If the film wants to implore us to understand the essence of man, how its portrayal of burgeoning American capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit is undoubtedly, jarringly, at odds with the nature of mankind. At its core, humanity craves companionship, stability and understanding, while capitalism breeds selfishness, inequality and isolation.

Shoot it loud and there’s music playing; shoot it soft and it’s almost like praying: Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story pumps the classic for exactly that, classicism, by milking the musical’s dynamics for maximum expressiveness. Its romance? At its most tender. Its dance? At its most invigorating and desperate. Its songs? As if “Maria” or “Tonight” needed another reason to stick in your head, they’re catchier than ever.

The self-awareness of the film could have been unbearable, except awareness (and our fragmentary experience of it) is so entirely the point of everything that the film is wrapped up within and that is wrapped up within it.

The love story at the center of Spring is mysterious, funny and often poignant—a tough enough thing even to describe, let alone commit to film.

The documentary gives us the life story of Blume, from childhood to now, presenting a fully-formed human looking back on a stellar career that just happened to reinvent young adult fiction.

Beyond its deeply unnerving character study, Nitram is a stark warning.

By comparison, the long-awaited The Incredibles 2 is inescapably messier throughout. The villain and scheme are not quite as compelling, and the choreography of character and location—another hallmark of the first film—is a perceptible degree sloppier. Nonetheless, it feels great to be back.

This beautiful, gripping, disturbing film deserves to be looked at with as much nuance as it offers. It’s not a damned hashtag-anything movie, it’s a potent and poetic autobiography that refuses polemic or politics. It manages to dive so deeply into the personal that it explodes into something universal.

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.

Bursting with big ideas on the complexities surrounding womanhood, patriarchy and the legacy of its eponymous subject, Barbie scores a hat trick for its magnificent balance of comedy, emotional intelligence and cultural relevance.

The exciting electricity of a non-white blockbuster cast becoming superstars before your eyes, the maximalist style of a modern smash updating its influences, the intertwining of hyper-specific and broad themes—Chu’s strengths and his cast soar, bringing In the Heights as high as its ever been. It’s the best Hollywood musical in years.

Beauty from tragedy is the foundation of Come From Away. An enduring message for us all.

There’s something to be said about humbly funded productions that achieve high aesthetic standards despite a relative lack of dough: When I Consume You packs an emotional wallop and looks stunning while spending peanuts compared to the average studio horror product.

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.

This is a movie for the fans—almost a gift, really. The last two-plus years have been a lot for everyone, and to escape to late 1920s England and France in all its splendor is a delight.

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.

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.

Fierce, fun, and steeped in youthful energy, it’s a film that’s willing to go to some truly dark places in its exploration of grief, death and what it means when we reach too far into the beyond, but it’s also never afraid to laugh along the way. That juxtaposition alone is enough to make it one of the year’s must-see horror films, an addictive thrill ride that never loses its own playful spin on some classic horror ideas.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train continues to prove the power of animation and how it can make the story of a boy slashing up demons with a katana about more than sleek fights, but also about how violence affects its characters.

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.

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.

The characters of Universal Language somehow leave you feeling better about humanity than you did before viewing it.

For every beat of affecting brutalism, there is an equally affecting beat of brutality.

After years of not discussing it, Liu goes on a quest to figure out why we don’t talk about this fundamental part of being human—no matter how weird it gets.

Marvelously uncomfortable and cringe-inducingly hilarious, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby rides a fine line between comedy and horror that perfectly suits its premise—and feels immediately in step with its protagonist, the college-aged Danielle.

As directed by Rachel Fleit, in her documentary feature debut, the movie is an unflinching look at what it is like to live with a degenerative disease that attacks the spinal cord and brain. But it’s also a look at a woman who has a fractured relationship with her mother, was never quite comfortable with her fame and struggles with anxiety and depression.

Though aimed at a slightly younger audience, The Monkey King still has the mix of high-stakes peril and high-reward comedy that has become part of Chow’s signature style.

Seventy-five years after its original release, Key Largo proves that there’s a timelessness to great acting, a visceral thrill to watching legends go toe-to-toe that doesn’t dull with age.