It’s a movie only Bong could have made: ferocious, bracingly critical of the absurdities of late-stage capitalism, yet fun and never priggish. It’s one of the best films of the year.

It’s arguably the greatest expression yet of Fincher’s style and worldview—caustic, unrelenting, and wickedly funny.

Poor Things is a work about distortion, assemblage, and invention, and thus it’s apt that the film deforms and amalgamates to beget something thrillingly unique.

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.

A monument to dark desire and the corruption it breeds, and a masterpiece of unholy terror that instantly takes its place alongside the genre’s hallowed greats.

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.

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 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.

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.

The result is even better than his initial design: a sharp, hilarious, self-aware, and acutely insightful work of both celebration and critique.

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.

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.

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

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

Sing Sing is a revelation.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

While you ponder the tragedy of what you just witnessed, you are left stunned by how talented Dickinson and Dillane are. It’s the kind of work that makes you excited to see what they do next.

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.

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

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

It harkens back to the more sprawling nature of the original Mad Max films, but it’s also a spiritual work that grapples with how humanity reacts to grief and loss— whether sorrow perverts you or makes you stronger—all while delivering on the visual spectacle you could hope for from Miller.

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.

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