

You’ll want to stand up and cheer for this eye-opening true story of three Black sisters from Brooklyn who emerged from a homeless shelter with their single mother to make it in the field of competitive track with the odds stacked against them.

Soderbergh’s mostly improvised jaunt on the Queen Mary 2 with three acting legends, shouldn’t work. But it does, gloriously, thanks to the irresistible teamwork of Streep, Wiest and Bergen. They’re pure gold.

A fierce and feeling Viola Davis headlines this historical epic about women warriors in 1823 West Africa and reminds us how indelible and truly inspiring it is to see these brave sisters doing it for themselves.

As an undocumented Filipina trying to make it as a country singer in Texas, breakout star Eva Noblezada punches through the film's familiar contours to find its beating heart as a timely portrait of the immigrant experience.

Are fascist dictators really vampires? That’s the shockingly funny premise behind director Pablo Lorrain’s look at Augusto Pinochet and his reign of terror over Larrain’s native Chile. Flaws and all, this spellbinder speaks scarily to the undying nature of tyranny. You’ll laugh till it hurts.

With a dynamite cast led by a never-better Jim Parsons, what could have been a dated retelling of a 1968 play about gay men in crisis emerges instead as a funny, fierce and scarily relevant wakeup call to a resurgent threat to marginalized minorities.

Sometimes a shamelessly retro wartime romance is all the escape you need and Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen add class and wicked humor to this fact-based WW2 spy thriller about how British intelligence used a corpse to put one over on Hitler.

Michael B. Jordan returns as star and now director to play Adonis Creed, the boxing champ who comes out of retirement to take on a fierce new contender (a dynamite Jonathan Majors). Even when the overcrowded plot stumbles, this clash of the titans is worth cheering.

The creator of ‘Hamilton,’ Lin Manuel Miranda, offers a stirring tribute to the creator of ‘Rent,’ Jonathan Larson, whose too short life—as acted and sung by the sensational Andrew Garfield—becomes a love letter to his soaring spirit.

Playing the kid sister of Henry Cavill’s Sherlock Holmes, Millie Bobby Brown, just 16, shines her talent on its highest beams and creates a totally irresistible family entertainment.

Oscar weekend is the perfect time to catch up with Edward Berger’s anti-war epic about young German soldiers dying in the trenches during WW1. The German-language film earned a wowza nine nominations, including Best Picture, and tragically its message never gets old.

Paul Dano excels in this fact-based tale of how little-guy investors actually took down billionaire Wall Street fat cats. What’s not to like about this slapstick tragedy with a windfall of laughs.

Longing for a sweet little surprise that transports you to a place of pure movie enchantment? Then check out the glorious Lesley Manville as a struggling London maid who travels to Paris to fulfill her middle-aged Cinderella fantasy of owning a Dior gown.

Director Kenneth Branagh again stars as Agatha Christie’s preening detective Hercule Poirot, moving Dame Agatha’s mystery from London to Venice and into the land of the supernatural. This all-star (yay Tina Fey!), wickedly entertaining shakeup does them both proud.

First-time director Drew Hancock kicks off the young movie year with an out-of-nowhere surprise, a fiendishly funny romcom scarefest that hits the entertainment bullseye and makes a star out of Sophie Thatcher as a hot date (for Jack Quaid) who doesn’t know her own power.

The cool factor is off the charts as director Jeff Nichols and a trio of sizzling stars—Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy—turns a landmark 1968 photobook about a 1968 Chicago motorcycle club into a vibrant vibe of a movie that vrooms to life on the big screen.

Even when bloated Marvel action robs the film of intimacy, Johansson digs deep into how her Russian assassin once felt outside the Avengers bubble. And Pugh deserves Oscar love as her pretend sister in this fab and fitting salute to female empowerment.

Sigourney Weaver deserves awards attention for turning what could have been a cliched dramedy about a real-estate agent, who’s also a functioning alcoholic, into something funny, touching and vital. And cheers to Kevin Kline as the dazed dude who loves her.

Way better than you may have heard, this mesmerizing look at young Donald Trump (a sensational Sebastian Stan) and his legal dark prince Roy Cohn (a dynamite Jeremy Strong) provides funny and scary insights into the ego Trump developed to rule the world.

OK, it’s no Fury Road, but visionary action poet George Miller scores a solid base hit by replacing the irreplaceable Charlize Theron with livewire Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger Furiosa in the exhilarating act of inventing herself. You’ll be dazzled, guaranteed.

Weigh the flimsy story against the eye-popping, jaw-dropping, shoot-the-works visuals that fill the screen to bursting and the choice is clear: James Cameron’s 3-D sequel to his biggest hit is the ultimate in-theater thrill ride. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life.

Starring the great Jessica Lange as a Broadway legend gobsmacked by a diagnosis of dementia, this is a snappy, stirring tribute to theater as a lifeline. Ignore the occasional drift into soap opera in favor of Lange’s transfixing master class in acting Just sit back and behold.

When it comes to high-wire acting with no net, Nicolas Cage is a rock star and the serial-killing satanic devil he plays here ranks with his bizarro best even when director Oz Perkins lets his plot slide into silliness. No matter—virtuoso Cage lights the spark and then, ka-boom!

Foodie culture gets hilariously torched as a celebrity chef, acted to pretentious perfection by Ralph Fiennes, holds his customers, except for a deliciously defiant Anya Taylor-Joy, to the fire at his restaurant from hell. It’s all delectably unhinged.

In this shivery ghost story, director-editor-DP Steven Soderbergh proves a rich imagination can work wonders on a low budget and turn the familiar into something fresh and frightening.

Love it or loathe it—there’s no in between—Emerald Fennell’s deliciously depraved takedown of the upper classes keeps you glued to Barry Keoghan as a poorboy driven to madness and worse by a rich Adonis (Jacob Elordi) and his sweetly vampiric mom (an Oscar-ready Rosamund Pike).

As a blunt-force Oklahoma oil rigger trying to save his daughter jailed in France for murder, Matt Damon gives an indelible, implosive performance in a deeply personal human drama disguised as a crime thriller.

Sorkin distills what made Lucille Ball a comedy legend and a prickly feminist pioneer into one tumultuous week of production on “I Love Lucy.” As for those who thought Kidman would be all wrong as the fiery redhead, won’t you be surprised—she’s all-stops-out fabulous.

Nicolas Cage plays Nicolas Cage in this whacked-out meta-comedy that doesn’t always hang together as a movie but cements its gonzo star as the eighth wonder of the world when it comes to highwire acting without a net.

Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Phillips turn this same-sex romcom for the holidays into a gift package that feels quietly and mischievously revolutionary.

Here’s your holiday counter-programming ticket to fear and trembling. It’s a passion project for Robert Eggers who creates an atmosphere of creeping dread in which Bill Skarsgård and Lily-Rose Depp are to die for as a vampire Count and his loveliest-trickiest victim

Naomi Watts and Bill Murray are funny, touching and vital as the most recent guardians of a 150-pound Great Dane named Apollo, but the scene-stealing pup scampers off with this slight but irresistible character study and wins a special place in your heart.

It can’t top the original and the absence of the late Chadwick Boseman hurts real bad, but Ryan Coogler’s sequel proves to be more than cringey franchise building by putting women of color in charge (yay to Angela Bassett and Letitia Wright) and watching them fly.

In this emotional powerhouse about an expectant mother who experiences her worst nightmare, the brilliant Vanessa Kirby delivers a tour de force that will leave you shattered.

Even though the ending fizzles out, the star power of Julianne Moore and Sebastian Stan turns this tale of con artists on the hustle among Manhattan one-percenters into a sleek, sexy sophisticated thriller with twists that won’t quit.

Fueled by performances worth treasuring from Chastain and Sarsgaard, this impossible love story between a woman who can't forget and man who can't remember slowly works its way into your mind and heart. Filmmaker Michel Franco makes sure you’ll be moved to tears.

Is that really Saoirse Ronan playing a blackout drunk with a violent temper? It is and against all odds she transforms this often dreary addiction drama on the strength of an emotional powerhouse of a performance that should rank her high in the Oscar race for Best Actress.

It’s frustrating that this immense, immersive true-crime story has been squeezed into a two-hour movie instead of a miniseries about the two women reporters—superbly played by Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon—who broke a notorious case the police could not.

So what if star and co-director Channing Tatum lays on the sniffles in this tale of an Army Ranger and a K9 warrior named Lulu, who steals every scene she's in. They’re both PTSD-scarred combat veterans who try to heal each other and they hit you like a shot in the heart.

The great Michael Mann directs a powerfully nuanced Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the ex-racer-turned-entrepreneur. The domestic scenes with his wife (Penelope Cruz) and mistress (Shailene Woodley) slow the pacing but the vroom of tires on the road is thrilling to the max.

As actor, screenwriter and dynamite debuting director, a seriously funny B.J. Novak takes aim at an America broken by disconnection. He doesn’t always hit his target, but when he does this tale of a New York liberal battling Texas gun nuts comes alive with mirth and menace.

This uneven musical take on Alice Walker’s seminal novel can trip on its own too muchness, but the star film debuts of Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks are worth shouting about in a tribute to Black sisterhood that’s blessed with a heart that sings and a spirit that soars.

Peter Dinklage sings! Pushing past the conventional elements in Joe Wright’s ravishing musical version of a unrequited love, Dinklage makes believers of us all. His Cyrano thinks his small size makes him a freak. But it's not a poetic ideal he can't live up to, it's his. That's his tragedy.

Despite widening gaps of logic in its slow-burn mystery plot, this twisty, killer-on-the-loose, dark-night-of-the-soul thriller features top turns from Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as L.A. cops chasing a psycho, played by a scary and diabolically funny Jared Leto.

A 40-ish single mom hooks up with a 20-ish boy band star. Cue the soap suds? Not this time. Somehow sensational Anne Hathaway and swoony Nicholas Galitzine make the cliches dance, bringing humor, heat and unexpected heart to a fantasy for daydream believers.

The return of Benedict Cumberbatch to the world of Strange may seem chaotic madness to the uninitiated, but it’s thrilling to see livewire director Sam Raimi breathe hilarity and juicy horror into the Marvel formula that so needed a shakeup. This is it.

It’s been 18 years between ‘Matrix’ sequels, but beneath the action chaos of warring computer codes are Keanu Reeves as Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, proving that they’re still romantic icons of timeless cool in a movie that’s a stone-cold trip. Wowza!

Hugh Grant uses his charm for evil in this surprisingly provocative cat-and-mouse game about the meaning, if any, of religion in a godless modern world. The dreamy romantic Grant of yore has been replaced by a diabolical presence eager to send us all to hell. What fun.

Tom Holland is better than ever in his surprise-packed, third solo outing as a teen hero in a onesie who’s out to save the world and a faltering pandemic box office. But this time the generic thrills are tempered with genuine emotion. Good one, Spidey.

All the actors excel at helping director-star Clooney turn this apocalyptic thriller into something more thoughtful than sci-fi flashy, especially the grace note of hope that speaks with heartfelt relevance to these pandemic times.

In what may be his final film, director Clint Eastwood, 94, overcomes a contrived script to build a tense, terrific legal thriller that indicts our broken justice system. Toni Collette and Nicholas Hoult help the master explore the gray area between heroism and villainy to stunning effect.

We’ve waited 36 years for this sequel and despite some rough plot patches, Michael Keaton returns in peak form to the funniest role of his career as the trickster demon who’s determined to let his freak flag fly. The Juice is loose, babe. Act accordingly.

Video games make lousy movies, right? Not this time. Thanks to Chris Pine and a cast of merry pranksters, especially Hugh Grant and a chubwub dragon, the big-screen D&D cuts through the confusion and chaos to create a goofball fantasy even a non-gamer can love.

This flawed but fascinating gay love story from director Luca Guadagnino is lifted to the heights by Daniel Craig who captures his character’s sexual heat and yearning heart in a performance he seems to tear from his insides. Is an Oscar nomination next? That’s the idea.

A riveting Anna Kendrick brings her own experience with a psychologically abusive relationship to this tale of a young woman who learns to stand her non-violent ground against a male predator through female friendship. The result is quietly devastating.

A love story about two pretty young cannibals won’t strike everyone as an appetizing dish. But you won’t be able to take your eyes off Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell as they try to reconcile romance with killer impulses on a road trip through hell.

I didn’t have much hope for this umpteenth take on the 1980s comic-book relic about humanoid teen sewer rats, but Seth Rogen and his team of merry pranksters have turned this animated version into a giddy, goofball delight. Cowabunga, baby!

In a world of humans, bad boy British pop rocker Robbie Williams casts himself as a computer=generated monkey. Too much? Maybe. But damn, this banger-infused biopic works like gangbusters under the visual magic of director Michael Gracey

Damn the cliches! Kevin Costner lends star power to this high-tension thriller, but even he can't match the wallop of seeing Diane Lane and Lesley Manville in action as mothers pushed to the limit.

You’ll either love it or hate it as director Ari Aster tasks Joaquin Phoenix with his most challenging role yet: a total loser just trying to get home to his mama (Patti LuPone). It’s not for everyone, except audiences starved for originality in copycat Hollywood.

Director George C. Wolfe had a dream to put unsung civil-rights firebrand Bayard Rustin front and center in a movie. And now, with the help of executive producers Barack and Michelle Obama and a thrilling acting tour de force from the great Colman Domingo, he has.

With its pokey pace broken by bursts of violence and racial tension, the end of Paul Schrader’s man-in-a-room trilogy falls short of the master’s peak. But this mesmerizer is the work of a true film artist continually striving to connect his tortured soul to ours.

Oscar winner Emma Stone teams up again with her Poor Things ’director Yorgos Lanthimos for a mesmerizing mindteaser, costarring a fabulous Jesse Plemons, that tells three stories that you can’t stop thinking about as they entertain and exasperate.