The film ends on a remarkably touching emotional note. Had it held to the strength of its convictions—and it is immensely obvious why it did not—it might have been the best ending of any superhero movie to date. (No, the bar’s not terribly high.) But it’s nonetheless awfully good, and we can still look forward to, mid-credits, the world’s best-ever Green Lantern joke.

While McCarthy does what she can with the material provided her, it’s not nearly enough to save the movie. As a result, Life of the Party doesn’t live up to either of the nouns in its title.

Swerving between thrill-a-minute action and intense, drawn-out suspense, Revenge has all the subtlety of a bazooka to the face, but it’s an arresting watch if you can stomach its most lurid moments of violence.

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

Much of what does work is owed to Theron and Davis’s incredible performances.

Disobedience finishes on an annoyingly vague note, almost as if Lelio and Lenkiewicz had stumbled on a more interesting, expansive narrative in the final act but didn’t quite know how to pursue it. The result is a film that, from beginning to end, feels as hopelessly lost as its characters do.

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.

You Were Never Really Here feels remote and somnambulant—a bad dream viewers know will end after 90 minutes, never to disquiet them again. Its emotional stakes are inflated so overzealously that they scarcely register as stakes at all.

There’s absolutely nothing else like it in theaters this year, which I mean as both a hearty endorsement and a necessary forewarning. Zama is a viewing experience that can be frustratingly inaccessible at first, but it blooms in bold, surprising directions.

The Devil and Father Amorth at times seems like it’s trying to set the record straight on exorcisms. Amorth is presented in the kindliest of lights, and the ritual seems to involve little more than intense prayer. But again and again, Friedkin can’t help but come off as an old showman dusting off his bag of tricks.

Pearson’s epiphany, and his subsequent battles with the church, were confusing for both parties, and Marston seeks to underscore that with nuance. Unfortunately, he ends up losing grasp of the compelling drama lying at the heart of that conflict.

Rampage is a big, noisy nothing—an action extravaganza that fails at being funny just as hard as it fails at being serious.

Zhao clearly understands that universal conflict between desire and reality, and with The Rider, she’s dramatized it beautifully.

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

It’s true that Isle of Dogs is a film about scapegoating, political hysteria, and deportation. But it is also—and at its best—a film about dogs. May they never go unpetted.

A Quiet Place is a taut piece of genre filmmaking, to be sure, though it succeeds because it leads with a believable, if heightened, portrayal of a loving family.

Blockers ends up being a mirror-image coming-of-age film, where the kids have to help the adults make some grand realizations.

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 film looking to challenge America’s gauzy perception of the country’s most famous political family, loaded with all the bleakness that task requires.

Falco’s performance is strong enough to make the film compelling even in its softest moments.

Don’t call Gemini a neo-noir—call it a neon-noir, a moody little slice of pulp fiction that ends up satisfying the eyes more than the mind.

Rather than dig into the mind-boggling, byzantine inner workings of the OASIS, Spielberg spends time with the flashier stuff. He is, even in this later, moodier phase of his career, still an entertainer first and foremost.

Once Pacific Rim Uprising reveals the means by which the kaiju might return, I was briefly delighted; there’s one strange twist that’s perfectly executed. But quickly enough it was time for 30 minutes of competent, clanging CGI action, and my brain turned right off again.

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.

Vikander, who can balance flinty charm with sympathetic humanism, helped keep me invested, but Tomb Raider could best be described as a solid step forward, away from past wrongs. I’ll take competence over silliness, but the Lara Croft brand still has a long way to go before her movies are truly memorable.

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.

I’m happy to see a major-studio teen film wrestle with homosexuality and life in the closet as more than a comical subplot, even though I wish there had been a more engaging character to build that progress around.

Though this latest project might feel like a trifle (it’s only 69 minutes long and was filmed at Cannes to take advantage of a press appearance Huppert was doing there), it’s also a clear statement of artistic intent.