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.

Snyder’s background is fine arts, specifically painting, and you see it in the chiaroscuro speed-ramping that litters his filmography. But the closest The Scargiver gets to anything arty is that you could compare it to Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son, in that it’s near monochromatic and feels like someone biting your head off.

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.

Arcadian does a few things remarkably well for a sci-fi/horror movie, but it needed a lot more to really spark: more commitment to its vaguely realized setting, more energy between the two very different brothers at its center, and above all, more Nicolas Cage — either version of him.

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.

It’s a franchise reduced to nothing more than a parade of hollow, familiar images, lightly repackaged in hopes that we’ll buy another ticket and try to revisit the emotions we felt when we encountered this world for the first time.

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 gets lost in a maze of awful storytelling and frustrating characters, all without offering anything more than the stock-standard horror tropes that have been done better in a million other movies.

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

After four movies, it isn’t really a surprise that the Kung Fu Panda machine is running out of steam — thankfully, though, it has just enough power left to churn out some genuine laughs at the end.

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

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.

Yet for all the boring set pieces, bad exposition, and faulty universe expansion, Johnson, Sweeney, Merced, and O’Connor still manage to find tiny spaces where their charisma can peek through.

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.

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

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.

Mielants is too tough-minded to be caught, it turns out, but that’s bad news for the rest of us. Will nurses a glimmer of hope in the darkness, only to snuff it out completely. This is a bleak, bleak movie.

Howard and Rockwell are both funny, charismatic actors, but it’s a struggle for them to build real romantic chemistry amid all Argylle’s layered artificiality.