No Joker in sight as the stellar and always surprising Joaquin Phoenix shows his tender side in this bracing, bittersweet family dramedy from Mike Mills, whose movie is a quiet thing, but with a delicate, soulful magic you won’t soon forget.

Is surgery the new sex? Body horror maestro David Cronenberg and a cast led by Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart tackle that question and more in a futuristic sci-fi shocker that will leave you laughing, squirming and—yikes—thinking.

So what if it’s talky. Writer-director Sarah Polley’s vital film gathers together eight women—acted with heat and heart by a miraculous cast—to debate what to do about male sexual predators. Doing nothing is not an option in this unique and unforgettable landmark in the making.

The scares are off the charts, but only as a means to confront the film’s thoughtful messaging about racial injustice. Dynamite star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and director Nia DaCosta make you think hard about everything you see. Welcome to a new horror classic.

How do you make a movie about an intellectual argument? By putting a human face on it, which is what filmmaker Ava DuVernay and acting force Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor do in this stunning provocation about race and class. The result is something rare: a movie that matters.

Thanks to a master class in comic and dramatic nuance from Bill Murray and Rashida Jones as a father and daughter dealing with cross-generational infidelity, director Sofia Coppola turns a wispy premise into something funny, touching and vital.

Cooper Raiff, who created this Sundance prizewinner, can't hide his feelings for people with disabilities and the challenges that come to those who love them. And I can't hide my feelings for this exuberant gift of a movie starring Raiff and a never better Dakota Johnson.

As the hard-driving daddy of Venus and Serena Williams, Will Smith gives the performance of his life in an unapologetic crowd-pleaser. You just may want to stand up and cheer.

Debuting director Regina King ignites sparks by casting four dynamite actors as 1964 civil-rights icons—Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Eli Goree as Cassius Clay, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and an Oscar worthy Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke—and letting them rip about being Black in America.

A fantastic cast led by Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton tells the sad but true story of the flame-out of the world’s first smartphone and the manchildren who created it. This raucous workplace comedy (think The Office) puts an unexpected lump in your throat.

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.