Avnet likely means well, just as Rokeach meant well. Three Christs needs more than a deep focus on the Christs themselves, and on the system that so utterly failed them. It needs to focus on Stone, and on the collision between ego and benevolence that led to The Three Christs of Ypsilanti’s birth. That should be the story.

It never quite rises to pedigree of Your Name, but it certainly asserts its place in Shinkai’s oeuvre as his most challenging film to date.

Bad Boys for Life is better than it should be—the audience at my screening clapped when it ended—but not quite up to being what it must: a reminder that, you know what, a thousand years from now, Bad Boys will still fucking be here.

Think of the film as an extended cousin of Too Many Cooks, where parody gives way to weirdness, which gives way to surrealism, which gives way to genuine horror by the end. Bonkers as the combination sounds, and it is unimpeachably bonkers, the effect of their marriage is hypnotic.

Rise of the Guardians is definitely fun, and definitely worthy of a holiday outing to the theater.

It’s genuinely passionate about telling the tale of a man who sought the truth and applied it to attain true equality under the law. Perfectly executed or not, we need these kinds of stories these days.

While the director clearly has a few tricks up his sleeve for hitting his viewers with the heebie jeebies, what he doesn’t have, at least for The Sonata, is a sense of how to weave those tricks into a unified, cohesive narrative.

The strength of ensemble’s performances can’t be overstated, especially that of Woodard and Hodge—she one of the greatest actors of her generation, he on the path to becoming one of the greats of his own.

Good as Marriage Story’s pieces are, they’re too finely curated: Baumbach rarely lets the film be as messy as it needs to be, hemming himself in with the threads of his limited perspective.

Just like with Welcome to the Jungle, the action is serviceable, but lacks genuine thrills.

If you’re a living, breathing person with feelings and emotions, it is almost guaranteed to set your soul aglow.

Slowly, agonizingly, over the course of two-and-a-half hours, the house collapses in a stream of Star Wars free association. At best, The Rise of Skywalker solidifies Ridley and Driver as movie stars. At worst, it ends this narrative not with a bang but with a recycled image from a better movie. If that isn’t proof that Disney considers this property more product than art, nothing is.

Little Joe could use a trim for better deployment of plot and unnerving atmosphere. No matter. Little Joe is a quirkily rattling movie, an off-kilter tonic during the year-end onslaught of movies proclaimed “important” by their studios, and what the film lacks in structure it makes up for in its eerie, cold singularity.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 may not be Toy Story 2 (or The Empire Strikes Back, for that matter), but it’s a more than worthy successor to the first film. Even when it falls short of its lofty ambitions, you can’t help but appreciate how thoroughly it commits to achieving them.

Scorsese’s gangster movies indulge the genre’s pleasures, of course, but in each of them—all seven of them—he’s looking for spirituality and for humanity. In The Irishman, he’s in self-reflection mode, glancing at his career-long search for God while pondering his own age.

A marvel of so many confounding, disparate elements that somehow conspire to bring us from one side of the earth to the other. One would think the Safdies got lucky were we not wiser to their talent.

There’s a terrific 50-minute fan edit somewhere in The Aeronauts, but as far as the theatrical experience goes, half of it is more than worth your time, if you’re willing to tolerate the other half.

It is intermittently a blast, particularly when Bale and Damon ham it up with each other, trading jabs and one-liners, and having childish slap fights in broad daylight as Miles’ saintly, patient wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) quietly observes. But when it isn’t a blast, Ford v Ferrari is politically muddled to the point of distraction.

It’s all delightful to watch.

A perfect balance between sexualized/gross-out humor and sincere admiration for one of the wildest emotional periods of a human being’s life, Booksmart screens like a love letter to that best friend who was closer to a life partner than a school chum.

Life, death, science, mysticism, love and hate blend together to reveal depths of an internationally renowned genius. Deeply personal, sometimes tipping into the experimental, Radioactive is like no biographical feature I’ve ever seen.

The movie is tougher, and more rigorous, and more interested in the hard work of healing than empty slogans. It is true to the spirit of Mr. Rogers without every deifying him. I bet he would have loved it.

Charlie’s Angels talks a good talk, but struggles to back up the talk with the drama necessary to make it worthwhile. At least Stewart, Scott, and Balinska are having a good time, but they’re so switched on, and Charlie’s Angels is so switched off, that it sometimes feels like they’re in a totally different movie than the one Banks is making. You may end up wishing that you were in that movie with them.

Lapid articulates Yoav’s increasingly fevered quest for the impossible through aesthetic fluidity: Whip pans and judicious use of saturated colors, couched foremost in the mustard-yellow, knee-length coat Emilie plucks from his wardrobe for Yoav at the beginning of the movie. It all reflects the movie’s rich and assertive style, a detached cool to hold the audience at the proper distance from Lapid’s narrative.

It doesn’t necessarily matter—nothing matters, really—but Dark Fate is so self-serious, so expositionally overwhelming, that its tendency to tell rather than show bleeds into its every aspect.

Motherless Brooklyn is far from an airtight masterwork like Confidential—it’s too bloated at almost two and a half hours and contains some acting choices that borderline on irritating—but for those looking for a neo-noir that goes down as harshly yet as satisfyingly as Sam Spade’s favorite Bacardi, it’ll deliver.

Even if that’s the film’s real raison d’être—much of the screentime is given to aerial training, aerial romance, aerial battles—the result is fun and thrilling, and plenty of snappy jokes and sight gags will keep audiences of all ages entertained.

It’s a pulse-pounding, tightly wound thriller that sticks its predictable but nevertheless effective ending in order to provide a satisfying genre retread.

It’s the most awkward family TV show you’ve ever seen, offset by a never-ending barrage of gags squeezed off with such a consistent rate of fire that keeping up is impossible. But there’s a silver lining: Each is hilarious.

Even through its absurdist, bleakly satirical lens, Bong understands that social inequity is not just theatre, but lived experience.

The sequel feels compromised, lumped with easy lessons about family and community, piecemeal and cobbled together from bigger ideas and the ever-nagging intuition that the sell-by date on the franchise has long expired.

An experiment of sound design paired with a stellar lead performance makes for a captivating film.

Murphy plays it all so sincerely we root for Moore. Leaning into how shoestring the actual 1975 Dolemite film looked while still celebrating the team behind it is the best way to capture the essence of Moore’s films without making fun of him.

Alien takes the long way around the barn to get from its creator’s fundamental psychic “stuff” to the genre classic it is today; Memory: The Origins of Alien, dissects the journey from concept to conception in microscopic detail, and w

Waititi infuses a level of humanity into WWII without blindly forgiving those responsible, nor hiding behind the guise of good guys in bad situations, or allowing even a 10-year-old boy to get away with hate without swift retribution and thorough self-examination.

Comprising hardcore and doom metal, à la Isis, Electric Wizard, and Doomriders, Bliss is more metal than most of the metal records released in the last five years. The substance beneath the slaughter is a happy bonus, and a reminder that even the ugliest horror movies can have more going on under the hood than one might think.

Fueled by Zellweger, Judy has the power to take you over the rainbow with Garland, past the bright lights, through the cold nights, and into the pure love between an icon and her audience.

Abominable may not offer much when it comes to a unique premise, especially after two other features have beaten it to the punch, but it’s nonetheless a wholesome bit of family fun with an impressive focus on themes of overcoming grief, propped up by a visual feast.

The Death of Dick Long’s central miracle is that, disgusting as its big reveal is, Scheinert’s direction is fundamentally compassionate.

Unfortunately, Gemini Man is saddled with a fatally weak story, almost as if Lee chose a predictable action-thriller narrative so that he could focus his energy on the effects and frame rate. But the result is a quirky-looking movie that’s generally boring.

Do not let anyone tell you that Joker captures our specific time, represents our specific society, both births and defines our specific zeitgeist, grabs ahold of our specific faces and breathes smoke down our throats. It doesn’t. Joker is, more than anything, fine. And we, more than anything, are not.

In many ways Eggers’ latest reminds us of Last Tango in Paris, which explored a similar unhealthy relationship dynamic. Just as captivating, frightening and thought-provoking, The Lighthouse shines.

While not quite a complete experience that sticks the landing, The Sound of Silence is nevertheless an impressive debut from a fresh new filmmaker.

For a movie that initially tastes like an unexpected treat, it’s especially disappointing that Empathy, Inc.’s third act sours and leaves a bitter aftertaste.

It’s chaos, but it’s controlled chaos (even if only just), and in the chaos there’s absolute joy.

Promare is a visually stunning, narratively anemic and predictable blockbuster.

There are some incredibly funny sequences, a few genuinely heartwarming ones, and so many plots it will nearly make your head spin. But that’s the Downton we know and love, and seeing so many familiar faces and dynamics is like visiting old friends for one more jolly reunion; you will smile throughout the whole thing.

Love, Antosha lays Yelchin’s immense spirit bare, but the film remains wanting for depth. Make no mistake: This is the definitive Encyclopedia of Anton Yelchin, a tome to chronicle the best of him. But there’s so much about him to learn, and so much breezed over to fit into a 90-minute running time, that Price’s study feels somewhat diffuse.

[Chon's] work is haunting and flirts with delirium, but at all times feels urgently alive.

When you turn those kids into adults, they lose not just most of their wonder, they lose most of their interest. They’re just some people in a horror movie trying not to get killed. And we have seen that many, many times before.

Dour as Paris appears through Lubtchansky’s lens, Garrel’s filmmaking is dexterous enough that A Faithful Man feels merry all the same.

Frenetic, anxious and visually stunning, the cinematography of Waves invites us to wade into this world, never warning us there’s still a chance we could drown.

Exceptional performances, an unbelievable story, and a soundtrack for the ages make for a viewing experience worth revisiting again and again.

Villains is a workmanlike thriller with a pair of memorable performances and a simplistic premise.

Simó “gets” Buñuel’s drives, and his animation lends the story a layer of romanticism while emphasizing that talent isn’t a hall pass. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles treats genius as a knottier idea. Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan is a masterpiece, sure, but “masterpiece” takes on layers of new meaning once we see how the sausage is made.

Ready or Not revels in expectations—it’s a survival thriller, dark comedy, gross-out revenge splatterfest—but rarely exceeds them, treading well through each genre signifier, as suspenseful and funny and violent as any one of us could hope.

Waugh’s action set pieces don’t surprise so much as operate with impressive efficiency

Good Boys manages to find that happy medium between outrageous and heartstring-pulling.

With layered direction that emphasizes quiet moments over outward emotion during scenes of tragedy, and soulful performances all around, The Art of Racing in the Rain is just the right kind of tearjerker with an injection of positivity that our understandably pessimistic society needs.

Even though it suffers from tonal and narrative inconsistencies, Dora and the Lost City of Gold deserves just enough praise for working as a gateway action/adventure exotic exploration movie for kids to eventually get into Indiana Jones, while sporting a central performance that’s effortlessly charming and instantly lovable enough to almost carry the entire project.

This is neither a pleasant movie nor a pleasing movie, but it is made with high aesthetic value to offset its unrelenting pitilessness: It’s fastidiously constructed, as one should expect from a director of Kent’s talent, and ferociously acted by her leading trio of Aisling Franciosi, Baykali Ganambarr and Sam Claflin.

Compared to the eight films preceding it, the mindlessness of Hobbs & Shaw isn’t a sign of humble poptimist genius, just of something less than what it could have been.

The greatest achievement Tarantino pulls off here is, by pure force, to yank this era back to life, to recreate it and revive it as if driven by some sort of religious mania.

Levant gives The Mountain context, structure, bones.

This is a universally powerful story, with terrific songs and countless funny and fascinating supporting characters. It’s a classic of performance and sensation. This version, seemingly by design—like that was the damned plan all along—drains every bit of life from it … in order to make it more “realistic.”

Crawl is a brilliant ode to the magical realism of Florida and how, when made with craft and care, few movie-going experiences are as good as creature-features in the hottest month of the year.

Stuber, although supported by the odd-couple chemistry between its two leads, ends up as stale as if it was made 20 years ago.

Ladkani’s camerawork is agile and sleek, and the editing is super-sound, so even with a complicated web of crime, corruption, socioeconomic tension, multiple languages, blurred-out faces and folks who operate in the dark, it’s easy to follow.

It’s (relatively) small, sincere and funny, and has more than your usual MCU allotment of post-credit bombshells.

Like a particularly bad trip, Midsommar bristles with the subcutaneous need to escape, with the dread that one is trapped. In this community in the middle of nowhere, in this strange culture, in this life, in your body and its existential pain: Aster imprisons us so that when the release comes, it’s as if one’s insides are emptying cataclysmically. In the moment, it’s an assault. It’s astounding.

This isn’t a movie in search of a greater meaning. It just needs to be entertaining. But it does both, and better still, it bothers to be creative.

The first thing to note about Toy Story 4 is that it is extremely funny: I’d argue it’s the most consistently comedic of the entire series

Director Nisha Ganatra, who also comes from TV, doesn’t really create a cinematic experience that begs to be seen on the big screen, but treats the characters and the setting with enough depth to breathe life into an otherwise tired project.

The movie doesn’t drag, but it’s a major drag all the same.

It turns out, after the third attempt to recapture the magic of the first film, that the Men in Black universe is not a particularly compelling one after all. Probably time to move onto something else. They’re all tapped out here.

I Am Mother offers just enough of a twist on an old futuristic tale to be enjoyable, and its small cast buoys the film above most small-budget sci-fi.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Rolling Thunder Revue is overlong but also overpowering, inconclusive yet undeniably stirring. It left me exhausted, but I kinda want to see it again.

Dark Phoenix was always destined to fail. Limiting the sprawling story to one main arc severely debilitates the original’s emotional resonance, but avoiding Apocalypse’s swollen plot and stakes-less character narratives means reigning in an essentially big saga and cutting all of its awe down to some rote CGI. To make this work in one movie is to deny the essence of the source text.

At its best, The Perfection is an homage to 1970s horror movies and 1980s thrillers, a glorious, multi-hewed mind screw.

Juxtaposing human-sized drama against classic Toho iconography and one jaw-dropping silhouette after another, King of the Monsters is often more magnificently overwhelming than not.

With music that breathes new life to beloved songs with an emphasis on percussion and horns, and production designer Gemma Jackson’s luscious world building that borrows from various Middle-Eastern cultures as added pedigree, Aladdin is the rare remake that actually gives us a whole new world.

Artistically, For the Birds is admittedly not groundbreaking. It’s rustic and basic and in some instances a bit muddled. At times it lacks a cogent forward thrust. But it illuminates something we might not think about very much, which is what is actually going on in the mind of a hoarder, and how the pathology of such a person ramifies on other people (and animals).

Asako I & II is an easygoing movie, at least if the film’s exterior is taken at its words. Under the hood, it’s roiling.

The sweetness of the film finds an amusing complement in its strange eroticism, itself part of the queerness of its genre mixing.

As video games and action movies parabolically draw closer and closer to one another, John Wick 3 may be the first of its kind to figure out how to keep that comparison from being a point of shame.

While there ample missteps—a villain the audience doesn’t really care about, a lack of epic fights that brought the original audience to both the games and shows, and a predictable plot—the film manages to be a hell of a lot of fun, capturing the spirit of its source material as effectively as a well-aimed Poké Ball.

A hushed, unassuming, intimate movie to remind audiences of the power of cinema by interrogating the definition of cinema itself.

It helps that this quiet film is stocked with actors who can carry the weight of their long silences, as well as a stellar supporting cast.

It’s her unstoppability, her tireless drive to see through the work she believes needs doing in the field of sexual enlightenment that gives Ask Dr. Ruth real urgency, lifting what’d be an otherwise breezy character portrait to near essential levels.

A beautiful, wise, erotic, devastating love story, this tale of a young lesbian couple’s beginning, middle and possible end utilizes its running time to give us a full sense of two individuals growing together and apart over the course of years. It hurts like real life, yet leaves you enraptured by its power.

Theron wrings this so-so material for all its comedic potential. But she gets little help from her running mate.

Comic book fans know the thrill of following all your favorite characters through a multi-issue storyline that culminates in a “universe at stake” ending. Now, thanks to 21 movies in 11 years and one massive, satisfying three-hour finale, moviegoers do, too.

Effectively, the film feels dishonest and, in spite of surprisingly dynamic camera work, intellectually lazy. Ironically, there is enjoyment in watching Binoche and Hamzawi, whose character is rightfully unsympathetic to her schmuck of a cheating husband. Non-Fiction is at least no more clever than Unfriended: Dark Web.

What makes Body at Brighton Rock such good fun is understanding where Wendy is coming from, and connecting to the very specific engine that’s fueling her fear. The movie’s truth doesn’t disappoint, because the truth is that nature plays tricks on the mind.

Above all else, Birdman is tender, raucously funny and deeply tragic.

As an aspirational film with too many flaws to overlook, Thriller at best qualifies as an interesting attempt at bringing additional perspectives to horror. Given the potential of this particular niche of the horror genre, that also makes it quite the wasted opportunity.

There’s some surprisingly compelling footage, played over the end credits, of real life Juggalos providing testimonials about what their community means to them, and in that a message about understanding the misunderstood.