Beyond being very smart and funny, it's also a great looking movie.

It’s mind-boggling that this entire thing was shot on soundstages using greenscreens. Favreau’s jungle feels like a real place, but it’s heightened and stylized and it feels like a perfect fit for the talking animals who make up the majority of the cast.

The film is at its best when it simply focuses on this strange dynamic between the two couples and the way they are each looking for something from the other that they don't dare articulate for fear of having to grapple with these weaknesses or flaws in themselves.

The fact Tomlin is so good also highlights the film's biggest problem. Too much of what works in Grandma comes from the subtle touches Tomlin, Elliott and Harden bring to their characters, not Weitz’s script.

Intermittently playful, consistently confounding, finally petrified, it's a film of fussy, cultivated austerity.

This is a sequel that has its own story to tell and that gets right down to it, and it expands on the ideas from the first film, but in a way that tells a thematically satisfying and complete story. In other words, this is how franchises are supposed to work.

Guardians Of The Galaxy is the most charming Marvel movie so far. The primary ensemble (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel) is perhaps the most winning group of characters they've introduced in any of these movies.

Other than the unsubtle but vivid storytelling, the main joy of 99 Homes is seeing two excellent but very different actors spark off each other for almost the entire runtime, in a brace of performances both brilliant and brilliantly matched.

Housebound is that rare film that manages to be funny without defusing any of its scares.

This is a very raw, sad, and beautiful film about faith and fatherhood, and it feels just as grounded and big-hearted as the other films Nichals has made.

It is as impressive as any movie released this year, but the storytelling falters in some fundamental ways that keep me from completely adoring it. Innaritu dreams big, and he has the muscle to back it up. The Revenant may not be his best film yet, but it's hard to imagine many filmmakers who are working at a higher level than he is these days.

Economically told from the start, the film moves beautifully.

The film plays with tension beautifully, and there are a few set pieces that I think are all-timers.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire more than makes the case for this as a franchise that's going to get better as it goes, and I am genuinely excited to see how they wrap it up.

Baumbach has cast a wonderfully talented group of up-and-coming actors around Gerwig and Kirke, but it's the screenplay and the leads' incredible chemistry that makes it all so entertaining. There are so many one-liners that you miss because the previous line of dialogue is just as smart and laugh-inducing.

Frank rides a really strange tone, and director Lenny Abrahamson deserves credit for how he manages to make the strange and the sad and the funny all feel like it's part of the same film.

When Garbus lets Simone show us why she's special What Happened, Miss Simone? is successful and vital.

There is a giddy sense of glee that runs through most of this movie, making it feel like Feig can barely contain himself with all of the things he wants to do and show you in the movie.

It's full of laughs and, towards the end, I even got a bit choked up in places.

What makes Captain America: Civil War such a terrific accomplishment is the way it takes what could have been the most crass and overcrowded story to adapt as a film and instead transforms it into an examination of just who these heroes are and what impact they’ve had on the world around them, and vice versa.

It feels like the single most successful attempt to pull the shape of one of the beloved comic stories into the film world. It also feels like Bryan Singer has finally figured out how to shoot an action scene where the X-Men actually look and feel like the X-Men, and where the fantastic is handled the right way.

The characters are so well drawn (and the relatively young cast steps up to the plate) that combined with the material’s natural tension you’ll find yourself riveted to the proceedings.

Trainwreck is more than funny. It's also wise, and that hard-won wisdom makes this a can't-miss for anyone who feels bruised by love, but never beaten.

I would argue that this may be the funniest of the films overall, and with Robert Elswit shooting it, it's absolutely gorgeous, with crisp, clean action choreography that you can actually see.

It's a fresh, beautiful and heartbreaking achievement that continues to surprise until the very last scene. It's dangerous to call something an instant classic, but sometimes it's simply the truth.

Southside With You is quietly romantic, but more than that, it burns with a deep sense of optimism.

Witherspoon does really uncompromising work here, playing Cheryl without any hesitancy or any fear or any ego. It's not a glamorous role, and she doesn't try to make Cheryl seem perfect, and she doesn't sand off this woman's rough edges.

There are no real stakes, and I find the attempts at creating suspense to be almost offensive. Irritating, at the very least.