D(e)ad offers a phenomenal experience, not only because of its talented creators, but also because it tells a relatable story that addresses a familiar situation in an unfamiliar way, while providing a surprising number of giggles.

The movie’s thread about parental neglect and/or sacrifice is wispy. As a carnival geek show, though, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy delivers the goods, and at greater volume than its unofficial predecessors. It isn’t as personal a movie as the possessive title implies, but the marketing is largely correct: For the first time in ages, a mummy presides over a real horror show.

Mermaid challenges our expectations about relationships and what they can mean for different people, picking up where Del Toro left off and taking the concept even further. This unlikely romance, brought to life by Pemberton and Larson, proves there is love and community to be found, even between two people (or creatures) from very different backgrounds.

Though their conflicts eventually lead to horror-movie violence, the cruelest fate, the movie implies, may be a professional life consigned to malls, overpriced novelty coffee drinks, and other commercial/cultural remnants of a millennial youth.

It’s both a canny contemporary riff on the material and a well-made but only moderately scary slasher.

The movie may not be what fans normally tune into the franchise for, but it’s certainly daring and different, showcasing how the core characters each react to being pushed beyond their limits. The animation is spectacular, with thrilling, complicated, multi-dimensional fights and some actual scares when it seems like there’s no way out.

Biographies of great artists often try to define their subjects via grand dramas and dark, defining moments. A Magnificent Life’s perspective is right there in the title: Even in its darkest moments, it’s a hopeful, comforting success story, framed in a way that encourages viewers to look back to their own childhoods, and confront their own wistfully ambitious ghosts.

The film moves so fast that you don’t have to dwell on its missteps for long. For every moment that feels a bit too weird, there’s a scene that’s absolutely hilarious or heartbreakingly sincere. This fairy tale is particularly twisted, but that just makes its happily-ever-after ending feel all the more earned.

It doesn’t capture the full horror potential of climate change, rising floodwaters, or even bloodthirsty sharks. But the filmmakers sure throw themselves into the fray with enthusiasm.

While Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice isn’t a bad movie, it’s not a very smart one. Constant plot recapping aside, this is a quick-moving comedy with plenty to enjoy.

Alpha is more of a horror-inflected drama than an outright genre piece, which allowed plenty of critics to fixate, not unfairly, on its failings as an AIDS metaphor. Yet the movie has resonance beyond simply recalling the years of its creator’s youth.

While there aren’t as many big laughs or surprises as the first film, Ready or Not 2 has some incredible moments.

For once, fans’ “Did they do the book justice?” anxieties are misplaced: The movie version of Project Hail Mary is funny, strange, heartening, and completely satisfying.

War Machine hits all the right spots for this kind of movie. It’s lean and propulsive. The practical stunts are impressive and immersive. And Ritchson, even playing a man so throttled by his own past that he doesn’t want to feel anything, is a compelling screen presence.

This movie is its own kind of Frankenstein’s monster, stitched together from a thousand different parts and lurching into disturbing life. The Bride! seems like it was meant to be discussed, analyzed, and unpacked at length, with different fans seizing on different elements as the key to the whole shambling creature. But like so many of the Frankensteinian creatures that preceded it onto the screen, it’s a bit of an unwieldy monster.

Cold Storage makes horror-comedy look as easy and appealing as it’s supposed to be.

Told through the lens of Verbinski’s slapstick sensibilities, Good Luck becomes both wildly original and wildly entertaining, even as it begins to break from reality in a messy final act.

Iron Lung is an immersive experience. It traps the audience in a close, suffocating space with Simon and the seeming inevitability of his death, and the sense of terror is palpable and thrilling. It’s a slow-burn horror movie, but it certainly isn’t lacking in scares.

Neither cheap fast food nor the greatest meal you will ever taste, the Statham Special maintains standards that are a cut above. Helmed by stuntman-turned-director Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen), Shelter is sharply paced, violent as heck, palpably shot on location, and laced with Surrogate Dad Pathos.

From visuals to music, it’s a top-tier anime movie. It invites viewers in from the start with colorful settings and stunning character designs. There is a subtle poetic tone, too, in linking the culturally foundational tale of Kaguya-hime to the coming-of-age story of a girl living in modern Japan.

The Confession isn’t particularly scary, but the horror of neglect and grief is expertly woven throughout the plot in other ways. What’s left is a tale that's much like a hearty but far too starchy stew — it will stick to your stomach for days after you finish it.

All You Need Is Kill isn’t as tight or fun a film as Edge of Tomorrow, but the visuals are stunning, and the moody tone makes it easy to get immersed in the world, even when the story doesn’t fully deliver on the premise.

In spite of the heavy odds stacked against it, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is one of those perfect middle entry movies: It elevates what came before and throws down the gauntlet for whatever might follow.

Fire and Ash bursts with genre details and imaginative flourishes, in a way that has me worried Cameron might be cramming in every idea as he goes out in a blaze of glory (despite promises of Avatar 4 and 5).

The biggest reason The Wailing is a must-watch for It Follows fans is that the directors and writers in both cases treat sexual violence like a forest fire that devastates everything it touches.

While it captures the fantastical quirk conjured up in Greenberg’s pages, the edges are sanded down into something more digestible.

Returning directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard once again blend the high-concept political messaging about embracing diversity with a blitz of visual gags, pop-culture references, and endearingly silly characters that ensure Zootopia 2 never feels too preachy. The film moves at a breakneck pace, driven by several major chase scenes and a flood of jokes that come so fast that even if one doesn’t land, there’s something else to laugh at a moment later.

Edgar Wright has built his reputation on steering his movies into unlikely, exciting places. In The Running Man, it rarely feels like anyone’s hand is on the wheel.

Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc serves as a good point of entry, likely leaving new fans satisfied, but it also has a drawback. Telling a self-contained story limits the stakes of what should feel like a sprawling anime epic. It’s an example of why following up a successful anime season with a movie isn’t the best approach if it undermines the franchise’s overall storytelling potential.

This movie does one thing, and does it well, via methods that escalate to nearly cartoonish proportions. And it’s clear in absolutely every grim, gory, gutting-it-out scene that Helander and Tommila know exactly who they’re making this movie for.

The sequel loses the small-scale, intense focus in favor of The Conjuring-level supernatural effects and action. At its best, it’s much scarier than the first movie. But it also comes with a level of full-on action-goofiness that Derrickson and Cargill avoided in Black Phone.

Weapons is masterfully entertaining and far more ambitious than Barbarian, and it feels more personal in the abstract. It more closely resembles a collage of nightmares than the expertly calibrated rollercoaster ride of Cregger’s previous film. But there’s something elusive about Weapons, too, meaning that — to stick with Fincher comparisons — the movie lands somewhere between Seven’s blunt-force didacticism and Zodiac’s sophisticated ghostliness.

It’s a silly family-friendly story that stands on its own, without expecting its audience knows what came before or cares much about what comes after.

James Gunn’s real superpower is his ability to wear this comic-book nonsense lightly — to take it seriously within the world of the movie without feeling like he’s assigning homework.

Elio is a big-swing movie, an attempt to push viewers out of their comfort zones and into a strange new setting. But while it successfully blasts off to a colorful new world of wonder, it doesn’t always land.

Ballerina may not satisfy all the John Wick stalwarts, but the movie does have its own satisfying angles, thanks to two things the filmmakers do radically differently from the rest of the franchise — and one thing they take straight from the series’ heart.

This might be the funniest cast Disney has ever assembled in the MCU. Every character plays off the others wonderfully, giving the whole movie the kind of chemistry that the franchise hasn’t had since the original Avengers.

Operation Undead is a stellar new entry in the zombie-movie canon that takes some real big swings: It respects the genre’s roots and need for thrills while providing a strong emotional backbone.

In the end, Sloan’s film coheres into a confident psychological thriller that’s more than the sum of its influences.

By smartly leaning on the tools of horror movies rather than war movies, the co-directors have made one of the most tense and scary movies of the year so far, along with some of the most harrowing cinematic combat ever put to film.

As Sinners accelerates toward its climax, none of it feels wasted. Its action is explosive, and while Coogler’s vicious momentum can be visually disorienting at times, the adrenaline and the way he tethers each character to a distinctly spiritual question ensure that the movie’s strengths far outweigh its flaws.

Good horror-comedy is hard to pull off, but Hsu finds his balance by steering hard into the comedy, while pouring on the fake blood.

Death of a Unicorn delivers on its biggest promise — a gnarly, funny creature feature with a fantastic ensemble, and all the unicorn-themed gore you can imagine.

Perkins has made a film that’s both more horrifically violent than his contemporaries’ projects and also unapologetically funny.

It’s a lot to take in, but it’s joyously and creatively rendered, a fantasy epic brought to life in vivid color and with all the visual creativity a fantasy fan could want.

As a Captain America movie, Brave New World is batting strongly below average. The filmmakers try to dodge the political commentary that’s always marked the MCU’s Captain America movies, and focus on personal stakes instead, but those plotlines don’t land with any force or focus.

Ostrowski and Benjamin make a few key changes to Sapkowski’s story, mostly for the better. The stakes feel higher, the scope feels fit for the medium, and the twists feel right for the times. The ending will likely be debated, and joining in on that conversation is a great excuse to read Sapkowski’s original story.

Presence is more intellectual than visceral, more engaged with raising questions than pinning viewers to their seats.

It’s a quiet, contemplative movie where most of the driving forces are subtle and understated, made evocative by the animation, which is mostly grounded save for an occasional, deliberate splash of color.

Eggers has made a visually grand movie, with an impressively doomy atmosphere and one hell of a closing shot. As a finely wrought monument to the ultimate Gothic horror movie, it’s worth seeing. But as a new reading of one of the most resonant stories of the past 150 years, it rings hollow.

Most musicals translate emotion into song. This one takes that a step further, translating emotion into a daring central gimmick. It’s experimental and explosive.

The series may actually be subject to a bizarre formula: The looser and more disparate the parts of a Sonic movie are, the better the whole somehow holds together. At least that would explain why Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is, improbably, the best of the lot so far.

Handcuffed by the photorealistic animation, which emphasizes high-res fidelity over expressionism, and the ties to The Lion King, which constantly remind viewers of the original masterpiece, Mufasa can never quite escape the Shadowlands.

Sleep feels like a major debut by a filmmaker who is ready to defy conventions and entertain audiences. It belongs alongside those great Korean horror films, even while standing apart.

If possible sequels can capture the magic and drama of this one, the Transformers cinematic universe will have changed for the better.

At a time when horror can feel like a studio executive’s dumping ground for cheap work and attempts at genre-bending may make less business sense, it’s a thrill to see a director like Kostanski go for broke on an absurd pitch and take the execution as seriously as Ridley Scott would on a historical epic.

Smile 2 is bigger, scarier, funnier, smarter, darker, and undeniably better than its predecessor.

The animation really anchors the movie, which otherwise feels a bit uneven, especially in terms of Anzu and Karin’s relationship.

Director Jon M. Chu blows away all expectations and deftly avoids the movie adaptation pitfalls that could’ve worked against Wicked. The movie celebrates its musical-ness, instead of begrudgingly accepting it. It’s nothing short of wonderful.

This attention to detail and reproduction is the movie’s greatest strength — The War of the Rohirrim looks and feels like Jackson’s LotR in the best way. It’s packed full of sword-swinging adventure, kingly drama and riveting monster mayhem. Unfortunately, it also reproduces the aspect of the Jackson movies that has aged most poorly.

Phantom in the Rain lives up to the bar set by the original anime series, with a toothy, spooky mystery featuring a suave protagonist, visuals so lush they sometimes border on overwhelming, and the skillful blending of cutting-edge and traditional animation to great effect.

The result is a claustrophobic introspection into guilt and remorse, which hardly sounds like fitting material for a grandiose movie musical. But Oppenheimer’s focused approach to human drama makes it sing.

My Old Ass is about growing up — the joy, the pain, and those little moments that resonate with us far longer than we think they will — and Park smartly pulls it off by drawing on Elliott’s perspectives of both the past and the present.

It’s a heartwarming, surprisingly poignant, movie that also makes its point by putting a variety of animals into natty human clothes.

Its statements about gender, violence, trauma, and entitlement are blaring and blatant, with little room for ambiguity or interpretation. And that absolutely seems to be the movie’s primary point.

Alien: Romulus is made up of roughly two parts: a haunted-house story in outer space à la Alien, and a crowd-pleasing horror-action spectacle like Aliens. The former element is stronger than the latter in this case, and the imbalance is one of the reasons Alien: Romulus feels like a by-the-numbers retread of the franchise defining it, rather than the resuscitative breath it so desperately needs.

Space Cadet is incredibly funny, but it’s also about someone pursuing a life she thought she’d missed out on, and finding her own strengths when she feels like she can’t measure up.

The film doesn’t come across as ironic, satirical, or like a thoughtful analysis or commentary. It’s the first of the three that could actually be considered a new entry in the genre it’s referencing.

Balancing a mood like this, equal parts terrifying and funny, feels nearly impossible, particularly when falling too far to either side would topple the movie entirely. But Perkins never slips — he keeps the tension and discomfort perfectly measured throughout. That tone is exactly what makes Longlegs creepy, rather than scary.

By channeling the gravitas of Western sci-fi movies, Kalki 2898 AD loses some of the range that makes Indian movies special. Its ambition is to be applauded. Its self-seriousness, not so much.

It’s likely the best Manhattan mayhem film since Cloverfield, and it’s also a downright excellent Hollywood blockbuster, if an entirely unexpected one.

The Imaginary isn’t as visually or narratively rich as Mary and the Witch’s Flower, or as transcendent as Miyazaki projects like The Boy and the Heron. But it does feel like a move in the right direction for Ponoc, an effort at finding its own voice and its own footing.

Ultraman: Rising offers much more than the average animated kids’ film: It rises to stand as not only one of the best Ultraman stories in recent memory, but arguably one of this year’s best animated movies.

Inside Out 2 is full of passion and empathy, letting the audience in on Riley’s inner struggle without always painting her as the hero, even in her own story.

With all these elements working in dreadful harmony, Kurosawa has made far and away one of the best horror movies of the year so far, and he sets a more complete and frightening tone in less than half the run time of most of those movies.

It has its share of creepy moments, rising tension, and sudden-blast-of-music jump scares, but as a suspense story, it fizzles out surprisingly early.

Hit Man could have been a lot of different movies, and part of the joy of the film is in how playfully it gestures toward all those different potential versions of itself. But ultimately, that one perfect scene defines it as a great romantic comedy with a delicious bite.

If you already have an investment in the franchise’s volleyball teams and characters, this movie hits. And boy does it capture the epic highs of the show. It’s likely to fully reignite the fandom once again.

So even as Furiosa is inevitably compared with Fury Road, both positively and negatively, put your trust in Miller’s weird, wild filmmaking.

Hamaguchi slowly pivots away from dispassionate naturalism, building to an impressionistic, opaque finale.

It might be considered admirable how firmly Titley sticks to the facts, rather than trying to draw out a moral from the entire situation. But it leaves the story feeling more like a quirky, isolated human-interest story than a watershed moment in the development of exploitative, stunt-driven reality television.

Turtles has familiar John Green touchpoints — a gimmicky story setup, a teen romance, a quirky best friend — but it turns the story inward and pulls off a fantastic character exploration, one that feels like a gut-punch in its best moments.

Mars Express is the rare example of an animated feature that warrants an almost immediate rewatch upon completion, if only to appreciate the craftsmanship of its presentation. It’s a densely layered sci-fi story that’s light on proper nouns, but heavy on subtext.

It’s a curiously specific movie, a gag aimed at fans of joyously culty, messy nonsense like Guns Akimbo or Crank — at least, until that final fight suddenly starts taking the narrative seriously. Even then, though, it’s best to watch Boy Kills World with the same snarky detachment the rest of its run time encourages.

No bodily function goes untapped in Sasquatch Sunset, which happens to be a meditative communion with North America’s glorious woodland.

It’s the single funniest movie of 2024, delivering punchline after punchline through its acute understanding of slapstick comedy and cinematic language. It’s the kind of singular cinematic experience destined to be a midnight cult hit.

Each half of the movie represents a different aspect of Spy x Family’s appeal, and each half is quite good for what it’s supposed to be. They just don’t gel together at feature length.

It’s a comedy about self-serious criminals for as long as it needs to be, a vampire slasher for as long as that’s fun, and a story about a vampire who craves love and attention by the end, fluidly shifting from one tone and genre to the next at exactly the right moment. Even more impressively, each version of Abigail is just as fun and bloody as the last.

One of the many things that makes Boys State entertaining as well as relevant is the way Moss and McBaine capture these kids’ different facets, and track how their combined ambition and naïveté play into the big picture.

The subjects of Girls State are trying to express their confidence about their power and impact in the world, while simultaneously watching their country deny them rights over their own bodies and emphasize their powerlessness. There’s a particularly uncomfortable irony in watching them working to piece together their own political beliefs and futures while their government is shutting down their options.

In a way, Monkey Man’s lack of composure is the point, and after it’s over, it’s easy to see Patel as an action star, but hard to picture him slipping into the role of a smooth agent of the colonial order. Maybe Bond’s not what he should be doing after all.

The movie is the perfect blend of silliness and serious, deep emotion that never becomes overstated, all told in bright, painted colors that deserve to be seen in theaters to experience their full glory.

Challengers is a sharp and snappy movie, full of big emotions expressed through fast-paced dialogue in some scenes and through silent, sensual physicality in others, all shot with creative verve and aggressively in-your-face energy. Everyone in this movie is chasing sex and success, and conflating those things with each other in unashamedly provocative ways.

Godzilla x Kong (yes, it’s styled like that, like a streetwear collab) is beyond “good” or “bad” or “movies.” It’s an arena show, a pro wrestler shouting in the squared circle, thumping their chest and raising the jumbotron hype meter before doing their signature move.

The movie is full of mood and carefully paced terror that is more sustained than bolstered, with a plotty ending that never pays off the movie’s conspiratorial promise. The good news is, in true exploitation fashion, the movie’s final moments are grisly, pitch-black, and perfect.

It isn’t what those people will think it is. It’s something better, more timely, and more thrilling — a thoroughly engaging war drama that’s more about people than about politics.

It doesn’t fully cohere, but it sure is a party.

The film is a bona fide wonder, and may claim the crown for the best movie of the year.