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.

AGGRO DR1FT isn’t an enjoyable or particularly well-made movie, but it is the movie I’ve thought about most this year. For better or worse, that’s worth something.

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.

It’s a laugh riot, with the potential to go down as one of the decade’s smartest and funniest comedies.

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.

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

In the process of stripping the series down to essentials, Green and co-writer Peter Sattler have made the most boring, uninspired version of The Exorcist imaginable: a regular old exorcism movie.

The Creator is a fully realized future in the service of a rote story and flat characters that only gesture in compelling directions; I’d rather not bother with that story at all.

Come for the fun gadgets and the kids saving the world, and stay for a message about recovery and kindness, delivered so earnestly that it isn’t saccharine at all.

No One Will Save You is not just a terrific horror-thriller, but one of the most surprising and entertaining sci-fi films the year has to offer.

The Expendables movies had one trick, and that trick has been played out. Director Scott Waugh has to resort to something else with Expend4bles: finally trying to turn one of these projects into a good action movie.

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

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

The lead actors carry the film, and the individual scenes are strong, though it never quite captures the deep longing that is threaded throughout the original.

Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money is neither dumb enough to capture the bonkers nature of the story nor smart enough to turn it into an entertaining or even informative tale.

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

There just isn’t much to differentiate Next Goal Wins from any other cliche-ridden underdog sports story. But what does salvage it is Taika Waititi’s ability to create quirky worlds filled with lovable characters.

The Blackening is a strange movie, and often a very silly one. But the creators can at least boast that they’ve put something on screen that horror fans don’t see often, and won’t be expecting.

The Pod Generation isn’t going to leave anyone with the dread and emotional impetus of a hard-hitting, scary sci-fi future, or the uplift and catharsis of a well-observed satisfying one. It’s more of a placid puzzler than a moving experience, though there’s certainly plenty to see on screen, and plenty to recognize in the commercialization it lampoons.

Branagh breaks all the adaptation rules. He smashes genres together. He goes fully over the top, which is exactly the direction that his Christie adaptations have been rolling toward. Branagh finally breaks free, making A Haunting in Venice the best entry in the series to date.

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

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.

I admire Blue Beetle’s craft in portraying the rhythms of a day-to-day life I recognize, but I resent it for trapping that life in a snow globe, where it’s safe and removed from the lives of white folks who think of themselves as allies. In this movie, that life isn’t much more than a nice Latin corner of the DC Universe, a place to visit for good tacos while everyone waits to see what the next Superman movie looks like.

There are no surprises in The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Just about everything in the story plays out exactly how the average horror fan might assume it would, exactly how they know it will, because the movie begins with the end of the story, then does little to play up the dread that comes with that knowledge. And most of us, unfortunately, know too much about this story already.

This kind of aggrieved posturing isn’t a good look in 2023. Geek culture won. Mardenborough’s story is real, and has a much more significant dimension than victory in some imagined gaming culture war.

If Wheatley seems a bit lost as to how to wring the maximum amount of suspense from this material, he at least maintains a location-hopping cornball sci-fi zip.

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.

It’s basically a checklist of the most beloved items from the Disney park attraction. But here’s the thing: It kinda works?