Simien has created a thoughtful movie experience that feels diverse, funny and visually interesting. Those expecting an exact recreation of the ride won’t find it here, which may be for the best. Despite a few cartoon-y scenes, Simien and his cast elevate Haunted Mansion to a thoroughly entertaining and oddly emotional good time.

It’s equal parts compelling, ridiculous and uproariously pleasurable, often to the point where you can almost hear director Ridley Scott shouting, “Are you not entertained?”

I think everything about the movie is too subtle and real to appeal to the "Batman" demographic, but for mature audiences who have forgotten how to smile, it takes up where "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' left off.

The intimacy and honesty of the family rapport, the razor sharp dialogue and—most unexpectedly—its deeply grounded humor keep the film and its slight and compassionate story utterly engaging.

The real stars are his screenwriters. By borrowing from their real life, Gordon and Nanjiani have crafted the rare romance that sparkles with real life emotion.

This is a subtle, elegant and altogether triumphant film about a subject I thought I was tired of, told with an artistry and freshness that is positively thrilling.

The saga of the guy who was the Tom Cruise of the 1950s now forms the shadow and substance of a funny, sad, meticulously researched and painstakingly detailed documentary, Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed.

This is the rare sequel that packs constant surprises while still delivering on expectations.

Flawed but different, well-crafted and consistently powerful, At Any Price is the best film about impoverished farmers in the economic agricultural crisis since Jean Renoir’s "The Southerner."

It’s one terrific, offbeat and heart-pounding thriller set in the frozen wilderness of a Wyoming Indian reservation that never ceases to surprise, enthrall and pump the adrenaline with an energy that stuns.

Written by comedian Joel Kim Booster, who also stars, the movie reframes the traditional rom-com by putting gay men into the leading roles and inviting viewers to experience drama and relationships that don’t often get the Hollywood spotlight.

Enhanced by superb writing and direction and nuanced performances by an ensemble of great actors, and enough take-home food for thought to keep the mind and senses totally focused from start to finish, The Company Men is pretty damn close to as good as it gets in a disappointing year at the movies.

If Juror #2 does turn out to be Clint Eastwood’s final film, he’s gone out with fireworks.

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.

The result is a brutal and haunting meditation on violence and power in the music industry — and whose careers have been derailed in the aftermath.

Among the most gripping, well-paced, acted and directed, and generally thrilling of anything that I've seen (yet) this year.

Considering the subject, ripe with titillating possibilities, it's surprisingly about as sexy as a week-old meat loaf. Tastefully directed by Tanya Wexler, it is a total joy from start to finish.

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.

This is their story. It is true. It is history. As a film, it is riveting, suspenseful, harrowing and exciting, and somehow, it also manages to be something rare among war pictures—a big-scale entertainment.

It’s rare to see a war film you can truthfully label poignant, but The Last Full Measure combines the heart-pounding excitement of "1917" with the urgent, deeply moving emotional honesty of "Saving Private Ryan" to tell a heroic but somehow overlooked story of courage under fire that now emerges as one of the most valuable chapters to emerge from the debacle of Vietnam.

This is the sort of riotous good time you want to watch in a crowd with shared laughs and gasps.

It’s not a guilty pleasure; it’s actual pleasure. If there was ever a time to run into Downton Abbey’s welcoming embrace it’s now.

The Safdies’ film is a cinematically expressive tightrope walk that seems designed to leave your blood pressure permanently spiked. It can be relentless and hard to take, but it is brimming with surprise and a vivacity that radiates off the screen.

An equally dreamlike and urgent act of radical archiving, Sierra Pettengill’s Riotsville, USA traces the origin of America’s militarized dismantling of social justice movements to a specific time and place.

In small ways, Hansen-Løve allows One Fine Morning to break the viewer’s heart, but overall the film is unexpectedly hopeful. Anyone who has guided a parent through a debilitating disease will find the story especially heartbreaking, particularly as Sandra begins to crack under the weight of her father’s suffering. But One Fine Morning is also about starting again and finding joy in the midst of sadness.

As it unfolds, The Man in the Basement is as provocative, intelligent and suspenseful as anything you are likely to see this year.

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.

For repeated breathless sequences involving hand-to-hand combat, assassination attempts, and a wicked climactic car chase, shout out to Director Leitch.