A sports anime focused around a group of orphans which makes the conscious decision to compete over basic necessities instead of participating in everyday society is the seed of a fruitful idea. But instead of playing to his strengths Araki has settled for lowest common denominator storytelling.

It is an absurd premise, one made even more so by its execution, which at the hands of veteran Hollywood thriller director Martin Campbell (the one-time director of Bond films who has been in movie jail since 2011’s Green Lantern) is often lackluster and, on occasion, shockingly inept.

A poignant and moving coming-of-age story, and an example of the way cinema can make real both memories, without losing their bitter honesty, and dreams, without compromising on their glowing promise.

From its gas-passing piranha (voiced by In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos) to its reliance on phrases like “butt rock” and “grumpy pants” that seem grown in a lab to make the 12-and-under set giggle, the movie plays its target audience like a fiddle.

A free-wheeling ride through the best of the actor’s filmography.

The Northman is a big-budget epic, but it retains those indie roots, with Eggers bringing in all of the elements that have made his past films so aesthetically successful.

The movie spends the bulk of its largely inert runtime painfully unaware that it is an example of the self-indulgent narcissism it’s intended to send up.

Dual can occasionally feel like a one-joke film that never bothers to be funny, or where the comedy comes off as so arch that it lands as something else entirely.

There’s plenty of magic in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, but viewers will need a summoning spell to conjure up a tangible plot.

This is a director whose only interest is in entertainment without a trace of originality. He isn’t interested in quality, only in length, noise, and stale ideas from old movies. There’s plenty of all three in Ambulance.

The movie is sewer drainage, but it does give Melissa Leo a rare chance to quote lines by the Bard she would never otherwise be asked to deliver.

Watching The Lost City is the cinematic equivalent of slogging your way through monkey poop.

This movie is as lifeless as the bodies Morbius drains and throws on the floor.

Stan’s trip to the moon may fade into the ether, but his ride down the highway with his brothers and sisters, all of them unsecured on the flatbed of a pickup truck is so brimming with immediacy that it won’t even matter.

Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the movie is an explosion of creative weirdness that is equal parts exhilarating and overwhelming.

Rory Kennedy’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is a swift and beautifully clear documentary about many things, chief among them the cost of profit above all.

It’s a movie that relies on the sort of nuance Rylance has mastered, and he unfolds the layers of his character, Leonard, with the same precision that goes into crafting a custom suit.

It’s not exactly a dull watch—two hours pass quickly—but it’s a purposeless one. Everyone involved, especially the puppy, deserved better.

Still, for all its adventure and flash, The Adam Project welcomes feelings. Levy doesn’t shy away from heart-warming, tear-jerker scenes, just like those beloved films of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.

Although it’s a sick and depraved menu, director Mimi Cave’s direction, for the most part, strives to be different—and succeeds.

This is a deeply personal film, which may feel unexpected in a Pixar movie. But the pains of growing up and feeling stuck between youthful adventure and the tradition of your family are resonant for any viewer, regardless of their own experience with puberty.

After Yang is a beautiful film, both in how it looks and in what it evokes.

Originally planned as a vehicle for Ben Affleck’s bland Batman, Reeves’ version hits left of center, offering a vision of the character not yet explored on film.

Dog may be man’s best friend, but Dog, a snooze about a boring 1500-mile road trip shared by a dog and a man—both war-ravaged, brain-damaged soldiers—should have stayed in the kennel.

The Automat was owned by the people, and it’s the people who loved it, remember it with passion, and still shed a tear when you mention it now.

A riveting homage to an extraordinary force as dynamic as she was unique.

In the same way F9 made no sense but was mostly fun to watch, Uncharted sometimes finds real moments of fast-paced entertainment. It moves quickly and it’s a good diversion, even with the drag of Wahlberg.

It’s mildly entertaining with a likeable cast. And when it ends, it’s a relationship you’ll move on from quickly.

There’s an old-fashioned panache to the film that just works, offering viewers an undeniably enjoyable journey.

The Worst Person in the World is a poignant reminder there is beauty in that uncertainty if we can only accept it.

It’s fun, not in a way a computer or a boardroom might interpret fun—pixels taking the shape of something familiar, regurgitated across the screen—but rather, in an unabashed way, where it winks at the audience without apologizing for its gimmick, without being insincere or self-deprecating, and without sacrificing what makes popcorn horror movies such a reliable collective ritual.

As much as there is to wonder at in Belle, the film is weighed down by its convoluted narrative.

The net effect of all this techno-philosophic yackety-yak is the not altogether pleasant feeling that you are simultaneously watching a movie while being trapped in an elevator with someone desperate to explain what it’s all about and why you should like it.

The pace is always zippy but rarely hyper, and there is just enough space for the film’s many emotional beats to resonate.

This is Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, and in her capable hands the story is purposefully hazy, unfolding in both present day and disjointed flashbacks, opening space for the audience to question the behavior of these characters and the societal pressures driving their actions.

In its best moments, The King’s Man feels like you and your friends have just dumped out your great grandfather’s dusty crate of tin soldiers to create a game that has no rules whatsoever beyond doing something ridiculous. But the movie’s politics? Ugh. They are the cinematic equivalent of your British uncle complaining about cabbies with foreign accents or claiming that Brexit didn’t go nearly far enough.

It’s diluted, a little flat, but sweet and familiar enough to evoke long ago memories, if not quite strong enough to give you a reason to bother to remember.

This is a West Side Story for both the past and present, as pleasing as the best movie musicals used to be, and as relevant as today’s headlines. It makes you feel like you are actually on the turbulent streets of New York’s west side, not a sound stage.

From its predictably gorgeous yet unimaginative visuals, to its familiar songs and predictable story, the film does feel rather safe despite being superficially groundbreaking for the studio. And yet, when the film dives into the specificity of its portrayal of Colombia or its themes which share similarities with the seminal novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, it becomes an exciting, nuanced, complex magical realist adventure that pushes the nearly 100-year-old studio forward to a new era.

One of the truly great animated films this year, one that now places Imbert alongside fellow countrymen Jérémy Clapin (I Lost My Body) and Rémi Chayé (Calamity) as part of a new generation of French animation talent that is delivering high quality animated projects in both story and style.

Licorice Pizza is the moment between the leap and the impact—the feeling of weightlessness even as you plummet.

Juicy, extravagant, glamorous, decadent and a crowd-pleasing carousel of euro-trash camp, Ridley Scott’s sordid saga about the rise and fall of the Gucci fashion empire has something for everybody.

It is true that with Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason has entered the unofficial family business of trying and failing to recreate the inexplicable magic that made the original Ghostbusters such a frothy delight.

As the focus of Mayor Pete, a fascinating chronicle of his 2019-2020 campaign, he’s living proof that decency, integrity, and liberty and justice for all still work in American politics. His story is like a good book you just can’t put down for fear that you might miss something.

The memories are vivid, but there’s no plot to connect them, and the film is rendered almost totally incomprehensible by accents as thick as congealed week-old mutton stew.

Except for her accent and hair style, Stewart practically plays herself, creating a living document not only of recent British history, but of contemporary stardom, and the intimate emotional fallout of a gaze that most people only know from a distance.

A film five years in the making about the poisonous effects of movie fame on the young, this fascinating but dismally depressing Swedish documentary is well worth seeing, but never fully escapes the feeling that it’s all been seen before.

Depraved, delirious, and downright stupid, Last Night in Soho is two hours of amateurish drivel by B-movie director Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead) that pretends to be half-retro Swingin’ Sixties comedy and half-horror thriller.

Written and directed with an overload of talent by Lindsay Gossling, it rarely falters and leaves a viewer grateful for a whirlwind of character-driven suspense and humanity instead of the usual Hollywood cliches.

Zhao keeps these far-reaching propositions grounded through the laser-like focus of her vision and the precision of the images dreamed up by her and veteran MCU lensman Ben Davis. For once in a movie like this, ocean waves and cloudscapes carry as much weight as the ultra-choreographed battles between intergalactic interlopers.

Rarely will you see a more soul-numbingly empty product of this tragic operation than Halloween Kills, a film that so completely sucks the vitality out of John Carpenter’s and Debra Hill’s original vision that one would be tempted to call it a desecration if that didn’t make it sound like more fun than it actually is.

The Harder They Fall may not be the second coming of the Western genre, but it is a highly entertaining film with inspired performances by Majors and Elba, and a thrilling debut from Jeymes Samuels, who makes the case for more movies like this to redefine the Western genre for a new generation.

No Time to Die may not be the worst James Bond movie ever made, but it’s in heavy competition as the dullest one since Octopussy.

The film itself is mostly fine, with breathtaking visuals broken up by a less captivating story that often drags its feet (despite several great performances). But its place within Western traditions—both real and imagined—is strange, unsavory, and fascinating.

The Spine of Night serves as an entertaining, action-heavy, gnarly throwback to the hyper-violent, high-fantasy rotoscoped animation of the 1980s that nevertheless suffers from a small production, muddled voice directing, and the usual problems of the animation technique.

Driven by four challenging, nuanced and completely distinct performances, Mass is an emotional razor-wire.

With four great performances in tow, it unfurls a harrowing tale of pain turned outward and inward all at once, by turning cinematic myths into melancholy memories, and repressed emotions into tender rhythms.

Red Rocket isn’t the kind of work that condemns or implores—not explicitly, at least—but Rex lays everything on the table, from Saber’s basest desire to his most complicated self-delusions, while Baker (who also serves as the film’s editor) refuses to let punchlines have the final word.

Strange, frequently haunting, occasionally hilarious and ultimately masterful, Titane is a journey whose head-spinning complications are a vital part of its emotional impact.

An unfortunately timely film, Flee uses animation primarily to sharpen the dangerous edges of its refugee story, and to capture the devastating physical and emotional toll of never-ending war. But in brief moments, the film acts as a spiritual balm, offering hints and possibilities of a world where Nawabi might one day be able to fully share himself with other people.

Still, in spite of its flaws, I liked The Eyes of Tammy Faye a lot—mainly because of its dedication to period accuracy in every visual detail, and Jessica Chastain’s baptism by fire in the complex leading role.

So much of Eastwood’s career over the last two decades has proven that his age and experience has incredible cinematic value when he holds himself to the high standards he set for himself years ago. When he doesn’t, which is sadly the case with Cry Macho, the uninspired results leave you with wistful memories of what once was.

It’s not for everybody, and it’s far from perfect, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more thrillingly necessary use of the filmmaking form this year.

Violet’s editing and texture effectively convey what the character is feeling, and while its noncommittal camera choices occasionally prevent the viewer from feeling it alongside her, Munn’s performance, and the film’s eventual narrative trajectory, are incisive enough to get around its visual shortcomings.

This is an intimate story, sometimes uncomfortably so, but it’s also an expansive one, about whether our societies allow people to live outside prescribed boxes and whether it accepts them when they do.

Sure, it’s a silly R-rated raunchy comedy in which we get both testicle and poop jokes (classic). But it’s proudly open hearted and a funny, if absurd, champion of friendship.

Exploring the suffocating complexities of domestic life in the social isolation of quarantine, this volatile couple explores the shifting values of their relationship, from sex to politics (including the possibility of — God forbid — marriage!), with an insight that is never less than a candid talisman to learn from and live by in troubled times.

Candyman feels like a reclamation project of sorts. One that will scare the pants off of you, yes, but also one that adds depth and resonance to the once-static slasher format.

It slogs on, piling on scenes and memories of every sci-fi epic and film noir from Blade Runner to Chinatown, but who cares?

Marvel's latest movie feels just as sanitized and safe as its other products, even with its killer cast and talented director Destin Daniel Cretton.

Unfortunately, it’s a fairly unimaginative, largely unconvincing, often dull and always predictable example of the genre with few thrills and no surprises, and the only thing it raises is a surfeit of puzzling questions about why the wonderful actress Rebecca Hall can’t find a script to show off her abundant skills in a vehicle someone might remember.

As much CODA is a film about a hearing person’s relationship to deafness and Deaf culture, it’s just as much about deaf characters’ relationships to a hearing world, whose norms most hearing people take for granted, and whose obstacles can impact everything from labor to self-worth.

Jennifer Hudson is so spectacular in Respect, the Aretha Franklin biopic, that she makes you overlook, ignore and eventually forgive the film’s multitudinous flaws.

The film itself plays like an extended riff on the famous scene where the Frankenstein monster befriends a little girl.

The target audience — people who waste their lives playing video games — might be amused by a movie about devices designed for the sole purpose of destroying everything in sight, but the serious audience the film industry wants to lure back to brick-and-mortar cinemas won’t find much substance here.

Gunn is much better suited to the material than either David Ayer or the trailer house that re-cut the previous film, though while the end result is gorier, funnier and occasionally more heartfelt, it doesn’t quite coalesce into something totally fun, or totally meaningful.

With little action, no suspense and an ending that fails in every way, Matt Damon is the only thing memorable about Stillwater.

If you don’t fall asleep, there’s plenty to look at, including action scenes crammed with special effects, as well as lush rainforests played by Hawaii, Australia, and — wait for it — Atlanta, Georgia.

Despite The Green Knight‘s opaque obscurity and scattered whims, there’s a clear beginning, middle and end structure that crescendos with a scintillating third Act.

Old is asinine.

The fight choreography is often impressive. But the script is pockmarked with cliches, tropes and never-ending predictability.

It’s still worth seeing, mainly for the depth and feeling Mark Wahlberg exhibits in the title role, but fails to expand a viewer’s vision and understanding of an otherwise hot-button topic beyond a superficial surface.

A sonic-boom look at a seismic band, The Velvet Underground dissects one of the most influential 1960s musical acts with dizzying visual flair and a structural academic rigor refracted through a showman’s prism.

The Danish director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers has never been one for subtlety, but this queer thriller and anti-Catholic screed sets a new high in lowbrow revelry. It’s smart smut, a witty, louche provocation that never takes itself too seriously.

Val doesn’t tell the whole story, but it does give a fascinating glimpse into a very human trajectory through the gauntlet of fame and fortune. It’s a legacy totem for a deeply spiritual soul.

Whether you are already familiar with both or you just got to know about Sparks thanks to Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers documentary, Annette is everything you’d imagine from a collaboration between Sparks and Carax, for better and worse. This is a film that is as overindulgent as it is earnest, but flaws and all, it is worth the wait.

Even the film’s copious weaknesses are a reason to smile, taking us back to both the series’ B-movie roots and to less fraught periods in our lives.

A film that feels immersed in fog, and one that reserves even sunlight for vital moments, Holler is a gorgeously-textured exploration of the way ruthless corporatism trickles down through each layer of a country, and a system, until it falls on the shoulders of a young girl and obscures her future.

By the time Wright’s somewhat exhaustive film concluded, every moment of it propelled by a high-octane geeky affection that felt like a newly discovered alternative fuel, I was in the strange duo’s thrall.

By shining the light on Stone, Agrelo’s movie rightfully makes a national hero out of a historical footnote.

For a movie that pulses with joyful expressiveness and brims with possibility, there is a tragic undertone to Ailey.

The Mark Wahlberg–starrer reveals just how stuck Hollywood sci-fi is in 1999, when The Matrix cemented ideas of digital consciousness in the Western mainstream (with a bent of pan-Asian spirituality).

The movie is messy yet scrumptious, unwieldy yet vibrant. Its plot is all over the place but the sum of its excellently executed parts amounts to a whole that feels like a turning point for Disney.

Make no mistake, this is a musical turned into a blockbuster, as Chu treats the wide shots of the dozens of background dancers with the same eye you could see Christopher Nolan apply to Tenet, or the Russo brothers apply to Endgame.

With no solution to the horrors it introduces, it’s a screamfest that seems rather pointless, too, but somewhat redeemed by a few genuine thrills, an imaginative use of makeup and camerawork, and a great supporting performance by the gifted young Millicent Simmonds, who returns as Regan.

The acting is first-rate from start to finish, but it is really Mr. Waltz who keeps the action flowing. Both demon and clown, he’s horrifying, appealing and immensely mesmerizing in a film about the pitfalls that await anyone who falls for charm while ignoring the evils that can sometimes hide behind the facade of disingenuous priorities.

There’s little weight, not much style and even less sense to the psychological terror The Woman in the Window attempts to inflict.

Without the grounding of richly drawn characters and burdened by ideas that reflect Pentagon policy papers of the late 1980s rather than our current world, Without Remorse has the feeling of product rather than cinema — just another polished, consumer-facing, slightly stale gizmo scooting down the virtual Amazon assembly line.