This peculiar but delightful hybrid just may be the best animated offering of the year.

The world doesn’t really need another Spider-Man movie, which is exactly what makes Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse such an unexpected delight: Here’s the latest entry in a fully saturated genre that somehow, through sheer creative gumption, does something new.

Wright has found an ideal collaborator in Oldman, an actor who knows how to embrace his most dramatic side but who still excels in his quieter moments.

It’s a sincere, measured, and clever homage to its subject, a work of storytelling that would have made Mister Rogers proud.

Wiseau’s odd appeal is the only reason anything in The Disaster Artist is remotely believable, even though it’s based on a true story. James Franco is magnetic in the role, so committed to precisely replicating Wiseau’s unique presence, that you understand why so many people went along for the ride with him.

The film doesn’t just re-create the journalists’ day-to-day life; it also captures the book’s solemn and matter-of-fact tone.

The clever script, written by Glass herself, is designed to keep the viewer guessing until the very last minute, and it’s the foundation of the first great horror movie of the year.

With its precise production design and rumbling racing scenes, Ford v Ferrari is as sleek and visually alluring as the vintage vehicles it showcases—but beneath its shiny hood is an engine with real complexity.

It is the script that made the difference here and that allowed Huston to make a better film than he had made in many years.

This is a film loaded with broad comedy, bold speechifying, blunt depictions of racism, and astonishing visual flair; it is a Spike Lee movie, made with the kind of artistic and political verve that recalls his best work.

The entire film has the sense of something being profoundly, and mercifully, upended; the result is engrossing, satisfying, and more than a little heartbreaking.

76 Days is unvarnished and raw, a first draft of a history that’s still being written.

As a film that attempts to honor its victims while simultaneously offering graphic details, it both improves upon previous iterations of the material and exposes the limits of the story itself. The result is a movie that wrestles with its very existence—and, perhaps, the existence of based-on-a-true-disaster tales.

Pig is a blend of absurd cooking melodrama, jokey revenge thriller, and allegory, and Cage is the connective tissue holding all those ridiculous elements together. He may have abandoned the brightest spotlight, but he’s lost none of his edge.

The sparseness of the script matches the modesty of the staging. Because the film lacks lush period detail, or really any specific background visuals at all, the audience’s attention is thrown onto the performances, and the cast rises to the occasion magnificently.

As is typical of a Soderbergh production, The Christophers doesn’t waste an ounce of its limited resources; the director always knows exactly how to keep the viewer on the hook while allowing the story’s emotions room to breathe. The real heist of The Christophers is that Soderbergh snuck such a bittersweet tale into cinemas, dressed up as a silly caper.

It’s ambitious, sprawling, and sometimes shockingly counter to tradition for the series. But it’s also hugely effective: In offering real closure for the first time, No Time to Die sheds Bond’s mystique. It cements Craig’s legacy of playing Bond not just as a reliable institution, but also as a flawed human.

Guardians 3 is a cheerful goodbye to many of the studio’s best heroes, who somehow managed to get through an entire series without being ruined by the larger superhero universe they inhabit. For Marvel, that’s both a win and a problem.

It is, in short, a film to scowl to. But if you can lock into that moodiness, it’s also quite enthralling.

It’s a roller coaster that viewers can enjoy riding all the way up, but it’s not afraid to question its own climax the whole way down.

True to its origins, Alita is a living cartoon of a film, which only makes its ridiculousness easier to absorb.

Kimi is yet another inventive blend of throwback suspense storytelling and current concerns; if Soderbergh wants to keep churning out one of these a year, he’s unlikely to run out of thematically ripe material.

The movie is weird and wrenching, asking the viewer to find humanity within the unreal tale of a puppet child’s rise to fame.

With Zola, however, the director Janicza Bravo has made a film that contends with the uneasy interplay between characters’ online and offline selves. And it posits that we use the internet to fool ourselves as much as to fool others.

A gorgeous and impossible puzzle of a movie.

With the inventiveness of Creed III, an old franchise suddenly feels fresh.

Unsane is a great worst-nightmare movie from Soderbergh, a tense piece of low-budget auteurship that plops the viewer into an absurd scenario and then ratchets up the tension for the next 90 minutes.

If the sequels keep coming, the John Wick story may one day collapse on itself. For now, the series remains the most reliable purveyor of high-stakes, onscreen combat around, a franchise that hasn’t yet been tarnished by its ongoing success.

A Fantastic Woman, nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category at this year’s Academy Awards, is a tremendous portrait of grief and prejudice. It’s also an incredible showcase for Vega, who excels in a role that’s unfortunately rare in film—as a trans character who’s more than the butt of a joke or an exoticized other.

Us is a thrill ride, a somber parable, and a potential first chapter in a vast, encyclopedic sci-fi story; talented as ever, Peele has found a way to cram all of that into a gleeful blast of a film.

Fennell has streamlined the book’s narrative, yes, but not its white-hot melodramatic core—and she understands it well enough to create a worthy swoon-fest for the ages.

Spielberg is in complete control of the material and even manages to tamp down his customary treacle until the movie’s almost over. It’s a fine, enjoyable ride, even if the ultimate destination is never the slightest bit in doubt.

It’s a film that sometimes plays more as a rambling TED Talk than as a straightforward thriller. But, in this case, I admired Shyamalan’s overreach, even as the auteur laid meta-textual twist atop twist in the movie’s giddily loopy ending.

That unsettling feeling is communicated by Torres’s devastating, genuine performance.

Babylon is the kind of grandiose folly that at least gives the viewer a big old mess to chew on.

Roofman deftly blends genres to create a low-key crowd-pleaser—one that avoids merely reveling in what made Manchester notorious in the first place.

It fearlessly—and wackily—reckons with how confounding people can be in their bid for one another’s approval: at work, at home, at their new friend’s house while dressed in their finest Ocean View Dining clothing.

Zhao's delicate examination of her characters outshines Eternals' duller and more convoluted moments.

The film is, as a result, a portrait of how Rasoulof perceives the systematic oppression within his home country, from which he is now exiled. The government’s rejection of its citizens’ efforts for change is personal to him—as devastating and painful, the film suggests, as having a father turn against his own flesh and blood.

The appeal of Flanagan’s take on The Life of Chuck rests on his understanding of this resonant quality of King’s writing; on-screen, as on the page, the story hums because it highlights the ordinary foundation upon which the supernatural can be built. Within the strange events is a core that is bittersweet and familiar.

For all its whimsy, Fingernails is delicately profound. Its characters aren’t making bold romantic moves; they’re interrogating their assumptions of what is ultimately an unknowable phenomenon.

De Clermont-Tonnerre understands that the lovers’ behavior and Lawrence’s social commentary no longer spur much pearl-clutching, so instead, she surprises viewers by adding uncanny elements to her most explicit scenes.

Bugonia’s provocative premise doesn’t yield a sci-fi thriller. The film instead offers an intimate, unhurried exploration of human cruelty.

Mike and Max’s relationship—in which she whisks him off to London so he can direct an all-male revue at the theater she owns—is the stuff of romance novels, but that’s the point: Last Dance is all wish fulfillment, seductive and surreal.

The result is a mishmash of subgenres that, surprisingly, works.

This is a film about Cameron’s core personhood, and how it stands up to concentrated efforts to transform it, and it’s told with quiet steeliness and grace.

Another kill is coming, and because we’re in this peculiar, mischievous film, it’ll be a playful one. But the outcome will always be the same: Someone who was once there is now gone. In the face of that chilling, prosaic nightmare, all Perkins can do is laugh.

Aquaman works because it isn’t laughing at itself—it’s both joyously whimsical and confident in its own seaworthiness.

The result is a documentary that’s fascinated with its subject without being reverent, one that’s beautifully photographed (the way that Vasarhelyi and Chin capture the scale of Honnold’s climb is stunning) without ignoring the horrifying consequences lurking if he fails.

A sensitivity to both petty human concerns and striking natural beauty is what makes Honeyland a particularly enthralling documentary.

Decker’s filmmaking is often dreamlike, but her storytelling has a cruel bite of reality to it—just as Jackson’s writing did decades before.

The story’s heightened reality works best when it’s barely distinguishable from our own—though it starts to lose steam the more it drifts into fantasy. The movie is at times a mess, but a compelling one, and this debut from Boots Riley should herald a fascinating filmmaking career.

It’s a movie that gleefully kicks its characters out of their comfy environs to plunge them into New York’s rattling, noisy crowds—and it’s worth watching with the biggest audience you can find.

There are no quick cuts here, no goofy ways of hiding gore from the audience: Nash wants the viewer to engage with the pure terror of what’s going on just as much as he wants them to sit in the tedium of it.

Air is a great return to Affleck’s original impulses as a director: It’s a fun, well-made film for grown-ups that gives its actors room to flesh out their characters and, most important, doesn’t rely on Affleck’s star persona.

Its advertising promises goofy hijinks amid an enclave of diverse species whose ecosystem is threatened by humans. The movie, in actuality, is refreshingly mordant about what might really happen if prey and predators were to try banding together: Their efforts would immediately devolve into a despairing, even political quagmire.

Coupled with Stewart’s exposed nerve of a performance, the suffocating intensity of Larraín’s filmmaking, and Jonny Greenwood’s droning score, the movie brings a fresh sense of tragedy and loss to a tale that might otherwise feel familiar.

The film may be too much of a bloody slog for some; others will be on board for every gruesome minute like I was.

The Square is darkly amusing, but it’s also bracingly honest in its absurdity, and that’s what kept me coming back to each one of its wonderfully knotty scenarios even months after seeing it.

This is the rare comic-book movie that actually seems geared toward families, mixing adolescent humor with sincere sweetness that doesn’t cloy.

When it’s at its subtlest, Lean on Pete sings with power; but when things get outwardly grim, it loses a little of its impact.

It’s a refreshingly silly and airy adventure focused on the emotions of one character, Wonder Woman (played by Gal Gadot), and a charming end to a tiring year of cinema.

Men would likely drown in its own weirdness were it not for its dynamic leads.

Wonka is saccharine, yes, but if you’re going to indulge, it’s better to be in the hands of a master confectioner.

Even by Kiarostami’s standards, this is a daringly, charmingly tedious piece of cinema, one pushing at the boundaries of what you could even call a “movie.”

Amazingly enough, the result is a witty, visually inventive, and fittingly sober story about the perils of the internet, told through the eyes of a video-game avatar with unusually large forearms.

Luhrmann’s approach works for one reason: Elvis should be a mess. Presley’s adult life was chaotic, and it unfolded almost entirely in public, from his spectacular successes to his ignominious decline. Watching it play out on film ought to feel a little disorienting.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco works best as a mood piece, and as its final act swung back toward heavy plotting, it mostly lost me, getting bogged down in thinly sketched interpersonal dynamics.

The most shocking thing about the film is its unabashed cheerfulness. For all Korine’s trademark provocation, The Beach Bum somehow manages to be an upbeat, triumphant tale of creativity and free-spiritedness.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind could’ve been a conventional narrative of despair and redemption; in Ejiofor’s hands, it builds realism and context into both sides of that story and manages to be a winning adaptation as a result.

As a piece of pure exposition, Dark Waters is interesting enough. But around the hard work and do-goodery, Haynes also provides a sense of crushing dread—the kind of unsolvable paranoia these procedure-bound movies usually work to counter.

It’s refreshing to see a kids’ movie that’s content to remain just that, and doesn’t feel a need to douse itself in pop references or inside jokes. Find the right frequency, and you just might enjoy yourself.

Stillwater is a mainstream work that contradicts preconceived notions, and is all the more fascinating for it.

This is a comedy that knows how to make fun and have fun.

Christopher Robin is the kind of uncanny experiment that only gets to happen in children’s films once every few years.

The Menu is unique, because it casts Slowik as both hero and villain. He’s not wrong to simmer with hatred for his elitist customers, but he’s also seething at the fact that he has, in fact, become one of them, propped up by the very system they created.

Knock at the Cabin avoids this problem partly through its deft casting, with Bautista serving as the most pivotal player. So much of the movie revolves around Leonard’s surreal monologues; the actor keeps a firm grasp on Leonard’s belief in his every word.

Chadha is showing how art, be it familiar or far from one’s comfort zone, can inspire a sense of freedom. Blinded by the Light does that wonderfully, in a jubilant story that’s told with grounded honesty.

Everyone plays it reliably straight, a contrast that helps the film maintain its zany energy—and, in the spirit of the original trilogy, maximize the number of jokes per minute. If one bit flops, another arrives in a few seconds to make up for it.

Spider-Man: Far From Home is a bouncy addition to a bulging franchise, with just enough fringe zaniness to help it stand out from the pack.

What surprised me about Multiverse of Madness was how much fun Raimi was allowed to have in the middle of it, turning every action sequence into something quite inventive and even delivering some cheeky scares throughout. This many years into the Marvel experiment, I’m heartened to see space for a real genre auteur amid all the multiversal machinations.

No Hard Feelings is not about to usher in a new era in mainstream sex comedies—it is, however, a delightful showcase for Lawrence’s movie-star verve.

The film doesn’t linger on its provocation, however; instead it sits with the moment’s ramifications in ways both darkly funny and sneakily challenging. Whether it tickles or offends, The Drama seems intent on generating a strong reaction from everyone who sees it.

The director’s meticulousness overtakes some scenes, crowding out any real sense of dread; occasionally his characters seemed to be drowning in the gorgeous, complex sets they were moving through. Eggers always manages to freak me out, though, despite the occasional lapses into tedium—he knows just how to evoke the simple fear of the unknown.

Given its similarity to the original, Gloria Bell could have just been a curiosity—but the hilarious performances by Moore, Cera, and Turturro make Lelio’s return to his own material more than worth it.

Williams has always thrived on the audience’s sympathy as much as their admiration, and Better Man finds a wonderfully goofy way to represent that with its charming, if unevolved, simian star.

Even if Molly’s Game is a tad too long and a mite too exposition-heavy, its star alone is worth the price of admission.

Though Longlegs has plenty of atmospheric scares, it never descends into total surreality, instead charting a path right between vibes and rules.

Barbie never descends into a cheap girls-versus-boys final showdown; it just reckons with the different ways self-image gets sold to us, the weary, willing consumer, even as the world grows savvier and more cynical. That it does so through bright musical numbers, acidic quips, and the right scoop of sentimentalism is all the more impressive.

Apatow’s greatest skill is at dissecting relationships, and that should’ve made up most of The King of Staten Island’s running time. Yes, the film is a tale of a young man facing his demons, but it works best as the story of a ruptured family finally learning how to put things back together.

Mostly, Thunderbolts* is just a fun action movie about found family among a bunch of hard-bitten mercenaries. It may not be the most original idea; the first Avengers entry could be boiled down in the same way. But I’ll take an iteration done this competently over a new adventure featuring the Red Hulk.

While it's hardly a cohesive experience, individual scenes are brought to life with striking power.

Running only 84 minutes long and stuffed with chaotic plot twists, Drive-Away Dolls is a perfect winter trifle.

It delivers many of the ingredients expected of a Marvel movie—cheer-worthy cameos; cute, fuzzy sidekicks courtesy of the catlike Flerkens, and a truly exciting mid-credits scene that’ll spawn countless speculative blog posts about the MCU’s future—while also keeping a keen focus on its characters.

Perhaps this really is the last Jackass; regardless, the series has survived so long not just because of the extravagance it conjures, but because of the camaraderie it inspires.

The messy third act, and its insistence on making Natasha infallible, doesn’t ruin the film. But it does make Black Widow a missed opportunity; Natasha never gets to make the choices that could help her complete her portrait.

As with all of his movies, Garland doesn’t provide easy answers. Though Civil War is told with blockbuster oomph, it often feels as frustratingly elliptical as a much smaller movie. Even so, I left the theater quite exhilarated.

Although Soderbergh’s approach has an artfulness to it; he’s telling a sweeping story while keeping the excitement mostly confined. The result, while self-contained, is gripping, quietly sexy, and robustly acted.