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.

In sticking its landing, Linoleum proves a case study in why no story can be fully judged until it’s over.

An endearing, infuriating, and despairing non-fiction portrait of a country’s final descent into oppressive authoritarianism, all of it shot covertly by one brave teacher, it’s a striking work of rebel cinema.

Boasting an exceptional Nicole Kidman performance as a woman recklessly in search of who she is and what she wants—as well as the orgasm that she’s long coveted—it’s a thrilling and amusing shot of cinematic Viagra.

Affords an intimate and wrenching view of a national collapsing under the weight of unbearable traumas, and of the young children who are the prime victims of that strain.

A captivating character study about a young man trying to carve out a grown-up life despite having spent half of his years on Earth behind bars.

With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs.

He’s a grand chronicler of his own biography, and expertly goaded on by Morris, whose queries challenge present and past statements and compel further elaboration and contemplation.

[Boasting] an ambitious and exhilarating story that matches its style, it’s the finest thing Villeneuve has helmed and the 2024 film to beat for outsized sci-fi showmanship.

[Its] genuine focus is the emotional turmoil that drives people to practice this profession as well as to patronize its “experts” in search of guidance and insights into the biggest questions of their lives.

One of the director’s finest, its thematic scope and emotional power growing with each new revelation.

Taut and entrancing, it’s a stark reminder that adolescence sucks.

With Furiosa, however, [Miller] chooses to follow the playbook he penned less than a decade ago. Consequently, the results are—for better and worse—only as epic as you’d expect.

Fine performances abound, including from Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow, but the film is ultimately at odds with itself, its handsome appearance and severe attitude clashing with its pulpy impulses.

Distinguishes itself by putting a distinctly 21st-century spin on its time-honored template, as well as via a black sense of humor.

This winning non-fiction portrait proves equally adept at eliciting laughs and tears.

At once incisive and ambiguous, it’s proof that Jude is operating on a completely different level than most of his contemporaries.

Its poignancy and humor is amplified by its canny decision to let Fox tell his own tale.

A movie that’s about—and asks its lead to literally and figuratively wear—masks, A Different Man is a multifaceted meta mind-melter.

An uplifting portrait of the possibility of rebirth—even for the most famous person on Earth.

[A] portrait of one woman’s heroism and the means by which it’s motivated by guilt, regret, fury, and despair—the last of which, ultimately, proves inescapable.

The film’s placid aesthetics help the directors strip away any artificial barriers between the audience and their subjects, thereby eliciting immense, compassionate engagement with Tori and Lokita’s plight.