It’s not always clear that Denis’ film is convincing enough to prove a point, or if any point it would prove is inevitably consumed by the nihilism at the core of its narrative. It simply exists, finds a moment of empathy now and then, is maybe pointless in the end. Like every one of us.

There was no good reason to resurrect this property. To quote Jud, “Sometimes, dead is better.”

It is, despite its surprisingly gruesome violence, little more than another superhero movie that will make more money than the GDP of a small island nation. It’s pretty good.

Hotel Mumbai may not be a perfect example of its genre, but its restraint from ideological grandstanding and a top-notch technical control of tone make it worthy of a watch.

The premise of a bunch of 1919 circus freaks whimsically conspiring to save an elephant from captivity should be an easy layup for Burton, but he just goes through the motions here with a paint-by-numbers Disney climax.

Refreshingly devoid of a traditional plot and any forced conflict, Gloria instead studies how such a character can enjoy the ups and downs of life even after her family has left her behind.

Like the best “food porn” movies, Ramen Shop is an expression of authentic passion, the kind fostered by abiding connections not simply to food but to the people, places and times food recalls.

Let the Hitchcock comparisons come. Peele deserves them well enough. Best not to think about it too hard, to not ruin a good thing, to demand that Us be anything more than sublimely entertaining and wonderfully thoughtful, endlessly disturbing genre filmmaking.

It’s a shame that its studio didn’t more heavily market Captive State. Smart, layered, tense, well-executed sci-fi like this should be nurtured in movie theaters.

With The Juniper Tree, [Keene] left behind an impeccable piece of cinema history as her legacy, waiting to be discovered by audiences denied the chance to experience it themselves.

Like any obviously competent action director, Johnson establishes geography and spatial stakes with rigor, but then, like any incompetent action director—cough, Peter Berg, cough—he loses focus, the idea of the action overtaking its execution. It’s frustrating, because Johnson clearly understands what he’s doing.

As far as Wonder Park goes, it’s basic, but not condescending. I especially appreciated an important addition to the finale that deals with how children should handle their feelings with balance and moderation.

The combined effect of Black Mother’s technique—Allah shot on both 16mm and HD—is dizzying to the point of overwhelming, but the discipline required to engage with it is rewarded by a singular moviegoing experience. As the mother births her baby, so does Allah birth new cinematic grammar.

We’ve seen a lot of this before, though the ’90s setting is a nice twist and provides a soundtrack that will prove consistently pleasing to any aging Gen Xer. But it’s Larsen who gives this weight and emotional depth.

As a closing chapter in the tale of Hiccup and Toothless, The Hidden World ends this portion of the tale on a satisfying note.

There’s a natural tendency to want to like Greta so that you don’t feel like a killjoy or a snob. But as much as I appreciated Jordan and his actors’ balance of high and low, I rarely treasured its trashiness.

With a narrative that adheres to such universal themes, Merchant reaches beyond the film’s wrestling fan core audience and constructs an inspiring story everyone can enjoy.

Happy Death Day 2U makes deliberate moves away from horror, adding both science fiction and comedy to muddle the original mixture for better and also worse. For better: The film is even more of a gas than its predecessor. For worse: It’s not as much of a horror movie.

For fans of futuristic sci-fi/action, it should provide an initially engaging but ultimately forgettable experience. Still, coming from Cameron and Rodriguez, even “forgettable” deserves a look.

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot is an exquisitely boring movie, a promise of high-concept adventure that only delivers a stiflingly melancholy ode to the unknown soldier.

Under the Eiffel Tower is a functionally enjoyable film bookended by an opening and a conclusion both dogged by distrust in the audience’s reading comprehension.

For some, Piercing may be a sign of an exceptionally talented filmmaker still finding his stride, this expertly handled erotic thriller an imaginative, stylized headache. For others, Piercing may be all those things, but ultimately not worth the punishment.

Everything is not awesome, but everything isn’t so bad either. How could it be when everything is everything? Perhaps this is the lesson on which kids can glom amongst this admittedly overlong, overwhelming experience: Yoda was wrong; trying is what matters. It’s a lovely lesson, and a lovely movie.

Labaki’s filmmaking suggests uncertainty at best and lack of confidence at worst. She layers on the suffering too thick.

Gina Rodriguez, who proved in Annihilation that she’s capable of something so much more addled and kinetic than this, does what she can with such aggravating material, but everything around her insults whatever emotional depth she can mine despite what she’s given.

I can imagine and understand it receiving all kinds of passionate feedback, from intensely negative to downright infuriated, but I doubt anyone will claim it is boring.

With its giddy and hypnotic mix of oil painting backgrounds and digital animation in service of a wonderfully inventive story surrounded by kooky, immediately lovable characters, Tito and the Birds is also one of the most original animated works of the year.

This is Shyamalan at his worst, a speechifying, moralizing scold who wants your adoration but doesn’t want to put in the effort, or himself at risk, to earn it.

Dunham’s filmmaking remains disciplined throughout, building pressure within that’s eventually released in explosive violence. That’s what the title promises, after all. But that promise doesn’t blunt the jolting effect of The Standoff at Sparrow Creek’s storytelling or the gutpunches dealt in its climax.

The Kid Who Would Be Kid hits the family classic trifecta: Spectacular fun for kids and adults, full of important themes, and a rebellious attitude in regard to the wide range of things grownups are messing up.

It’s endearing to see Burger change his typically harsh tone to create a story awash with such positivity. And just like its French original, The Upside is fairly superficial, but warm enough for the studio dumping ground known as January. One could do a lot worse.

Overall, Dragon Ball Super: Broly punches triumphantly within its own weight class, aspiring not to any lofty heights of thematic heft or cinematic gravitats, but delivering a visually packed and unabashedly enjoyable experience that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser among enduring fans, the modestly engaged and newcomers alike.

Modest Heroes is a satisfying sophomore effort from Studio Ponoc, a collection of shorts that, together, resonate with the sentiment of that most joyous and courageous of adages made famous by the likes of Rod Serling: “...there’s nothing mightier than the meek.”

What Buffalo Boys lacks in originality it makes up for in spirit. There’s a verve in Wiluan’s direction, a sense of joy shaping his approach to the tried and true familial vengeance hook.

We’re typically never trusted to accept the reality of an icon’s life for what it is rather than what media consultants want it to exemplify. What the film’s real failing amounts to is any lack of interest in Ginsburg’s true superpower: Her inhuman, sleepless drive to do the work.

Considering Ferrell and Reilly’s immense talents, Holmes & Watson is an even more unsettlingly unfunny experience.

The heartbreaking bravery of Barry Jenkins’ third brilliant film is that he rests upon a clean, aching ambiguity: Such hope is both enough, and will never be enough, because nearly 50 years later nothing has changed.

Pawlikowski leaves it to the viewer to determine for themselves the fate of his Cold War proxy parents, and to glean purpose from the film’s gaps in time, its reticence, and even its black-and-white palette. Married with the Academy ratio, the color scheme makes the film feel classic, but Pawlikowski’s desire to plumb his past makes it timeless.

It’s hard enough to have a fully CG character as your co-star, and it’s even tougher when an actor is tasked with creating a deep emotional bond with something she can’t even see during production. Steinfeld is up to the challenge, making us believe in Bumblebee’s existence almost as much as the animators who worked on bringing him to life.

For the most part, the DCEU just can’t square its admittedly exciting set pieces with solid storytelling. In turn, whenever Aquaman pops a squat to unload exposition, it grinds to an interminable halt. Those action scenes, though. Revolutionary at best, innovative at worst.

Where The Big Short was bold and enlightening, this is just well-trodden ground, trod over once again in a fashion that feels decreasingly novel.

Ralph Breaks the Internet provides a fun, family-friendly time at the movies. It may lack the nostalgia-fueled power of the original, but it has a potent power source of its own in the messages it conveys.

Rather than being concerned with historical authenticity (Sandy Powell’s costumes are gorgeously anachronistic), Lanthimos gestures towards an emotional reality that posits the lover and the loved as soldiers, capable of being a casualty in what each party believes is a greater cause. What a blazing and burning feat of melodrama.

The film’s emotional arc is much like that of a child’s temperament: capricious and stubborn, equally prone to flights of whimsy opposite episodes of over-dramatic tantrums. This isn’t a criticism per say, but it’s worth mentioning in light of how this quality of Mirai’s storytelling may frustrate some audiences even as it endears itself to others.

Shoplifters is held up by the strength of its ensemble and Kore-eda’s gifts as a storyteller, which gain with every movie he makes—even in the same year.

Thought the harmony between Lee’s film and Murakami’s text, even as different as they are, is something of a paradox—Lee makes notable changes to the protagonist; fleshes out Murakami’s story to create the film’s first two acts, adding a powerful third—Burning belies the notion that auteurs in different mediums can’t fully co-exist in the same work.

It’s often said that going into business with family is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea, but Clara’s Ghost provides an exception to this particular rule.

Never-Ending Man is an impressive documentary.

Ultimately, this particular intensely collaborative endeavor clicks on all cylinders in a manner even the MCU could learn from. As a result, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse vaults into consideration as one the best Spider-Man films ever.

Like a sack of shiny baubles, there may be plenty of sparkle, but the story being pieced together from the jumble is told with all the narrative flair—and nearly equal amounts of exposition—of a Wikipedia entry.

Sure, Widows is a dynamite entertainment, but it’s also more mournful, thought-provoking and intelligent than that.

Despite the rarified standard of living in the film industry, I think it’s safe to say that superior intelligence has not taken possession yet. But something has. And somewhere in Heaven, Ed Wood is gazing down and going, “Dang.”

Where Hill’s characters fill every frame with warmth and empathy, the world they inhabit is as contrived as a memory one trusts too much.

It never hurts to be reminded of how powerful storytelling actually is.

Much of Guadagnino’s Suspiria feels beholden to nothing, indulgent and overwrought, existing only for itself. Art should never have to justify its own existence, but also: Why does this exist? What motivations conceived this film that seems to want very little—to maybe even dislike—the movie on which it’s based? And yet, it’s unforgettable.

There are some individual moments and elements to like here, but taken as a whole, Bohemian Rhapsody is mostly a flatline with occasional blips of life here and there—and not nearly enough to bring the whole body back from the dead.

Casting Amandla Stenberg to carry the project was an inspirational choice: She’s luminous and always captivating in the part, delivering a natural performance that allows easy access to Starr’s soul.

David Gordon Green’s Halloween is an intensely frustrating experience, buoyed by solid action and well-crafted scares, but simultaneously damned by an incredibly clunky script and appalling lack of focus.

While it flares up before fizzling out in its final moments, the view is admittedly entertaining and worth witnessing if only to relish in the thrill of its visual excess.

This movie isn’t just about America, or the collective power of the human imagination, or one man’s heroism, or one woman’s strength in his absence. It is about how being human can mean cruelty and tragedy and loss and unimaginable pain … and how that’s still not enough to defeat us, not by a long shot.

As moving as the families’ recoveries can be, and as earnest as Greengrass is at trying to honor their stories, there is an undeniable waft of the familiar in his dramatization of their difficulties. Greengrass hasn’t found a new spin on this sort of material. You admire the resilience, but I’m not sure Greengrass makes you feel it.

This is the most engaging and emotionally effective Moore doc since Bowling for Columbine.

The Old Man and the Gun is a jaunty joyride, a valedictory for a beloved American icon and a giddy true story. But Lowery ties it all together at the end: It’s a story about how the years go by, and who we are. It’s a story about all of us.

As the crimes of the deportation haunts Bisbee and its inhabitants, so, too, are we haunted by them through the filter of Greene’s lens. But that experience, the experience of being haunted, proves vital. Maybe it’s necessary to let history haunt us. If we don’t, we’ll never be able to move beyond it.

For every nice small observation and delicately detailed bit of emotional truth, A Star Is Born is, in a larger sense, trapped by its own construction. Yes, it can be quite moving—but it’s moving precisely how you might imagine it would be.

As delightful as relentless CGI monster mayhem is—and there’s plenty to go round as The House with a Clock in Its Walls rolls through its final act—it’s the lovely character work that makes the story memorable. Roth and his cast pack a surplus of exuberance into a children’s fantasy mold that’s by now grown musty.

It’s occasionally delightful, frequently funny, and good enough to make me look forward to what Greer will do next behind the camera.

The movie is a shameless, relentless wreck.

Abrahamson can transition seamlessly between static James Ivory-type long shots of the soothing English countryside, easing the audience into a sense of comfort that comes with the high-class beauty of the period drama, and uncomfortable close-ups of faces, weaning in and out of focus, daring us to confront the neuroses of the characters head on. Underneath the veneer of uber-polite socializing is a vast inner turmoil.

As messy and predictable as its plot can get, A Simple Favor is an engaging throwback to the aforementioned tongue-in-cheek mysteries, drawing much of its energy from the chemistry between Kendrick and Lively. It need not be any more than that.

The Public Image is Rotten’s soundtrack is, of course, great, and the candidness from former bandmates regarding their backstabbing and youthful mistakes is certainly refreshing, but it’s all wrapped in a package wearing dad jeans: too safe, too simple, too given to a happy ending.

As was the case in Cosmatos’s first film, the comparatively sedate Beyond the Black Rainbow, each frame, every shot of Mandy reeks of shocking beauty, stylized at times to within an inch of its intelligibility, but endlessly pregnant with creativity and control, euphoria and pain, clarity and honesty and the ineffable sense that Cosmatos knows exactly how and what he wants to subconsciously imprint into the viewer.

Once all these characters come together, the film’s manic, disjointed first act settles in for some seriously rollicking ’80s-esque hijinks, replete with brand new Predator aliens and a healthy dose of worldbuilding that touches on today’s every hot button issue, from climate change to genetic modifications to anti-ableism that’s actually probably just ableism.

The film’s vistas are beautiful and Matthews’s aim, high, but those aspirations are not fully realized in what feels like a first draft attempt at brushing Western customs with textures drawn from a South African palette.

City of Joy is a piercing little film, by turns appalling and uplifting, that manages to go straight to the heart of a complex issue and contend with it eloquently, bravely, and concisely.

Arizona bathes its absurdist satire in the bleakest humor and takes a sober glance at the consequences of America’s worst modern economic calamity.

What’s immediately surprising and dispiriting about The Happytime Murders is how haphazard the actual puppets are. They aren’t inventively or cleverly put together, and they’re sort of repulsive in a way that’s less “edgy” and more “consistently unpleasant to look at.”

It’s true that no one’s really making films like this anymore, but it’s also true that everyone pretty much wants to.

The documentary’s so simple it feels profound without ever really trying.

What Keeps You Alive’s forthright quality feels refreshing, and Minihan’s craft is a major plus, too.

The only explanation for such shoddy plotting is that this is the first in a planned franchise, but Mile 22 gives us absolutely no reason to want to return to the world of Jimmy and his war games, an apocalyptic hellscape protected by a guy who cares about nobody and is fine with it, because nobody cares about him.

Yuasa doesn’t care much for substance, so beyond the film’s surface charms there’s not much to hang onto. But those surface charms are substance enough. Colorful, madcap, and surprisingly sweet, The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl is the best nocturnal romp you never had, and a dizzying reignition of rom-com formula.

In its keen and sensitive and moving observations about the uncertainty in being Asian-American, it’s always drifting, and Wu’s incredible ability to convey all those ideas wordlessly is what makes the film more than just about a material China girl.

More giggle-inducing than terrifying, The Meg throws enough incidents at you that it simulates the feeling of being entertaining.

Trump plays no part in Rachel Dretzin’s Far from the Tree, a documentary distilled from Andrew Solomon’s nonfiction novel of the same name, but the film rebukes his cruelty regardless by doing what cinema does so well: highlighting humanity.

This movie is unbalanced and constantly fluctuating and as uneven as you’d expect from Spike Lee, but this time that works for the film rather than against. There’s a nationwide emergency, and Spike Lee, with BlacKkKlansman is screaming in your face for action at every turn.

Very rarely do you get the sense that anyone involved in Christopher Robin had a really strong take on the material or an innate understanding of why these characters have resonated for nearly a century.

This film is occasionally funny. But not super-funny. It’s occasionally poignant. But not a heavyweight on the drama side, either.

Gus Van Sant’s film certainly captures how Callahan used whimsy as a defense mechanism against seemingly insurmountable real-life conflict, but Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot captures little of how Callahan’s art was such a vital part of that whimsy.

All of the plot developments, including the third act twist, are predictable for aficionados of the genre, but the many successful standalone comedy and action sequences, as well as the natural chemistry between Kunis and McKinnon, keep us going.

McQuarrie’s sense of building a scene on the barest of elements, communicating the most empirical of information, is so breathlessly impeccable, the plot barely seems to matter aside from creating easily understood stakes and giving Ethan Hunt a reason to keep, in the parlance of the film, figuring it out.

This is one of those rare occasions in which a movie uses the dusty trope of turning a group of oddball misfits into a “family” and actually pulls it off in an emotionally satisfying way.

The greatest miracle of Eighth Grade is its warmth. The film reflects arguably the worst stretch of growing up in America’s education system, but it’s rarely if ever ugly. Instead, it’s compassionate, radiating retroactive kindness for the children we all were to soothe the adults we are now.

The Third Murder may not be Kore-eda’s best work, but the film proves a satisfying challenge, a complex exploration of sin and righteousness in an amoral world.

As a birds’-eye view bio of the career of an important comedian who died too young, this film is funny, poignant and informative.

For every overgeneralization Macdonald leans into or too-obvious historic parallels he lets fly, there is a corresponding performance, ebullient and transcendent—a purity Macdonald, and his viewers for that matter, can’t help but sour.

Sorry to Bother You has so many ideas busting out of every seam, so much ambition, so much it so urgently wants to say, that it feels almost churlish to point out that the movie ends up careening gloriously out of control.

At its best The First Purge functions like a much-reduced Purge movie retread. It’s not that it’s bad, really. It’s that we’ve seen this before.