The Edge of Seventeen has more than enough earnestness of heart to make up for its structural shortcomings. It’s a teen film with an uncommonly honest ear for interactions.

This is a filmmaker’s film, a fully realized statement that oozes with the assurance and confidence of a hungry visionary who not only knows what he wants to do but how to do it.

Boyle and Garland’s return to the franchise seems deliberately set on reinventing as many cliches as it can, while also exploding our assumptions about what a zombie movie might be. Make it to the end, and you’ll either be annoyed at its more over-the-top touches or delighted by the final bizarre moments. No matter what, you won’t be bored.

Despite a handful of faults, it’s that rare horror film that works on both a psychological and a visceral level.

It’s a shame, given all of the film’s strengths, that Dheepan takes such a precipitous nosedive in its final act.

It exists less as an adaptation than a love letter to the film, its large community of fans, and crazy dreamers everywhere.

If Lo and Behold is more just a collection of interviews on a series of themes than a cohesive piece of storytelling, it’s still a fascinating endeavor into how the Internet went from personal to unimaginably broad and how it could either continue to expand or perhaps even return to that infant phase again.

Rich Peppiatt’s feature debut spins the freewheeling cinematic language of Edgar Wright and Guy Ritchie into a fun, heartwarming, and suitably raunchy celebration of the Irish language.

The script, although endearing, is too poorly edited to lift its quirks to the next level, no matter how many stars show up for roll call.

A celebration of Rudy Ray Moore, the creative process, and black creativity, Dolemite Is My Name is an absolute joy to watch.

Director James Gunn’s first foray into big-budget movie making succeeds despite focusing on characters largely unknown to mainstream audiences and provides some of the most genuinely affecting moments of any Marvel film to date.

What makes A Prayer Before Dawn so powerful is also what makes it so punishing.

Simon Rex gives a virtuoso performance.

Mixing horror movie imagery with honest, heart-wrenching human truths, Bayona has created a dark, coming-of-age masterpiece.

Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger thrives with terrific performances, compelling characters, and a biting sense of identity that hits the thematic nail on the head. Though the poor pacing strains its true potency, the film’s striking visuals and sharp direction bolster the impact significantly, resulting in an artfully-crafted tale of ambition and greed.

Berger’s take on All Quiet on the Western Front is a searing indictment of the futility of war, one that knows the way conflict erodes the human soul and the machinery that keeps that erosion moving. Its battle scenes are as impressively staged as they are visceral to watch, despite a few hinky ropes of CGI here and there.

Despite Sorkin’s significant shortcomings as a director, The Trial of the Chicago 7 hums along mightily on the strength of its god-tier ensemble and whip-smart script. There’s hardly a false note in the cast, all of them capably handling Sorkin’s overlapping, erudite dialogue with aplomb, and many of the big moments land with a splash.

Zola‘s not without its faults. The script is a little too loosy-goosy for its own good, and the last 10-15 minutes are admittedly a lackluster resolution to the high-tension hijinks on display. But until that point, it’s downright thrilling to watch a film breeze through its grimly funny energy with such exuberant confidence, especially with such a new, vibrant voice in Paige.

Only in its final stretch does Midnight Special start to lose its distinct identity.

Tickled unfolds like a bad drug trip, starting off with giggles but quickly descending into surreal horror.

This film is a goddamned blast. To merely call it the strongest entrant in the DC Entertainment Universe so far is to call Jaws the strongest entrant in the shark movie canon. Say what you will about Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, and Deep Blue Sea, but Wonder Woman is in another class altogether.

Desperately seeking stability while her marriage to Prince Charles crumbles, Diana is tragic and three-dimensional in the hands of Stewart.

A cold, visceral, and overwhelming piece of cinema.

Gael García Bernal is astounding in this film.

Though the movie ultimately minds its business about a lot of the personal affairs it brings up, it imbues its characters with a bounty of implied off-screen life. No Sudden Move is somehow both a stylized genre exercise and part of a larger, less rigidly controlled tapestry that reveals itself as it goes.

For the majority of its runtime, Stronger manages to escape the traps that populate such films. It’s worth seeing, and worth your investment. Let’s just hope that next time around, Pollono and Green find a way to stick the landing.

Pavements is a genuinely unique watch that turns the idea of a rockumentary upside down. It at once delivers upon fans’ thirst to learn more about the band while respecting the fact that their inconsistent story is part of the appeal.

Anyone looking to have their mind changed by this new cut … probably won’t. Anyone who hates The Godfather Part III is still going to hate The Godfather Part III, and anyone who loves The Godfather Part III will probably love it even more after seeing the coda. Alas, it’s still The Godfather Part III and that’s just fine with me.

Decker succeeds in transporting viewers inside the mind of a tortured genius. With its mesmerizing cinematography, a deliciously waspy script, and fantastic performances, Shirley is a smart and intricately woven look at a woman’s struggle to create in a world telling her to be something else.

It’s a dizzying, sadistic feature, and may well be Aronofsky’s most biting work since Requiem for a Dream, but it’s also concerned with some deeply painful and humane material. Where that film aimed for repulsion of a literal bent, however, Mother! is far more concerned with horrors of the allegorical variety.

Approach 10 Cloverfield Lane on its own terms, let Trachtenberg and his top-notch cast (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr., and a ferocious John Goodman) yank you into their world, and try not to sweat through your clothes.

The film is replete with unforgettable images, stellar performances all up and down the cast, and genuinely original and thoughtful revisions of expected tropes.

Come for the bloodshed, stay for the sisterhood. Like Black Panther before it, The Woman King immerses us in African culture; only this time, it shifts the focus to real-life women and proves, without the corny factor, that we have always been warriors.

I still don’t know whether all (or even most) of Asteroid City’s ideas coalesce, so scattershot is the film’s pacing and plotting. But from moment to moment, it charms and moves in ways only Anderson can deliver.

While there are no chapter breaks or anything to formally guide the audience in that way, Into the Inferno feels unusually episodic by Herzog’s typically cohesive standards.

There’s a lot to sink your teeth into with Emily the Criminal, between its strong Plaza turn and a pitch-black moral core that refreshingly commits to the bit. But outside of those devilish comforts, a lot of Ford’s debut is frustratingly thin, more concerned with giving Plaza plenty of opportunities to bore through the screen with her eyes in extreme close-up than in really breaking down her psychology and the perverse romance at its center.

Gyllenhaal gives one of the most staggering performances of her career, and Colangelo’s deft command of tone keeps the lengths to which Lisa will go to stay close to Jimmy’s perceived greatness close to the chest right up to the end.

The relaunch of the classic comedy series captures exactly what made the original, and other movies from the team behind Airplane!, so essential: An almost non-stop onslaught of silly and random moments, rejecting any attempt at logic to instead go for the gut — which is to say, the belly laugh.

It’s a provocation, and for the most part, it’s an effective one. Yet for a film all about verbal and physical blows, Bodied seems to grow skittish when it comes to landing the nastiest ones, the ones that would call its own ideals into question. It’s just insightful enough to leave audiences wishing that it were more so.

Dickey pivots between storyteller, philosopher, hopeless romantic, philanderer, asshole, loyal friend, and belligerent drunk all the way up until the very end.

With Creep 2, you’re never truly convinced the narrative is going the way you think it’s going, and while that may be frustrating to some (aka, those who don’t understand the concept of psychological thrillers), it’s almost enchanting for those looking for one good scare.

Get Me Roger Stone offers its audience an unblinking, if disappointingly straightforward, look at the infamous operator.

Although it stumbles a bit at the end with a self-aware redemption that isn’t entirely earned or particularly in character, Diamond Tongues is still a brilliant and realistic portrait of the young artist as a bitter borderline failure.

Feature-length films generally aren’t nimble enough to reflect the current zeitgeist with such uncanny accuracy, but Blair’s neo-noir-comedy-thriller is that rare story that seems to have come along at just the right time.

It’s a feel-good story enlivened by the fact that there’s no overly sentimentalized hokum to be found.

A tightly constructed narrative, which examines the role of forgiveness,The Two Popes is a lowkey buddy comedy that simply follows two actors at the top of their game.

It’s a gripping, fascinating watch, an elegantly assembled portrait of the end result of influencer culture and late-stage capitalism – the blind leading the blind into an empty, insubstantial image of success and luxury that turns out to be nothing but smoke.

Though he’s been accused of re-carving the same dollhouse-scale miniatures over and over again, The French Dispatch finds Anderson continuing to fill out his increasingly elaborate skill set.

Theron’s a perfect avatar for Cody’s irrepressible empathy for her subjects, wounded and loving in equal measure, and she’s hardly been more watchable.

Darkest Hour spends so much time as an actor’s showcase for Oldman that it oftentimes forgets to remind the audience of the ongoing war around him. However, despite the film’s occasionally languid pace, Wright imbues enough urgency through Oldman to maintain an undercurrent of tension throughout the film’s two-hour runtime.

Chapter 2 is a hyper-violent piece of pulp action cinema through and through, but it’s also an exemplar of how to make such a film with style and intelligence.

Garland boldly asks us to take a step back, to forget about notions of who is right and who is wrong and simply focus on the horrors of what might happen if this happened at all. If you surrender to its abstractions, it proves a disquieting, terrifying watch.

Skating fans and Hawk aficionados will find a lot to like ... But it’s frustrating to see Jones’ approach fail to dig much deeper into the man than we’d already expect, opting instead to more broadly elaborate on the low-key death wish a lot of skaters seem to engage in.

At points the film simply observes the smaller, more innocuous moments of a coming-of-age story; much of it is framed in intimate medium shots and close-ups, and there’s a distinct kinship between the numerous wayward souls in its world that carries it along.

By firmly rooting all of the film’s sprawling drama in a singular conflict, directors Joe and Anthony Russo manage to do what many superhero films have struggled with in recent years: find a truly effective reason to pit superpower against superpower.

By the time Whitney reaches the point it inevitably must, Macdonald’s film stands as an archive of how preventable Houston’s passing truly was.

The world-building might not be 100% there, but it’s a true crowd-pleaser that’s paced within an inch of its life.

While Finley’s film may be slim on any truly insightful commentary about what makes Amanda and Lily tick, that’s almost beside the point. Instead, this is a film about the fine lines separating civility from chaos, and how it only takes a tiny push to send you across when you’re close enough to it.

We waited literal years for a Bob’s Burgers movie to hit screens, and it’s here, and it’s a whole lot of fun.

Given the sheer volume of jokes on hand, it’s impressive how often LEGO Batman successfully lands its punchlines.

Much of Kate Plays Christine is more of a form exercise than it is a documentary portrait, which works to both the film’s benefit and detriment.

It’s not the savage darkness of Okja that lingers most after it ends, or even the political allusions. It’s the story of Mija and Okja, trying to make sense of a frightening world where good people and animals alike die each day, and the only thing that can usually prevent this from happening is more money.

Lucky is not perfect, but metaphors rarely are. There are jarring narrative jumps that never resolve and a superficiality and dry humor that keep the intensity fairly low. But the message is a blunt one. And given the heavy topic, this levity works in the film’s favor.

The result is that this film isn’t necessarily for the Pink Floyd newbie, as they’ll be hopelessly confused as to who is who — however, they may still be able to take in the incredible music. And Pink Floyd at Pompeii captures a Golden Age just beginning — a whole lot of spectacular music was soon to come from Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason. You could see it coming, clear as an eruption from the grounds of Pompeii.

It’s a warmly empathetic documentary, the kind that simply observes instead of attempting to sound one kind of rallying cry or another.

As many note throughout the doc, the best moments that film as a medium has to offer are found in the smallest details. And when you find something truly great, as with this scene, you can just keep looking and looking until you spiral into the same void on which the grisly sequence ends.

Guided more by emotion and imagery than by any conventional plot, A Bigger Splash is a wicked, mysterious, ceaselessly sexy, and experiential carnal summer whirl.

Southside with You is a rewarding bite-sized drama, rich with characters who we already know, but also don’t really know.

To be sure, the concept of Spike Jonze directing a Beastie Boys documentary conjures up flashier results than this. But taking it for what it is, Beastie Boys Story remains an entertaining, insightful, and unexpectedly fun look back at three of hip-hop’s most iconic voices.

Even as On the Count of Three tumbles toward an ending as unpredictable as it is slightly unearned, the bones of its central performances and unabashed embrace of its concept keep you glued to the screen.

Though Raya and the Last Dragon is a visual and audible spectacle anchored by an all-star cast, the film’s lack of originality and paper-thin characters leave it on the less memorable end of Disney animated films.

These jackasses up there on the screen are breaking bones, facing fears, and throwing their bodies against anything they can think of because they find a joy in it. There’s joy amongst this fellowship of freaks, and they’re sharing it with a worldwide audience that’s faced mostly melancholy for far too long.

There’s something, well, deliciously appetizing about Bones and All’s oddball romance, from Guadagnino’s sensitive approach to the material to its staggering work from both leads.

The movie is too vividly realized to be boring, but it spends a lot of time scrambling out of the gap between pulpy fun and serious allegory. It’s also hobbled by the fact that it’s very much, as the opening credits say, Part 1; no real resolution is offered by the end of its 155 minutes. It’s just half a movie.

The Invitation is supremely well-crafted.

Every Little Thing isn’t a movie you watch for story, though — it’s a movie you watch for understanding. Not just the nuances of what it means to be a caretaker like this, but what it’s like to see the world from the perspective of the tiny and vulnerable. Because this world, in microcosm, is so full of little beauties.

Gray’s many fans will probably love Armageddon Time, and it may even win over some more neutral viewers who respond to his decidedly non-nostalgic look at a pivotal (and not especially promising) moment in U.S. history. But anyone who has found his movies less articulate than the ideas behind them will only get occasional respite here.

Formally, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel ... But this straight-shooting approach mostly works, even if it doesn’t pin Davis down as concretely as some would like.

The film maintains a hum of stoic, nerve-trembling anxiety that carries through to its finale.

In a time when so much of what we consume can feel plastic and cheap and mass-produced, it’s the human touch we come to crave — especially when it leads to something as fun as this.

The performances, like the film, are rich, layered things of tremendous feeling and complexity. The characters, like the film, are imperfect but well worthy of cherishing.

The film’s most poignant moment comes in an interview that took place near the end of Zappa’s life. He’s asked how he wants to be remembered, and he responds, “I don’t care.” That doesn’t mean we don’t care, or that we aren’t allowed to care, but this isn’t the film to make us do it.

Whether the result of the film’s brisk 90-minute runtime, or a lack of desire to investigate some of its subject’s greater desires and fears, Love, Gilda feels breezy to a fault.

Hidden Figures might not be as groundbreaking as the women whose story drives it, but like those women, it does what it does very well.

Come Inside My Mind is a moving, engaging portrait of a beloved comedic icon, but like Williams himself, it sometimes lacks focus.

For those who love stories about found families, East of Wall is essential viewing.

The more affecting moments in Sully come when the film puts aside its posturing and really examines what it is to be heroic in a cynical age.

Beyond the gross-out humor and music video homages, there’s a sweet and emotional story about finding family in the world where you’d least expect it, and the strength that can be found in friendship.

The romantic comedy beats are familiar enough, but the ways in which the film attacks them gives it a subversive shade that nicely compliments an otherwise straightforward fish-out-of-water story.

If someone decides they don’t like you, there’s nothing you can do about it. If enough people share that opinion, they can absolutely destroy you. Combine that with an always-fantastic Cage, thoughtful and buffoonish in every gesture and tic, and it makes for a delightfully mixed bag.

Its essential components touch on the valuable insight that the white imagination often can’t wrap its head around what Black music is actually saying, and the ways it says it.

A rich feast for cinephiles, filled with love for the craft that makes movies like this possible.

It’s brassy, breezy and gut-bustingly fun; unfortunately, it’s at the expense of the film’s drama and pathos.

Queen & Slim is a traditional road movie with decidedly untraditional inclinations, a romance framed against stark realities. But it’s equally a political act, a film whose very existence demands questions about the ways stories like it are typically told, from whose perspective, and perhaps most valuably of all, for what audience.

Coppola sends us on a light, frothy father/daughter adventure, to be sure, but one suffused with the tiny tragedies of misogyny, and the excuses men make for their selfish behavior. Even the sweetest dishes need a little salt to bring out its complexities, and On the Rocks is no exception.

Wrestling, at its best, is a mythic art, an extension of the traditions of ancient Greece — with all the grand pageantry and theater that turns mere mortals into titans. Durkin knows this, and uses all that bigness to startling effect, transforming the tragedy of an American family into a bittersweet legend.

While the Fyre Festival was infamous for its crowded venue, poor infrastructure, and slowly devolving sense of social order, Woodstock '99 feels like the OG version of that kind of entertainment trainwreck.

It’s a film with no easy answers, and rightly, Hood doesn’t strain to offer them. If the film’s attempts at barbed satire don’t land as well as its graver moments, it’s nevertheless an effective look at the new kind of war.