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.