The humanity on screen might be messy, but the skill with which it’s portrayed never is.

Roma is both visually and emotionally arresting, grandiose and intensely intimate all at once.

A revelatory burst of Black history suffused with the joy and struggle that made it possible.

Ejiofor is truly incredible from start to finish. McQueen’s approach to Solomon’s struggle is seamless, eschewing onscreen titles or obvious discussions of lapsed time or virtually anything that could briefly detach a viewer from their immersion into Solomon’s real-life nightmare.

This is pitch-perfect filmmaking, the kind that turns a hungry visionary into a popular last name. Rest assured, it’s all earned. Manchester by the Sea is a hearty, rewarding drama audiences will remember for years.

McQueen’s focus is on the community, not the individual; his focus is on the party as a whole and the optimism and community it engenders. Films about the unabashed celebration of Black joy and success are few and far between, which makes Lovers Rock all the more remarkable.

There’s something relatively shocking about the way One Battle After Another comments on This Moment In Time; it almost seems like production on the movie wrapped yesterday, as opposed to mid-2024. Yet while its focus on issues of political power, immigration, and the rise of white supremacy are all too relevant, Anderson never loses sight of his characters, and the different ways in which they commit to taking action.

I Am Not Your Negro is the kind of documentary that could open ears, eyes, and hearts with its moving agony and historical empathy.

By minimalizing his loftier techniques and tendencies of the past with brusque pacing and grand photography, Nolan has assembled the leanest and most impassioned film of his career.

The execution of this story is almost uniformly perfect. Haigh’s script and direction are a clinic in careful and measured storytelling, favoring a delicate and devastating slow burn of a narrative over big dramatic moments and outbursts.

The Irishman is a remarkable achievement that proves the best may yet to come from one of the most essential American filmmakers to ever live.

Inside Out is a superlative work of inspired imagination, one that may very well stay in your mind for a very long time.

The best movies are little worlds that welcome you into the experiences of fascinating characters, giving you everything you need to understand their perspectives and actions. Past Lives does so in spades, painting on a small canvas, but with rich hues of emotion and meaning, knowing that a great story and a great life aren’t necessarily the same thing.

It’s a transcendent love story, and a work of overwhelming empathy.

Johansson and Driver both give strong performances, while the use of supporting characters for comedic levity is smartly executed. While the content of the film isn’t happy per se, audiences will find much to like.

The superficial thrills of the genre are all present and adoringly rendered, but the actual purpose of the whole exercise is much harder to discern.

Despite hitting so many classic coming-of-age hallmarks, Lady Bird never feels anything but fresh (and refreshing). This is, in part, due to the the film’s remarkably realistic performances.

It is as much a celebration of song and contemporary dance as it is a call to action about the need to embrace our humanity and connect with others. Quite simply: it’s a joy.

It’s moving stuff, even if Kore-eda threatens to dilute his themes by overindulging in them. Shoplifters overstays its welcome somewhat as the third act rolls on, with an epilogue that seems to exist only to absolve characters that don’t quite deserve it. The empathy is admirable, but one wishes for a touch more restraint, especially in the wake of such an emotionally devastating climax.

What makes Toni Erdmann, the finest comedy in recent memory, so wonderful and beguiling is the deep undercurrent of sadness that informs its eventual life lessons.

While Howard Ratner is undeniably Adam Sandler, one of the most famous actors in the world, you’ve definitely never seen him like this before. He’s working with non-actors, some of them literally off the street because this is a Safdies production, and there’s just a sense of authenticity and rawness that you don’t see in mainstream cinema.

The film exudes pure humanity in every frame, in all of its messiness and splendor and tragedy, and much of that raw emotion is owed to the performances.

The glory of Hittman’s film is in finding those moments of beauty among the brutal silences, and the magnetic grace that can be found in a person’s most difficult days.

Grounded and yet also experimental, cold at some points and intimate at others, The Zone of Interest is one of the year’s most deliberately challenging films, unafraid to explore one of humanity’s darkest moments from some unexpected angles.

The Souvenir‘s power is deceptive, in a way; it’s only at the film’s end, at the moment of its bracing final image, that its ideas and genre subversions come fully into focus.

This is Spinal Tap is hilarious to everyone who’s not a musician. Because for as ridiculous and perverse as Rob Reiner’s heavy metal mockumentary gets, the slim, 82-minute comedy gnaws at more truths than any other rock ‘n’ roll biopic ever put to celluloid.

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.

This is despairing filmmaking, but also the kind that arrests the eye from its first moments. Lee has made something rare here: a portrait of poverty that treats its subjects not as victims or as aggressors, but simply as pawns of a far grander social scheme than any of them can possibly comprehend.