The stop-motion musical is an artistic triumph that colors Collodi’s cherished storybook characters with humanity and depth to craft a mature tale about rebellion, mortality and the love between a parent and child.

Yes, This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection is constitutionally sad. It’s also angry, restrained, abandoned, exuberant when cracks open between its downward facing emotions, and, above all else, impeccably constructed.

On the whole, X proves that West is a master of craft. In The House of the Devil, he ingeniously drew out suspense through his slow, careful editing, and 13 years later he still hasn’t lost his touch.

Here, merriment and melancholy go hand in hand, partners in life’s dance just as a stiff drink is an accompaniment to life’s pleasures. The combination proves as intoxicating as the fancy-pants cocktails the boys whip up together—if not more so.

Repeat viewings of Across the Spider-Verse to bridge the gap until the final installment next year sounds like a great way to savor this film as it so richly deserves.

Every detail here, every flourish, has a purpose, whether splashes of red on flower petals, soft edges around dusk-lit trees, or three-panel split screen sequences that read like the pages of illuminated manuscripts brought to life.

It speaks to Anderson’s skill as an architect of distended narratives that One Battle After Another’s parenting motif functions as a concrete pylon for action and political intrigue and rank human cruelty; it’s the beacon the film comes back to time and again.

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.

If nothing else, the impeccable craftsmanship is breathtaking, and if that’s not reason enough to seek out great cinema, nothing is.

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.

The film is a visual gem, each set piece rendered with an impeccable level of polish and attention that does justice to Nihei’s penchant skill for depicting monolithic dimensions.

Avengers: Infinity War is epic in a way that has been often aspired to but never fully grasped when it comes to the translation from comic book panel to the Big Screen. It’s what happens when moviemakers take their source material seriously, eschewing unnecessary melodrama even as they fully embrace the grandeur, the sheer spectacle, of it all.

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.

The movie is smart, stirring and deeply exciting, but more than anything, it is surprising. This is a Star Wars movie that plays with your assumptions and upends them, but it never betrays the story, characters and ethos at the series’ core. It expands the idea of what a Star Wars movie can be. It’ll knock you over.

Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorehead’s feature directorial debut is an invigorating reminder that talented, original voices occasionally surge forth from the festival circuit grind.

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.

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

How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a deliciously bizarre and refreshingly unique experience that not only manages to successfully meld two completely opposite tones—punk and whimsy—but to wrap them up into an exhilarating narrative that infuses a familiar sci-fi/comedy/romance structure with a host of surprises that even the most hardened genre scholar will appreciate.

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.

What begins as a straightforward story of two artists creating different projects ultimately turns into Hansen-Løve’s strongest argument for the inextricable nature of life and art yet.

Hittman’s work is remarkably precise. She does not focus on anything extraneous to the central drama of Autumn’s journey.

Lady Bird is nothing short of tremendous, a wise film about how two people deal with ambivalence.

The results are diverse, intimate, harrowing, and deeply moving, while the existence of the anthology itself feels nothing short of miraculous.

Wandel’s movie is immersive and bruising, full of empathy for its young characters, and unrelenting in its depiction of the challenges they face. And it makes you wonder, with utmost sincerity—how did any of us ever reach adulthood in one piece?

With our current cultural moment so defined by protracted digital isolation—and its cousin, anonymity-enabled cruelty—the best thing de Wilde’s Emma. could do was lean so hard into the sublimity of Austen’s original that, for the entirety of its gloriously phone-free two-hour runtime, its audience might feel, collectively, transported. And that, it absolutely does.

Time melts beyond its tangible limits when watching Memoria, resulting in an audiovisual trance disorienting in its peculiar placidity.

It’s simply up to the viewer to relinquish control, strap into the rollercoaster seat and trust that the ride will take them somewhere transcendent. And it does.

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint is wry with a side of quirk, unblinking in facing its subject matter head-on while refusing to pull punches; it isn’t without mercy, either.