It’s a psychedelic, bombastic rock opera, but amid all the energy, Yuasa ponders what stories have been lost as society’s more controlling elements attempt to control how art is made and distributed.

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.

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

With Maestro, Bradley Cooper makes a metaphor of Bernstein through the lens of his tumultuous marriage. It’s less a portrait of a life than a depiction of the fulcrum creators pivot on, presented by a talented artist whose ambitions lie along similarly oppositional extremes.

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.

At times, Relic reaches something like lyricism, which lifts a bleak horror movie above hopeless wallowing. The movie isn’t so much doomy or depressing as it is clear-eyed and resolute about its own horrors.

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.

Because the romance takes a back seat in favor of the main character’s growth, with the primary climax focused inward, Suzume ends up with a particularly unique and beautiful romantic arc.

At best, it’s basically a heavy-handed, inelegant Twilight Zone episode that was ultimately rejected by the religious organization that commissioned it.

Candace Against the Universe does everything Phineas and Ferb does and then some. It’s a natural evolution of the show for Disney Plus, relishing in the series’ perfectly timed humor, updating reference points for the fun of it, and adding an emotional layer that resonates

Dolemite Is My Name is ultimately a little flimsy — perhaps as is appropriate given the nature of Dolemite itself — but it’s a star turn for Murphy. His compassionate choices make up for the film’s flaws, or at least make them less noticeable while you’re watching it.

Simon Rex’s performance as Mikey sweeps up everything around it, including the movie’s audience.

The film is full of potent human drama (largely coming from Gourav’s performance), but as an examination of the world’s intersection with modern India, it usually lands on the wrong side of inauthentic.

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.

The film seesaws between being a persuasive argument for standing up for what’s right and simply being an actor’s showcase.

Flora and Son excels in its humane yet prickly depiction of Flora’s relationship with motherhood.

The film is genuinely clever at times in the way it explores the construction of illusions. But the process is deflating, because it also pushes the audience away, cutting them out of any investment or belief in the narrative.

Spencer is an act of psychological horror, a kind of ghost story, and a survivalist picture carried by an uncannily immersive Kristen Stewart, in the best performance of her career.

It starts as a crime caper, makes a pit stop among the sitdowns and power-jockeying of gangster films, and somehow manages to tie its many disparate threads together in a period drama about the destruction of an American city. It’s all the more dazzling that it does all this while being slickly entertaining and assured

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.

What Coppola accomplishes is less a magic act than an elegant threading of a needle.

Howard explores the life of the lyricist and the magic he brought to some of the most famous Disney melodies.

This film has a fire in its belly. But more importantly, it also has a heart full of love: love of life, love of freedom, love of Black people and culture, and love for its ferocious, complicated, brave women.

It’s enjoyable on the surface level, but it’s also a layered existential poem. It’s Wes Anderson at his most mature and magical — and at his most singular, in a way no one else can capture — especially not AI.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline is the rare movie that effectively weaponizes a radical political message by marrying it to conventional genre storytelling. It feels like a game-changer: the kind of movie that will inspire artists and budding activists alike for generations to come.

With stronger visuals than X, a phenomenal and ambitious performance from Mia Goth, but also an emptier and more meandering plot, Pearl loses the fun parts of Ti West’s pastiche. At the same time, it still delivers plenty of thrills and killer moments. It’s both a vividly painted nightmare and a showcase for its star.

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.

Encanto is a masterpiece that makes the Disney musical-with-a-splash-of-magic formula soar.

As a crime thriller, Emily the Criminal is well-written and absorbingly paced, but it’s Plaza’s fearless work that makes it memorable.

The French Dispatch is probably the worst film of the director’s career. But even his worst effort is worth biting the bullet for.

Provocative in every sense of the word, the movie is equally capable of drawing viewers in with its witty study of sexuality and faith, and turning them away with its unabashed titillation. In this film, as in many of Verhoeven’s previous works, those two opposing forces are very much the point.

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.

With this project, Rugna breaks plenty of horror rules and literally writes his own, turning his film into 2023’s most unnerving horror release — and a welcome revival for a subgenre that seemed like it was on its last spindly, clawed, wall-climbing legs.

The animation is gorgeous and crisp, and the script keeps its referential nature low-key. This could easily be someone’s first Bob’s Burgers experience, and it remains likable enough throughout that it probably wouldn’t be their last.

House isn’t all that scary, but it is weird in all the best ways, and nothing else looks or feels like it.

The movie, which chronicles the personal tragedies of Wilkerson’s life as she conceives and researches the book, is an awkward hybrid of these two approaches, neither of which fully succeeds. It’s a drama that wants to be a documentary, and it’s at its best when it’s just reeling off Wilkerson’s fascinating ideas at full flow.

Timid viewers who are normally averse to horror aren’t going to find much comfort or safety in this movie. But for longtime horror buffs, this feels like something fresh: a simple story, told in the rawest and most startling way, and given a face out of nightmares.

An existential mystery-thriller that vacillates between the farcical and the macabre, Taylor’s film isn’t just a rumination on the legacy of gentrification and the exploitation of minorities, but a poignant and darkly funny meditation on the power of one’s own choices and the necessity of cooperation in the face of oppression.

At its best, Children of the Sea steadily envelops viewers with curiosity, drive, and calmness. It’s a sensory concert.

Bottoms strikes a balance: It’s a playful satire, and it’s also exactly the sort of film it’s making fun of.

Like The Prince of Egypt or Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas before it, The Sea Beast ditches talking animals and funny sidekicks, but it can’t fully shake off its Disney influences. It’s a whole lot of well-animated beasts and water, with nowhere to flow.

If there’s one takeaway from Smoking Causes Coughing, it may be that: Life is short and illogical, and it often feels like one big joke that’s just a beat away from a punchline.

Catherine Called Birdy is the rare book-to-film adaptation that makes some huge changes for the better.

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.

If the Jackass crew, headed up as always by director Jeff Tremaine and star Johnny Knoxville, have dedicated themselves to anything, it’s staying young at heart. Their latest film is an uproarious, adolescent, and at times nauseating display of how time won’t affect your ability to have fun if you don’t let it.

This movie is drawing on some old, old tropes and familiar ideas. But it does it in a way that makes them feel as new, fresh, and exhilarating as young love itself.

Villeneuve has spent his career merging intellectual and philosophical queries with striking otherworldly images, but that duality is frustratingly imbalanced in his vision for Dune. The visuals are mesmerizing, but the world-building is flat.

With The Half of It, Wu has crafted a love story that tackles love in all senses, not just romantic, prioritizing not just who gets to kiss who, but what each character hopes and dreams for. They’re so well-realized that watching The Half of It feels like the beginning of a new relationship. It’s exciting, enticing, and filled with hope for what comes next — in this case, seeing what else Wu has up her directorial sleeve.

Nothing about where the story is going or how it’ll get there stylistically can be taken for granted. That’s one of the biggest joys of Shaw’s projects — the sense of something new and different happening, of that anti-capitalist, anti-conformist, anti-containment bent that stretches throughout the story also extending into every aspect of the film’s aesthetics.

Director Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner, The Secret of Kells) and screenwriter Meg LeFauve (Pixar’s Inside Out) have rebuilt the Gannetts’ fragmented, surreal little parable into something that’s more like a conventionally structured kids’ movie, but they’ve also made it more exciting and resonant. It’s a lovely film.

The ending doesn’t land, but there’s no denying the hilarious, poignant two-thirds that precede it.

Not everything Miranda and Levenson try with this film works, but even at its messiest, the movie is always meaningful.

The latest from Spanish writer-director Alberto Vázquez is transgressive and aggressive to a degree that’s hard to fathom: It weaponizes cute cartoon creatures against its audience, and introduces innocence and beauty in order to tear it apart on screen in the most horrific ways possible. The film isn’t an easy watch, but it is a bold and memorable one.

Through Durkin’s eyes, longtime fans and newcomers alike can see the paradoxical reality of pro wrestling — an entertainment that is both theater and sport, fake and real, and too often safer in the ring than outside of it.

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.

Michael B. Jordan imbues this spinoff/threequel with a cinematic zest the series has never seen before, expanding the visual language of the Hollywood boxing movie in remarkable ways.

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.

It’s a movie designed for people who like their future-fiction thoughtful and relevant, and for people who enjoy the runaway-train feeling of having no idea where a given story could possibly go next.

Pixar has been alternating between playing things safe with sequels to its hits and taking bigger swings with emotional human stories. Hoppers sits awkwardly between these impulses, recycling emotional moments and plots from other films while eschewing any clear moral or big moments of character growth.

Kline’s movie works best when it blurs the lines between the people of a nerdy subculture and the style of their obsessions.

By inhabiting the worst periods of his life, LaBeouf delivers one of the best performances of the year.

What’s especially strange about The Killer is that Fincher achieves almost everything he sets out to, but he sets that bar dispiritingly low.

The Long Walk is rife with simmering tension, complex emotional drama, deliberate pacing, gorgeous cinematography, and striking, horrific images.

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.

Athena is arguably a style-over-substance movie, given how little time and attention it devotes to the personal drama underlying its politics. But in Gavras’ hands, the style is also the substance, with a restrained classicism giving way to baroque staging as each long take accelerates. Scenes build in ways that feel both narratively inevitable and visually prophetic.

A sense of play and joyful collaboration permeates Leonor Will Never Die, even as it engages with serious issues of life, death, and legacy. It reminds us that love, like creativity, is a living thing, and that both are meant to be shared.

The UK-born Jones apparently learned to sign, sing, and put on an American accent for the role, and you’d never know it — she holds the movie together in an astonishing breakout performance.

For all its virtues, Bros is a bit of a frustrating watch, a lovely Nora Ephron-esque charmer buried somewhere underneath the self-imposed burden of representing “5,000 years of queer love stories,” a tug-of-war between the micro and macro that nearly squanders its sunny central romance with an attempt (however noble) to be all things to all people.

Whether strictly factual or broadly truthful in a poetic sense, its approach to queer history as coded, long-buried document is its most exacting facet. But as a story of science, hidden desire, and sparks re-igniting the soul, it’s a languid affair.

Jusu paints a rich portrait of Aisha’s life as an undocumented Senegalese immigrant and nanny under the thumb of a wealthy white family, but the horror elements meant to visualize her internal struggles never quite cohere.

The brightly rendered details and Mulligan’s full-throated performance accessorize a film that ultimately might not be as groundbreaking as Fennell thinks it is regarding gender roles and heterosexual dynamics. But there’s an undeniable satisfaction to her brutish approach.

Every moment of M3GAN is both endearingly silly and sneeringly mean, which is what gives it its power.

Remi Weekes’ feature directorial debut not only exposes the horrors of the immigration system, but mines survivor guilt for a clever, bone-chilling thriller.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train is a brilliant encapsulation of the series’ strengths and appeal, filled with moments of pulse-pounding action, heady emotional gravitas, and fantastic character-affirming moments of levity and humor.

This is the kind of film where viewers can let themselves flow with the film’s emotion, or entirely ignore the action and just get lost in the beauty of the imagination. Either way, it’s a luscious trip to take.

The squibs are juicy, the nudity is full-frontal, and the psychedelic orgy sequence is extended. But there’s a trenchant point to all the blood, sex, and urine.

What starts out as a sweet fairy tale turns into a metatextual romp that spirals in and out of itself, and gets deeply weird and weirdly deep. Sean Charmatz’s debut animated feature is an odd little gem that defies expectations.

The film is missing out on a cohesive vision, to the point where the audience will spend the entire film waiting for the flashbacks and summaries to end, and for DaCosta’s movie to finally begin. But by the end, she’s only offered a visually stunning homage to the original film. For a director of her talent, that isn’t enough.

Not only is it a fun fantasy movie, it’s a great adaptation of a gaming session. And it’s an invitation into a new and more visual version of a world dedicated players already love — and that the filmmakers seem to love, too.

Bayona’s approach to the “triumph of the human spirit” arc — often a broad, four-quadrant, feel-good cinematic flattening of real events — is both scrutinous and rigorous. It turns the concept inside out, presenting the ordeal of 571’s survivors as a murky scenario that we’ve been granted secret, intimate access to.

Its creepy unease lingers, and just as in It Follows and The Guest, Monroe is the face of that unease. That’s the power of a great scream queen.

Gunn, for a time, was uniquely aware of how expendable he was. And The Suicide Squad is thoroughly focused on notions of expendability. It’s also violent, perversely comedic, and despite pacing issues, an impressive effects-driven spectacle.

In spite of its compactness and intimate focus, Oldroyd maintains enough ironic distance that the audience is never fully immersed in Eileen’s subjective viewpoint. In the way he lingers on details and nervous fidgets, the director invites the audience to speculate about what’s really going on with Eileen.

There is nothing particularly bold about The Batman. Its strength is in execution.

Shang-Chi is refreshing in how little it’s concerned with big-picture universe-building details. Instead, the movie focuses on an extremely personal story that also implies exciting things about the future of Marvel movies.

Luca isn’t trying to make people cry, the way some Pixar movies now feel obligated to do, but it still rings as a bittersweet experience. Instead of a tearjerker, it’s a fond memory, a soft sigh after a recollection of a time gone by.

There’s some knuckle-biting tension as viewers wait to see how it’ll all play out, but Mylod and the writers also suggest that it’s worth chuckling a little at everyone involved, whether they’re serving up fancy versions of mayhem or just paying through the nose for it.

So whether you’ve been following Jujutsu Kaisen for years or are just hearing about it for the first time now, check out Jujutsu Kaisen 0 if you ever get the chance. It’s the kind of rare movie that actually has something (awesome) for everyone.

Spider-Man: No Way Home brings Peter to his biggest screw-up yet, making for a fascinatingly messy film that tries to juggle fan service with a finale for Peter’s high school years.

In Penny Dreadful, Green demonstrated an ability to alternate between seeming preternaturally confident and absolutely tortured, and that contrast is on full display in Proxima.

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.

The film is a horror story with the heart of a family drama, and for the most part, it works very well. But just like real families, it’s pretty consistent in both its strengths and its flaws — in other words, it’s the perfect sequel for fans of the original movie, while also being not that bad at welcoming viewers who might have missed the first go-round.

While there’s plenty of CGI-packed action, there’s no real tension.

It’s true that Lib smashing against the brick wall of blind faith is an essential part of the story, but at some point, The Wonder crosses a line between eerie ambiguity and aimless floundering.

This Emma fully earns its titular period, as well as an early place on any list of 2020’s most enchanting films.

The film is, in the end, Hawkins’ to own. Her eyes — and her posture, her voice, her jittery movements — defy any show-stealing, and lend a solidity to a film that might be a little flimsy otherwise.

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

Dystopian sci-fi has rarely been as delicately and beautifully detailed as Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper’s new film.