Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein is a breathtaking coup, an exhilarating riposte to the conventional wisdom about dream projects. The writer-director makes something almost new, and definitely rich and strange, out of a story we all thought we knew well.

Jane Schoenbrun’s second narrative feature is a gnawing search for belonging in the static spaces between analog pixels.

It’s also, crucially, a deeply humanist movie. Anderson cares about these characters deeply. Bob’s frustration becomes our own, as does his concern for Willa. So many “films of our moment” have felt angry or cynical, but Anderson’s movie transcends that by being human and even offering optimism. It’s not one loss after another. It’s one battle. Keep fighting.

Writer/director Liu Jian has taken familiar stylistic elements, and made them feel fresh, and exciting. Have a Nice Day may be Jian's second feature after "Piercing I," but it feels like a major breakthrough.

So many documentaries cut away from performances, thinking we only want a glimpse of it to get the gist before shuttling on to the next thing. What a joy to be given the space to settle in and let Tina take you where she wants you to go.

Godzilla vs. Kong is a crowd-pleasing, smash-'em-up monster flick and a straight-up action picture par excellence. It is a fairy tale and a science-fiction exploration film, a Western, a pro wrestling extravaganza, a conspiracy thriller, a Frankenstein movie, a heartwarming drama about animals and their human pals, and, in spots, a voluptuously wacky spectacle that plays as if the creation sequence in "The Tree of Life" had been subcontracted to the makers of "Yellow Submarine."

It plays like a Marvel superhero movie had Marvel been run by Suge Knight.

Everything in The Justice of Bunny King—the clothes, the car, the decor, Bunny's sharpened eyeliner pencil, the plastic cake box, the worn-out bra—hasn't been carefully placed in the frame. They were there before the camera started rolling, and they will be thereafter.

It’s a powerful feeling to witness art that reminds us that all aspects of our existence are valuable, especially our pain.

Here is a formidable opus whose real spiritual relative is Tennyson's "Ulysses". Yes. All is Lost is that good.

While "Oh, Canada" has moments of mordant humor, its ultimate mode is the elegiac.

Guiraudie's directorial assurance is stunning: the entire movie is a master class in audiovisual storytelling, as well as an exemplary case of immersing the viewer in an environment.

Without Arrows is an ironic title for a film that pierces the heart. It’s a loving portrait of a damaged but unbowed way of life, that of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and that makes it important for archival reasons. But what makes it art is the way it uses the language of cinema to capture the experiences of life as it is lived, decade after decade, and also as it is recalled in present tense.

Labyrinth of Cinema is tremendously affecting, frequently beguiling, usually exhausting, and on, and on, and on.

I had some minor quibbles about Coco while I was watching it, but I can’t remember what they were. This film is a classic.

Blood on the Mountain is wide-ranging across time, driven by talking heads and select footage, but it nails the human element at its core.

Covino’s film is an exhilarating anomaly, if not a wake-up call for the visual potential of heartfelt comedy.

There is that feeling you get inside when a movie suddenly starts to push your every button, creating an emotional connection that goes beyond pure reason and mere emotion. It elevates your mood to such a point that you wish you could hug the screen out of sheer joy and recognition. That is what Gloria did to me.

As cinema, it's not trying to reinvent any wheels. But it's an impressive example of basic storytelling techniques refined for maximum impact, each element reinforcing and feeding off every other element, as in the enclosed ecosystem that it depicts.

It may go against its ethos to deem del Toro's Pinocchio an impeccable masterpiece, even if that's an adequate description, but know that if the art of making movies resembles magic, this is one of its greatest incantations.

Fire of Love is one of a vanishingly rare breed of documentary that is determined to be "total cinema," not just capturing the facts of what happened to its subjects but creating an entire aesthetic—a vibe—around them.

The game of wits between Phil and everyone else is a chilling one to watch, and it’s exactly the kind of end-of-the-year movie to finish things with a bang.

This film, directed by Zhao Liang (acclaimed here for his 2009 “Petition”) is a kind of poetic documentary. It’s all images and sounds, no interviews, no talking heads.

This franchise has demonstrated an impressive ability to beat the odds and reinvent itself, over a span of time long enough for two generations to grow up in. It's a toy store of ideas, with new wonders in every aisle.

Apart from its numerous profound achievements, Neulinger’s picture is an extraordinary work of film analysis, inviting the viewer to study certain encounters frame-by-frame as a way of revealing their unspoken subtext.

Watching Coppola land on his head and then pick himself back up again and point himself at another brick wall is ultimately strangely inspiring.

"D-Man" is one of the most eloquent works of art to come out of the AIDS era, and it continues to be done by dance companies around the world. Can You Bring It shows the challenges inherent in this, but is also an essential reminder—to people who sorely need it—of just how bad it really was "back then"...

A diminutive and misleading title for such an affecting, often profound film.