The danger of movies based on conceptual wit is that they will lose steam as things proceed and the filmmakers run out of ideas. Thankfully, Maddin and the Johnsons effectively develop their story — goofy and absurd though it may be — so that these constant digs at our ineffectual leaders do coalesce into something meaningful and alarming.

Cronenberg is transmitting to us from the borders of death, behind the enemy lines of inconsolable grief. And the man’s mind is still so alive that it seems churlish to ding this movie for being so — God, this isn’t the word I want to use, but I must — lifeless. Sadly, the inertia eventually gets to us.

Horizon feels like the opening chapters of a grand novel patiently rolling into place, carefully delineating characters and offering telltale glimpses into their lives. It’s rich in period detail and filled with majestic vistas that seem to match the expanse of its story. But this can be a curse, too, at least while the film only exists as this one installment.

Whenever it finally opens, we’ll probably all be too busy trying to cancel each other over this or that, in part because, despite the fact that he makes grandiose, overstuffed films, Audiard rarely holds our hand when it comes to telling us how to feel about his characters; he has a maximalist’s eye and a minimalist’s heart, which is a fascinating tension to bring into a musical.

Oh, Canada might be a movie that was conceived in the long dark night of the soul, but it moves towards brightness and possibility.

The Scargiver plays like a screensaver. Its shots are littered with lens flares and aesthetically pleasing smoke, with the contrast of golden light and planted fields alongside spacecraft and gas giants on the horizon. It would be just as evocative as a carousel of stills on an unused monitor, or maybe more so, given that the stills wouldn’t be accompanied by ponderous dialogue.

It’s a cheap-thrill movie, and on that score it mostly delivers.

I cried at the end of Babes, despite thinking that it wasn’t working all that well for most of its run time. Movies can be funny that way, leaving you indifferent for long stretches and then walloping you with an emotional moment that’s even more effective for how you didn’t see it coming.

Lanthimos’s unwavering, matter-of-fact style embodies the unquestioning nature of his characters. And while the internal logic of his controlled worlds feels ironclad, it never really is. The filmmaker’s precision is a ruse, a magic trick designed to make us think one thing while quietly building a case for its opposite: the reality that none of this makes any sense.

It’s a film about Amy Winehouse that just doesn’t care for Amy Winehouse much, as an artist or as a person.

Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it.

Furiosa — somber, steady, and supremely twisted — is a reminder that none of this stuff is really supposed to be cool.

The Planet of the Apes movies were built on rage and shame about the world as it exists. And whatever its many flaws, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes gets that largely right.

A generous film that’s ragged at the edges but manages bursts of the sublime.

In its own discreet, modest way, Evil Does Not Exist leaves us with a haunting sense of personal and ecological apocalypse.

As Solène, Hathaway gives a particularly lovely and vulnerable performance. She’s radiant as a woman reconnecting with big, swooping emotions, and reminding herself that those feelings are not the exclusive territory of the young.

Sex can be a rigid rubric of performance for some and a fluid experiment in expression for others. The friction between those two perspectives fascinates Femme, a volatile, sensuous revenge film in which the body and its desires don’t lie.

Like the film Challengers itself, Zendaya is a star who still operates on the surface of things.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is the 15th feature from Guy Ritchie, and while it’s not very good, it’s also hard to dislike something that has the genial tone of a day-drunk romp.

The glee everyone involved obviously felt in getting this improbable flick made is never balanced out by a sense of why anyone would need to actually watch it.

What makes Alex Garland’s Civil War so diabolically clever is the way that it both revels in and abhors our fascination with the idea of America as a battlefield.

It overflows with intriguing ideas, even if they aren’t all fully explored.

With The Old Oak, Ken Loach goes out with one last, full-throated call for brotherhood and solidarity. It’s the most hopeful the old soldier’s been in years.

As an action flick, Monkey Man is often quite entertaining, but it keeps distracting you with images of the film it’s trying, and often failing, to be.

Like the best studio horror directors, Stevenson understands that we’re not here for logic. The First Omen is soaked in style and mood with images that are both textured and shocking and that tap into tantalizingly visceral fears.

At times, it feels as though it has emerged — dusty, tattered, and beautiful — from the storied earth of Italy itself.

There’s style and skill to spare in Asphalt City, but the movie also feels like a victim of the very numbness and emotional emptiness it seeks to expose.

Wicked Little Letters delights in its naughtiness, but it really should’ve embraced its perversion.