You may think you know Sterling K. Brown, but trust us, you have never seen this version of Brown — a man utterly dripping with villainy, if villainy were in liquid form, and all the more chilling for the calmness with which he intones the most horrific thoughts.

It’s certainly a bit whimsical and stop-and-go considering how much of the story takes place outside of the aquarium, but it mostly stays on the right side of cloying never veering into treacly “The Life of Chuck” territory. And it is all building to something, though it takes a bit of time to get there.

Hokum has so many of the right ingredients going for it.

I Swear — at a perhaps overlong run time of two hours — is full of warmth and even humor, with Davidson occasionally laughing at himself and inviting us to join in.

Many of its twists aren’t hard to see coming, and the movie sometimes lacks the scale needed for a sprawling battle. But a mustachioed Odenkirk with a shotgun is, by most metrics, more than enough firepower for any movie.

As the movie grows more abstract, it loses momentum. But an impassioned melodrama and a curiously sincere belief in the transformative power of pop music wrap “Mother Mary” in a gothic garb all its own.

This latest film by the great and astonishingly prolific Steven Soderbergh is not out to give the audience what they think they want from him. Instead, it’s a meditation on art, legacy, creativity and the oh-so-touchy subject of who has the right to critique.

By its nature, “Exit 8” is sparse and repetitive. But in the not-especially-decorated annals of video game adaptations, it’s one of the most compelling and clever meldings of the two mediums — cinema and gaming — we’ve seen yet.

Jittery, tense, fast-talking and always on edge, this is a Hamlet, above all, in a rush.

Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and Illumination founder Chris Meledandri, as producers, seem committed to keeping things light and playful even while beholden to advancing some kind of coherent, moderately compelling story where there wasn’t one previously.

Beyond any direct lines of connection between past and present, “Two Prosecutors” has the neatness and timelessness of a parable, one that Gogol might have written, and one that could resonate in any era where the naively courageous challenge fascism.

[Petzold] turns “Miroirs,” a slender and sweet 86-minute puzzle, into one of the more lovely and profound little movies about how hearts can be mended by just opening a door.

Ultimately “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” has a few good laughs, some inspired needle drops, quirky references and a go-for-broke energy that should make it an enjoyable, low-stakes click.

Kiri is exceptional in carrying a film in which she’s the only talking, present actor. But that a movie so threadbare manages to feel like too much is both the film’s accomplishment and its failure.

Reminders of Him is a well-crafted, well-acted sad-happy Hoover adaptation.

As in Lord and Miller’s animated movies, their tone and pace remain singular. Project Hail Mary might blow past a two-hour runtime and yet there’s rarely a dull moment with all the problem-solving, earnest irreverence and unabashed commitment to imbuing life and wit into every molecule of the story. Daniel Pemberton’s unusual, buoyant score and Joel Negron’s sharp editing are key.

The tonal extremes and multilayered theatricality of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s movie-mad movie are, by any measure, a lot. But I would argue such ambitious gambits are exactly the kind that a filmmaker in their sophomore outing ought to be taking. “The Bride!” feels constantly like an act of plate-spinning that’s about to collapse. That it doesn’t is a fever-dream feat, one that makes me eager to see what Gyllenhaal does next.

Somehow, amid all the lighthearted anarchy, “Hoppers” manages to pull a few emotional strings too. After the heavy-handed “Elio” misfire, “Hoppers” might still feel fairly distant from the heights of peak Pixar; It’s also a big, joyful leap in the right direction.

It’s both captivating and bleak, with a series of sexual encounters that can only be described as feral — “Wuthering Heights” wishes it could have hit the ravenous peaks of Fernando and Jennifer together.

Like its subject, “Man on the Run” inevitably pales next to films of the Beatles heyday. But it’s a meaningful companion piece about the end of an era and the start of a long and winding road.

An adaptation of a Bernard MacLaverty novel of the same name, “Midwinter Break” is a delicate film that stays in a minor key, but whose impact is profound if you can get on its level.

Sirāt is the kind of film that will get under your skin and fester, the kind that will leave you with a pit in your stomach.

My Father’s Shadow is a gem, a deeply felt memory piece and vibrant portrait of Nigeria in 1993.

As in most sci-fi movies, the set up of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is better than its follow through. But the movie has a kinetic kick, and you could argue that it’s obsessed with the right things. We could use more movies similarly engaged.

It’s based on Adam Mars-Jones’ “Box Hill,” but Lighton’s film largely avoids the darker, abusive turns of the novel. Lighton is more keen to enjoy the unfolding dynamics of a relationship in the extreme, one that ultimately, like any other, is guided by needs and wants.

Unlike Robert Eggers’ 2024 “Nosferatu,” which was beautiful but bleak to look at and featured an ugly, fearsome vampire, Besson imbues his main character with a swashbuckling sexiness that suits his star’s craggy appeal.

If Soto’s film is loose and gritty, its satire is remarkably precise. This is a farce of creative life where the only pure artistic intention is a joke.

Thrilling because it puts the future in the hands of the young. “Arco” dares to imagine a fate for them, somewhere over the rainbow.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest... is part noir, part comedy of remarriage, and part Freudian fever dream about past lives.

There’s plenty of good music in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, including Radiohead’s “Everything in Its Right Place” and one of the most gloriously unhinged uses of Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” ever conceived. If the previous film had a Fellini-esque vibe, this one has punky, anarchic feel.

It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.

No matter how you feel about the history here, it’s a visceral performance that simply demands to be seen.

The very threat of zombies keeps things kind of interesting, perhaps because of all that’s come before, but this film seems to be suffering the same plight as its protagonist. Both are searching for closure, a bigger point, something that might give the whole thing meaning.

Polinger’s film isn’t a comfortable watch and it’s not meant to be. It gets under the skin.

There’s something comforting about the fact that Jarmusch is still doing his thing, exactly how he wants to, and that so many great actors are lining up to be part of it. He’s a singular voice in a landscape that’s always in danger of flattening.

The tone is so farcical that the gruesomeness of some of Man-su’s acts come slyly.

[A] nerve-busting adrenaline jolt of a movie starring a never-better Timothée Chalamet.

It might not be the best of the bunch, but the infectious childlike spirit (and intestinal fortitude) remains firmly intact.

A deeply felt film about one teetering marriage, and a work whose power sneaks up on you slowly.

Based on Freida McFadden’s novel, “The Housemaid” rides waves of manipulation and then turns the tables on what we think we’ve just seen, looking at male-female power structures and how privilege can trap people without it.

For those whose trips to Pandora have made less of an impact, “Fire and Ash” is a bit like returning to a half-remembered vacation spot, only one where the local ponytail style is a little strange and everyone seems to have the waist of a supermodel.

This is a piece about characters and Winslet gives her actors space to build people that by and large feel pretty real — the standouts are really Flynn, as the sensitive son still living at home and closest to his parents, and Spall, believably oblivious in that charmingly British way.

Like the infectious and haunting needle drops, from Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby” to local hits of the time, “The Secret Agent” is the best kind of personal film, imbued with so many things that Mendonça Filho loves, both resurrection and elegy.

For a movie that was in so many ways about a country mouse (bunny) coming to the big city and finding endless varieties of wildlife, both upright and shady, the “Zootopia” sequel spends too much of its time away from its mammalian metropolis. Even Nick Wilde — no longer scheming, more in touch with his feelings — doesn’t feel quite so wild now. The fun caper spirit of the first movie is alive enough to carry Bush and Howard’s film, but you can’t help feel like sequel-ization also means domestication.

Zhao, co-writing with O’Farrell, goes straight for the tear ducts, with crucial help from a superb cast led by Buckley — who, like her character, seems to have an extraordinary ability to dispense with artifice and access a wildness simmering beneath the surface.

Apparently even death is no respite from earthly puzzles like the love triangle. Sure it’s messy and confusing for those involved but it’s also one of the great storytelling setups for a screwball comedy. And this particular film, imaginative and shrewdly whimsical with an utterly charming cast, delivers on the promise. Lucky us.

Certainly the film has a fascinating premise, one that would have worked well enough were it totally fictional — but works better with the knowledge that it’s based on fact.

Bentley’s film is haunting and patient, a dreamlike journey through a world that was disappearing in real time and an ode to the beauty that’s remained.

Could the movie have hit harder at the self-involved stars we often worship? Of course. But what makes it powerful is not the Hollywood drama. This is a movie for any of us who have missed a child’s school recital, asked an assistant to work late or skipped a family dinner because a client was running behind. It’s about time. It’s about where we choose to spend our time.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t does what sequels apparently must do these days — load up the characters, return to favorite bits and go global — but nails the trick, a crowd-pleasing return that already has a fourth in the works.

As unkempt and overwrought as “Die, My Love” is, it’s not a movie that’s timidly weighing in on parenting and gender roles. There’s plenty to admire in Ramsay’s uncompromising and delirious portrait of marital hell, particularly in the bracingly raw performance of Lawrence.

The mashup of genres may feel a bit tonally rough, but it ultimately works, not least because of its unifying factor: Sweeney, who imbues her no-holds-barred portrayal of Martin with both sweetness and rage, with brio and real vulnerability.

What does it say about a nearly two-and-a-half hour drama when the 80-year-old footage from inside Nazi concentration camps that was shown inside the real courtroom is the most compelling and memorable sequence?

Trachtenberg who previously directed and co-wrote the story of “Prey” in 2022 and the animated “Predator: Killer of Killers” earlier this year, is confident in this world and it shows. He’s created a story about the betrayal of family and the joy of found family — and slicing horrific, nightmare creatures in half with a laser sword. But it’s both parts of Fanning that steal the show.

It’s a tall task to follow up a smash like “The Worst Person in the World,” but “Sentimental Value” rises to the occasion: Mature, sharp, bittersweet and maybe even a little hopeful.

Nouvelle Vague, with a young Godard making things up off the cuff and on the fly, is a reminder how less can be so, so much more. And how it’s nice, as a young filmmaker with big ambitions, to have some company.

Ultimately, it’s an effectively minimalistic thriller that leaves much room for interpretation and debate, and a good option for anyone looking for something creepy to watch this Halloween without the gore.

Though I’ve been apprehensive about the flamboyant severity of Lanthimos’ movies, I found “Bugonia,” a chamber-piece gut punch, hard to shake.

In many ways, this movie is, then, a mirror of “Nebraska” itself — unexpected, complicated and very American gothic.

It’s a subtle, affecting portrait of relapse, punctured by a wildly cruel embarrassment that is brilliantly staged and executed.

Usually a cinematic heist is spectacular — in its success or its failure. Reichardt has removed all spectacle, telling instead a moody tale of a man who makes a dumb mistake and slowly loses everything, like a tumble down a mountain in slow motion.

Watch it and it will linger in your mind. It’s a movie for Iranians, of course, but it’s valuable for any society hoping to one day mend a divided country.

One of the more sheerly delightful movies of the year.

It might not be masterpiece material, but it has a soul and is an undeniably beautiful, worthwhile addition to the canon.

The film succeeds in doing what it aimed for: Presenting a humane portrait of a guy who will be serving most of his life behind bars, in crowd-pleasing packaging. But what, ultimately, is the point of using the charming parts and ignoring the unsavory ones? For a filmmaker who has never shied away from the rough edges of reality, “Roofman” feels a bit dishonest.

Its plot turns can be rash or implausible, and the movie increasingly feels like ideas and set pieces strung tenuously together.

Molina’s main stage might be a dull, claustrophobic prison cell, but Tonatiuh’s performance is vibrant technicolor.

The film is a wonderful collaboration between [Byrne] and writer-director Bronstein, who drew inspiration from her own experiences with motherhood. It also has given Byrne, an actor of effortless appeal in lighter films, a chance to display versatility and grit in surely the toughest dramatic role of her career.

What carries it through, above all, is the great command of Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty,” “Detroit” ), who knows perhaps better than any working filmmaker how to turn bracing real-life, or near-real-life crises into heart-pounding thrillers.

How do you go back and yet forward at the same time? The filmmakers have rather cleverly done that by incorporating plot points from the first two movies and building out with new characters and blurring the divide between flesh and digital worlds.

Despite its grainy, VHS aesthetics, “The Smashing Machine” is a surprisingly conventional and oddly untroubled movie, albeit one that gives Johnson an indie-film platform for one of his finest performances.

The first and most important thing to say about “Anemone,” a bleak, somber, absorbing but also sometimes frustratingly opaque collaboration with his director son Ronan, is that it’s brought Day-Lewis back.

Filmmaker Raoul Peck uses George Orwell’s writings to weave together a biographical portrait of the author and a dispiriting picture of power and truth in the modern world in “Orwell: 2+2=5.”

All of You is a sort of second stab at this story, which Goldstein and Bridges (“Black Mirror”) first explored in the canceled-too-soon AMC anthology series “Soulmates.” Fittingly for a story about second chances, this time it sticks.

Squibb and Kellyman, both terrific, are the real reasons to seek out “Eleanor the Great.” The film may trip over its own contrivances but their performances will leave you moved.

The Lost Bus is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter.

Fitting for a movie with an actual skeleton in a closet, “Adulthood” is about legacy and how we become our parents. It’s also about recognizing that our parents are human and complicated.

In Paul Thomas Anderson’s gloriously messy, madcap roller coaster ride through modern America, objects in the rear view may go out of sight, but they don’t disappear.

This final movie will give loyal Downton fans what they want: a satisfying bit of closure and the sense that the future, though a bit scary, may look kindly on Downton Abbey as long as Mary is in charge.

The film, which runs over two hours, is building to a profound conclusion, a payoff for all the slow-paced and melancholy moments that preceded it. But it requires definite patience from its audience that it doesn’t necessarily earn just by existing.

In the end, we’re left to ponder not only grief but loneliness, and the lengths people will go to fight it. Shakespeare had a line about that, too, referring to “the mystery of your loneliness.” In Sweeney’s disturbing but also oddly satisfying tale, that essential human condition retains its mystery.

Baltimorons is one of those little movies you might stumble across and be surprised that it hooks you. It does so despite — or more likely because — of its complete lack of flashiness or any self-evident attempt to “hook you.” Instead, it manages that simply with low-key charm and a warm, unpretentious humanity.

"Last Rights” — part of a universe that includes “The Nun” and “Annabelle” franchises — is a decent enough final cinematic prayer for this franchise, combining the personal story of the Warrens and their daughter, Judy, with a new paranormal possession that’s created a freaked-out family.

The script could certainly be sharper, the comedy more clever. But for two hours on Netflix, Coopers Chase is rather a comfy place to be, with some moments to cherish.

It’s a little shaggy and you’ll occasionally yearn for a bit more humor along the way. But “Caught Stealing,” based on Charlie Huston’s 2004 novel, is a ride, foremost, in ‘90s nostalgia.

The film lacks depth in exploring questions of morality and human nature while depicting Ritter’s lofty goals to save humanity.

Though there are elaborately choreographed long takes that smack of contemporary moviemaking, “Splitsville” belongs more to a screwball tradition stretching back to the 1930s.

As Ethan Coen finds his groove as a solo director, “Honey Don’t” might not be “The Big Lebowski” or “Raising Arizona,” but it is a swing in the right direction. At this rate, if we get the pleasure of seeing a third film, it might just be a classic.

East of Wall is a promising start for a burgeoning filmmaker and a worthy portrait of an insular world that many of us will never know.

Highest 2 Lowest may not reach the heights of some of Lee’s best films, but it’s the kind of film that makes you hope Lee and Washington have more to make together.

The chief weakness of “Freakier Friday” — which brings Curtis and Lohan back for an amiable, often joyful and certainly chaotic reunion — is that while it hews overly closely to the structure, storyline and even dialogue of the original, it tries too hard to up the ante.

If “Barbarian” came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, “Weapons” doesn’t disappoint but it doesn’t have the advantage of surprise. It will, at the very least, make you feel a little dread when the clock hits 2:17 a.m.

It’s an impressive work of independent cinema that stays shockingly grounded thanks to its two leads and their fearless performances.

It’s a kind of over-the-top, “Misery”-styled meditation on entrenched gender cliches in heterosexual dating.

What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It’s a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive.

Nobody’s perfect, though Bobo may think she is. But in Venter’s performance, Davidtz has found something pretty close: a child actor who can carry an entire film and never seem like she’s acting.

Not everything works in “Superman.” For those who like their Superman classically drawn, Gunn’s film will probably seem too irreverent and messy. But for anyone who found Zack Snyder’s previous administration painfully ponderous, this “Superman,” at least, has a pulse.

In many ways, the folks behind Jurassic World Rebirth are trying to do the same thing as their mercenaries: Going back to the source code to recapture the magic of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster original. They’ve thrillingly succeeded.