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.

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.

Particularly paired with Cruz’s knockout performance of a woman whose life endures the legacy left by the trauma of her family’s unresolved past, Parallel Mothers is a deeply political example of what is lost when we have forgotten—and what is achieved when we fight to remember.

Gyllenhaal’s extraordinary direction, paired with exceptional performances from The Lost Daughter’s lead actresses, culminate in a perfect storm that yields an astute portrait of the painful expectations of womanhood.

Rita Baghdadi’s new documentary Sirens is a smartly crafted, hugely entertaining look at the band as it goes through growing pains, fights for bookings, and navigates inter-band dyke drama against the backdrop of a city under constant threat of attack.

Experiencing Branagh come full circle with Belfast is like getting an invitation to observe an artist come to terms with his roots. There’s the expected nostalgia, but also the graceful observation of the wisdom and clarity acquired with the power of hindsight.

By way of candid humor, a magnetic performance from Rex and Baker’s careful attention for authenticity, Red Rocket is a sympathetic profile of a porn star past his prime.

Judas and the Black Messiah’s greatest success is not that it somehow humanizes the Black Panthers, but portrays the Black Panther movement as self-evidently legitimate.

It’s a slow-burn stunner.

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

This is a film that wants to make you feel as confused and terrified as the characters you’re watching. In this, it is unquestionably successful.

Phantom Thread gets under your skin. On the surface, it is proper and refined and exquisite. But underneath, messy, angry real life keeps bubbling up, fervent and eager to escape. At last, it bursts through the seams. It always does.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is more than Boseman’s performance, sure, with Davis and Domingo going on some delicious tears of their own and Wilson’s words continuing to sear and soar in equal measure. But Boseman’s ownership of the film, an Oscar-worthy snapshot of potential and desire, gives an otherwise lovely and broad tragedy something specific to sing about.

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.

Ridley Scott directing a grand, riveting medieval epic that doubles as an analysis of gender dynamics might be unexpected, but The Last Duel manages to effortlessly combine Scott’s action sensibilities with an empathetic thread between the past and present.

It is a film attuned to decline, not just to the pain it can cause, but to how it refracts memory, presence, and touch. Above all else, it’s a film acutely aware of memory’s place in a person’s sense of identity, how it can unfairly slip through hands desperate to hold on.

A multimedia extravaganza of frozen idiocy, Hundreds of Beavers is a slapstick tour de force—and its roster of ridiculous mascot-suited wildlife is only the tip of the iceberg.

Ghostlight is a comedy in a loose sense, a tragedy in another, and a redemption song in yet one more. More succinctly, it’s a Thompson film, meaning it gently, tenderly unpacks and embodies every single feeling its characters might have about their situation at hand.

The third film in the arguably least-loved franchise of Kevin Feige and company’s box office-melting enterprise, it’s also the liveliest, funniest and “loosest” film of the bunch (and that includes Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2).

Yes; it stars a dog–but it’s also one of the year’s most potently unnerving and emotionally resonant horror films at the same time.

Through capturing victim testimonies as they were presented in court during this months-long trial as well as the dogged pursuit for justice by a ragtag team of bravely dedicated prosecutors, the film wholly resists sensationalization, opting instead to faithfully reconstruct the events that culminated in a landmark win for social justice amid a shakily budding democracy.

Although it all may veer towards a cliched representation of British-ness, Fiennes and Mulligan’s leading turns as Brown and Pretty are charming.

Adapted from Hideo Furukawa’s novel The Tale of the Heike: The Inu-Oh Chapters, Inu-Oh is a true evolution of an ancient artform while also emphasizing friendship, legacy and who has the right to tell the stories of the departed.

Levant gives The Mountain context, structure, bones.

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.

Mitchell narrates in his rich baritone, taking his own audience back through the past, not only to appreciate the circumstances and struggle Black cinema has come from (and appreciate where it’s at in 2022), but to witness the incontrovertible proof of its appropriation by the movie industry through the decades.

With a silly genre premise that could easily have been rendered as either an Asylum-esque B movie or a four minute SNL sequence, Sketch instead stands out as a triumph of movie-making chutzpah, an impressively confident and well-executed combination of family comedy, adventure, fantasy and even the occasional twist of horror and suspense.

A Love Song’s a brief and pretty little thing—less than 90 minutes—with the warm melancholy of revisiting a memory or, yes, an old jukebox love song. Walker-Silverman displays a keen eye, a deep heart and a sense of humor just silly enough to sour the saccharine.