Whether this atypical Burroughs adaptation and unconventional love story truly works for you in the end or not, you won't regret getting swept up in the journey.

American Fiction fully understands that you don't have to sacrifice art or politics for entertainment, satisfying those who want a rich thematic experience or to just have a laugh in a crowded theater.

Armed with mythology and its evocative atmosphere, Nikyatu Jusu's directorial debut revels in slow-simmering horror, haunting with its shadows.

Inconsistencies and issues aside, Shazam 2 hits the comic book movie sweet spot. The performances are strong, the humor lands, and the stakes feel high with comic book panache and the kinds of visuals one only gets in a comic book (business-destroying minotaurs, anyone?).

Don’t expect any inspiring schmaltz from The County, but for those looking to understand the global nature of the struggles faced by those who dare to resist all-encompassing economic organizations, this movie delivers the goods.

Barbarian ends up being a masterclass in tension and unpredictability. It is scary without leaning too hard on tropes, making for a truly entertaining film. It is a damn good-looking movie anchored by great performances all around.

It's disturbing and uncomfortable, but it's certainly never boring. At the very least, "The Wasp" will stick with you long after the credits roll.

It becomes futile to resist the intoxication of Otomo Yoshihide's rock music and the visual excess. Yoshihiro Sekiya's cinematography dances with Inu-Oh's supernatural ballad, extending and sprawling across the lakes and stage. Easily, those concerts are the most enthralling and splashiest sequences, recreating the adrenaline of witnessing stagecraft, all culminating into a hell-raising musical finale.

The result is an erotic cataclysm of gnarly kills, an aesthetic to die for, and another powerhouse performance from Mia Goth.

Yes, "Evil Dead Rise" is the most "Evil Dead" movie, from the mind-melting body horror to the outrageous creature design to the darkly comedic spring in its step. Here's a movie that invites you to treat the decimation of a family unit by demonic forces like a big ol' party. There is a select portion of the human population who will find that reprehensible. The rest of us freaks can just crack open the cursed book, read the cursed words, and enjoy the cursed ride.

You simply don't know how you're going to handle a situation until you are in it; until you've dug yourself a grave you can't get out of. In God's Creatures, this inquiry, and the way it forces the audience to look at themselves as harshly as its characters, is not only the film's sturdy foundation but its greatest emotional asset.

Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers may at first present like a run-of-the-mill effort from the face of Spanish cinema, but there's a deceptive amount of variation here. It's both a perfect distillation of his artistic fascinations and marked evolution in the depth of his thematic explorations.

It is difficult and uneasy, and often feels more punishing than entertaining.

Like a beautifully constructed puzzle box, The Wild Goose Lake various layers unfold in satisfying ways. With elegant violence, emotional richness and a complex yet coherent storyline, this is a rare bit of crime thriller treat that truly pays off.

Vera Drew is both the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and we should all be so lucky to bear witness to her madness. The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules, and The People's Joker refuses to follow any of them.

This is a tonally rich, libidinously powerful, and psychologically complex tale told by a master filmmaker equally at ease with European art-film conventions and B-movie hijinks. It’s this exceptional balance between the profane and the profound that sets Benedetta apart, truly proving to be penetrating in its effect in more ways than one.

Slightly confused as Titane might be in what it's trying to say, at least it is saying something bold and wild and challenging. It's a head-pumping, face-splitting, heart-tugging visceral experience of a film that is better left, well, experienced for yourself.

Bleak, severe, and awesome, "The First Omen" is the best horror movie of the year so far.

The film may end on a bleak note, but there's some levity mixed into the very batter.

If you’ve seen The Godfather Part III, you’ve essentially seen The Godfather, Coda. Those expecting something drastic, like Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Redux, are going to be disappointed. Instead, the filmmaker has made little cuts here and there. Cuts that indeed make the lengthy film and its sprawling narratives a bit more concise – it’s eleven minutes shorter than the theatrical cut. And while that may make for a (slightly) brisker experience, it can’t fix all the problems that are irreconcilably baked into the film’s DNA.

Though Strange World has no meme-worthy songs like "Encanto," its imagery is singular and unforgettable, and its adventurous spirit is genuine and thrilling. This is the kind of thing Disney should make more often.

Holy Spider shines a light into the murky corners of a society that emboldens its aggressors. In that sense, the film is essential viewing. Even if it is completely devastating.

For a film that grapples with so many capital-letter themes about loss, identity, and perseverance, it's the central question about belonging — and our difficulties in ever really getting to know how we fit into another person's life, even a spouse or parental figure — that truly sets After Love apart.

Spring Awakening: Those You've Known hits the majority of the marks you'd want it to. It's nostalgic and brimming with warmth, funny and heartbreaking secrets are revealed, and the archival and reunion footage of the show transports you to the emotional peak akin to the kind of highs you might've experienced watching it live, either back then or if you were lucky enough to see the reunion concert in the flesh.

Casablanca Beats drums its ideas loudly and effectively. The result is a boisterous and crowd-pleasing delight, showing a community with deep specificity that nonetheless speaks to the concerns of young people all over the world.

It's not "elevated" horror attempting to reinvent any wheels. It is, however, a very satisfying, very fun, and very well executed scary movie.

At the end of the day, it's an earnest, good movie looking at a very specific part of this mythical figure's story. It's a story that deserved telling, and this was the right guy to tell that story.

Kidman's performance is simultaneously vulnerable and feral, yet another tally on the board proving her as one of the greatest to ever do it.

Amy Seimetz plays by her own rules like this is the last film she’ll ever make (it won’t be, no shot). She Dies Tomorrow ponders self-fulfillment with agency and riveting execution. Seimetz’s fearlessness is what sells every ounce of this uncontrollable narrative’s every zig and zag. From tone to philosophy to composition, this is Seimetz’s soul on celluloid.

Not many films have started this funny and uplifting, while ending this bleak and depressing.

Howard feels like an in-memoriam tribute from a friend: made with a rosy sense of nostalgia, and perhaps a few too many photo montages, but with love.

Natalie Erika James’ debut doesn’t just tug at the heart, Relic wraps around it and steadily sinks its teeth into it.

I left 28 Years Later nervous about what might come next. After The Bone Temple, I'm thrilled at the prospect of where this story could go. That's what I call progress.

Its disquieting moments of magical realism paired with the all-consuming romance shared between Undine and Christoph — which feels as grand and tragic as the best cinematic love stories — add some warmth to Undine‘s chilly, cosmic exterior.

The Boogeyman doesn't set out to reinvent the wheel, but thankfully, it doesn't need to. Savage knows exactly how to push all the right buttons and pull all the right levers to engineer maximum potency, utilizing classical set-ups and pay-offs in entertaining, satisfying ways.

This is a movie that is both familiar and fresh. Scary, yes, but mostly disturbing, gory, smart, quite expansive, and all around created in the bowels of hell itself. 

Jason Yu knows how to stage a tense thriller and gives Sleep a sense of claustrophobia, using the small size of the apartment and some inventive camera movements to slightly change the apartment throughout the film, showing how the characters are losing their grip by making them unfamiliar with the place they know best in the world.

With comprehensive access and a vital narrative, Welcome to Chechnya is an important work of journalism.

It's been 26 years, but Judge hasn't missed a beat. The movie pokes fun at the ridiculousness of our modern world without ever making overt political statements or heavily referencing pop culture, making it a refreshing little escape from our own real-world stupidity.

The film belongs to Del Toro and Threapleton, each of whom steal the film in disparate ways.

It's rare that sequels outdo what came before, but O'Connor manages to do so here. This is pure popcorn entertainment, executed effectively.

The sum of its parts, including realistic performances and solid writing, makes it more than a great trans film – it's an overall great movie, regardless of the subject matter. Still, in a time where trans people's humanity is cruelly questioned and threatened, trans artists making art celebrating their own existence are more welcome than ever.

For audiences curious to know the ins and outs of the early days of MMA fighting, you'd be better served by watching the 2002 documentary. If, however, you're more curious about the people involved, and if you're someone who feels like either a winner or a loser (or, more to the point, both at once) in life's big match, then The Smashing Machine is for you.

Mescal is quite good and tender in these final moments, as Will grapples with his grief. But it is Buckley who remains the shining beacon that keeps "Hamnet" alive.

Fortunately, the film doesn't attempt to turn "Yojimbo" into the first piece of an epic saga but aims to deliver another satisfying standalone samurai adventure.

If there ever was a role that played perfectly to Pascal’s natural charisma, it’s Maxwell Lord.

Thelma's plight is handled with respect, and by putting us in her perspective, Margolin allows us to empathize and see the world through her eyes.

Linoleum is much more than meets the eye, and as the film wades into its final 15 minutes or so, you'll find yourself overwhelmed by an emotional revelation that not only clears up any lingering fog from the story's puzzling evolution but really pulls at the heartstrings with a wonderfully woven tapestry of life and love. 

Carney has this genre on lock. No other working filmmaker has consistently captured what he's able to with his movies, zeroing in on the way music can bridge emotional distances.

A House of Dynamite delivers on its promise of creating a gripping, well-crafted, anxiety-inducing thriller that sticks with you.

Amy Poehler relies heavily on this intimate collection of media, provided with the full support of both the Arnaz and Luckinbell families, and honestly, it's the most fascinating way to tell their story. It adds the kind of intimacy and personal touch that fans hope to see from a documentary like this.

Rebel Ridge delivers the goods. Pierre is the film's true weapon, and the movie wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without his cool-as-hell performance. The actor has striking eyes, and Saulnier realizes this, using lots of close-ups of Terry's face as he silently works things out.

Islands is a poignant and engrossing reminder that you're never too old to start living. It's never too late to develop a lust for life.

The filmmakers have made a movie which, while not being particularly deep, manages to be fresh, engaging, creepy and fun. For a mainstream horror flick adapted from a game, that's a feat in and of itself, but what gives "Until Dawn" extra heft is its meta, existentialist twist on the monster mash, making the film not the best, but the most horror movie of the year.

It's easily one of the biggest surprises of this year. While it doesn't yet settle the debate about where video game movies will go from here, it proves the subgenre is evolving. Video game movies, especially "Mortal Kombat" movies, don't have to be radical reinventions, nor do they need to be relegated to fan service slop. They can be more.

The film develops not in grand gestures but in an accumulation of small, gentle moments.

It exists in its own little world, blending genres with surprisingly strong results. What starts off seeming like a quirky rom-com quickly morphs into something far more disturbing, and strange.

Fuhrman’s performance is so unhinged, and Hadaway’s direction is so merciless, that The Novice constantly dances on the edge of character drama and full-fledged horror movie. It’s an impressive feat of incisively dark tone, even if the plot and characters are little more than shadows.

Anything's Possible perfectly captures the idealized fantasy of teen movies without ever insulting the intelligence of its audience, and finally gives us a feisty, relatable, and lovable trans girl to add to the teen girl movie canon of greats.

Godzilla Minus One is one of the rare Godzilla pictures about the indomitability of the human spirit.

Shanks can clearly blend horror and comedy, keeping things hilarious while never letting the tension diminish, and it's a technique that allows him to play an audience like a fiddle.

The Wedding Banquet may be the feel-good movie of the year, but that's not to call it a frivolity. It's a film that, once again, demonstrates how all of us, no matter from what background, can relate to each other, and in the era we're currently suffering through, that's a message we could all use more of.

Overall, the film is on point with its incredibly smart casting, and that victory aids in fully shaping the world Price Williams and Pinkerton concocted in their zany witch's cauldron.

Practically every immaculate shot in Maria is framed as if it were the title character's own theater stage. This makes an apt runway for Angelina Jolie to do her thing and deliver easily her most dialed-in performance of the last decade (or more).

With Mangrove, it feels like McQueen has put the story — of Black pain, Black joy, and Black triumph — back in the hands of the London West Indian community.

Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers is a proudly very daffy and strange movie.

The film is a fun and totally fetch amalgamation of both eras of Cady, Regina, Gretchen, Karen, Janis, and Damian.

Even a minor stumble or two does little to hold back one of the year's better horror efforts, leaving us to grapple with images that will haunt us long after the credits roll.

I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is a vibrant and inspiring story to come out of the COVID cataclysm both in its narrative and also with its production. This film contains a powerhouse of talent from actors to directors, writers, and producers, many of which wear multiple hats. Filled with refreshingly vulnerable and relatable situations, I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking) is ultimately as validating as it is captivating.

Fear Street Part 3 is an absolute blast. But there’s tragic darkness prevailing here, as there has been through the previous entries. Yes, we’re having a good time with all this horror, but we’re also affected by the senseless death and dismemberment. There is no reveling in the spilling of blood here. There’s just a unique feeling of loss; the sense of cosmic injustice at young lives being cruelly snuffed out by thoughtless, uncaring hands. It’s oddly beautiful in a devastating way.

Despite its beasties, "Keeper" is not a monster movie, but is instead a scathing look at an idea inherent in human relationships, particularly romantic ones.

Cronenberg creates an atmosphere of nauseating dread through it all as things grow increasingly deranged. No fooling: this is not an easy movie to watch. It gets under your skin and makes your flesh crawl. It infects you. You'll probably want to take a shower after the credits roll, and then take another shower just to be sure you're extra clean.

Nimona lives and dies by its main character, and it greatly succeeds in adding to the canon of great animated protagonists. Despite some rocky visual choices, this is a film worth the wait.

Between strong character work, adept mystery writing, amusingly tongue-in-cheek fourth-wall breaks which broadly work, and swift action sequences, Enola Holmes 2 is by and large a welcome and engaging mystery experience.

The Hidden World isn’t “big.” It doesn’t offer a shattering emotional moment, it doesn’t tear your heart in pieces. Instead, it tugs at your heartstrings and gently guides you to the finish line of a wondrous, lovely franchise that was more than we deserved.

A wickedly enjoyable tale of freak shows, dark and stormy nights, innocent dames, morally bankrupt schemers, and a femme fatale to die for.

Mars Express works because even its most outlandish and complex sci-fi concept is grounded in human drama.

Fire Island is every bit the hilarious and semi-meta rom-com you expect, packed with quips and well-timed jokes, but also makes ample time to continue the pursuits of Austen's story, exploring the emotional nuances of overcoming judgment for love.

By the time The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial comes to its somewhat startling conclusion, I was saddened by Friedkin's passing all over again. What a loss. But at least he left us one final stunner.

Concrete Utopia is not subtle about its allegories, particularly when it comes to immigration. Thankfully, the focus on character and the fast pace of the story that moves us from one crisis to the other keep the message from becoming overwhelming. Likewise, the script and visuals tease a larger world with stories just outside of what is on screen, adding to the film's worldbuilding.

Molli and Max in the Future is the textbook definition of an indie darling that executes well above its obvious production restraints, as unique and boundlessly ingenious a film you'll find in today's media landscape.

Mánver is astonishing as Cruz. The film gives the accomplished actress plenty of opportunities to shine. It's such a committed and warm performance, and a willingness to really dive deep into the psyche of her character means you won't be able to get her out of your head.

Good Madam takes its time to linger on subtle and chilling notes before unveiling its fantastic finish. The only drawback to the film is it hints at more supernatural events than we ever see play out on-screen.

This is as close to a multiplex contender as Porumboiu is likely to get, which may of course aggravate those that like their drinks sour, their bread hard and crusty, and their films to be as esoteric as possible. For those that don’t mind a bit of fun along the way this quirky, surreal crime thriller just might work its way into your heart.

Even if the bird rescuers' efforts are merely a "Band-Aid" against an ever-engulfing miasma, Shaunak Sen provides a worthy arc for the audience to grasp an elegant understanding of the brothers' ecological purpose.

Tringle of Sadness is an utterly hilarious satire told in three acts, each more ludicrous than the last.

The result is a chaotic, surprisingly funny, and intense night gone wrong that masterfully balances comedy, drama, and suspense. 

It feels remarkably honest and true to itself, demonstrating again that taking such a popular character seriously is nothing to laugh at.

Sacramento is film that knows exactly how to transcend the sum of its parts.

No less than 40 years pass throughout the film, but the immediacy and almost casual flow of time makes it surprisingly easy to attune one's senses to what van Groeningen and Vandermeersch are attempting to communicate.

As told through Szumowska’s highly symbolic aesthetic, The Other Lamb makes for a chilling glance at the strange pull that cults exert on their members and how their values imprint themselves on their members in irrevocable ways.

An ambitious, complex, and layered look at how the court system in America is virtually designed to keep defendants like Steve from every getting a chance at actual justice.

There’s are undeniably great moments in Judas and the Black Messiah, but one can’t help but think the movie needed to push itself just a little bit further. But perhaps the raw power radiating off the screen via the performances is enough.

It's a classical fable or a postmodern story within a story. Triumphant or deeply nihilistic — or both. The second in his planned "elements" trilogy, "Afire" will be difficult to top.

Smith, Lawrence, Adil & Bilall keep Mike and Marcus winningly human. They're adult men who suffer from heart attacks and panic attacks as much as they leap over cars and make impossible shots with their pistols. That special, magic mixture of grounded heart with over-the-top action and comedy is what makes a "Bad Boys" film, and make no mistake: "Ride or Die" is not only a great "Bad Boys" film, it's also a top-tier action comedy.