A mostly meaningless film about meaninglessness, Under the Silver Lake nonetheless has enough fetid charm to justify wasting a few hours on it. After all, the movie ultimately suggests that wasting our time is the best we can do in this rotten, rigged life.

Key Largo belongs to its villain, through and through.

A predictable narrative is given rich contours in Little Woods.

The Painter and the Thief tells a remarkable story of artistic understanding, one which Rees gives a clever, two-part structure.

There isn’t a boring frame in the film, even when the scenes involve little more than long conversations between two people.

As a political satire, Let the Bullets Fly is pointed and precise.

The picture’s reason for being is Bacall, whose Marie “Slim” Browning slinks onto the screen asking Harry for matches and walks away with the entire movie.

Wonka may be more Paul King than Roald Dahl—it bears the clever kindness of Paddington and Paddington 2 far more than the clever cynicism of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author—but a worse fate could have befallen the iconic title character.

By its bombastic (and somewhat abrupt) final scene, you have to imagine that The Eyes of Tammy Faye accurately captures how Tammy Faye saw herself.

At it best, I Feel Pretty works as shameless fierce send-up of contemporary beauty standards.

Kong brings the personality, Godzilla brings the power, and we get to have the fun.

Time puts a face—and a family—to the systemic injustice within the American prison system, asking why it took an extraordinary woman’s extraordinary efforts to reclaim basic human rights.

One of Pixar’s smaller, sweeter efforts.

If In the Heights is packed with enough bold choices to invite both effusive praise and endless nitpicking, that comes with the genre.

Bergman Island deftly interrogates the idolization of art and the lionization of artists, while also distinguishing between experiencing a place and sucking it for “inspiration.”

This adaptation of Don’t Look Now by director Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, The Witches) is primarily an achievement in hallucinatory editing.

This is one of [Hitchcock's] significant works, accented by wickedly effective insert shots and a handful of strong performances.

This is, in many ways, a deeply thoughtful film—about loneliness, grief, anger, and finding something to truly care about. And Cage gives a performance that embodies all of those things.

Gosling excels at an open sort of stoicism, a way of keeping us at a distance on the surface while also giving us a peek inside. And so he’s a good fit for this take on Armstrong.

A romantic, flashback-rich narrative distinguishes this feature-length animated effort, which Warner Bros. was confident enough in to give a theatrical release.

If the movie’s straightforward dramatic and dialogue scenes don’t have the same delicacy as its more poetic gestures—especially once increasing crime, police harassment, and discriminatory housing policies close in on these two families—the film still stirs the soul as a counter-document to alarmist history.

Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench has more ambition than its talent can possibly live up to, but it’s an invigorating experience nonetheless.

A triumph of design, Raya and the Last Dragon is held back by a lackluster story, one cobbled together from various influences (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, an array of Southeast Asian cultures) and bent in service of a tortured—and somewhat confused—lesson about learning to trust.

Cooley High has the same youth-movie energy that defines some of the genre’s greats: American Graffiti, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. All of these films run on the mischievous, unfounded optimism that characterizes our teenage years. They make you nostalgic for naivete.

As a document of some of the top musical talent of the 1970s, The Last Waltz has a time-capsule quality that’s off the charts.

Robert Redford hovers like a ghost over A River Runs Through It—not so much as director (this is a sturdy if uninspired adaptation of Norman Maclean’s novella), but rather via his sacramental voiceover and the casting of a young Brad Pitt.

Before it strangely peters out, lost in its own conspiracies, The Shrouds registers as a mournful, if macabre, meditation on losing a loved one—as only writer-director David Cronenberg could manage.

This is a movie I was somewhat dreading—its premise just seems too possible in these fractious days—yet Garland managed to imbue Civil War with a solemnity and maturity that made me grateful for it. Let’s hope it remains a warning, not a weather vane.

Crawl lends credence to the claim that you should never give up on a director.

Wyler is smart enough to plant the camera fixed on Streisand, from the shoulders up, for her final number, “My Man.” Always willing to let his stars be the star, Wyler may have been the perfect choice to center her, for the first time, on the big screen.

Greene seems to have produced a respectful account of the experiment, allowing these men to find some form of catharsis without exploiting them.

The movie, for its part, is fairly lively. Especially arresting, from a visual standpoint, is an extended sequence in which Beau encounters members of an interactive theater troupe in a forest.

Garland and Mason don’t exactly generate sparks as a couple, and her histrionics in the dialogue scenes eventually overwhelm the picture. But early on, this has a a lot of Technicolor/CinemaScope magic.

Plan 9 from Outer Space may not be pure bliss to watch, but you certainly can feel the bliss that writer-director Edward D. Wood Jr. must have experienced while making it.

A curious comedy that neither looks back at Rear Window nor ahead to Vertigo, but rather exists in some goofy space all its own. It’s as if Hitchcock went on vacation, but kept working.

Watching Hold the Dark isn’t quite as interesting as ruminating on it afterwards, which is probably both a critique and a compliment.

Once Upon a Time in America paints a portrait of the United States as a land of shadows and violence, yet one that nevertheless has an irresistible, romantic pull. [2014 re-release]

Hoss (so riveting in Christian Petzold’s Phoenix) gives the strongest performance, arriving at the party with a goddess-like superiority that Hedda tragically chips away at as the night proceeds. Though not without a riveting fight.

We should never become accustomed to the horrors of war, so for all its familiarity (morally and formally), the movie still feels necessary.

Clearly May is invested in the material — she wrote it — and deserves credit for creating a fruitfully improvisational atmosphere. Yet she doesn’t leave a very distinct signature here, such as the social satire she brought to A New Leaf and The Heartbreak Kid.

I counted at least five different movies in 28 Years Later, director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland’s return to the zombie series they started with 28 Days Later back in 2002. Thankfully, each is brazenly, bizarrely, grotesquely compelling in its own way.

Widows largely works...not as a character study but as a consideration of corruption on a larger, societal scale.

If Neptune Frost plays like a visual album rather than a traditional movie (even a movie musical), it offers more substance than that description suggests.

This is as much Looney Tunes as Chaplin or Keaton—what with the manic pacing and animated flourishes, like question marks over characters’ heads—but in truth it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Crawford is riveting in the lead, tapping into David’s impotence and barely suppressed rage while also making him sadly sympathetic—especially in the sweetly sincere moments where he tries to maintain a genuine connection with his children.

Just when I was about to nod off, Top Gun: Maverick jostled me awake with a fresh approach to the sort of blockbuster entertainment that the original movie managed so expertly. Faint praise? Maybe. But also higher praise than I ever expected to be giving.

What’s really spooky about Candyman is that the movie is confused in almost exactly the way that the first film was. Maybe the material itself is haunted.

The Ross brothers—who handle the cinematography and editing in addition to directing duties—manage some indelible images, even as they stay as inconspicuous as possible.

Stray Dog is methodically paced, with long sequences of Murakami tailing a suspect or wandering crime-ridden alleys while undercover. He and Sato stake out another mark at a baseball game, which seems to go on forever. Yet if the movie drags, at times, it’s also enlivened by occasional visual flourishes.

This is a curious movie of both fury and quiet feeling, a take on the genre that’s occasionally explosive, but mostly, surprisingly pensive.

Zhou is fantastic as the schoolteacher-turned-rebel-leader; clearly not content to keep her head down, she’s always peering out of windows to get the lay of the land, even before she officially joins the movement.

It’s the performances that ultimately carry the film.

The Fall Guy isn’t perfect, but as a crowd-pleasing, romantic action comedy, driven by the magnetism of its stars, it feels like an increasingly rare treat.

The true revelation is Dyer. A fresh presence amidst the boys’ club of Stranger Things, she’s incredible here in a performance that ranges from understated drama to physical comedy.

There is no doubt the material is elevated by the interplay between Fey and Poehler.

Whenever the film settles on the two leads—who both melt into these real-world personas so thoroughly that Hannibal Lecter himself is soon forgotten—it becomes an intimate portrait of faith as a struggle, even for those at the very top.

This is a sad film, if beautifully observed, about a young girl learning that she won’t always be able to have her mom to herself—that, in fact, she never really had her in the first place.

Director Arthur Jones delivers a fascinating deep dive into meme culture, tracing how something like this can happen so quickly in our viral age.

Prince of the City mostly feels like a competent procedural, but it occasional startles with images of similar artistry.

In the fractured funhouse mirror that is Transit, contemporary France by way of World War II looks an awful lot like the United States in 2019.

Blow the Man Down snagged me right away with its bold, stylized opening.

What’s missing, in comparison to Nichols’ other movies, is an internalized angst.

Honest, incisive, and deeply sympathetic, Beach Rats is an intimate portrait of the cost that is paid when a teenager feels societal pressure to remain closeted.

What Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh did for Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Burton and Taylor do for Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? They remind us that sometimes writing and directing must simply step aside and concede the power of performance.

Lee gives this familiar figure of vengeance a soft, singular touch.

Watching Pearl, the first movie I thought of was The Wizard of Oz. This is as if Dorothy got sucked up by a tornado and dropped down in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—holding the chainsaw.

If Carney had wanted to dive into the darkness of this drama—and Hewson has the heavy eyelids to do it—he might have enabled her to give a powerhouse performance. This perhaps isn’t the great Flora and Son we might have wanted, but it’s the pretty good one we’ve got.

It’s often asked why battered women don’t “just leave.” Gaslight evokes the sort of psychological intimidation and cruel mind games that make it so much more complicated than that.

Shirley isn’t a masterful film, but it suggests that Decker has one in her.

As a narrative, Thunder Road doesn’t entirely cohere—various plot strands involve Jim’s ex-wife, his daughter, and his partner on the force—yet Cummings remains riveting, never letting you get an easy fix on this troubled, troubling character.

Bullitt earned its reputation for Steve McQueen’s lengthy car chase through the hills of San Francisco, and the sequence does have a gritty, low-tech authenticity. Yet there’s more to the movie than squealing wheels.

On the surface, A Quiet Place Part II is another expertly crafted and well-acted monster movie, much like its predecessor.

The silliness is as sharp and improvisational as ever, as are the impressions.

There is pleasure and poignancy in that adventure, even as it grows, but I was content to immerse myself in the seemingly hand-sketched, watercolor-hued opening sections.

Certainly The Phoenician Scheme still fits within what I’ve come to call “Wes Anderson’s restoration cinema.” It just does so more plainly, less poetically.

Bob Fosse’s half-confession about what a jerk he was to the women in his life may pull a lot of punches, but there’s just too much art on the screen to completely disregard the effort.

There’s joy in watching Cooper, for the most part, actually pull this off—including the gamble of casting an acting novice in the crucial title role.

There has been debate over the graphic depiction of violence in the film, which is sickening and unblinking. Still, the explicitness undoubtedly forces you to face the brutal trauma that was inflicted upon women in this particular time and place—indeed, has been inflicted throughout history.

A work of blockbuster auteurism, Avatar: The Way of Water wildly, weirdly expends massive resources on a vision at once generic and bizarrely idiosyncratic, for better and for worse.

How thoroughly does Joan Crawford own Grand Hotel? She makes Greta Garbo superfluous. A star parade (and Best Picture winner), Grand Hotel unfairly encourages such comparisons.

Gazzara is riveting as man who exudes cool and calm—style—while also stinking of panic.

Unfortunately the screenplay, by Dana Stevens, relies on crowd-pleasing story beats and injects a groan-worthy romantic subplot; the movie yearns a bit too much to be a hit. At least director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights, The Old Guard) brings a lively musicality to the sequences depicting Dahomey cultural rituals, as well as a clean ferocity to the many (and gruesome) battle sequences.

The Long Goodbye is cheeky and often cheerily meta, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a lark.

It’s astonishing, and a bit sad really, how prescient Real Life was in retrospect. In 1979, Albert Brooks had already predicted and skewered the contrived inauthenticity of reality television with this biting mockumentary, yet we’ve gone ahead and given over much of our entertainment hours to the format anyway.

The Northman throws a few wrinkles into its vengeance story, but doesn’t offer up much food for thought. This is mostly a visual extravaganza of gritty historical detail, mythic imagination, and brutally horrific violence.

Lust for Life features exhilarating scenes of Van Gogh at work, often set in the locations of some of his most famous paintings and punctuated with close-ups of the original artwork. Like the 2017 animated experiment Loving Vincent, the movie functions not only as a biopic, but as an exercise in aesthetic reinterpretation.

Onward may not rank among Pixar’s best, but the studio’s ability to gently tweak heartstrings, without overdoing it, remains intact.

If you’re going to take on an iconic role like Mary Poppins, it doesn’t pay to be timid. You might as well go for it. Emily Blunt does just that in Mary Poppins Returns, taking the Julie Andrews template, honoring it to a T, and adding her own lively spark.

You can see the movie’s influence on everything from Forrest Gump to Idiocracy to Elf, all comedies with oblivious, world-changing simpletons at their center.

Old is vintage M. Night: a high concept brought ever higher by a filmmaker apparently incapable of second-guessing himself.

Here and there, Coppola seems interested in poking that Murray persona. On the Rocks would have been much better if Murray had done some poking too.

As adapted from the beloved Jane Austen novel by screenwriter Eleanor Catton and director Autumn de Wilde, Emma. is a cheerful confection—brightly colored, briskly consumed—and as such a worthy representation of one of the great literary characters.

A smart, sweet gem of a comedy.

She Dies Tomorrow is compelling, but I can’t say I ever truly felt the infectiousness that’s experienced by the characters.

Ophuls’ technique is often on the nose, but it’s still exhilarating.

Moura captivates as the quietly seething central figure, while Filho’s use of saturated colors and lively diegetic music make The Secret Agent a sumptuously unsettling experience.

When it remains focused on Ruth’s subjective perspective, it offers something special, and tough.

Superman is a bastion of blockbuster innocence, a movie that’s a studio product, certainly, but also something that could have grown from one of Smallville’s sun-kissed cornfields.