Given that this is a Part One, the film’s conclusion is inevitably less satisfying than a proper third act, but this is a worthy entry in America’s best ongoing franchise, one where sincerity and absurdity walk hand in hand with vital, triumphant conviction.

The spookiness of The Humans conveys a larger point about the intimacy of family life. The Blakes’ shaky dynamic—their passive-aggressive asides and nonchalant appraisals—could be considered normal, but by using filmmaking techniques usually reserved for ghost stories, Karam challenges that normalcy.

It’s sad and sometimes angry, with a heartfelt view of a relationship’s dynamics that some of the director’s prior works lacked.

It’s a movie that actually makes the past look otherworldly, unlike many period pieces, which strive to make history seem easy to slip into.

The result is a surprisingly funny and extremely melancholy hangout film, an elegy for a bygone era that reflects on how all art eventually loses its edge.

As these films have gone on, they’ve become more and more fascinated with Hunt’s essential ludicrousness. Mission: Impossible – Fallout decrees him elemental—a crucial, indefinable component keeping the very fabric of humanity knitted together. The film is so dizzyingly fun that, at least while you’re watching, it seems like a sound conclusion.

Although The Killer is a crisply told piece of pulpy neo-noir, it also has an element of self-parody to it, laying out a consummate professional’s precise process and then dashing it into chaos at every chance.

Gerwig manages to honor both the letter and the spirit of Alcott’s tale; Little Women is stuffed with trials and tribulations, yet overflowing with goodwill, just as Alcott described it herself.

For as expensive and action-packed as it is, this Superman is also stuffed with whimsical concepts and ridiculous side characters.

Does Coco rise to the heights of Pixar’s very best work? No. But it is a generous, heartfelt film, full of color and music, one that offers a timely Thanksgiving tribute to the intergenerational importance of family.

Granik’s ability to convey so much about how a community works without didacticism is part of what made Winter’s Bone (which was set in the Ozarks) such a thrill to watch. While Leave No Trace is a more muted drama, it has a similarly firm grasp on its characters and the places they comes across.

Marty is vivacious, and the film around him is buzzing at the same frequency: itchy, anxious, yet unbearably exciting throughout, each minute defined by some hairpin plot turn.

The final battles in The Way of Water are rousing, but they’re also feats of geography, astonishing in how they manage to keep the audience focused on a huge ensemble of characters who are jumping between various locations.

Let the Sunshine In is a unique, spellbinding work, worthy of comparison to Denis’s best films.

It’s a celebration of the man, but also a quiet tragedy, with many regrets piling up to a muted and devastating conclusion.

Never has the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” seemed like more of a universe, in ways both good and bad. Infinity War—the title is almost too apt—is a narrative juggling act the likes of which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. It is far from a perfect movie, but it is probably close to the best movie it could have been.

Dìdi exudes a special kind of empathy and warmth toward the kids who grew up in the age of Myspace, as well as their families. Many coming-of-age stories examine a child’s relationship with themselves and their parents, but Dìdi also tracks how those shifts were made more jarring and strange in the early days of social media.

Like the beachside wardrobe the cast dons for its sun-kissed retreat, the movie is colorful and breezy. Glass Onion is mayhem-filled fun, best enjoyed with a crowd.

The script, by Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jonathan, is capable but unremarkable, as is Howard’s direction. But the cast...consistently elevates the material.

Sometimes Shang-Chi is a straightforward martial-arts drama, all fistfights and meticulous choreography. Other times it’s a high-fantasy epic, full of stunning scenery and complex lore.

Just over two hours of entertaining but profoundly silly superheroism.

This is a demanding film, and there is one grisly (though in no way gratuitous) twist near the end that will test the endurance even of those who appreciated what came before. So be forewarned: Aronofsky has made precisely the movie he set out to make. But it may very well not be the movie for you.

Hathaway delivers a sharp, witty dissection of female celebrity, at once impenetrably vain and entitled, yet also riven with self-doubt. It is both the most pointed and most amusing way in which the movie toys with gender expectations.

The result is a comedy so black that it recalls the words of the immortal Nigel Tufnel: It could be “none more black.”

If Mickey’s life is suffocatingly bleak, Mickey 17 is anything but. Rather, it’s a wacky, satisfyingly strange romp that further reaffirms Bong Joon Ho as a singular filmmaker.

Girls State is much more than a gender-flipped version of the previous project. Instead, the film offers a sharp study of how a supposedly empowering environment can simultaneously inspire and limit aspiring female leaders.

A tense, loopy look at acting and writing, the movie is at times deliberately off-putting. But it’s anchored by a star-making turn from Helena Howard, who plays the fascinating, inscrutable figure at the story’s center.

This movie is as much a eulogy for a country that Eastwood sees as slowly crumbling as it is for the life Earl chose to lead.

For Avatar fans, I have great news: The latest installment of James Cameron’s magical-alien adventure saga is here, and you’re going to love it. . . The bad news for anyone not already on board: This film has no interest in you.

The film earns its length not by overstuffing the frame with opulent action, but by slowing things down and basking in the charisma of its ensemble.

It’s also just a sexy, fun movie for grown-ups that believes in its story rather than empty spectacle. . . this is a rare romantic comedy to see with a roaring crowd.

I’m all for the studio exploring new concepts and original characters going forward, and setting aside the endless anthologizing of its biggest hits for a good long while. But if I had to get another Toy Story, this is about as strange and beguiling an entry as I could have hoped for.

With his latest movie, Lanthimos has made a tense, heart-wrenching tale with an admirably askance view of humanity that’s a worthy successor to his prior works.

The Sisters Brothers feels special. It has the painterly visuals of a classic film, but its lead characters are black-hatted villains whose road to redemption is mostly motivated by exhaustion rather than guilt. The story is grim and violent, but the brothers’ relationship is shot through with ramshackle humor, and the men they’re ultimately tasked with pursuing are portrayed as loving and idealistic—an utter rarity for this kind of story.

Mikey is one of Baker’s most thought-through creations, and Rex brings him to life with terrifying honesty.

With its ever-evolving protagonist, Return to Seoul defies neat categorization. It’s a low-budget character drama with the twists and turns of a high-octane thriller. It’s also a consistently satisfying watch that honors the difficulty of wanting to be understood—and the relief of finally releasing that desire.

Hustlers would work as a goofy comedy; it works even better as a thoughtful one, crammed with killer lines and supporting work from both acting veterans (Julia Stiles) and fresh faces (Cardi B). It’s a salute to extravagance that knows when to cut loose and when to hold on quiet, introspective beats.

Birdman—I should probably note here that the full title is the punctuationally ridiculous Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)—is a giddy fantasia of themes and genres, and if not all of them fully cohere, then so be it. As the Birdman voice inside Riggan’s head reminds us, sometimes viewers crave pure entertainment, not just “talky, pretentious, philosophical bullshit.”

By framing her characters’ inventiveness with boldly bizarre imagery, Schoenbrun is getting at what makes internet horror such a unique mode of cinema. The viewer is unsettled not just by the content, but by their ambiguous relationship to who’s sharing it.

Boys State is both inspiring and occasionally terrifying, and that befits its gaze into America’s political present and future.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? may be a muted story, but it is a profoundly memorable one.

Whether Midsommar works for you depends on whether Dani’s arc lands with the emotional heft Aster desires; certainly do not go into the film expecting any high-octane kills or gorily creative set pieces.

Despite its period setting, The Favourite just might be Lanthimos’s most trenchant and relevant work yet.

With Judas and the Black Messiah, King has made a thriller that speaks to history without feeling didactic, that keeps the audience in suspense even though the ending was written decades ago.

While it takes time to build up steam and set up its plot mechanics, once everyone is in costume and letting loose, it’s an exhilarating ride.

Overlook Turning Red at your peril. It’s the best thing Pixar’s produced in recent memory and perhaps the studio’s most emotionally nuanced and thematically clever film since Inside Out.

It’s funny, high-spirited, and giddily loopy, a descent into madness told with the energy of a sea shanty. But it has that same attention to detail that makes Eggers such an exciting filmmaker.

Nomadland is a work of exploration, and not just across the sprawling American West. Fern is exorcising her darkest demons, which spring from the systemic neglect that has been visited on so many Americans in recent years. The odyssey makes Zhao’s film a transfixing mix of reckoning and catharsis.

That Rose-Lynn is an onstage force is easy to tell from the second she picks up a microphone, but Taylor makes this film less about her gift than about the maturity she needs to take it beyond the local Glasgow pubs. As a result, the film’s melancholy but uplifting closing notes land that much more powerfully.

For all its eerie focus on the end of our lives, that’s what Johnson’s movie is about: celebrating the people we love.

It’s scary. I’ve seen plenty of Godzilla movies and enjoyed most of them, but the title character has rarely been so frightening to behold.

In Palm Springs, the journey the central characters go on isn’t just about trying to escape the loop—it’s about understanding that no matter how tedious life might seem, there are always ways to find joy in living it.

Triet skillfully spins the viewers’ sympathy into a worst-case scenario, literally putting these feelings on trial, and it serves to compound the excitement. It’s a simple question, really: What if a domestic drama got crossed with a courtroom thriller? Anatomy of a Fall is the glorious answer.

I’d forgive anyone for thinking this all sounds a little too precious, but that’s Rohrwacher’s storytelling skill: She can make such a fairy tale feel familiar without sapping it of its dreamlike charm.

The dazzling ambition on display, both aesthetically and narratively, justifies the swing. But I won’t be ready to call the Spider-Verse series a masterpiece of the genre until I watch it stick the landing next year—even though I’m a firm believer that it will.

Jenkins uses her gift for capturing intimacy as a weapon, telling a story that’s sometimes brutal, other times acidly funny, but always honest.

Mary Poppins Returns is surely not a movie for everyone. But for those with a deep fondness for the original film, it is a worthy remix.

In depicting the out-of-sight, out-of-mind bubble mentality of Israel’s civilian citizens (and how easily that bubble can burst), Foxtrot is a uniquely powerful work.

With Tick, Tick … Boom, Miranda celebrates the power and the pressure of the world he loves most, and he’s picked a subject who encapsulates those warring dynamics perfectly.

It’s breathtaking to watch the director work on such a grand scale, but the humans within his film do sometimes get lost. For all Nolan’s metaphysical mastery, there’s an undeniable coldness to his twilight world.

The horror genre has, of late, been hijacked by purportedly “elevated” takes that avoid the simplicity of something like a slasher. X provides a map for how to do the classics right while still taking the formula somewhere original.

The Tale is above all a work of profound empathy, as a look inside someone’s psyche would have to be. Fox isn’t just excavating the abuse she suffered as a girl; she’s also engaging with and forgiving herself, reconciling with the damage that she had convinced herself to ignore for years.

CODA is insightful and moving enough to be worth all the fuss.

Again and again, blood splatters onto the camera lens, producing gleefully gory images. It’s grimy, sometimes even ugly filmmaking, but it’s effectively disorienting. What’s most striking about 28 Years Later, though, is how it manages to hold together its freewheeling plot and tonal shifts.

The film is simply intent on capturing the energy of that special “us against the world” connection that can exist only in high school and unleashing it onto the screen.

It’s only right that a film about her challenges—and maybe even disturbs—its audience in turn.

This film is not a grandiose tale of love transcending all, but it does find all kinds of sweet, specific ways to portray a lasting partnership.

Unrelenting and frank, Passages captures the creeping discontents of its Fassbinder-lite protagonist without losing sight of how his transgressions affect those around him.

What most stunned me about Eighth Grade was how well directed it is. It’s rare that teen movies have the kind of visual acuity and verve that Burnham achieves here.

This is a movie that deserves to be seen—it’s a work of maturity and confidence from one of the indie world’s best young directors.

The highest compliment I can bestow on it is that Corbet’s drive has paid dividends, leaving much for me to puzzle through.

An endearing look at creativity as well as a surprisingly poignant reminder that most artists succeed not through individual genius, but by being part of a community.

The Woman King is a barn burner if you’re just looking for an invigorating night at the movies. But Prince-Bythewood’s real triumph is in grounding that sterling entertainment in a challenging dramatic text.

Despite the grand scale, like all of Jia’s works, Ash Is Purest White leaves questions of good and evil to the viewer—this isn’t a philosophical story, but a personal one.

Ducournau challenges viewers to find the humanity in a character who seems intent on rejecting her own, all while provoking as many laughs as gasps.

Green has crafted a hermetic, office-bound world so ambiguous that the moments when she reveals its dynamics directly sometimes come off as disconcerting.

With so many details pulled directly from history, along with scenes shot inside an intake prison that had housed the RTA alumni featured in Sing Sing, the film often plays like a documentary.

Lawrence is superb at exemplifying Grace’s confusion.

This latest adaptation may not hit every note established by Walker’s text and Spielberg’s drama, but it tells Celie’s story sensitively. It understands, in other words, that she comes with a uniquely imperfect, profound rhythm.

The resulting adaptation satisfyingly combines the grandiosity of a musical and the intimacy of filmmaking.

Best of all are the car chases, which Wright choreographs with the same blend of wit and technical finesse he brought to the pool-cue, “Don’t Stop Me Now” zombie rumble in Shaun of the Dead.

The result is a stylish thriller that’s also a cathartic unleashing of Patel as a performer and storyteller. With Monkey Man, he asserts himself as someone who can break the boundaries Hollywood typically establishes for actors like him.

Within Problemista is a heartfelt core conveying something profoundly human. It’s a marvelous mixture of surrealism and social satire that depicts the American dream as a nightmare of bureaucracy and phone calls to customer service. There’s nothing more absurd, the film argues, than the mundane.

Conclave also adds a few too many contrived twists in its quest for narrative drama, but the movie moves nimbly enough to avoid a collapse into pure fantasy.

The world was not built for the likes of Marcel, but he can help guide us through it.

Priscilla is more than a story of a young woman in a gilded cage; it’s also an examination of how adolescent beliefs can be hard to shake.

Though this menu is clearly by design, the result is both a meal that feels less than the sum of its parts and individual courses that themselves feel somehow undercooked. I found myself simultaneously wanting both more and less.

Victoria & Abdul is worth seeing for Dench’s magisterial performance and for Frears’s light but sure directorial touch. Just don’t mistake it for actual history.

Clooney’s a strong-enough star to sell Jay’s achy heart, even amid the glitz and glamour. Baumbach’s odyssey into more treacly territory is an attention-worthy gambit, though one hopes he doesn’t lock the grouchiness away forever.

The film hums with energy anytime Merlin is on-screen, but even when it’s in the hands of its very sweet preteen ensemble, it’s a lively watch.

Few modern true-crime movies and shows remind viewers that they have as much responsibility over their own choices as the people onscreen do. That message may be uncomfortable to absorb, but it’s far more productive than luxuriating in disturbing acts.

Barbarian serves up all the requisite thrills with panache, but it also provokes deeper, longer-lasting reflections. That balance is why the film has continued spreading so organically months after its release, and why it’ll keep tempting viewers down to the basement for years to come.

Lowery’s film is an easy-breezy celebration of Redford’s charisma and a fitting swan song given that it might be his final on-camera role.

Scott has long made movies about how systems of power exist to serve only the powerful, from the faceless corporations of Alien to the indifferent cops of Thelma and Louise. As The Last Duel rumbles to its bloody conclusion and its two leading men clash, it’s clear that the filmmaker’s allegiance lies elsewhere.

The Suicide Squad is very funny, bleakly self-aware, and shockingly violent—a refreshing mix of familiar conventions and gory satire.

The aesthetic is Twilight Zone, and the plot could be right out of The X-Files. But despite its small-screen influences and tiny budget, The Vast of Night is shockingly cinematic, overflowing with the kind of inventiveness you rarely see from a first-time filmmaker.

Director W.S. Van Dyke and married co-writers Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich leavened the novel's hard-boiled tone and grim wit. The result is less a detective story with occasional flashes of humor than a light comedy set against a backdrop of murder.

Beats Per Minute is specific in topic, to be sure—this is a moving account about the gay experience at a particular point and place in history—but it’s also fascinating to consider from a wider angle, as many people continue to grapple with how to carry out different kinds of political protests.