In spite of sensational direction from Trey Edward Shults and raw, emotive performances by Kelvin Harrison, Jr. and Taylor Russell, the polarizing two narrative halves of Waves don’t gel to produce a satisfying whole.

It’s the strongest Benoit Blanc movie yet, thanks to the way that the best artists learn and grown from their previous works, applying those lessons to their future projects.

Ti West’s X is a strange and wonderful return to form for the indie-horror phenom, an ode to the life-altering magic of cheap and dirty horror pictures. 13 years after his breakout hit in the genre, Ti West has added another great horror film to the canon.

To watch The Sparks Brothers is to listen to a superfan corner you at a party and evangelize about their favorite band with all the verve of a street preacher. He’s lucky, then, that Sparks is worth the praise, and that Wright’s breathless enthusiasm matches their cheeky, irreverent vibe.

Good Time is a film of trembling anxiety, and while the score and the Safdies’ terrific direction both aid this, it’s Pattinson’s outstanding performance that pins even the most outlandish occurrences to a deep sense of emotion.

Incredibles 2 hardly shakes the foundations of what a superhero movie should be, but it’s a raucous crowd-pleaser that serves up enough mouthwateringly beautiful eye candy to delight kids and grownups alike.

Here’s a cocktail so potent that it may just snap even the most tired and cynical viewers out of apathy.

Here’s a documentary with plenty of courage in its convictions, and a teachable exercise about modern health problems.

With a haunting Brad Pitt performance at the center of an existentially arresting personal journey, Ad Astra feels like the boldest, most considered major studio movie we’re going to get for a long time.

In Andrea Arnold’s sublime film American Honey, freedom is relative, but every once in a while it can feel so damn good that the whole world disappears around it.

You Hurt My Feelings is a quirky, incisive study of ego death, of what happens when you learn you’re not the hot shit you thought you were and have to recalibrate accordingly.

It’s hard not to see the parallels between A Hidden Life‘s setting and the modern-day world in which it’s released. In an era where nationalism reigns high, and people’s loyalties are questioned when they refuse to defer to a leader they cannot support, its abstractions feel universal enough to graft onto the world stage of 2019.

Baumbach uses this twisted reunion as a brilliant funnel for all of his world-building — and it’s quite a story, broken down into multiple sections, no less. Yes, he goes nuts with the exposition, but there’s little offense here considering, well, that’s exactly how it would go down in reality.

Abrams and Kasdan’s respective humor and pathos push the characters beyond some of the more rote and redundant storytelling. So while it’s not always compelling, it’s always fun.

This is a three-hour documentary whose only problem is that it’s not even longer. Whether you’re a lifelong genre fiend or someone who just sampled Midsommar for the first time and needs another fix, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is an absorbing academic exercise in the pedagogy of folk horror.

While Lean on Pete risks turning gratuitous in terms of narrative flourishes and excess, it’s never gratuitous in its characterizations. Each individual encounter is rendered with compassion and respect.

Barbie is a magic trick, a stellar example of a filmmaker taking a well-established bit of corporate IP and using it to deliver a message loudly and clearly. That Greta Gerwig’s third solo film as director also manages to be a giddy, silly, and hilarious time is essential to its power, and the challenge of this review is thus trying to explore how the magic trick works, while still preserving the flat-out awe I have at what it achieves.

By refusing to adhere to traditional biopic tropes, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood becomes something far more fascinating.

It’s a striking debut, and the kind of outing that will invariably leave audiences wanting to see more from Lynch behind the camera in the future. But Lucky is a showcase for Stanton above all things.

Wrona’s near-flawless execution serves up a terror that’s enlightening and paralyzing all the same.

Lowery is content to live with these characters and show them to his audiences in hopes that they, too, will fall in love with them, and he succeeds mightily.

One critic’s ‘too much’ may be another’s ‘so much to unpack’. But that’s the thing. The style, the lament, the punchy rhythm and breathless momentum of The Other Side may be hefty, but it certainly makes a dent.

The film is filled with sensitive performances that help to upend the fantasy of the nuclear family as the cure for society’s ills. It’s a sparse but stunning mood piece, and a wonderful showcase for Dano as a uniquely family-driven auteur.

Mank‘s definitely a film-tailor made for cinephiles; it’s a dense, complicated work with a screenplay as labyrinthine and mired in inside baseball as Kane‘s. But as a stylistic exercise and a work of craft, it’s one of Fincher’s most exciting in years. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, the costumes, the production design, or the score. And the Wellesian flourishes are an interesting stylistic move for a filmmaker usually known for his cold, crisp exactitude.

It’s one of the most arresting, affecting science fiction movies of the last few years, and certainly one of the best films to see release in 2018 thus far. It’s ambitious and haunting, which makes its international streaming release all the more tragic.

Whose Streets? humanizes Ferguson, but not for the benefit of skeptics. It’s a rallying cry for those who understand their pain and those driven by that same pain to affect real and lasting change.

Great performances but not enough revelations.

Perhaps the film’s most striking quality is its restraint. Thematically and stylistically, it’s a film of quiet medium shots, long takes, and clear but evasive words. Every choice is tiny, but humane and usually deliberate.

Instead of simple heroes or avatars for big ideas about equality, Loving delivers complex, imperfect human beings who are struggling to find their place in a far from perfect world.

Profound and illusory, Silence shows Martin Scorsese at the confessional, in sensationally cinematic style, delivering perhaps his most intimate work to date.

It’s easily one of the best animated films of the year, and one of the most assured, endearing works of del Toro’s filmography.

The story may never break free of its more dated tropes, but the Dune movies represent a remarkable collection of talent coming together to, if nothing else, remind us of the power of epic storytelling on a big screen.

The result is sleepy and somewhat solipsistic, but that’s part of the charm of a Linklater joint, especially the personal ones. It truly feels like a filmmaker opening his mind to us and inviting us to share in his dreams.

The uneven quality of the vignettes aside, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is still a suitably Coenesque jaunt through the merciless trails of the American West.

The plot unravels beautifully, at a pace that’s methodical but still anxiety-inducing, building up an air of psychological fear so impenetrable that the only relief from it is an occasional splattering of visceral horror or an even more rare quip along the way.

The strengths of Furiosa do not eclipse Fury Road, to be clear, nor does the latter film shine as far superior. Instead, they really are two pieces of the same puzzle, different in their scope but connected not just by characters, but by ethos and aesthetic. It’s the ultimate double-feature, and afterwards, you’re gonna want to drive fast.

We get to see Lopez command the screen as easily as Ramona does the stage, offering up a seductive awards-worthy performance that makes us remember why she became a movie star in the first place.

In this instance, the medium just doesn’t elevate the material. That said, Fences is still a gripping watch, but it’s gripping for the reasons the play has always been gripping: the language and performances.

Watching brilliant actors face off over issues of idealism, pragmatism, and maybe occasionally faith makes for captivating viewing. Conclave even dares to make it a little fun. Which might be its most subversive element.

In a word, Another Round is intoxicating. Vinterberg elevates what could have been a mope-fest with a magnificently defiant tone and a powerhouse performance from Mikkelsen.

Paced to perfection and grounded by a magnetic leading performance, Shiva Baby is as painfully awkward as it is impossible to look away from.

Few films are ever as enjoyable and endearing as Sing Street.

It’s not easy, balancing careful character development and a vivid sense of place with the bloodlust of expectations, but Zahler’s done it here.

Yellow Submarine is a journey to the very brightest spots of our imagination, and it’s a vibrant reminder of how joyful, inventive, and freeing animation can be.

Bolstered by the fantastic technical direction at every turn, Priscilla lands as a remarkably moving portrait not just of a pair of American icons, but also of a dissolving romance.

A passion project from the sing-talk god David Byrne, Contemporary Color is a concert film, but a finicky one, unstable and unfocused.

Sunfish is visually rich in the way that manifests when a filmmaker genuinely loves their subject or setting, and Falconer's Michigan roots are on full display throughout, and it left me truly excited to see what this young talent does next.

More than a metatextual look at the struggles of indie filmmakers to gnaw at their own emotional wounds, Black Bear is an astounding showcase for its leads, and way more than it says on the wrapper.

Even two viewings in, I’m struck by the density of the work itself, its feelings on death and aging and the past shifting with every line of dialogue or idiosyncratic image.

Indignation resonates at times with the tension of things said and unsaid, regretted and forgotten.

Whether a treatise on the complexities of family dynamics, or the transformative power of love, or a dollhouse exploration of weird, broken people flailing for meaning in an uncertain universe, Kajillionaire carries plenty of rewards for those who are willing to succumb to July’s particular set of skills.

While Long Strange Trip is full of rare or untouched archival video and audio, there are very few revelatory treasures to tell those seriously interested in understanding the Dead’s impact something new.

In a lot of ways, Top Gun: Maverick is the platonic ideal of a film sequel, constantly in dialogue with the original project, and committed to growing and expanding upon that source material.

BlackBerry holds up well as a blunt portrait of BlackBerry’s ascendance as well as its eventual decline, with cinematographer Jared Raab riffing on the documentary-esque filming approach of Succession to keep the action kinetic.

Sean Wang, as both writer and director, has turned in an excellent entry into the “call your mother” cinematic canon. He doesn’t flinch from the darker or more troublesome aspects of the early teen years, but he ultimately balances them expertly by handling his messy protagonist with generosity and care.

After similarly sumptuous but somewhat tragic films like A Fantastic Woman and Disobedience, Gloria Bell feels more life-affirming, more explicitly comic. In many respects it’s a beat-for-beat remake of Gloria, with only a few cultural details swapped out, but the tale translates quite well.

It Comes at Night isn’t scary so much as it’s horrific, though Shults is extremely gifted at cultivating the kind of slow, droning dread that inflates in your chest like a black balloon.

The storytelling is great here, but it’s really the action where this movie shines. As with Prey, the secret sauce here is an almost Looney Tunes-esque approach: Buckets of red and green blood are spilled both due to the human stories as well as the Predator’s hunting, in inventive ways that prove thrilling right from the jump.

Watching John Wick: Chapter 4 sometimes felt like watching an above-average assembly cut. At an unwieldy two hours and 49 minutes, your eye will immediately be drawn to what cuts through the noise — and there are plenty of these moments. But “moments” does not a well-told “movie” make.

Watching Roadrunner feels like engaging in a kind of collective mourning, a desperate bid to understand a man who meant so much to so many, even if we never met him. For those of us who cared about Tony, whether through the television or a recipe, this is essential viewing.

With High Flying Bird, Soderbergh may well have crafted the most direct distillation of his own philosophy of filmmaking to date: idiosyncratic, confident, and endlessly disruptive.

The Humans is magic.

This is a kitchen-sink hymn for the indomitable spirit of the common man.

The Lost City of Z is as much about the struggle of progress as the real-life story it’s telling, and Gray sharply observes the ways in which mankind continuously tears itself apart, usually in the name of progress.

Endgame manages to effectively deliver reunions alongside farewells, fan service alongside the kind of storytelling which needs to occur in order for the whole billion-dollar machine to keep a’grinding, and a handful of sincere, honest-to-God surprises that make the grandeur of the whole thing feel justified.

There’s a strangeness to certain passages of Sisters that bolsters it through its seedy saloons and cacophonous firefights, and it constitutes the best the film has to offer.

There’s a depth to the city that shows how far the form has come in a short time, and Zootopia is better off for it, especially when it still ultimately doesn’t break away from the familiar Disney formula as much as some of the studio’s other recent films have managed.

The empty promise of the American dream is the implicit subject of most of his films, but in Lost in America, they’re the most exquisitely drawn. Failure and pettiness haunt David and Linda, and Brooks finds compelling ways to frame them.

Undoubtedly, Barbarian will raise comparisons to last year’s Malignant, a similarly wild-as-hell horror flick that zigs and zags down all manner of crazy roads. And to be sure, there’s a similarly perverse glee to be found here, as Cregger toys with your expectations before jumping you to another element of his insane narrative.

There’s such humanity and spirit to what del Toro has done that despite the narrative differences, it genuinely feels like the definitive take on Shelley’s classic tale. He’s said what he wants to say about his beloved Creature, and we are better for it.

It’s a mess, but a glorious one, the kind of ambitious, unapologetic project that’s most notable for its perspective.

The long-shot is hardly a novelty — as it so often tends to be wielded in Hollywood — but a point of view — a feeling even. And rarely, if ever, has that style been so affecting and executed so beautifully.

Ultimately, The Substance isn’t saying anything new, but the extremes to which it’s willing to go make it unforgettable cinema.

It’s the kind of wholly fun, satisfying late-summer fare that audiences will crave as the season winds down on its face, but like much of the director’s more recent output, it’s operating on several more thoughtful levels at the same time.

It is, for all of its action, and unexpected hints of the underbelly of humanity, and bodily fluids, actually quite a languid, melancholy film. It doesn’t shock its viewers, nor does Denis seem to have any interest in doing so. It quietly, meticulously unmoors them instead.

Nosferatu delivers exactly what it promised — a new version of a classic tale, told by one of our most technically accomplished filmmakers. And this is certainly a more explicitly sexy version of Nosferatu than what the original German film delivered 102 years ago. However, it otherwise follows its source material, as well as the paths laid out by other adaptations, so faithfully that its most original elements feel drowned out by the familiar. It’s perhaps the best-made Dracula adaptation to come around in a long time. But it never feels essential.

With a jukebox parade that will invite viewers to inevitably sing-along to classic earworms, How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is the Bee Gees documentary you’ve been waiting for. It’s a fitting tribute to their unending love for each other.

When it keys into Mamie’s horrifying experience, and the way she refuses to retreat from it, Chukwu and Deadwyler pack a wallop.

Poekel and Audley keep exposition to a minimum, allowing the truth behind Noel’s breakup to emerge organically, in the weight of an object or his reaction to a beaming couple. It’s elegant filmmaking, seamless in its storytelling.

Jordan Peele's made a thrilling, exciting blockbuster that also touches on the nature of spectacle, and the ways artists get chewed up and spat out (in some cases, literally) by their work.

When Neville chronicles the failed work of Orson Welles, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead comes alive with newsreel tabloid verve.

Pixar’s latest has all the sweet, ricochet-fast humor of the original, the same brilliant animation and rich color, the same winning performances (complete with a few new scene-stealers), and the same simple, staggering emotional intelligence of its predecessor.

While these are major hurdles to the film holding together as a consistent exploration of its subjects, On Body and Soul is still an intriguing, cerebral comeback for Enyedi.

Personal Shopper might be a failed, if noble, attempt at transcending genre, but you’ll leave psyched to see what its star does next.

It’s a marvel of filmmaking created from nothing (and one of the more meaningful uses of 3D in recent memory as well), and Favreau stages one scenic tableau after the next with uncommon skill.

If Jones can move from mortal woman to musical superhero in the space of a few moments, if she can convert the despair within her ravaged body into energy, then so can the rest of us in our times of weakness.

What’s so inspiring about Better Man is that it represents the culmination of such a smart collection of choices, ones that add up to create a true portrait of an artist.

This isn’t about the inner mechanics of the game, and it’s not even strictly a film about gambling, per se. It’s a dense character study that rests on the shoulders of Johnson, who delivers his strongest performance to date, casually handling every scene with a magnetism that recalls the likes of ’70s era De Niro or even the aforementioned Caan.

The Nightingale has a torn – and riveting – conscience.

The scope of Presence remains small and intimate throughout, in a way that really makes you appreciate Soderbergh’s craft, especially his attention to detail.

Robbie has been great in many films, including some pretty bad ones (what’s up, Suicide Squad), but she’s outstanding here.

The handful of scenes in which Bernstein does speak of his craft are engaging; the film depicts him as well-loved as both a professional and a man, a charming teacher to his students; his charisma and confidence are hypnotic. Unfortunately, it’s unclear what Cooper is really keen to communicate with this portrayal.

Project Hail Mary is a movie that believes it’s possible to save the world. It dares to hope. And that’s more beautiful than all the stars in the sky.

It’s fascinating when Smith chronicles Carrey’s stunt in tandem with gags he tested on late night shows.

The conclusion of Relic is haunting, beautiful, and cathartic.

You may not come away feeling like you know much about Wheatle himself, but you get to spend an hour in his shoes.

There are several sequences where the comedy of Thelma really sings, but if the film was just a parody, it would maybe be a funny yet rough watch. Fortunately, its depth of feeling for its elderly characters elevates it to a strange hybrid that works remarkably well, with Squibb’s performance in particular bringing it all together.

There’s grace to be found in The Beguiled, and delicacy, but what’s most interesting is the brutality and power that seethe beneath the surface.