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.