As much as the movie is an enrapturing, sometimes overwhelming experience, filled with passion and hard work and adoration for the impossible task of making such a singular movie at all, Anderson and his animation team find the film’s soul in these dog’s eyes.

Although it has its share of cliches, it remains a gripping, chilling story throughout—one that strikes a little too close to home in the context of 2020.

Kandhari’s film emerges as an off-kilter treatise on identity, and what cultural, social, and physiological elements can shape it, even well into adulthood.

It’s a stylish meditation on childhood that isn’t afraid to indulge in all the sentimentality that goes along with that. Almost 30 years after Dazed and Confused, Linklater is still reminding us exactly why childhood is a uniquely special thing.

In Glass Onion, everything is more. More jokes. More self-reflexivity. More twists and turns. And, undeniably, more fun.

In its unflinching portrayal of historical massacres perpetrated against the Ona tribes of South America, it presents obfuscated truths about colonial atrocities, using its austere direction and sun-bleached color palette to firmly place us in the middle of man-made horrors.

Not only does the film successfully advocate for, and humanize, a populace that has been routinely silenced in popular culture, but it demonstrates that the destruction of these cultures has been emblematic of humanity’s extended downfall.

Those who choose to embrace the uncertainty get an enjoyable exercise in suspending rationality. Tucked away in the film’s charmingly light and plucky script is a profound challenge for Fodor, and for us: To hold logic and antilogic in our minds at once.

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.

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.

Authenticity has a time and a place, but even without it, Reece creates a wonderful cinematic experience.

More than a solid MCU entry, First Steps is among the most vivid, peculiar, and emotionally present superhero films of the past decade.

Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is as indecisive as its endlessly curious heroine, but it is an invigorating, exceedingly kind portrait conveying that the journey is just as—if not more—crucial as the place we end up.

We Have a Ghost may not stand toe-to-toe with the dual brilliance of Freaky and Happy Death Day, but it’s proof that Christopher Landon still feels like he’s just getting started.

Bugonia is ripe with tension and oftentimes hilarious, but its comedy is derived in an easy way.

Made in England winningly humanizes two filmmakers who were at one time so mythical that Scorsese genuinely had doubts about whether they really existed, or if those names might be pseudonymous, he admits in the documentary.

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

The Sadness is incredibly gorey and gleefully embraces just about every documented taboo—but instead of an exhausting edgelord sensibility, it accurately depicts just how little convincing a crumbling society needs to obliterate itself.

By the time the credits roll, all the ingredients Reeder’s been carefully marshaling come together in surprising, satisfying ways, delivering a horror film that leaves the world a little bigger, a little stranger and a little scarier.

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.

Run gives its dual leads a slim window for making first impressions and finding bases for their roles, which makes their performances and Chaganty’s direction doubly impressive.

What Four Daughters does do, it does brilliantly. Ben Hania and her subjects give us a profound live window into the cycle of trauma and, in doing so, radically trace an under-recognized path between deeply personal pain and dogmatic extremism.

As with the first film, the look of 28 Years Later is key to its effectiveness.

You Resemble Me starts as a coming-of-age story and mutates into the permanent falling apart of a woman invisible to society. Then, it redefines itself again as a documentary reckoning...It’s a brilliant turn that showcases the first-time filmmaker’s investigative background with bite.

Considering the constant glut of mid-tier horror, it’s refreshing to encounter a film that’s rooted in traditional genre filmmaking without buckling under the weight of its influences.

The tactile world Glass has crafted is just as immersive and erotic in its design as it is physically between her two lead lovers.

Healy’s good; Schilling’s superb. Together, they make a hell of a team, he the wide-eyed schlemiel, she the hysterical but thoroughly capable victim who would naturally rather not be a victim in the first place.

Never-Ending Man is an impressive documentary.

Together, these intersecting storylines yield more than enough funny, gross and surprisingly sweet moments to keep Freaky Tales chugging merrily along, even though it feels quite clearly calculated for the midnight festival crowd in particular.

Maya Forbes has crafted a zippy comedy about a charismatic charlatan and the disastrous impact his fakery has on the rubes gullible enough to fall for his schtick.

Prey is inarguably the best Predator since the original. The film gets so much right, paying homage to John McTiernan’s 1987 masterwork—through cigars and direct quotes that it’ll have fans hooting—and adding Indigenous representation with real cultural strength.

In the way it revels in dry humor, in the hilarious, almost unconscionable ease with which Bong swings between mirth and the macabre, Barking Dogs Never Bite is more of a comedy than any of the director’s later movies. But the most fascinating thing about the film is the forlorn soul that emerges from beneath the comic trappings.

A film so ambitious lives and dies by its central performances, but Rogowski is typically brilliant, and acting newcomer Adams marks yet another casting coup for Arnold.

Gardner’s a timeless actress, and it’s through her that Pandora and the Flying Dutchman gains its own timelessness. She’s so cool and controlled that any time the film starts tipping over the edge from fantasy to absurdity, her mere presence grounds it.

The film thrives within a dream-logic vibe, especially in Olivares’ cinematography, with its heavy emphasis on symmetrical framing, stark contast and lush use of yellows and blues, evoking subliminal terror.

The First Omen is an exceedingly successful first feature, and an invigorating film within a genre’s increasingly limp mainstream.

In an industry still obsessed with youth, the message of Jerry & Marge Go Large is one worth celebrating.

Writer/director Andrew Semans’ sophomore feature pulses with black-hearted humor and cruelties so odd as to be undeniably believable, but it’s Hall’s expressive transformation that drives the film’s blood into its final manic fever.

A legacy sequel that does nothing to revitalize its characters, expand its canon, extend (heh) its mythos, or even really tell a new joke. I laughed through the whole thing.

Gunn and crew have made that vibe, alternating between inventive and bloody battle and ballbusting hang-out sesh, their delightful spandex hallmark—and The Suicide Squad’s intensification of it from the GotG films feels like it’s been let loose on a particularly rowdy vacation.

As a fantasy, Damsel convincingly transports us into the lair of a dragon that is often stunning and always intriguing.

When The Power is on, it’ll have you white-knuckling a flashlight all night. When it starts flickering, well, even its least nuanced moments or most telegraphed turns still have a level of craft that make certain Faith will be able to keep the lights on as a filmmaker for a long time to come.

Don’t mistake Come to Daddy as anything less than unbridled, of course, but for such a staunchly bonkers movie, composure rules Timpson’s aesthetic. He maintains an impressive control over a narrative that, at face value, appears to be constantly spiraling out of control, but that’s part of his design.

The documentary gives faces, names and histories to those affected by the residential schools—and looks, bracingly, towards a future where healing is possible.

Avilés is more concerned with the shape and sound of childhood, and across the 95 minutes (which covers one evening in the lives of this disjointed cast), she offers a nuanced take on the disparity and complication of being young in a world built to amplify grown-up problems.

Through its deeply flawed cast and Peter Pan-esque world caught in stasis, Maboroshi communicates the suffocation and silver linings of being trapped within a particular point in time. Part elegy and part celebration of the past, it makes for an evocative, unusual ghost tale.

If you, like critics, consider Coogan selfish or asinine, the film will validate that view, but for a purpose, and through the sharpest of organic comedy.

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.

Whatever it’s trying to say, France rewards those who are willing to take the journey without a promise of clear resolution.

Its devastation is familiar. But because filmmaker Shiori Itō is both survivor and journalist, and recorded her own investigation into her assault in real time, the documentary becomes a thrilling testament to her exceptional, tenacious agency in the face of a hostile world.

Seeing successful Latino families in a storyline that has been heretofore just been told from a white perspective is important. But none of that would matter if Father of the Bride wasn’t entertaining. Thankfully, it is. Garcia and Estefan in particular are so at ease in their roles that they invite us to be part of the celebration.

It’s a calculated and logical film about an altogether illogical subject.

American Fiction is a satire about how far up our own asses writers can fit our heads, confronting and interrogating the concepts of genius, self-regard and good taste.

Saint Frances gets specific, stays lighthearted, but hits like a ton of emotional bricks.

It’s an honest to goodness real movie with a mind of its own; practical FX work and creature design help, too, as essential to what distinguishes The Wretched from its influences as the Pierce brothers’ writing.

Ragnarok ain’t a home run, but it’s a solid double, and certainly enough to cause Hollywood scouts to raise an eyebrow.

If Elfman’s destination is grim, the journey she takes to get there is palliative.

The Damned gets by more than well enough via the elemental strength of its moral dilemma and the pristine beauty and unrelenting inhospitality of the Icelandic wilderness that is its scene-stealing star.

Briskly paced and charming to a fault, it’s a Spider-Man movie that fully embraces both its source material and the perils of 21st century teenage life.

It’s a lean, efficient, no-frills film, and that’s as it should be. Begos rejects pretense. He’s making his version of a psycho Santa flick, no more, no less. But the logline’s comic absurdity and the execution of his premise is so straightforward that Christmas Bloody Christmas feels fresh among the season’s horror canon. It’s a Christmas miracle.

Watcher flourishes as it complicates its premise beyond the unknowable and faceless desires of a shadowy silhouette.

The writer/director demonstrates a rare storytelling economy in his feature debut, leaving no trace of fat on Homebound’s bones and letting only the most essential elements shine.

Its ambition is as small as its budget, but hell if the filmmaker, cast and crew don’t seem more than enthusiastic in serving up the entirely nutrition-less titillation.

Parents of teens will be charmed (and definitely feel validated) by how accurately the movie captures this period of time.

It’s a movie that sometimes feels obsessed with music, and sometimes feels like an old man flipping back to his preferred, familiar playlist.

It’s an exquisitely challenging production, one that calls for repeat viewings over years, all the better to persuade the film to surrender its meaning.

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.

All My Friends Hate Me digs out a special niche between cringe comedy and horror, as if Stourton, Palmer and director Andrew Gaynord welded an EC Comics plot to an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

It’s got enough biting snark to hook viewers from the jump, and enough heart to keep them around until the end.

Light, fluffy and sugarcoated, The High Note feels like a throwback to another time when studios produced movies with the sole purpose of putting a little spring in viewer’s step.

This is the best installment since the original, mainly because the film takes risks and bends conventions already set forth by the films that came before it. Scream was built on rules, but rules are always best when broken.

With such charming old-school performances, Hit Man peels back the layers of genre to reveal something alive–lovely in its full-bodied animation.

Ultimately, it’s unfortunate that Call Jane can’t decide whether it’s a character study or the study of a movement, as it’s a visual pleasure that successfully tiptoes in both directions before retracting its more confrontational opinions.

Together, from director Stephen Daldry and writer Dennis Kelly, succeeds by candidly approaching the subject head-on—literally, as its two-handed drama starring a couple played by James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan is a moving, sharp and charmingly black-humored film of direct address.

Overall, this is an easy film to admire—it’s exhaustively detailed and an intriguing collage of an important American institution.

Don’t let the film’s attitude or excess fool you: it takes a dim view of the culture in the neck of the U.S. where it’s set, but nonetheless cares deeply for the people trapped there who deserve to live better lives in better places.

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.

Lingua Franca has a lived-in sensibility facilitated by Sandoval’s empathy and understanding of what Olivia’s going through. It’s the film’s best quality: a firsthand knowledge driving an earnest request to be seen and respected, as an American and as a woman. Olivia isn’t asking for much. There’s no reason to deny her.

Scales is a grim movie as much as it’s a gorgeous one. It isn’t without hope, but hope is in short supply, on land and underwater.

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.

Shujun’s script, co-written with Yu Hua and Kang, eschews any viewer hand-holding, keeping its messages and themes backgrounded; if there is a greater context for the film’s plot, perhaps it lies in its depiction of law enforcement in mainland China, and the toll police work takes on the people conducting it, though Western critics lacking background in contemporary Chinese social and political mores can at best only speculate at best.

The tone reflects the content, and while this undoubtedly makes Cyber Hell an uncomfortable watch, it certainly makes an impact, too.

Relic posits that old age is not something to be reviled or worshiped, instead viewing aging as a continual process as opposed to a fearful spectre.

It’s a simple film about complicated, often painful confirmations about the country we all call home, and about optimism for what that country can look like when people share it with each other; it’s about what happens when your worst nightmare come true; for Chun, it’s also about suffering a nightmare so dreadful that the foundational trauma of your youth seems preferable by comparison. But it’s especially about the way movies change the people who make them and the people who watch them. Bad Axe is a gift.

Daddario’s work is a ferocious joy to watch, particularly in light of how well We Summon the Darkness holds back on secrets.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial isn’t Friedkin’s most sophisticated directorial effort, nor is it his most advanced thematic musing on man’s capacity for evil. Yet it enshrines him as an actor’s director, one capable of coaxing out subtle responses that can, by decimals of a degree, change the temperature in the room.

Gorgeous and gross in equal measure, propelled by the sense that anything could happen, Like Me is a visual feast.

A sobering, beautiful movie that’ll haunt you for weeks after watching it.

It’s a funky, janky, raw piece of autobiography, masquerading as the only thing the film industry makes anymore: A superhero movie. The riotous and weaponized result is everything the corporate use of the Joker isn’t, and everything it could be.

While space travel has always required idols, Return to Space would benefit from a more nuanced portrayal of the controversial figure accused of hoarding money and upsetting the stock markets with his tweets—even if said figure might eventually put us all on Mars.

Karmalink is a very good story about child detectives trying to make do in an imbalanced and unfair world. Like Inception, it nods at the human desire to escape into our dreams, and like much of sci-fi, it grapples with human reliance on technology. Some of the most interesting implications go unexplored, but it’s beautiful to look at and delights where it treads.

The Valet parks itself squarely between the lines of established genre tropes, but with such precision and flair that you can’t help but be charmed.

Though there’s a bit of a moral jumble to its ultimately productive deconstruction of the revenge movie and it’ll certainly never be a bedtime story, Riders of Justice still has a savvy lesson to impart to the grown-up children raised on the strong and silent type.

Categorizing Dead Mail is the exact sort of detective challenge faced by those sorting letters in the film’s post office dead letter unit: It’s a psychological aesthete crime story with occasional giallo tendencies, a film that will immediately become one of the strangest and most unconventional things on Shudder.

While the film’s ending feels a bit abrupt and cheesy, Of an Age boasts phenomenal performances and a salient (if somber) central truth.

This is all the makings of Oscar gold, rife with the story beats that The Social Network codified—and even succeeds in some clever elliptical storytelling, the stuff that makes award bodies shiver—but Johnson’s and Raab’s aesthetic consistently pulls the iconism of the story into messier immediacy.

Tramps is a minor effort loaded with small pleasures, but tallied together, those small pleasures add up to one great movie.

First-time feature helmer Grabinski firmly steers his script away from sticking in one mode or another: It’s neither purely scary, nor purely tense, nor purely hilarious, but instead most or all of these at once, producing a uniquely unnerving tone where shortness of breath in one moment instantaneously gives way to cackles in the next.