Free Fire might be a trifle of a quippy, feature-length shootout, but it’s the best damned trifle of a quippy, feature-length shootout you’ll ever see.

At its core, it’s simply a sweet personal story — made by a guy who, as we see here, started off wanting to do exactly that.

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.

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.

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

A singular work, brimming with ideas, by a budding visionary with a hell of a lot to say.

Queen of Katwe shows that a film doesn’t have to give up on the tenets of genre, but has the potential to win big if it can enliven them in new ways.

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.

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.

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.

Education is a tinier, more intimate button on McQueen’s set of stories, but it’s one of its most potent: the simple act of learning is powerful actualization, so proven in the white establishment’s efforts to make it so inaccessible to Black people.

It’s a performance worthy of all the acclaim it’s received, not just because of the emotional impact that Anderson’s involvement brings. Her work is instead a reminder that none of us are obsolete as long as we keep breathing. We always have a chance to tell our stories.

It’s easy to get swept up in Booksmart‘s pace and pleasures, but take a breath and you might find yourself longing for a world that’s at least a touch more familiar.

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

As a crowd-pleasing, emotionally gripping joyride about the ways in which music can change our lives, it’s one to see, and more than once.

Even if the rapid-fire pace of the jokes keeps a tiny handful of them from landing, the film gets bonus points for not being afraid to get emotional.

There’s something sad, frightening, or even disturbing around nearly every corner. Still, there’s delight in the world, and it’s hardly in short supply.

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.

As the film’s scope reduces, it builds in horrific momentum.

Because that’s ultimately what Reitman succeeds at with Saturday Night — capturing the allure that’s kept audiences tuning in for what will be 50 seasons, come September 28th, 2024. The sense that something magical is going on in a little studio called 8H. No one knows what will happen. But they want to find out.

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.

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.

There are a couple hiccups that prevent the movie from elevating to the classic status of your Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fictions.

Sacha Jenkins' doc is a warts-and-all examination of the funk-punk superstar, refusing to editorialize his sins and successes."

Waititi’s witty script and colorful supporting role as Adolf Hitler are the obvious comedic highlights of Jojo Rabbit. But the film only works because it manages to nail its balance of tones.

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.

Running the gamut from grotesque to goofy to genuinely scary, Alison Klayman has assembled a compelling and tight look into the inner workings of modern politics in the Trumpian key.

As with most Duplass-produced films, Rainbow Time perhaps ambles a bit too awkwardly into its ending. But, if it weren’t already clear, this is a messy movie about messy people, unique in both its character dynamics and worldview.

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

Like in fighting, there are some movies of a certain caliber, which excel because they know exactly what kind of movie they’re meant to be. Road House is definitely a fun watch — because it doesn’t punch above its weight class.

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.

While not particularly subtle or probing, The Invisible Man manages to do what many of our greatest horror movies have done before it: address a real-life, everyday nightmare in a heightened, bracing, and even cathartic way.

The whole movie is affecting, so much so that Pennywise doesn’t even matter. In a way, he’s more of a McGuffin to the real horrors at hand, from parental abuse to violent bullying to the unnerving revelation that life has only just begun.

Sisters is made of pure, frenzied comic momentum.

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.

Lady manages two remarkable achievements at once: Delivering both a slice-of-life narrative, rich with cultural details, while at the same time telling a galvanizing, even inspiring story about what it takes to activate a person towards speaking out for real change.

Berg offers a visceral experience that overwhelms with startling humanity.

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

One of Eastwood's most pleasing character studies since Million Dollar Baby.

In one sense, here’s a sequel to a ‘90s classic that trades heavily on audiences’ appreciation for that previous film. In another, here’s a film that uses that fact in service of an insightful, affecting commentary on how there’s no choice in life but to either move forward or to not.

Out of an act of war, Jolie has created a film of real compassion.

Brigsby Bear offers a touching and daringly unconventional reminder of how no approach to filmmaking is inherently bad with the right mind at the helm.

Grim and gritty are words this movie firmly rejects, instead leaning into the human side of everyone involved, even its villains. There are a few choices that work less well than others, but the end result is a movie that doesn't sacrifice its titular character in service to franchise-building. Instead, it focuses on celebrating the values that Superman himself has embodied from the beginning.

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.

A Star is Born isn’t a new love story, or even an especially unique one. But it’s a traditional love story told supremely well, and sometimes that’s exactly what audiences go to the movies to see.

Anyone who’s ever been to a great concert knows that it’s the very rare movie that can fully capture the transcendence of live performance. Hit Me Hard and Soft gets damn close thanks to the dual perspectives of its directors: The artist at the peak of her abilities, and the observer in awe of what he’s witnessing.

As with so many Laika films, you’ll come for the breathtaking animation, and you’ll leave both enchanted and surprised by the big, beating heart beneath it.

Whether or not the film fully lands will come down to how much you’re willing to give yourself over to its theatrical world. Like the immersive artform it’s examining, Madeline’s Madeline is frequently truthful and sometimes indulgent.

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.

The Greek filmmaker builds a stunning world with The Lobster, and much of its success stems from the inherent mechanics and the less-is-more storytelling that drops empty spaces for the mind to paint.

Told mostly in shadows, this is a story of broken trust and haunting guilt. Ahari uses one of the genre’s oldest tropes to remind us that it’s in confronting our demons that we gain the power to overcome them.

It’s a brave, uncompromising debut.

At times amusing, at others analytical, De Palma is both an homage and a lecture.

As fascinating as it is to peek in and eavesdrop on what appears to be an authentic Bob Dylan, Dont Look Back captures something that’s perhaps even more indicative of the songwriter’s nature: Dylan in transition.

Eclectic and unconventional in its presentation, Soundtrack’s density can throw you for a loop, especially if you don’t know the first thing about the geopolitics of the time and place. But it proves a healthy primer on the skeptical eye we should take towards world powers, and how even the art that’s meant to free us can be used against us.

While one of the few downsides of Causeway is the lingering desire to spend more time with these characters, the film holds an excellent return to form for Jennifer Lawrence and makes a stellar case for many more leading man roles for Brian Tyree Henry.

If the Avatar universe is going to be James Cameron’s preferred delivery method for visual spectacle on this scale going forward, then, let’s face it — by then, we’re all going to be itching for our next trip to Pandora.

It’s well-paced, the kills are inventive, and the gags largely land, especially for hardcore Scream devotees. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett finally have a lock on the amped-up Scooby-Doo mystery tone of Craven’s era, and that’s a blessing.

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.

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.

VFW delivers the goods—tough-guy dialogue, memorable characters, and so much splatter— and audiences will be giddy as adolescents as the gore literally explodes on screen.

Alone is exactly what it sells — a taut, hot-wired survival thriller. With its gaunt storytelling, meaty characters, and high-stakes action, the film delivers on all fronts.

Misdirection, tight spots, intimacy as danger. Allied is a paperback thriller’s greatest hits compilation. But the film’s plotting is lively and sincere, gussying up the staid tropes of intrigue into immediate pleasures and perils.

It is impressive, though, the way the movie works to incorporate new online phenomenons, from Bitcoin to swatting. The latter bit, especially, resonates as one of the film’s most unsettling elements, if only because it feels so depressingly possible. Truly, it’s surprising just how soul-crushing Dark Web becomes after luring us in with so many intriguing mysteries, but, hey, this is the internet we’re talking about.

Moonage Daydream reveals a man who took a tremendous bite out of the apple of life — and millions of star-people won’t soon forget.

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.

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.

Much as he might adore the man’s work, DeLillo’s mannered, precise writing occasionally clashes with the cheeky punch of Baumbach’s typical approach. When he leans into the artifice (see: the scenes around the Gladney dinner table, overlapping dialogue as the family circles around each other in a ritualistic dance), the film fizzes even through the chaos.

Craig’s performance on its own is worth the price of admission, and if nothing else Guadagnino really knows how to transport the viewer to a completely different place and time from today. With his films, the cliche has never been more true: The journey is the destination.

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.

Though the plot might feel a bit overly complicated, given the level of Serious Business being discussed in serious tones by these characters, it never drowns out the key emotional connection. There’s nothing seismic here, just a colorful, enjoyable yarn by one of the best cinematic confectioners around. One with some real heart to it.

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.

This unique blend of docudrama, action movie, and cartoon immerses the viewer in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a more traditional film.

A rich, complex drama that’s as much about consequence and justification as it is destiny.

This is sharp blockbuster filmmaking, coming at a time when IP is seemingly the only thing that gets any door open in Hollywood these days. Rather than churn out something cynical or pandering, though, Flanagan has instead taken that IP and instilled it with heart. Not just the chummy heart he’s hallmarked in past efforts, but the kind that comes from a creator who’s offered a chance to truly honor his influences and run with them.

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.

Even when the narrative strays or lingers a few moments too long, it is Kier that reels it back in. Ultimately, Swan Song succeeds and proves that fabulousness has no expiration date.

It’s a thrilling rollercoaster designed for the theatre made by one of the few working directors who truly knows how to make movies for a theatre.

The way Lowery observes Pete and Elliot’s relationship with nominal dialogue is beautiful. While it’s easy to deride the remake as commercially conceived, the film still feels as rare as the dragon it depicts, wholesome and heartfelt.

Molly’s Game is a successful crime drama, but it’s also a film that acknowledges the presence of both good and bad luck in the pursuit of excellence. Most importantly, it allows failure to exist as a living and breathing entity, rather than a tragic ending or a fate simply suffered by the morally impure. And that is what you might call exceptional.

Mangold’s steady direction doesn’t quite live up to Spielberg’s signature flair, but this is a solid entry in the franchise, solid enough to even inspire interest in future installments.

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

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.

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.

Does Rebirth set up a promising new future for the franchise, as its title suggests? Not exactly — again, this feels very much like a stand-alone adventure. But it does prove that it’s still possible to tell a suspenseful and exciting stand-alone story within this franchise; while it might not quite match the original, it at least doesn’t lose sight of its most compelling elements. Dinosaurs might be dying out. But the audience’s desire to watch them gobble up humans will never go extinct.

Peele is a talented director of action as well as horror, and Get Out is always far from boring even in its more familiar scenes.

Splicing DNA from Heathers, Lord of the Flies, The Invitation, and a host of other influences, Reijn has crafted a shrewd horror comedy that gives the virtual circular firing squads of our modern online lives a real body count.

As an allegory to civil war, it’s well-worked and deeply thoughtful. But overall, the film leaves a slightly bitter taste, and — perhaps purposely — lacks some of the final third conviction that McDonagh has achieved so often in his stage and film work.

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.

While the filmmaker is very much the protagonist of this story, the personal touches included don’t overwhelm the story — and in fact add a certain sweetness, especially as both women face setbacks in their quest, and their friendship grows deeper.

Host is so clever, so creepy, and so effective. At 56 minutes, this is a lean and mean slice of horror, a fitting opening salvo for the spooky season ahead.

The film is more than an accumulation of shocking twists and surprises. It’s a tawdry but perceptive meditation on the ways that victims of abuse build walls to protect themselves from harm — and the great lengths that someone would have to go to knock those walls down.

It all leads to a cinematic experience that’s powerful, scary, disturbing, and often quite funny.

There's a confidence to respect in this film, as it tells a story which feels fresh within the established framework.

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.

Armstrong’s dialogue flows like no one else’s, but there’s something just a little bit unbearable about listening to stupid people talk like they’re smart, and Armstrong doesn’t pull away from that aspect.

It’s a committed portrait of an artist, with White’s devotion to capturing Bruce’s soul almost overcoming the lack of physical resemblance… And you do eventually get used to that. For he’s not trying to be the definitive Bruce Springsteen, either — just a ghost of a man who was lost, and found what he was looking for in his music.

What makes The Princess so surprisingly fun is its commitment to a hooky premise.