The Nest proceeds pretty much how we expect before ending on a grace note that feels well-earned. It’s a compelling story, but what makes the movie special is the fact that we’ve had Coon to watch along the way.

An original script from Arthur Miller, The Misfits turns on the playwright’s usual concern: that of the individual trying to maintain his identity in a changing world.

Shelley scholars will likely have much to quibble with here, but for Buckley admirers, The Bride! is a must.

I’m not exactly sure what tone Friendship means to set, but the movie itself feels confident in its own skin. And that counts for a lot.

The result is a sci-fi fantasy that’s part Fantastic Planet and part Miyazaki.

With a mixture of cheeky stock footage (including, yes, Charlton Heston’s The Ten Commandments), ironic soundtrack choices, and abrupt edits that function as record-scratch exclamation points, Lane’s film breezily stays above the fray.

If Test Pattern feels a bit unfinished by its end, it’s not because I wanted resolution—documenting the refusal of resolution seems to be the point—but because there seemed to still be more, especially between the main couple, to explore.

The actor’s cadences and vocal register are different than the real Rogers (did I detect an illogical Southern accent here and there?), but he mostly embodies the lightness with which Rogers held the screen, the unhurried manner in which he spoke to people, and the way, while watching his show, the world stopped for a little while and you felt like someone deeply cared.

Burning Cane doesn’t resolve things as much as it makes poetry of them, right from its opening shot of the radiant beams of the sun shining upon the drifting smoke of a smoldering sugarcane field. Sometimes it seems as if there’s no escape from the stain of sin.

Returning director Chad Stahelski not only gives the fight sequences the time and space they deserve (while thankfully also pulling back on the gun fetishism that had begun to take over the series), he and cinematographer Dan Laustsen bathe the proceedings in a color scheme that could be described as “nocturnal menace.”

Baumbach gets career-best performances from the leads.

Of course, Cruz is luminous—especially as she embraces a maternal side that is at once nurturing and ferocious.

The Killer is a gorgeously sterile, de-romanticized riff on the likes of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (which notably features a near-silent assassin) and countless other hit-man movies, peppered with sideswipes at capitalism.

At its best, the movie captures the thrill of those moments, whether romantic or friendly, when you realize something special is happening.

What’s difficult to get past, even in Encore, is the queasiness of those minstrelsy club numbers, where the White audience gazes at Black bodies as the camera performs pyrotechnics. The vantage point is simply too compromised.

When The Dead Don’t Die sputters, you fear that Jarmusch’s political angst may have paralyzed him. But then there is the bleak, sardonic beauty of the climactic scene.

With The Card Counter, Schrader offers another self-flagellating portrait of a man who’s experienced—and enacted—great sin, struggling to perceive anything akin to divine grace.

In Longlegs, writer-director Oz Perkins establishes a strong enough sense of mood and atmosphere to absorb a DEFCON-2 level Nicolas Cage performance

If your sense of humor leans heavily on wordplay and vaudevillian puns, you might even find the movie to be hilarious.

Like Marty, the movie wants to impress us. And like Marty, there’s something about it I don’t trust.

Shiva Baby has a comic claustrophobia that almost makes you choke, so intense is its depiction of familial/traditional walls closing in on its main character.

Most of the picture takes place on a luxury cruise liner – on which Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo are stowaways – and the setting makes for a wonderful comic playground. Racing up and down decks and in and out of cabins, the brothers exhibit a more sophisticated sense of staging and interplay than they did in something like Animal Crackers.

By the time Oppenheimer ends, it becomes more about the interpersonal problems of two miniscule men—miniscule, at least, against the backdrop of the cataclysmic, world-destroying questions and implications it had been exploring.

The movie vacillates between a metaphorical meditation on the debilitating demands of motherhood in general and a reality-based drama about dealing with a particular child eating disorder, yet Byrne gives a performance that’s game for both.

The movie’s best moments are those of cinebro-bonding between Pascal and Cage’s characters.

The Fishing Place registers more as a calculated, intellectual exercise—particularly in the bold decision to break the fourth wall with 30 minutes left in the film and remain there, again via a single take.

The central romance of I Know Where I’m Going! may be a bit of a drip, but swirling around it are filmmaking flourishes of the sort that the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger would lavish on the cinema throughout the 1940s, under the name of The Archers.

The whodunit plot is a bit laborious and uninvolving, but William Powell and Myrna Loy are so delightful together—slurrily sexy in the manner of the 1930s, when words and glances had to do all of the work—that it hardly matters.

In addition to the requisite action and excitement, there’s a painterliness to Twisters that I didn’t expect.

The movie belongs, without question, to Fraser, whose performance relies not on pity or saintliness (Charlie has his faults as well), but a gentle, even beguiling belief in dignity for all.

A lot of fun, even if it could have been better if it had taken itself just a smidge more seriously.

Cukor does stage a crackerjack sleigh chase in the climax (the movies need more of those), while overall managing to capture Crawford at what feels like a crucial juncture of her career, just as the gloves were really coming off.

White Noise is ultimately an absurdist comedy, with Gerwig and Driver as the victims/clowns at its center (he wears a suit of amusing denialism, while she floats about in a tragicomic state of daze).

One of Hollywood’s true curiosities. At times a charming, kiddie Western, this John Wayne vehicle also has a real nasty streak.

Majors is easily the best thing in this third Rocky offshoot.

Palm Springs is fun, but long live the theatrical experience.

The movie is a collection of ghoulish creative impulses (some of them gorily sadistic, as when a character is trapped in a room of barbed wire) rather than a coherent story.

[Zellweger’s] unrecognizable, in appearance and level of conviction. Even with the gaps I have in her filmography, I feel safe saying this is a career-best performance.

The definition of a satisfying Hollywood action drama.

One side effect of a tagalong project like Lightyear is that even while the movie is rightly being shrugged off as another reheat, moments of real artistry will get overlooked. The animation in this Toy Story-adjacent adventure is astounding; with each new movie, the studio advances the art form in incremental ways.

This sounds a bit like Hitchcock, but Charade—written by Peter Stone and directed by Stanley Donen—isn’t nearly interested enough in humanity’s dark side to qualify. The movie just wants to have fun.

With or without special effects, Twister delivers the same sort of suspense that’s been a staple of good drama since storytelling began.

Directed by Marielle Heller, Can You Ever Forgive Me? has its funny moments—Richard E. Grant proves to be a sublime comic partner as Jack Hock, a fellow alcoholic who gets roped into Lee’s scheme—but mostly the movie is immensely sad, the story of a woman who deep down desires companionship but just isn’t wired to accept it.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a pair of performances—no, it’s really a singular, joint performance—like what we get from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar.

The movie is a hate-watch thriller that scoffs at its characters as much as you do.

Love Lives Bleeding has a grimy verve all its own. It’s a nightmare metaphor for how hard some people have to fight for love, especially when it’s not approved of.

A light delight, even if you have no experience with the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves takes its fantasy world seriously, but not itself.

In Andrei Tarkovsky’s science-fiction masterpiece Solaris, a character observes that even in the depths of outer space, “we want a mirror.” Perhaps that’s why Ad Astra—starring Brad Pitt as an astronaut in the near future who travels to Neptune to find his missing scientist father—feels like the most visually arresting session of talk therapy you’ve ever experienced.

I point this out not to exonerate Lorincz in any way—goodness knows that the sheriff’s investigation in the doc’s final third gives her outrageously more leeway than a Black suspect would receive. Still in monsterizing her in this way, The Perfect Neighbor lets viewers off the hook.

It’s amusing, in a Barry Lyndon sort of way, but also feels a bit blinkered. Discounting Napoleon Bonaparte as a buffoon who merely benefitted from societal chaos does a disservice to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, he left dead.

More successful as a quiet, nuanced family drama than a broad social satire.

Black Is King—like the offstage sequences of Homecoming or the soft-glow segments of Lemonade—is ultimately a project of image cultivation. African history, African-American experience, Timon and Pumbaa—all bend in service of a staggeringly talented star. It’s an astral projection that nearly functions as an eclipse.

Ready or Not works best as a black comedy about how far the obscenely rich will go to keep what they (undeservedly) have.

It’s as if a mid-century work of Italian neorealism took a nap in a field and had a dream.

Much of Holler’s plotting feels driven by issues (factory layoffs, opioids) rather than allowing those issues to naturally exist within the narrative, but Adlon brings an exhausted authenticity to the film that makes up for it.

If Local Hero is ultimately less complicated than its reputation might suggest, writer-director Bill Forsyth navigates the tale with a warmth and wry humor that wins you over, while the seaside vistas—captured by cinematographer Chris Menges—are ridiculously beautiful.

Harrowing, certainly, but also a beautiful promise of renewal.

Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie) manage a coherent tone of genial wonder, while also offering some stunning, color-soaked space visuals, as well as a witty camera.

The movie wants us to see how the butter is made, nothing more and nothing less.

Wise and witty, Inside Out 2 continues the Pixar tradition in the ways that matter most.

Wunmi Mosaku (Ruby on HBO’s Lovecraft Country) has a fierce sense of determination, even if her character has to defer in this traditional marriage, and Sope Dirisu keeps revealing more and more layers to the husband, a man struggling to survive under what ultimately feels like the curse of assimilation.

Nosferatu feels unique compared to other Dracula variations in the way this world appears drained—of color, light, nearly life itself. It’s as if blood has been sucked from the very images.

The techniques ultimately reveal the way art can foster the sort of emotional connection that is vital to the human experience.

It’s only when She Said opens up to consider Twohey and Kantor’s home lives, as well as the ruined lives of the Weinstein victims they interview, that the film exhibits some vigor.

The Farewell resists any temptation to be a wacky, extended family comedy and instead stays true to the sadness of its central premise.

It works itself up into a fine froth by the climax, and even manages to score some political points against the repressive Iranian regime in the process.

One Night in Miami—adapted by Kemp Powers from his own play, as well as the directorial debut of actress Regina King—manages to elevate that conceit (and its obvious stage origins) with sharp performances and a bold directorial hand.

The Brutalist is a momentous movie, if not quite as momentous as it thinks it is.

Without such careful world-building, to an outside observer Bacurau feels like a bunch of bonkers set pieces in a vacuum.

Even for a Wong Kar-wai film, Fallen Angels is lavishly stylized.

I’d say the movie is a lot, but you’d need way more than those four letters to cover it.

All Light, Everywhere is very smart and extremely meta (Anthony often films himself and his crew setting up a shot, to emphasize the observational point), though it can be a bit dry.

Paris, Texas has an undeniable power. There is certainly a sort of transcendence to be found in the sight of Travis, wearing those 40 miles of rough road on his face, finally finding a measure of peace.

The movie considers what it means to move on, to reconcile with the past while creating a new future. For both a city and a person. And, perhaps, a sea nymph.

Another 1990s domestic parable chastising workaholic dads, The River Wild also functions as a gorgeous travelogue and a Meryl Streep action film. Director Curtis Hanson sure packs a lot into one river trip.

Not quite one of the Disney classics, yet still delightful, this little ditty owes much of its charm to its precise anthropomorphization.

It’s less Close Encounters of the Third Kind and more like a special episode of The Twilight Zone, starring The X-Files’ Mulder and Scully. Which is to say, pretty fun.

Yes, Meet John Doe is “talky” (if politically astute). That—along with a fairly inert romance between Stanwyck and Cooper—counts against it. But the cast commits with full hearts, especially Cooper, who creates a character both silly (there’s some great physical comedy in his reactions to being put up in a posh hotel room) and sincere.

Da 5 Bloods may be mid-tier Spike for me, but man did we need it in June of 2020.

Writer-director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) paints a communal portrait with a large cast of characters, which makes the film feel a bit wandering and amorphous at times. Yet there are arresting, individual moments.

Director Sian Heder had an obvious aesthetic card to play with CODA, and she saves it for just the right moment.

The movie’s most distinctive feature, especially as a family biopic, is the tragic nature of this story. The Iron Claw is a downer that ickily sticks with you.

The undercurrent of economic insecurity is gone, replaced by a generic, “get-the-band-back-together” plot, but this sequel to Magic Mike still shines as a movie musical.

A powder keg of movie-musical performances, Wicked balloons the Broadway sensation in unnecessary ways—this is only Part I, despite the fact that it runs nearly three hours—but I hardly minded thanks to the dynamic force of its two leads.

Thankfully a sharp cast and goofy wit mostly keep the movie light on its feet.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower turns homage into a richly rewarding adventure.

Daughters centers on a real-life event that is emotional catnip—a dance for daughters and their incarcerated fathers—but the documentary, like the men it features, earns its way to that overwhelming moment.

There’s a soft, dim quality to the air in Clementine, the feature debut of writer-director Lara Gallagher. It sometimes blurs into murkiness, but mostly it gives the psychological drama an appropriately dusky glow. This is a movie about not being able to see others clearly, and how that distorts the way you see yourself.

There’s a fleshiness to the material that you can almost feel, as if you were stroking your own face.

Considering this is a remake of a superior 1997 Norwegian film, director Christopher Nolan doesn’t create anything nearly as inventive as his Memento, but at least Insomnia is expertly conventional.

Dumbo ends happily enough...but all that comes in a rushed finale; the movie is more interested in capturing the shadings and sounds of sadness (so many scenes take place in the blue night).

Sean Baker’s movies see people for their humanity first and their circumstances second, an approach that has never been more clear than in Starlet.

Writer-director Alex Russell, making his feature debut, offers a creepy, Talented Mr. Ripley-style character study that doubles as a meditation on celebrity and authenticity.

Overall, this is genuinely moving and instructive, though I do wish it was a wee bit funnier, considering the onscreen talent and the fact that director Josh Greenbaum guided the sublimely silly Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar.

Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) lets the racial tension largely simmer beneath the surface (Terry is Black), leaning into his trademark, straight-ahead propulsive style.

Sure, it may look like it was filmed in a parking garage and the story seems cobbled together by someone who fell asleep during Raiders of the Lost Ark and Romancing the Stone, but it’s still hard to resist The Lost City as it coasts along on the charisma and chemistry of its stars.

When it comes to 1980s comedies about urban anxiety, I prefer this Ron Howard lark to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. Partly this is due to the manic brio of Michael Keaton in his feature debut, but it’s also the fact that the movie—written by the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel—has a better control of comic pacing and energy. Not all the jokes land (and some are problematically dated), but an awful lot of them do, with exactly the right timing and intensity.

The movie won’t change your world—but it’s nice watching two lost people experience a hopeful change in theirs.