Electrified by virtuoso filmmaking, its enraged message comes through loud and clear.

With thrilling dexterity and acerbic wit, finds a way to mock crass commercialism, cultural misogyny, corporate greed, worker exploitation, bigotry, social media hate, and the many systems and forces conspiring to crush us all.

A three-hour drama whose slender story serves as the skeleton for a formally exquisite examination of loss, faith, family, and connection, it's the year’s first masterpiece.

Heartbreaking barely begins to describe it, although the terms masterful and transcendent also apply.

A WWII horror story rooted in separation, alienation and a cold indifference that shakes one to the very core.

Mimicking the form, and channeling the spirit, of ’70s big-screen blockbusters, it’s a bravura tale of community, persecution, and the way in which memory is both stolen and recovered.

Both a nail-biting thriller and a messy moral drama, rife with tensions between justice and vengeance, healing and suffering, and reality and fantasy.

Its formal showmanship unconvincing and off-putting, the film is a case study in the hazards of prizing style over substance.

It mixes the comfort and reliability of a greatest hits album with the bold visionary direction of a thrilling, experimental album from an artist at the peak of their powers. If The Boy and the Heron is really the end of Miyazaki’s career, he’s gone out with a triumph.

More impressive than its nimbleness, however, is its poise and empathy, the latter of which is chiefly bestowed upon its protagonist.

A film that, regardless of its easy-going pace, demands active engagement with its action—a request that’s innately in tune with its depiction of creation through dialogue.

A harrowing 215-minute epic of perseverance, trauma, exploitation, and anti-Semitism, it’s a bracing examination of the scars of war, the difficulty of recovery, and the genius, madness, and self-destruction begat by calamity.

Composed to seem at once off-the-cuff and mannered (replete with varying film stocks), La Chimera blends sweetness, sorrow and silliness with a lyrical touch.

Haigh is otherworldly when it comes to capturing not only the feeling of falling in love but all of the fear of vulnerability that comes along with it.

Its anger is matched by its empathy, both of which abound in its tale of woe set in the nightmarish region between Belarus and Poland.

A divided epic of awe and horror, fission and fusion. It’s simultaneously a unified portrait of a conflicted man and a singular achievement for Hollywood’s reigning blockbuster auteur.

A breakout (produced by Barry Jenkins) that heralds Victor as an idiosyncratic and exciting new American artist.

A breakneck rollercoaster—about ping pong!—infused with a manic desperation that’s almost as electric as its athletic centerpieces are taut.

As superb as any feature debut in recent memory, its power derived from its marriage of graceful writing, subtle direction, and unbearably expressive performances. Movies don’t come much more exquisitely heartbreaking than this.

A stark window into the conflicted soul of [Ceylan's] homeland, whose tensions and schisms are subtly evoked throughout the course of this challenging, if ultimately rich and rewarding, 197-minute import of longing, resentment, compromise, and self-interest.

Ultimately, the truths of Hard Truths are as simple and poignant as they are difficult to initially discern. An unmistakable certainty, though, is that this reunion of Leigh and Jean-Baptiste was too long in the making—and should be repeated once again post haste.

Poor Things is a film of immense ambition and craft, and one that mostly does what it set out to do, which is to be a vast and riotous psychodrama.

Pictures of Ghosts isn’t a timeline but a winding journey through remembrances of things past, and it moves with entrancing gracefulness through a history that’s near and dear to Kleber Filho’s heart.

A harrowing first-person view of a ceaseless nightmare, defined by both blistering immediacy and crushing sadness.

A mesmerizing film about the sweep and swirl of life, love, and the relationship between yesterday and today.

A tour-de-force of unbound creativity, its silky staging, enchanting performances, and playful inventiveness combining to make it one of the year’s undisputed big-screen highlights.

A quietly explosive tale of disconnection and betrayal, its placid exterior masking a wellspring of combustible tensions that are both impossible to ignore and difficult to resolve.

Both understands our private relations as enigmas to those on the outside, as well as wields that mystery for a subtle, striking examination of the imaginative means by which we fill in personal and collective blanks.

Setting a new benchmark for diverse, agile, breathtaking animation, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is as striking as non-live-action films come.

This intensely empathetic film—co-starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan—has a tendency to tip into strident affectation. But thanks to newcomer Reeves, it still lands more than its fair share of punches.

A superb companion piece to the director’s 2022 biopic Elvis, it’s a feat of showmanship both by Presley on stage and Luhrmann behind the camera.

A scathing portrait of Jones and the vile misinformation he spread about the Sandy Hook tragedy.

An alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) harrowing and hallucinatory story of an OB-GYN who discovers that her every attempt at nurturing life leads only to more death.

A story about home, inheritance, and fiction’s ability to reveal truths capable of bringing alienated individuals together, it’s a tumultuous, moving triumph.

A caustic portrait of the rat race as legitimately killer, and another feather in the cap of one of world cinema’s true maestros.

Together, [Culkin and Eisenberg] make for a winning pair, balancing each other in a variety of ways that speak to the material’s larger concerns about loss, grief, remembrance and regret.

A Nice Indian Boy is filled with enough novel truth to transcend its predictable elements, leaving viewers with a film that feels like a genuine love story, instead of an idealistic imitation.

The lessons of The Wild Robot are simple, but the artistry it uses to get there is anything but. It’s the kind of kids movie that feels all too rare with its painterly backdrops and genuine earnestness. The whole family is likely to fall in love.

A sumptuous period-piece celebration of sensory delights—both culinary and otherwise—infused with all manner of complex, intoxicating flavors.

A small-scale tragedy about arrogant intolerance and self-centeredness that’s at once highly specific and, more depressing still, universal.

A steamy, sad, and amusing snapshot of desire and identity.

When it comes to sleek, stylish genre movies, Soderbergh remains a maestro at the top of his game.

A beautiful and bountiful bite-size film, it stands as Anderson’s second triumph of 2023 (following June’s Asteroid City) and a mini-masterwork in its own right.

Pulsates with harsh, anguished emotion, thanks in no small part to splendid visuals that make it the most beautiful film of the year.

A peerless example of using exacting form to not simply inform and enhance content, but to create a profound link between movie and moviegoer.

A testament to the vitality and fragility of memory that itself serves as an act of preservation—of a prized past, a fraught present and an everlasting devotion.

A deliriously pointed cautionary tale about the perils of getting what you want, and an instant contender for classic midnight-movie status.

Never coherently articulates (or draws connections between) its various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.

Though its real-life story ultimately proves a little too one-note, it makes up for its thinness with a powerhouse lead turn from Sydney Sweeney as a woman caught in a nerve-wracking mess of her own making.

An unforgettable portrait of the search for unity at the edge, and end, of the world.

Rasoulof’s film damns Iran for its fanatical, corrupting, chauvinistic tyranny, all while generating breakneck suspense and, ultimately, resolving its tale with a disaster that contains within it a measure of hopefulness.

A work of tremendous look-at-me energy: all prolonged close-ups and studied master shots of actors weeping, screaming, laughing, longing, and freaking out with sweaty, grimy intensity.

Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.

An off-kilter creation that feels like the wacko offspring of Aki Kaurismäki and Abbas Kiarostami’s cinemas.

Though there are times when the material could be tighter, Newnham’s latest film is a compelling celebration of the revolutionary Hite.

Sing Sing is a revelation.

Provides a remarkable snapshot of the war crimes that—as the daily news reminds us—are still being perpetrated today

Initially teasing a condemnation, only to come away with something less certain and more fascinating, it straddles various lines, and perspectives, with impressive confidence.

A masterful film that invites contemplation and, in return, delivers lyrical beauty, haunting mystery, and more than a bit of unexpected terror.

Akin doesn’t untangle his main character’s inner life; rather, he simply recognizes that healing is a process that both begins with oneself and is aided by those we allow into our lives and hearts.

Funny and charming as ever, it’s a welcome cinematic reprise for the British icons, even if this latest outing is slight enough to suggest that it might have been perfectly fine as a short.

Operates in a single, precious sub-Kelly Reichardt register, its every second marked by studied images, sounds and performances.

A superb thriller that employs common genre devices for a canny and caustic rumination on right and wrong, love and lust, virtue and vice.

A stirring testament to both [Rushdie's] resilience and to freedom as a vital bulwark against the forces of extremism and evil.

A marvel of slapstick invention that in terms of pure unbridled creativity puts most big-screen comedies to shame.

A film about the unremarkable that’s anything but.

Hit Man is hot and hilarious, a winning combination amplified by a story that gets knottier at every turn.

Another [Petzold] masterwork about characters who are trapped by internal and external circumstances from which they find it intensely difficult to escape.

What initially seems like too absurd and comedic a conceit to work for a full 90 minutes ends up being one of the more human and successful works of art inspired by the COVID lockdowns.

A dreamy tale of loss and grief, death and resurrection, as well as a supernatural reverie about the mysterious relationship between the present and past—one in which the living are reborn as ghosts.

As grim, and transfixing, as they come.

Riefenstahl is a crushing exposé, and its most impressive trick is peeling back the layers of a very private woman to show a petulant child who can’t believe people haven’t gotten over the atrocities she willingly helped create.

It boasts some of the nerve-wracking anxiety of Uncut Gems and the keenness of last year’s standout Playground, even if it doesn't eventually pull off its delicate tightrope act.

A remarkably intimate non-fiction exposé about the ordeals women suffer after being sexually assaulted—and the strength, courage and togetherness required to change that status quo.

The acclaimed star delivers a masterclass in silent expressiveness, and he proves the riveting axis around which Tim Mielants’ precise and deft feature revolves.

Rife with Trump-era parallels that only augment its global relevance, it’s a warning about those who seek power by claiming holy authority.

In Challengers, tennis is sex, and sex is tennis. The two things are never separate, and their concurrence is what makes the film such a fascinating, lithe creature.

Its sentimentality expertly balanced by its humor, The Holdovers is a story about the lies we tell ourselves (for good and ill) and the reality of our not-so-dissimilar human conditions.

A big-hearted fable of self-actualization, tolerance, and togetherness.

With his maiden cinematic venture, Wilson doesn’t break new ground so much as continue his idiosyncratic artistry on a larger scale.

Escalating at a mad rate until it tips into outright lunacy, it’s a higher and more hellish brand of nightmare.

As Toho Studios’ new Godzilla Minus One proves, the Japanese know how to get the iconic radioactive behemoth right.

A triumphant satire about race, exploitation, family and identity that’s as rich and captivating as [Wright's] tour-de-force.

A quiet and formally rigorous portrait of a paternalistic society, the crimes it breeds, and the fury, shame, regret, and self-loathing that follows.

No matter its hopeful closing notes, it’s a downer of epic proportions, its action encased in a shroud of loss, loneliness, and depression that’s at once bracing and taxing.

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One isn’t quite as dynamic as McQuarrie’s preceding Fallout, but it’s not far off that standout’s pace, and it finds a way to concoct a satisfying resolution to its tale even as it sets up its closing 2024 chapter.

As the fourth entry in a long-running franchise (written, like its ancestors, by Alex Garland), it is, to borrow a phrase uttered by its protagonist, “miraculous”—and marks this zombie saga as a nightmare with few equals.

Johnson’s franchise remains a sly and sure-footed delight, as well as demonstrates, with its religiously minded latest, that it’s capable of coloring its Christie-esque mysteries in a variety of shades.

Understated, graceful, and moving, it’s the first great film of 2026.

A collision of agony and ecstasy that approaches the divine even as it reveals piousness to be an outgrowth of, and justification for, earthly suffering, it’s like nothing the genre has seen before.

Saying little but speaking volumes about American disaffection, apathy, self-interest, and foolishness, [O’Connor’s] performance bolsters this askew heist film and cements his status as cinema’s most magnetic new leading man.

A sweet and sad slice-of-life about the comfort and sorrow of solitary repetition, buoyed by a Yakusho performance that rightly earned him the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Proves to be an ideal showcase for its lead—even if its light comedy is a bit too slight.

In Gerwig’s capable hands, even a movie about the one of most popular toys of all time eludes expectations at every turn. Barbie is her mainstream masterpiece, a dazzling dream that will touch the souls of everyone who sees it, even if they’ve never picked up a doll.

An electric thriller with blood on its hands, flesh in its mouth, and deviance on its mind.

Rock ‘n’ roll portraits this vibrant, introspective, and nimble don’t come around very often.

While its assortment of recurring images, conversations, scenes, and dynamics intermittently borders on the exhausting, it plays as an intriguing meditation on desire, dreams, and the things that make us who we are—and without which we’re lost.

A directorial debut of poised peril that should inspire both laughs and a few sleepless nights.