The final shot of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is overwhelming. It’s a culmination of the two hours that have preceded it, but it’s more than just the end of a movie. It’s an entire life cycle of a love affair.

Baumbach takes the time to make room for their opposing viewpoints and experiences, and he creates a richer film for it. Marriage Story is beautifully bittersweet. There are no winners or losers in Charlie and Nicole’s separation, and no heroes or villains, either.

Petite Maman is the work of an unusually sensitive filmmaker, and it speaks to Sciamma’s skill as a director that she’s able to express the nuances of this complicated dynamic through such simple actions and words.

American Utopia will last past the current moment, past the pandemic, but in the cultural context of its upcoming release, it feels both like an electric current and a balm.

Even as Howard screws himself over with blustery bravado, it’s hard not to root for him. It’s a testament to Sandler’s performance, categorically the best of his career, but also to the Safdies’ skill behind the camera.

Weerasethakul’s Memoria doesn’t give too many answers. It moves at an interminable pace. But those are mostly strengths rather than faults, methods that force the audience to engage with the thoughts and collective memory buried deep within their psyches. In that sense, Memoria is a sensory explosion, and its dense, immersive shrapnel isn’t easily removable.

The clarity and care with which Hittman handles a relatively straightforward story lends Never Rarely Sometimes Always an urgency greater than it would have if she tried to moralize about making proper care more easily accessible to (and less stigmatized for) women.

By taking away the spectacle of violence, Glazer’s film shows another side of one of history’s greatest atrocities. The scale of the human catastrophe sets in not because it’s represented, but because the characters don’t seem to notice it at all.

What makes Little Women particularly refreshing is that Gerwig treats the four March sisters as equals, rather than as right or wrong for wanting different things.

The film’s fantasy elements look absolutely beautiful, and they naturally include shots of the classic impossibly delicious-looking Ghibli food. But they come with a kind of wistfulness for days gone by, paired with a full, unsentimental realization that there’s no getting them back. Which all feels like a director taking one last look at his career before bowing out. How Do You Live? has all the makings of a perfect swan song.

If only every film could achieve the sublime tenderness of First Cow.

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.

Roth and Scorsese carefully seed Killers of the Flower Moon’s script with context, texture, and detail, even when they’re avoiding exposition and making sure every scene has a dramatic point. It’s an incredibly lived-in movie.

The Power of the Dog doesn’t just mark Campion’s return — it’s the best movie of 2021 so far. This psychological Western’s themes of isolation and toxic masculinity are an ever-tightening lasso of seemingly innocuous events, and they import more horror and meaning on every closer inspection, corralling viewers under an unforgettable spell.

Dick Johnson Is Dead is the best reminder possible to cherish your loved ones while they’re still living — to take that extra photo or video as something to hang onto once they’re gone.

The presentation of this filmed version is occasionally rickety, but not nearly enough to stifle such a stellar production.

It’s a delight no matter how you slice it; for fans, it’s a reminder of what makes Almodóvar such a great director, and for neophytes, it’s an unforgettable introduction.

Every aspect of Wolfwalkers is thoughtfully, beautifully rendered, and the story is full of twists that keep things unpredictable until the finale. It’s one of the most impressive films of the year, and the best animated film of 2020 thus far.

The journey Zhao has crafted is marvelous, exploring literal peaks and valleys as well as emotional ones.

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

The entire 104-minute show is performed in a single “room,” so it comes down to the sheer strength of Schreck’s writing and performance to hold an audience’s attention. Schreck more than pulls it off.

This isn’t a vanity project, or a narrative about a single standout auteur: It’s a story that centers collaboration, both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

On-Gaku: Our Sound is a story of musicians who can’t play music, but still find gratification in the act of creating. It’s a deadpan buddy comedy about amateur passion, produced through the raw power of an animator’s amateur passion.

It’s difficult to believe The Lost Daughter is Gyllenhaal’s feature directorial debut. The rhythms of the narrative, the assured visual language, the precise performances she pulls from each actor moves with the confidence of a veteran filmmaker.

By focusing on specific individuals and the shared starting ground of Camp Jened, the filmmakers find a concrete thread to follow rather than getting lost in how much history there is to cover. More importantly, they bring a personal, empathetic touch to the story that makes it feel immediate, relatable, and like a call to further action.

A Real Pain isn’t a movie about real conclusions or grand statements, but one about deeply personal relationships and how pain and history can affect them. In that way, it’s powerful, as well as deeply funny and touching.

Diop’s film isn’t brash or loud, but it’s still stunning, capturing the migrant story and its effects in a new light.

Lowery more than catches an attentive audience’s attention with this film. His dazzling visuals, brilliant spectacle, and petrifying sequences are enrapturing. Likewise, Patel finally lays claim to the leading-man mantle so often bequeathed to him, yet so rarely earned.

It’s a hell of an achievement, and the rare case where a remake feels like an act of fervent fandom.

It’s a short film, but its portrayal of inspiration, self-evident in both its artistry and homage, is simply enormous.

While the procedural story takes up a fair bit of screen time, the emotional story is the center of the film, and the one that’s likely to stick with audiences longest and most clearly. As a story, it lacks the verve and dynamism of his early action films. As a portrait of obsession and regret, it’s remarkably sophisticated and satisfying.

The Fabelmans is Spielberg exercising his vast filmmaking knowledge to compose a story where his entire heart is stapled across the screen. It’s beautiful, evocative, enthralling blockbuster filmmaking, perfectly tuned to remind viewers of the power that can reside within a movie.

It’s bold, dazzling, introspective, and occasionally disturbing, which makes it a fitting capper to not only the new film series, but to the Evangelion story as a whole.

Finding self-identity through the guidance of her ancestors, Beyoncé lays bare that celebrating Blackness isn’t just an appreciation of the past. Black Is King is a reclamation of our thriving future.

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.

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.

This is how In the Heights won me over. Because in spite of its flaws — like lopsided twin romantic subplots where the lead characters are overshadowed by their best friends, or cloying lyrics that play on both the literal and figurative meanings of “powerless” — it’s ultimately a work of affection for both its subject and its medium.

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

If this movie is well and truly a wrap for The Venture Bros., though, Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart could not be any more worthy or fitting of a farewell to one the greatest animated comedies to air on television.

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.

Soul feels like the best Pixar movies used to feel — deeply humanistic, with both silly, kid-friendly humor and a sincere solemnity that feels entirely adult. Docter and Powers weaponize all of this in a story that literally and directly questions the meaning of life.

With a bright visual style and specific, evocative storytelling, Turning Red is an incredibly special addition to the Pixar canon, and one of its best films.

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

In spite of its heavy subject matter, it’s also one of the most electrifying and downright fun historical dramas to come out of Hollywood in years.

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

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

Saint Maud feels like a closed system, more designed than fully felt. Its moments of ecstasy are never as thrilling nor frightening as they should be.

At times befuddling, though adamantly mesmerizing, Neptune Frost fuses searing anti-establishment lyricism with ethereal electronica to create a film and universe worthy of its place alongside the likes of Sun Ra’s Space Is The Place and 2019’s I Snuck off the Slave Ship.

It’s about perseverance and the power of working together toward a common goal. Those themes are universally relatable — as is the giddy thrill of watching racist forces of imperial oppression get exactly what’s coming to them.

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.

Night of the Kings occasionally strays too far into fantasy (and CGI), even though the more grounded scenes are what truly make the film sing. Still, it’s a stunning work. Lacôte’s tribute to the power of stories is a powerful story in and of itself, celebrating oral traditions and the rituals we create for ourselves in order to make life just a little more bearable.

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.

It’s very difficult to walk away from You Won’t Be Alone without wanting to fill a notebook with its words and recollections of its images. It’s a film of wonder, of watching, mimicking, and soaking in awe.

Street Gang certainly doesn’t tell the whole story of Sesame Street’s early years — it can’t begin to. But it’s an absorbing, nostalgia-courting start, and for people with fond memories of the show, it’s an unbeatable chance to approach it as an adult, and understand their own childhoods a little better in the process.

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.

Although the film ends up as a shallow rumination on revenge and single-minded dominance, it’s hard to beat as spectacle. In terms of making history exciting and engrossing, The Northman is about as titillating as gateway drugs get.

The explosive fury of Bacurau’s slow-burn climax is a gratifying payoff to the film’s suspense, but without the deliberate measures taken to make the rest of the story count, it’d ring hollow.

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.

Everything Everywhere’s multiverse is a remarkably flexible metaphor. It’s equally suitable for expressing some common frustrations the audience may relate to, about botched choices and wasted opportunity. But it’s just as suited for setting up a series of ridiculously kickass action sequences where literally anything is possible, because the characters aren’t bound by reality or causality.

Godzilla Minus One is the throwback movie that longtime Godzilla fans have been waiting for.

In Glass Onion, made amid the dissociation of COVID, [Johnson] just lashes out left and right at a series of easy targets: the utopian fantasies of Big Tech, the hypocrisy of liberal politics, the fatuousness of online image-making. It’s muddled stuff, embodied in a gaggle of callow caricatures that he struggles to establish a natural kinship between.

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.

Seimetz has crafted the perfect anxious monster, repeating an idea often enough to let it take root without explaining so much about it that it can be rationalized away. It’s all nestled within a dark — and at times, darkly funny — psychological horror movie.

Shelby and Miles’ story is compelling, but Mangold digs deeper to find the motor that propels Ford v Ferrari across the finish line.

It’s a movie that commands attention, with everything going on across the screen and in the script. The action plot augments the family conflict and vice versa, with every moment of the story pushing those plots forward. It’s an utter delight from start to finish that brings the best of animation and the internet to life.

There’s a focus on ritual in Huesera that builds both its horror and its character study in compelling ways.

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.

West delivers a crowd-pleasing return to horror that’s a love letter to the genre without becoming a parody.

Wright takes an exhaustive approach to the band’s career, going album by album, talking to collaborators and supporters as well as to the Maels. Throughout, Russell and Ron remain somewhat aloof, perhaps by design. They’re more open about their past and their intentions here than they’ve ever been in interviews, but they aren’t about to give away all their secrets.

Working with fellow directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, Gibney has delivered a swiftly paced chronicle of history in the making, rich in both immediacy and uncertainty.

Barbie the doll has to be everything for everyone, and she’s never succeeded. Barbie the movie has been asked to perform the same impossible trick — and just like I still feel a sentimental attachment to Barbie, I feel an overwhelming fondness and admiration for the movie’s daring attempt to make it work.

Rather than copying the core premise of the short story, Bonello’s French- and English-language adaptation uses James’ dense, descriptive prose to weave detailed textures and sensations in each of his timelines.

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.

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.

This isn’t a movie about car chases and explosions, it’s about the squirmy but satisfying feeling of watching justice done, and it’s a pleasure to watch the pieces fall into place.

It’s an unruly, wild, and tender film that sometimes gets lost but, by the end, finds its way to a very moving state of grace.

Dune: Part Two is exactly the movie Part One promised it could be, the rare sequel that not only outdoes its predecessor, but improves it in retrospect… One of the best blockbusters of the century so far.

Apollo 10 1/2 is a charming, visually striking blend of history and fantasy that captures the way children see and process historical events happening around them, and considers what they choose to remember — and how those choices affect them as adults, and the worlds they choose to build around them.

With a patient, compassionate, but penetrating gaze, How to Have Sex maps out the dangerous, murky territory of teenage sexuality and friendships.

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

Green’s approach to stories — finding larger truths rather than focusing on the most sensational aspects — vaults The Assistant into extraordinary territory, as it sheds light not only on the actions of abusers in power, but on the people around them, who can’t or won’t do anything to change the status quo.

Vinterberg’s ending offers an unlikely sense of catharsis, even though it isn’t truly happy, turning the film into something fresh and affecting. On top of all that, the film provides the opportunity to watch Mikkelsen give perhaps his best performance yet.

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.

The maze Kaufman is leading us through is a mystery, as he never pulls back far enough to show us the whole thing. But as itchy and claustrophobic as the paths are, they ultimately lead to a sense of hope.

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.

The combination of Dahl’s bleak plot turns, from the offscreen death of Luke’s parents to a witch who lures the grieving young boy out of his treehouse with the promise of a pet snake, Roeg’s in-your-face camerawork and Henson’s creature effects make every second of The Witches unencumbered, gleeful torture.

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.

After Yang is intensely internal and personal, as grief so often is, which guarantees it won’t connect with a wide audience. But as a collection of images and moods, all gently nudging at that central question of what defines a person, it’s gravely hypnotic. It’s an old question, asked in a new way, with deepest gravity and respect.

Comedy is a welcome release for the genuine harms couched in Gibberitia’s philistine precepts. Authoritarians are self-important, humorless fools. We should make fun of them and laugh at them. Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia encourages viewers to join in the mockery, but not at the expense of its central motif, because ripping on autocrats alone isn’t enough.

This is a movie meant to introduce viewers to the real emotions people bring to their escapist fantasy worlds. But for most viewers, it’s more likely to simply be a confusing, exhilarating, context-free introduction to the fantasy world itself.

The Summit of the Gods isn’t a joyous film, and it isn’t a dreamy one. But it does feel like a remarkably insightful meditation, both about what it would really be like to fight your way up Mount Everest, and about why people keep taking up the challenge

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.

I’m Your Man offers a perspective on humanity that’s equally whimsical and melancholy, and its intimacy is a welcome change of pace in science fiction, a genre that too often mistakes violence and colonialism as the only drivers of drama.

Cregger merely uses the premise as a foundation for something more ambitious, delivering a lean, surprising film with effective thrills, while also giving viewers plenty to contemplate afterward.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair isn’t just a movie about connecting, it’s about becoming. It’s a powerful acknowledgement of how confounding and frightening young adulthood can be. But it’s also a film about hope.

1917 is a noble, failed experiment in breaking the rules.

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.