The visual design is a trip, combining a comic-book aesthetic (not just the use of panels and dialogue balloons, but also digital tricks that mimic the hand drawing and paper printing of an actual comic) with the dynamism of state-of-the-art animation.

David Oyelowo plays King, and there’s no denying he brings a charismatic forcefulness to the part. This is particularly true in his speeches, which begin calmly, rooted in reason, and then whip up into a righteous fury that he struggles to contain and barely – just barely – does.

This is noir as costume party.

If Beale Street Could Talk is less interested in railing against systemic racism than lamenting the everyday goodness that is lost when racism carries the day.

An amusing and heartfelt exercise in boots-on-the-ground feminism, Support the Girls takes place in an unlikely location for such an endeavor.

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

A very particular sort of camera is at work in Hale County This Morning, This Evening. It peers from unconventional angles, lingers on images longer than they at first seem to deserve, and generally offers a perspective that is at once unremarkable, given the everyday subject matter, and revealing.

Vox Lux has such snarky contempt for pop music—or at least the star-making machinery that governs it—that you wonder why writer-director Brady Corbet bothered to make an entire movie about the subject.

As for the actors, Weisz gets to showcase her skill for subterfuge, while Stone reveals new levels of manipulation and deceit. But it’s the lesser-known Colman, as Queen Anne, who ultimately wrests control of the film.

Shoplifters definitely goes after your heartstrings, yet especially after some third-act revelations put this family in a larger social context, the movie earns any tears it gets.

The only thing I can imagine anyone offering in complaint about Roma is that the movie delivers an uncomplicated depiction of a secular saint. That’s true, to an extent, and yet it’s also what I love about this full-hearted, exquisitely crafted, deeply grateful film.

It will restore your faith in grace, goodness, and maybe—just maybe—even in humanity.

There is a soft sadness that permeates the film and steadily spreads, until it gradually devours each of the main characters. It may devour you.

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

There are laughs aplenty in this lawless, arbitrary, mythological Old West, but a feel-good yarn it ain’t.

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

This is Mulligan’s show. Her risky, raw performance is the life force of an otherwise muted film.

The first Suspiria is a psychedelic sensory experience, but it didn’t really mean much. The remake, written by David Kajganich and directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), tries to bring too much meaning to its horror conceit.

Hahn and Giamatti make for a great movie couple, in that the very way they stand near each other makes you believe they’ve already been through better and worse.

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.

There are two curious elements to The Land of Steady Habits: writer-director Nicole Holofcener centering a film around a male protagonist; and Ben Mendelsohn giving a regular-guy, mildly comic performance. I wish both experiments had paid off a bit more.

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

The film clumsily stumbles into feminist significance in its final moments, without having laid much groundwork for it beforehand.

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.

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.

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.

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

I’m all for scaring kids at the movies, and even allowing dark magic to be a part of that. (I’m a fan of The Witches, after all.) But the indiscriminate application of intense horror tropes here feels both clumsy and inconsiderate. Kids deserve both more, and less.