Stutz in the end isn’t revelatory per se, but it is deeply heartfelt, intimate, nakedly honest, and engaging.

Spirited is one of those movies with numerous creative choices that feel inspired, not just by the holiday spirit in the lyrics but the desire to pull off a good show. When Spirited has so many of its ornate pieces in sync, it can be a joyous cinematic treat like very few others of past or present.

Often echoing a thriller — Logan Nelson’s nervy score doing a lot of the heavy lifting — Nothing Lasts Forever is both concise and wide-ranging.

Heineman’s thesis that because leaving has gone so poorly, staying would’ve necessarily been better is incorrect at best, and disingenuous at worst. He wants to think structurally, aware that America can and does flatten other nations beneath our clumsy footfalls. He just can’t — or won’t — see the whole structure out of apparent fear that it’ll be too unflattering for all involved, including him, the army’s useful launderer of their image-sanitizing talking points.

Potent with ideas and feelings, ‘Wakanda Forever’ ultimately triumphs nonetheless through heart, soul, grit, and a great sense of visceral urgency.

It’s rare for a film to so boldly depict shamanic experience as Nocebo does here, where ritual and sacrifice open up relations with enigmatic and powerful forces in unseen realms.

You Resemble Me is a challenging film that tests the limits of empathy, but one whose lessons are ignored at our own peril.

Despite the A-list team all returning for the sequel, the frisson is gone, and Enola Holmes 2 feels much more elementary, primary, and uninspired.

Argentina, 1985 doesn’t break new ground within the genre, but it’s a fascinating re-enactment of a major historical moment in Argentinian history. Anchored by a beautifully curmudgeon performance by Darín, Mitra’s film is understated, compelling, and ultimately an important rumination on the incremental way that justice is served.

The film’s key asset is Johansen, and “Personality Crisis” pulls off the neat trick of serving as an introduction for us newbies while providing new insights and footage for the fans – the latter primarily in the form of the mellow concert footage.

The arresting visual competency of Scarlet, which includes the clever use of archival footage previously seen in Marcello’s Venice darling “Martin Eden” and the beautifully composed textures of its cinematography, can’t salvage its muddled pace.

The film finds a little verve; Edgerton is put through the imagined ringer in a handful of unnerving dream sequences, and a motif featuring the mountainous crime scene is interesting (until it isn’t). But for all of the interesting twists and turns, as the story comes to its smoky conclusion, one can’t imagine who in the audience will make it to the payoff.

The creative vision necessary to properly chronicle the impact of two musical icons never presents itself and thoroughly undermines the film’s resonance, deforming the movie into a prosaic, excessively sentimental catalog of events.

Mildly diverting from time to time due to its beautiful production design, The School for Good and Evil is mostly an unmitigated slog, filled with underdeveloped characters, absolutely terrible dialogue, and a world that feels both completely ripped off from better things and unnecessarily complex.

A joyless, glacially paced compendium of interchangeable scenes of people floating around in their goofy masks and capes, tossing clichéd dialogue and CG lightning bolts, and punching each other into buildings.

Bitch Ass can lack the grounded political context of the genre, merely wearing the clothes of style for an unfulfilling slightness. Even so, even as each member of the quartet is picked off by Bitch Ass, the revenge plot’s appeal lies on more wholesome ground. Amid an absurd twist, partially and intentionally played for laughs, is a story about maternal love and the ways cycles of generational trauma can lead to greater pain.

The film is accessible, engrossing, urgent, and horrifying.

The pace drags in the home stretch a bit, and the laughs dry up considerably. None of this matters much. George and Julia spark and sparkle, which is what the trailers promise, and it’s what the movie delivers.

It’s immensely satisfying to follow Kantor and Twohey while they take on that toxic system as two working mothers trying to set a good example for their children, sharing resources and a sense of sisterhood down the line. It’s, in fact, so satisfying that you find yourself wishing there was more of that intimate camaraderie throughout “She Said,” which sometimes gets too repetitive in newsrooms and private interview sessions with lawyers, PR spokespeople, and silenced victims alike.

And the score, again by Carpenter, his son Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, is another banger, often lapping the action onscreen for mood and dread. It almost becomes a provocation, forcing us to long for more active involvement by Carpenter, a filmmaker whose skill and restraint frankly puts Green to shame. Who knows if Halloween Ends will actually conclude the slasher series (let’s not forget that “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” was the fourth of twelve installments). But I’ll say this: even as a fan of the franchise, when the title came up at the end of Halloween Ends, I found myself hoping to God they weren’t kidding.

Rather than outlining a mere monolithic presence, it displays the multifaceted distinctions of Blackness. We witness and appreciate these works with the same reverence that Mitchell espouses. Is That Black Enough for You?!? is indeed more than enough, and makes you hope Mitchell gives us plenty more documentaries to come (and soon).

A mite repetitive at nearly two hours, it’s still an edifying intermediate-level study compressing academic insight into personal reflection, and vice versa.

It’s impossible to watch Bruckner’s adaptation without comparing it to Barker’s. Barker tapped into the darkest locus of human desire and expressed it on screen as shocking carnal violence. Bruckner sands down that perverted, forbidden lust into an accessible blueprint: Setup, kill, exposition, repeat.

A gorgeous and grave anti-epic, Pacifiction proceeds in scenes that serve as pristine containers for Serra’s idiosyncratic style, slow and digressive, full of flabby jokes and windy talk. It’s like watching a tropical aquarium slowly fill with algae.

To an even greater degree than in most Hong films, the film’s scenes of casual small talk, awkward silences, polite smiles, and glasses clinked to change the subject, open up faultlines in the characters’ lives.

Though Till can not rewrite all of history’s wrong, you never doubt the genuineness of Chukwu’s intentions. This isn’t a salacious film. This isn’t taking advantage of Emmett Till’s memory for cheap prestige. Rather Till is an urgent and reverent, albeit flawed, pursuit of justice.

It doesn’t happen too often, especially from modern studio fare, but Parker Finn’s Smile is the kind of horror movie that earns the unique qualification of “genuinely scary.”

What My Best Friend’s Exorcism excels at is demonstrating that while demons are scary, a world without your best friend is even more terrifying.

The longer There There goes, the more it meanders and never into the realm of anything particularly funny or compelling. Instead, it plays mostly like a series of exercises – in writing, acting, and covid-era production. It feels like a movie Bujalski made to make a movie. Which is fine for him but doesn’t offer much to the rest of us.

Hocus Pocus fans wanted a new movie, but Disney just gave them a mascot appearance masquerading as a sequel instead.

It’s an audacious odyssey that buckles under the weight of all its ornate and flights of quirky fancy. But if you’re a cynical optimist that’s disgusted with the rise of despotism, absolutism, rancid lies, revolting white supremacist beliefs but still wants to believe in humanity, hope, and the goodness of people, it might just strike a major chord.

It’s a beautiful tribute and a wonderful farewell to a legend, father, and artist.

For the most part, the comedy in Zombie’s The Munsters is low brow, the vibrantly gaudy locales could pass for displays found inside of a Spirit Halloween store, and the acting rejects subtly like bloodsuckers do garlic, all of which often feel exactly as they are supposed to be. Zombie is an artist that operates on a strange wavelength has likely made his most sincere work to date, fulfilling the brassy exhumation of these weirdos.

As newly-elected president Gabriel Boric takes the stage to address the nation that placed upon him precious trust, it is hard not to be moved by the electric rawness of hope.

Mckenzie is a good match as an actor, countering Davis’s big emotions with a quieter turn and more introverted but no less affecting. She isn’t afraid of the difficult contradictions of the character, and by the film’s end, we’re struck by how much everyday horror this young woman shoulders and sucks up.

If you’re a fan of found footage and enjoyed the previous “V/H/S” films, you’ll find enough in “V/H/S/99” to keep you entertained. However, even though the addition of more camp and comedy shows that the anthology series is still evolving, five films deep, you have to wonder how much more tape is left in the cassette in the “V/H/S” franchise?

Sidney functions as a loving memorial to the pioneering Black movie star who passed earlier this year, but it never suffices as more than a tepid first draft of his life. And it is never as groundbreaking as Poitier’s best work.

Mary Harron is too good a director to make a drab, conventional biopic, so it’s disappointing to report that with Dalíland, she’s done just that. It’s not a complete waste, and she manages to insert a handful of distinctive flourishes and memorable characters. But the picture never escapes the box it’s been placed in or transcends a key, fundamental error in its conception.

Wearing its influences on its sleeve, the rom-com aims to show where arranged marriage traditions and modern dating habits can fit in a multicultural modern Britain. Unfortunately, it can’t shake the screenwriter’s white gaze.

Destined to make audiences weep, The Swimmers is no doubt a crowd-pleaser with an important message about the growing refugee crisis worldwide, and Yusra’s story is one worth telling. It’s a pity the filmmakers couldn’t take the time to see her life as more than just a vessel for this message.

Unfortunately, aside from the always reliable Hawke and Okonedo, there isn’t much to praise about this deadpan dark comedy, which is miscalculated on almost every level.

Other People’s Children is a moving rumination on the pains caused by the unbudging pillars of traditional parenting. It is a rare offering in its enlightened kindness, and a heartbreaking one, too.

This is the director at his tenderest.

The film comes to life when Majors and Powell are in the air. Dillard and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt make the sky feel vast and alive, threatening to swallow up Jesse and Tom at any moment. Along with the film’s thrilling flight scenes, Majors is the biggest draw of Devotion, showcasing his distinctly masculine vulnerability to portray a man as strong as he is silent.

Though the film starts and finishes with swaggering demonstrations of politicized revolt, the rest lapses into the conventions of a genre fatally attached to them.

Butcher’s Crossing is a gorgeous travelog. It’s also a warning about what happens when people fail to tread lightly in the natural world, both as a consequence of nature and themselves.

Perhaps it worked better as a theatrical endeavor, but the result is a film that feels like a collection of familiar hospital set storylines thrown together without a true compelling throughline.

Regardless of its minor flaws, Berger and his crew have crafted a faithful and heart-wrenching adaptation that fully realizes the novel’s trenchant anti-war themes.

Anchored by Kendrick’s best performance in years and Francis’ incisive script, Alice, Darling is a visceral, deeply felt clarion call, not just for more awareness of the signs of emotional, intimate partner violence but also as a reminder to those who have experienced this abuse to allow themselves some grace.

At its best, Pallaoro’s quiet film wields the paradoxical power of cinema to create pure illusion.

Unpretentious and unassuming, but effective, Corbijn creates his own cozy, sleeve for these trailblazers to get their due and creates a must-watch for rockologists everywhere in the process.

With Emily, Frances O’Connor has crafted a first film that feels like the work of an accomplished master.

Peter Farrelly’s “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” isn’t so much a bad movie — though it’s certainly that — as an inexplicable one, a comedy/drama set in the Vietnam War that somehow believes it’s saying anything that hasn’t been said a million times already about that conflict, and far more skillfully.

Both stars were evidently tempted by the promise of a “meaty role,” taking that concept to mean one that entails a lot of acting instead of complex acting. As the intrigue builds, both characters lose the multi-dimensionality that should be growing deeper and richer, reduced from individuals working within a system they must also oppose to a more basic cat-and-mouse dynamic.

The double character piece excels most when Neugebauer does her thing and facilitates her actors. Together, they build a pair of utterly real people, nonetheless confined to a dramatic universe more prone to contrivance. But the pleasures of the former generally outweigh the irksomeness of the latter, with Lawrence and costar Brian Tyree Henry joined in as a super-generator of onscreen magnetism.

The picture clangs clumsily for stretches, particularly in its second half; Selick is trying to merge the doomy darkness of “Coraline” with the high spirit and good humor of “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and they don’t always mix.

A Jazzman’s Blues is a passion project that climbs close to the edge of becoming self-indulgent fodder. The film is never as deep as it thinks it is. Nor is it terribly original either. But for Perry, this is a massive change. And while you shouldn’t praise a director for merely trying. Perry does more than try with “A Jazzman’s Blues.” He finally shows that he’s not a one-trick pony.

As a visual offering, The Silent Twins has moments of sheer, raw imaginativeness. As a worthy study of the two central characters, sadly, it lacks the same level of vision.

Everything on the menu of The Menu looks good enough, but once its moldy tirade against the one percent has been fully dished out, it’s plain to see there’s not a whole lot of meat on the bone here.

Diop’s Saint Omer doesn’t condescend to the viewer by slinking toward black-and-white offerings of good and evil, or broad statements about race or gender. This ripped-from-the-headlines narrative accomplishes a feat far more creative, and a bit less forced. It dances on the surface of these participants, and in their subtle ripples, to reveal the humanity in the seemingly inhumane.

Confess, Fletch is an absolute pleasure – the mystery is a corker, and I giggled from beginning to end.

Styles, night and day here compared to his work in that other fall release, wonderfully inhabits a working-class man fearful of public scrutiny but unable to hide his true self.

Catherine Called Birdy is delightfully witty, irrelevant, and modern-minded while carefully dodging the self-satisfaction and smugness that those descriptors can conjure up.

It’s Spielberg’s most personal film, one that gorgeously revives the memories of his childhood and youth with a lavish sense of wistfulness and an aptly Hollywood-ized, fable-like touch.

This Land often feels like a simplified (but not unwelcome) plea for sentimentality— its observational approach essentially diffuses any political reading. It’s odd to watch a film so invested in the rhythms of politics that is also strangely apolitical.

Sarah Walker is great in an unself-conscious way, foggily conveying Star’s blinking on-off struggle to bridge the gap between her inner monologue and the outer world. She speaks in a thick voice that sounds effortful and takes in the world with watchful, silent eyes. It’s the rare performance that’s magnetic in its passivity.

In “Glass Onion,” the filmmaker shows absolute mastery of his genre, and his craft. It’s pure, pop pleasure.

The Woman King is more than an action movie. It’s a film that depicts a side of African history that is rarely told and an opportunity for Black people to assert their humanity and regality.

Having these two storylines run parallel provides for both disconnect and whiplash, a narrative choice that emphasizes what Goldin beautifully labels “the darkness of the soul” — to be plagued to feel everything while concurrently condemned to nihilistic numbness.

You wish the film had a slightly more queer eye behind the camera (yes, that’s a genuine thing, Andrew Ahn’s “Fire Island” is an excellent recent example). Even for a major studio production, it might have helped. But if everyone around you is laughing, maybe it doesn’t matter. It probably means another Bros gets made which, hey, wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

Steve James’ film not only convinces you to believe that a compassionate spy can exist but also to have compassion for a man who committed a traitorous act. And even though the editorial choices are leading in their execution, it’s no secret that A Compassionate Spy is a moving, thoughtful documentary.

A busy web of interpersonal dynamics, Love Life often feels more concerned about its characters’ storylines and the way they all fit into each other than about what the audience might be getting out of watching it all play out.

The Inspection isn’t a bad movie. Rather it’s a disappointing slog because the arduous journey it sets up should have offered greater returns.

This whoopie cushion of a film raises the concept of the lowest common denominator up to the highest highs of esoteric tastes and in doing so, gets closer to the essence of artistry than all of its self-important, straight-faced forebears.

While it’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, “Clerks III” is an achievement for Smith and definitive proof that the filmmaker is maturing.

Baghdadi’s affection for cherishing quaint moments overwhelms the opportunity to fuse the band’s affable charm to a well-rounded depiction of modern-day Middle Eastern women existing on the fringes of their culture.

This is a nasty, queasy, unforgiving piece of work. It is utterly devoid of hope. It’s as shocking as any slasher, as horrifying as any grizzly bit of wartime realism — yet there’s something so compelling about the director’s broader argument, and it’s rendered with rare visual deftness, with some big swing moments that land terrifically.

Dead for a Dollar provides a decently intriguing yarn within the framework of the Western that burrows a few inches below the surface. No one can say Hill didn’t hold up his end of the deal, which may be all that matters to him in the end.

Another lifeless live-action adaptation from the factory that’s inside the Disney vault.

Barbarian is nasty. Whether you take that as a positive or a negative will be an entirely personal thing, but it’ll be a word that people on both sides of the opinion aisle will likely use to describe it.

There’s enough humanity from the story and performers alike that cuts to the soul and mostly offsets the uninspired direction. But “The Son” should shine at least a little brighter through the dark material given these participants and their previous triumphs.

Comedy is all about timing, and the timing here is all off, so the laughs are disturbingly few. What a missed opportunity this is.

While The Eternal Daughter manages to sell a truly spine-tingling atmosphere of ghosts, it feels closer to a thought and style experiment in the aftermath. But the film’s time-and-logic bending final reveal arrives as a gut punch nonetheless, with a restrained parting note both ethereal and lifelike.

The Aftermath may lack the novelty of the first film and often takes on more than its runtime can account for, but it also successfully adapts the genre of espionage thriller to the documentary form with riveting results.

Boldness and ambition may get the best of the film, but just like Booksmart, which announced the promising beginning of an intriguing directorial voice, Wilde proves she’s not a one-hit-wonder, at least technically and artistically. Don’t Worry Darling may be a misstep, but Wilde’s still got a flair for cinema that feels worth keeping an eye on.

Rich, layered, and full of beautiful shapeshifting emotional depth—at times laugh-out-loud funny, and then stopping on a dime to turn melancholy, heartrending, and or horrifying—The Banshee of Insherin will surely unsettle audiences trying to pinpoint blame or ascribe a hero or villain to the piece. Its morality and personal sympathies are purposefully opaque.

What it boasts in abundance — in this riveting study of a deeply broken man, suffocated by nine years of self-immolation — is a rare and deep compassion, elevated by Fraser’s starring turn.

Magee’s script doesn’t always give them enough material to play with, but Corrin runs with it and, most impressively, with a freedom that totally clicks with de Clermont-Tonnerre’s sensibilities. And yet, when the credits roll it feels like something is missing and, well, you somehow wish they’d pushed it even more.

While it’s great to see an example of a filmmaker refusing to rest on his laurels or stay inside the nearly defined box of his cultural reputation, a film must be a film – not just a concept. Un Couple never quite manages to transcend its origins as a precious pandemic project.

Despite Deakins and Mendes’ shorthand in framing gorgeous images, there are moments, especially in the second act, where the film could simply use a bit more energy. Luckily, for Mendes, Colman provides it soon after and when the movie needs it most.

Flimsy logic notwithstanding, Pearl is the superior of the two heavily-stylized slashers, partly because it dedicates so much time to building the eponymous antiheroine from the ground up.

Dense isn’t always used as a compliment when describing a movie, but in the case of Women Talking it’s a badge of honor. Polley is tackling numerous social dynamics among the women as well as a number of contemporary themes including women’s roles in society, religious freedom, sexual liberation, and even gender identity.

As always, Lelio has a way with his actors. Nothing will ever feel forced. Even the most melodramatic stakes will feel grounded. And yet, despite a pointless framing device the film simply does not need, it’s missing some of the visual magic of his earlier films.

Mostly, watching these characters tease out their problems is fun but from a far remove, and satire at such a safe distance starts not to really feel like satire anymore.

Clean narrative lines, top-notch production design, great acting, and Hollywood-grade cinematography and lighting elevate Burial above what might have been a forgettable schlock-fest.

Especially after the film’s stunning conclusion, Athena is destined to leave jaws on the floor and heart rates significantly elevated long after the credits roll. This is the painful, perilous present tense written in the flash of a smartphone camera and the blaze of a Molotov cocktail.

The African Desperate is the work of an artist who has moved fairly seamlessly from the gallery to the cinema and has more than enough vitality and insight to join the canon of films about the Black experience in higher education

For all of the blood, guts, and gore, for all of the stomach-cramming gluttony, here’s a story brimming with extraordinary romanticism. What emerges, by the end, is one hell of an ode to giving yourself to the ones you love: your bones and all.