While it is not going to be among the very best of 2023 when it comes to its story, the craft that went into its presentation is unlike anything you’ll see this year or any other. It manages to burst through the surface of its frequently stormy narrative waters and grab hold of your heart just as it does your eyes.

The characters are consistently charming, the humor sufficiently silly, and the animation often beautiful, though the standard path it takes holds it back from fully exploring the potential lurking just beneath the surface. When it all bursts free towards the end is when the film is at its best.

Even with its many narrative flaws, The Silent Twins gives us an insight into not just the lives of the two sisters but the way they made sense of it through stories of their own.

Though it doesn’t have the audacity to close when it should with its characters at their very lowest, The Estate is still proper fun in seeing a deeply improper family tear each other apart.

While Bird Box Barcelona is only following the trend, it is too bad to see the spin-off try so hard to keep fans excited about the next chapter that it undercuts the emotional weight of its ending. So, while the film surpasses the original in every sense, it still gets dragged down by the needs of a franchise.

Christmas Bloody Christmas makes two promises in its title: it’s going to be about Christmas, and it’s going to be bloody. It succeeds on both fronts to create a fun, fast-paced Christmas horror that is all style, very little substance – but when it works this well, it's totally fine.

It is an experience built around surprise revelations and plunging into the unknown. What is found there is not nearly as impactful as the actual journey itself, making for a mixed bag of horror and humor that rises above its lesser parts enough to hold together.

All in all, Incredible but True remains an unmissable movie for Dupieux fans. And for those worried about getting lost in the filmmaker’s passion for nonsense, the movie might be his most accessible work yet.

To anyone interested in the history of film, Champagne includes the earliest known examples of freeze-frame techniques, highlighting how innovative Hitchcock was.

Beyond the clichés and the added elements to try and boost the drama, Tetris at its core works because the true story is inherently an interesting one, and when the film sticks to these details, it's at its best. Like a difficult game of Tetris, this film might fumble some of its pieces, but in the end, it's ultimately a satisfying experience.

Led by two solid performances by Pugh and Freeman, A Good Person shows growth from Braff as both a writer and director, as he attempts to push himself into a more mature story that we’re used to from him.

Bennett lifts the story up just like the bubbles in the veuve's own delicious champagne, showing us the brilliance in this biopic drama.

National Anthem may at times feel a bit too simple, but the craftsmanship and the core performances are enough to make it worth a watch.

Blue Beetle brings a breath of fresh air to DC with its focus on smaller stakes and family dynamics, standing out just enough from other superhero films.

For all its faults, Mickey: The Story of a Mouse is at times a charming look at one of the biggest icons of our time, and while this story has been told many times before, it’s never been told with the sort of scope and frankness about how Disney has maybe failed with their mascot.

It offers a solid police investigation story though fails to use its unique sci-fi world as well as it could have.

Good Burger 2 certainly isn’t a masterpiece, but Kenan & Kel still have the special sauce that makes this film work.

Waititi’s latest isn’t bad by any stretch, and isn’t close to his worst (again, Love and Thunder, watch your ass), but as a sports film and a comedy, it is fairly average.

Despite being a bit tonally uneven, A Little White Lie is a lovable indie dramedy led by the always delightful Michael Shannon and Kate Hudson that is worth bookmarking.

The Sky Is Everywhere takes a lot of swings that miss, but the heart of the film is in the right place, and when it really works, The Sky Is Everywhere knocks these emotions and ideas out of the park.

Lightyear is still an extremely fun action sci-fi film that is better than most animated films released in a given year, and will bring a smile to fans of this character.

While Bloody Hell is undoubtedly courageous for dealing with many sensitive themes, the film struggles to find its pacing and keep the audience engaged in a story that sometimes feels too predictable.

Insidious: The Red Door might not be the scariest installment in the franchise, but it feels a lot more human than the others before it. The character moments end up feeling more effective than some of the film's big set-pieces and, while that may bug some genre purists, those who have stuck around since the first film released over 10 years ago will be pleased.

Despite its obvious flaws, They/Them is still worth a watch, mainly because of the sensitivity with which the filmmaker presents the fears and joys of LGBTQIA+ people. It’s no easy feat to introduce a huge cast of characters in a short runtime and still make us care about all of them, but Logan does exactly that.

Gillan gets a great opportunity to show her comedic skills, and Stearns remains a solid purveyor of dark comedy, but Dual’s gloom eventually overtakes the absurdity to a depressing degree.

Fackham Hall holds its own as the first of its kind — and carves out a brand-new niche in the satire landscape.

Berg’s documentary is at its strongest when it focuses on the musical legacy that Buckley was so concerned about that he would leave behind, and less so when it tries to delve deeper into who Buckley was as a person.

It’s the movie’s efforts to make this as digestible as possible for the audience through its light-hearted tone and simplistic dialogue that render it a movie you watch on Netflix with your parents and probably never think about again.