For all the eye-popping battles and fast-moving action, it’s an emotional story that takes the time to explore what its protagonist really wants out of life, and why god-tier power may be as much of a burden as a benefit.

Men is nearly unique as a horror movie in Harper’s specific response to the threats she faces. But even as she parts ways with the usual wailing victim image, the film still holds onto its sense of the uncanny and horrific. Even seasoned body-horror fans may be shaken by where this film goes in terms of its bloody physicality.

It’s no wonder that every part of Across the Spider-Verse is an attempt to outdo the first movie. The idea of growing, of surpassing and ignoring everyone else’s limits, is the heart of this series’ heroes and their individual journeys. It looks like the movies themselves are designed to follow suit.

The story of The Vast of Night is nothing particularly special. The storytelling, though, is spectacular.

The movie isn’t the most comedic or innovative addition to the romantic comedy genre, but it is sweet romantic fluff. Occasionally, it falls into the pitfalls of the genre by introducing fabricated tension that the rest of the film doesn’t really justify. But ultimately, it still checks off all the boxes it should.

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.

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

Helmed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls, 2003’s Freaky Friday) and with a script from R. Lee Fleming Jr., the screenwriter behind the original movie, He’s All That is one of the best high-school romantic comedies in recent history. It uses the old movie’s makeover template to carve out a romantic story that hits all the satisfying beats, turning turns them into something refreshing… and actually better than the original movie.

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.

Vogt makes deliberate, thoughtful choices that amp up the story’s drama and horror without ever turning it into the kind of action-centric special-effects showcase Americans have come to expect even from their low-budget superpower stories.

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

Without spoiling either Max Cloud’s action or its comedy, Owen makes the running gag about Max’s macho bluster into some of the sharpest gaming criticism released this year.

It unfolds with a fascinating specificity that goes well beyond the Batman details, and unlocks a lot of conversation-starting thoughts about the various ways and reasons people associate with different fandoms.

In The Craft: Legacy, the witches have no evil intent, only giddy desires and confident decision-making. This suggests witchcraft doesn’t invite trouble, regardless of how it’s used — it’s just power that can vanquish problems. The Craft portrays witchcraft as alluring, complex and consequential: in The Craft: Legacy, witchcraft is fashionable, quick to master, and easily renounced.

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.

The movie is packed with deep colors, glorious texture, and striking sequences, plus plenty of drone footage showcasing unspoiled, rough wilderness. Apex’s narrative simplicity (and the fact that it’s a Netflix movie) might lend itself to second-screen viewing, but anyone who lets their attention wander to their phone is going to miss some beautiful footage that makes this story seem a lot bigger than it is.

The movie is such a rich, emotionally detailed text that not sticking the landing is only a minor mark against it.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

These films use movie magic to make real humans look like they’re actually doing outrageous things, rather than using them as faces meant to humanize a digital creation being put through its paces. This is why Dead Reckoning Part One makes for an incredible blockbuster experience.

Nolan is not one to let any member of the audience miss his point, and the film’s final scene does ram it home. But first, he builds out the web of ambition, compromise, dreams, politics, jealousy, and inspiration — in a word, humanity — that unleashed the forces he stands in awe of. In Oppenheimer, man is the most dreadful machine of all.

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

Napoleon isn’t a movie about grand triumph, or about disastrous failure. It’s a story about masculine insecurity, and how it can reduce the world to violence.

The doc never feels propulsive, or even particularly informative, and it never has to. For people who remotely enjoy the existence of dogs, Well Groomed is one of the most wholesome, joyous, purely enjoyable documentaries in the streaming world, and Stern doesn’t aspire to anything more.

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

Freaky boasts such energetic performances from the thoroughly game Kathryn Newton and Vince Vaughn that the horror-comedy breezes by in a pleasant, amusing way, no matter how reductive its central conceit gets.

The match of material and star works so well that the story’s relative simplicity and undercooked quality aren’t too much of a stumbling block. It’s a perfect next step for Brown, and hopefully a sign of greater things to come.

The film isn’t without its flaws, but they’re all forgivable in light of how well it hits the feel-good bullseye.

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.

Brendan Walsh’s cold survivalist thriller, Centigrade, is a creatively crafted claustrophobic study of a fractured marriage. Strongly acted, the drama wallows in melancholy while presenting peaks of hope amid its simple icy setting.

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

Cartoonish as it is, Bullet Train is committed to letting its core cast make as big an impression as they can through quirks and fights, as Olkewicz’s knotty script ping-pongs between past and present.

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

Richardson’s task is to play off everyone else’s broadness, and his ease in doing so smooths over the rougher patches of Werewolves Within.

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.

Sometimes the acting is stiff and sometimes the plot points are routine, but overall, it’s a transformative magic act, taking the familiar and using a few flourishes and sparkles to turn it into something magical.

The Pope’s Exorcist doesn’t match the bone-deep terror or filmmaking heights of the original Exorcist, but sets itself apart by building the whole movie on an understanding that its whole premise is a little silly — and it’s never afraid to lean into that fact.

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.

There are moments in Wakanda Forever where it feels as though the film itself might buckle under the weight of not only the expectations heaped onto it, but of the loss that animates its core premise. When it manages not only to meet the verve and creativity of 2018’s Black Panther, but ultimately to tell its own successful story, it feels no less astonishing than a man with wings on his ankles soaring through the air.

The true pleasure of watching Slumberland isn’t in its inventiveness or originality — it’s a B on both those fronts — but in the delight of simple themes performed well by talented players, harmonizing to greater resonance.

On the Rocks is her most accessible movie so far, with less hazy atmosphere and a sturdier, more traditional center: Laura is written by Coppola and performed by Rashida Jones with a directness lacking in The Virgin Suicides or Lost in Translation.

A B-movie designed by people who knew exactly what kind of enjoyable trash they were making, Jolt is unabashedly silly, sloppily written, and overly reliant on the likability of Beckinsale and fellow cast members Stanley Tucci and Jai Courtney. But it’s also a breezily entertaining reminder of how delightful it is to watch Beckinsale get pissed off.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a Marvel film of unusual conviction, where every character beat is given the same weight, whether it’s the climactic battle against the villain, or perennial goofball Drax quietly explaining that someone hurt his feelings.

Calling it the best video game film to date feels like hyperbole, but it certainly has more heart and humor than its contemporaries.

In the Earth is an immersive portrait of tribalism and madness, angst and survivalism. And in spite of the somewhat predictable narrative, the film builds to an unshakably tense, unsettlingly eerie conclusion.

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 core of the movie is about empathy, and Hosoda’s sentimentality is compelling, even at its most overstated and earnest.

Cameron leans all the way into manic mayhem, smash-cutting from one outrageous image to the next. The final act of this movie shows off a freeing attitude he’s never fully embraced before.

Writer-director Jeffrey Brown may not be an innovator, but he has a poetic knack for coaxing the old roots of dread into fresh, cancerous bloom.

Practically everything about Wolf truly relies on MacKay, who has to be convincing enough in his at-odds identity to simultaneously draw viewers’ empathy and promote their unease. And he is, for every minute of this film’s 98-minute run time.

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.

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

What makes the documentary so compelling is that it captures the process of re-creating a performance that’s meant to be experienced live.

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

Mulan handily clears the bar set by live-action duds like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, but it still fails to recapture the magic of the movie it’s adapting. It forgoes the strongest ideas in the animated film (the songs and the humble origins of heroism) in order to try to tell a more conventional story.

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

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

The movie’s drama efficiently ratchets up the tension for its action to hit hard and move on. Again: Like an actual plane, it’s a marvel of craftsmanship so unobtrusive that it’s easily mistaken for mundanity.

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.

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

Scare Me plays some thoughtful games with the idea of horror-comedy, and eventually, Ruben uses the self-aware humor to sharpen the shocks.

Fincher’s movie about movies seems to be about attempting to work within a system that’s encompassing enough to impose itself on fantasies and reality alike.

The film’s plot, adapted by Simon Rich from one of his short stories, is unfortunately saggy. But Rogen’s performance remains rock-solid throughout.

The film weaves a study of what it means to discover you’ve built your life over an abyss into the fabric of a multiplex-friendly horror movie, but it wouldn’t work without Hall’s deft, complex performance.

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.

Even though this movie is sometimes haphazardly stitched together, like a dismembered hand added onto a corpse, Lisa Frankenstein is shocked back to life by magnetic visuals, engaging chemistry, and deliciously escalating motives.

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.

It’s a lean, smartly shot horror-thriller, and though most of the characters are thin, the performances lend them more depth.

It’s a pleasant enough hangout movie, and someday it may be held up as a slanted portrait of what mid-2020 felt like for people privileged enough to ignore politics. But it still feels like a minor movie in the face of a major catastrophe.

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.

Any similarities to Little Shop of Horrors are superseded by similarities to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as the story becomes less about a mutated plant and about the lengths people will go to in order to achieve happiness, real or manufactured.

Even though his film is dragged down by its criminally long runtime and weirdly sympathetic sob story, Cruella is a delightful romp full of fashionable heists and over-the-top theatrics. Does it work as an origin story for a familiar villain? Not really, but it’s a pretty damn fun time.

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.

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.

When the movie leans into the music and the love story at its core, it shines, evoking poignant emotions. But when the filmmakers try to smoosh in wildlife hijinks, it falls into the all-too-familiar trappings of the most cliché animated kids movies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The movie improves with distance. Days later, I mostly remember the good times The Beekeeper offers: Jason Statham beating on fools who deserve beating, bringing the pain in exciting and inventive ways, all while delivering bee-themed one-liners. Sometimes, that’s all you want from a bee movie.

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.

Fear Street: 1666 is a campy, grisly offering, and it’s also a satisfying conclusion to Deena and Sam’s arc, even though it alludes to the possibility of future explorations of Shadyside and Sunnyvale.

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.

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.

The film deftly balances a crowded narrative that includes a father-son reconciliation and a depiction of the dangers of running the streets.

It’s a slavish tribute to the first Top Gun. But it’s also a better film, and perhaps more importantly, a much nicer one: more grown-up, more generous, and more lighthearted, in line with its more mature star.

When Secret Headquarters indulges the fun of kids with superpowered gadgets, it shines. When it narrows the focus to the conflict between Charlie and his dad, and the toll that being a masked vigilante takes on family life, the movie stands out from other entries in the “kids discover superpowers and/or super-gadgets” subgenre.

In an age where corporate IP has become a de facto religion in global cinema culture, The People’s Joker is a blasphemous Molotov cocktail of a movie, with a unique and valuable point of view. And it’s hilarious, too.

This is a movie where the craft dominates the experience, which is thrilling for people watching for the artistry, but less convincing for viewers focused on the story.

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.

Just because Ariel falls in love doesn’t mean she’s not a strong and beloved protagonist, and just because Eric is a handsome and dashing prince doesn’t mean he lacks the substance behind that charming smile. By updating their romance, the 2023 Little Mermaid makes the love story more satisfying — and resonant for a new generation.

Bolstered by a (mostly) stellar cast, who make the iconic characters their own and show off their spectacular singing voices, Mean Girls is a fun little update, though it never transcends the experience of the original movie.

Weapons that send an enemy into a dream state or a phantasmagorical world give director Zhao all the opportunity he needs to radically change animation styles, or fill the screen with wild fantasy images. This is a movie worth seeing on the biggest screen available.

It’s a strange and memorable film with a unique voice and a unique perspective, and that alone makes it worth seeking out. But just as Stearns’ characters seem to be constantly suppressing a shriek of dismay or despair or defiance, viewers may come out of this one suppressing the urge to go yell at Stearns and demand a satisfaction that the movie isn’t about to offer.

It’s a movie that may look a lot better in the rearview mirror than it does in the moment.