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.

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.

By the time we finally do get to the blood and guts, the filmmakers have laid such an artful foundation that the viscera is just another part of Suspiria‘s hypnotic modern dance.

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.

I might not be able to tell you what exactly Assassination Nation is, but the one thing I can confidently say is that it’s not easy to forget or dismiss.

Though Life Itself is neither good nor “so bad it’s good,” it’s also such a bizarre, inexplicable film that it’s almost worth seeking out just to experience it for yourself. For those who want to watch a worthwhile family melodrama, however, just stick with This Is Us.

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.

Mandy is destined to live forever as a cult favorite, but what’s going to set it apart from so many others is the way in which Cosmatos sustains the emotional stakes of Red’s quest through the entire film.

If Double Indemnity were a hangout movie, this would be its sequel. It’s delicious.

As a writer and director, Hill demonstrates an endearing and encouraging empathy for his characters, crafting a portrait of adolescence that allows every emotion and every decision — from the most relatable at any age to the most boneheaded — to exist without irony, judgement, or condescension.

White Boy Rick is a collection of interesting enough scenes in desperate need of a more cohesive framework.

The way that Chazelle films the inside of a cockpit (claustrophobic, sensorily overwhelming, fraught with potential danger) and space (stark, haunting, stunning) are both testaments to what’s possible with the latest advancements in technology and vision in filmmaking. That said, it’s hard not to wonder why this particular film, as well-crafted as it is, was made now.

Lizzie isn’t exactly an exciting film, but it’s absolutely a compelling one. Much of that, again, emerges from Sevigny’s work, who finds the notes of delicacy that the film around her occasionally lacks.

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

To watch it is to open a pizza box that’s been jostled a few too many times. Inside, the cheese clings to the cardboard, sauce splashes against the sides, and pepperonis drip with grease. It might be sloppy, but you’ll be damned if it don’t still taste good.

It’s all deliciously fun and deliriously devious, but Widows isn’t just an exercise in sheer escapism.

Weaving together the past and the present, masterful interpretations of Baldwin’s incredible prose, gorgeous visuals, and a sweeping score, If Beale Street Could Talk draws audiences into its overwhelming mix of emotions all at once.

It’s good to see Black and Dekker offer up something so boisterous and stupid as The Predator. Is it messy? Absolutely. But, is it fun? It’s popcorn, baby.

Between its structure, its worldview, and its anti-heroine, Destroyer is almost impossible to ignore. Love it or hate it, it will still leave an impression and it will undoubtedly inspire discussion.

Halloween deserves credit for its efforts to balance old and new, for taking us back to Haddonfield in a way that isn’t purely for cheap nostalgia, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that there’s something more that it could have been achieved.

In a climate where far too much entertainment passes itself off as “resistance” for making empty gestures and landing easy punchlines, this is at least a step toward a more honest and open look at what America has always been, what it really is now, and what it’s going to take to make it live up to even a fraction of its dream.

As a parade of exaggerated neon-soaked atrocities, Climax is certainly never boring, but it often strains credulity where it aims to provoke genuine discomfort. It exhausts where it should provoke.

If Peppermint has one thing going for it, and it’s by and large the only one, it’s Garner.

It’s about as effective as a Walgreens Halloween display, where any terror derives from uninspiring shock value, and given that each and every pop-up scare can be seen from over a mile away, the movie fails in that respect, too. It’s exhausting even.

The Little Stranger slowly mutates into a harrowing treatise on the ways in which absolute privilege can corrupt absolutely.

Support the Girls is the kind of film that sneaks up on you as it’s going along.

It becomes clear all too quickly that “puppets say swears” is all the film has to offer, so it’s a slog to sit through the remaining seventy minutes of that same joke, repeated ad nauseam.

A perversely fascinating mess from start to finish, Mile 22 is Berg’s most baffling attempt yet to make art out of the most virulent post-9/11 fears about terrorism and international espionage.