Easily one of Disney’s more imaginative and detail-oriented CGI offerings in a while, Zootopia uses the classic tropes of anthropomorphized animals and comic references to pop-culture touchstones to slyly puzzle out what it means to be “civilized.”

A literate, sophisticated comedy whose humor and loss and hope linger in our hearts, like the jazz music it reveres, both sweet and lowdown.

Writer/director Seth Worley is clearly having fun with the Amber-inspired monsters made real: They bear googly eyes and vomit sparkles before incrementally scaling up to more malevolent creatures that may test younger viewers’ mettle. But Worley is just as invested in the emotional nuance of the story, which meets each of its grieving characters at their own speed and shows them a lot of grace.

Since so many of De Palma’s films have become part and parcel with the American cultural consciousness of the last 50 years, I can’t imagine this filmmaker’s insights not providing every viewer with some memorable takeaways.

Elisabeth Holm and Robespierre’s screenplay is both quirky and grounded, gleaning pearls of wisdom about the toxicity of secrets in the face of truth without getting preachy.

Just the kind of vicarious excitement for which the movies were invented.

Plenty of killings abound, nevertheless the film is a masterful -- albeit warped -- love-story-cum-road-movie that revolves around three of the most invigorating performances of the year.

A quietly searing drama about morality, priorities, and absolute truth. It’s told in a matter-of-fact manner that eschews melodrama, yet is loaded with haunting human moments and circumstances.

Wild Indian is a horrifying and thought-provoking thrill ride that packs quite a punch when it hits right.

Until things devolve into a stormy conclusion, Dheepan is a sharply observed drama about identity and separation, strangeness and commonalities, and making do while hoping for something better.

Yes, the action sequences are hilarious, and yes, the design department gets to cut gloriously loose with the kaleidoscopic, shifting microverse of the Quantum Realm, but this is first and foremost about family.

First-time feature director Kapsalis understands that the best way to capture a performance like this is to just leave the camera on her as Holly leans in to her worst instincts.

It's that rare horror-comedy that is both comedic and horrifying.

There’s an interesting tension at play within Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the strongest MCU outing since Black Panther, that’s nevertheless as much Marvel Machine as it is Raimi enjoying his return to the big screen after almost 10 years away, deploying every trick he keeps up his sleeve.

Based on actual events, this claustrophobic epic is as emotional as they come: a Holocaust story shot through with a layer of darkness both literal and figurative

Enthralling and effortlessly relevant, Birdboy is a searing contemporary fantasy, and often unrelenting in its savage attacks on greed, acquisitiveness, the disposable society, and some not-so-subtle jabs at Spanish Catholicism.

The film is so alive, so joyous and raucous at times, that the empathy you feel for these characters is all the more poignant and the catharsis is well earned. This is a film you fall into, like an embrace you wish two sisters would hold, but one that the world denies them.

A holiday film with no conscience whatsoever, Mars Attacks! will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it definitely will make you wonder about Earth's ability to defend itself in the face of higher life forms.

Bruckheimer -– always eager to egg on the public’s thirst for bigger, louder, stupider –- has done a scandalous amount of damage to contemporary cinema, but for once, his dubious talent for big-buck bombast is exploited for good rather than evil.

Steeped in bleak, ominous atmosphere and period-perfect costumes and design, this is one of those rare genre films that gets under your skin and stays there.

It's not so much the individual storylines that grab you, but Curtis’ unrelenting optimism. In the end, it's nice to know that love, actually, does conquer all.

There are no easy answers in The Territory, just a plea for awareness, for intervention.

A compendium of really neat stuff and nifty sequences, and it will just have to do until Vol. 3 or reunification comes along.

Truthfully, it's hard to imagine a better screen adaptation of this queer household. Addams would have been proud.

The film is wickedly hilarious but more in a droll and knowing kind of sense than a har-de-har-har manner.

It’s such a simple story but told with such grace, tenderness, compassion, and wonder, that all its strangeness seems familiar and welcome.

The pictures are gorgeous, and the words, well, if you listen hard enough, the words say exactly what one needs to hear: that is, to wake up and live.

Most anthologies have the framing mechanism simply service the stories they contain: Instead, Spindell weaves each tale into the bigger fabric, like bloody fat quarters making up a gruesome but surprisingly snugly quilt. When the pieces all are sewn together, the fully assembled The Mortuary Collection may well be the most wickedly fun anthology since Trick'r Treat.