Brendan Fraser excels as a failed American actor adrift in Japan. Is his film a shameless soap opera or a far flintier look at human frailty? It’s more like both.

After a one-year intermission, “For Good,” makes its debut as a darker, gloomier, frustratingly less dazzling take on the “Wicked” IP. Should you still see it? Damn straight. Despite its stumbles, the final half of this witchy brew soars on the musical wings of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande who are twice as wonderful the second time around.

Anora Oscar winner Sean Baker produced, edited and cowrote Shih-Ching Tsou’s captivating tale of three generations of women building a life in Taipei. One personal note: As a leftie myself, I strenuously object to the idea that being left-handed is the mark of the devil.

There’s a timely message in this animated beauty about a time-traveling 10-year-old boy who dreams of the dinosaur era but lands in 2075 instead.

Elle Fanning does the monster mash and brings audiences back to theaters in droves by lacing the action with laughs

Josh O’Connor adds another triumph to his growing list of exceptional performances as a Colorado father broken by divorce and a raging wildfire. Bring handkerchiefs

Jesse Eisenberg and his magician crew plan a diamond heist, but slinky, shady Rosamund Pike steals this zircon of a movie

Glen Powell runs for his life to win a reality TV jackpot in a remake of a dystopian Stephen King thriller that comes on like gangbusters—until it loses steam.

George Clooney is a movie star and Adam Sandler is his manager in a deceptively lighthearted Noah Baumbach comedy that hides a world of Hollywood hurt.

Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones bring flesh-and-blood immediacy to this classic in the making. about the beauty and terror of pioneering railroad days. A tough sell? Maybe. But not when a movie dares to reach for the stars like this one.

Jennifer Lawrence gives a performance to die for in a devastating tragicomedy about postpartum depression that drives away her husband (Robert Pattinson). Scottish hellcat director Lynne Ramsey doesn’t know from comfort zones and she may push you too far, but don’t discourage Lawrence. Risk becomes her.

What to do when a great actor is stuck in a not-so-great movie? You bite the bullet and watch anyway for Russell Crowe at his cunning, commanding best as Hermann Göring, a Nazi whose soft-pedaled narcissism gives him gobs of unearned confidence. Enough to fool his shrink (Rami Malek) and the tribunal judges at Nuremberg? That’s the idea.

The acting could not be better in this new film landmark spiked with laughs that can suddenly—or maybe not for hours or even days later—leave you choking with tears.

Colin Farrell rolls the dice that maybe he can save this mess of an Edward Berger movie about a gambler’s addiction. Not this time

Two people talking in a car. Hardly the stuff of white-knuckle drama, right? It is when you hitch two phenomenal actors, Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, to a suspenseful script and tightly coiled direction by Babak Anvari, and then stand back and let them rip.

You don’t need to know a thing about Jean Luc Godard’s 'Breathless' and the New Wave to accept Richard Linklater’s invitation to participate in the sweet agony and ecstasy of their creation. No true movie lover would dream of missing it.

Half hot romance, half gory action, this big screen take on the Japanese anime TV series is not a blockbuster for nothing.

Even with Emma Stone as his glorious muse, Yorgos Lanthimos can be self-indulgent, self-satisfied and grindingly obtuse, but damn he is also a true visionary.

Exclusively culled from police-cam footage, this outstandingly crafted, Oscar-buzzed documentary examines a white Florida woman who murders her Black neighbor on the basis of a stand-your-ground law that indicts an entire society

Everyone looks pretty and cries ugly in this glossy, grit-free tearjerker from the bestselling Colleen Hoover that traps the actors in marshmallow and gives soap opera a bad name.

Even when her movie spins and lurches, the sensational Tessa Thompson blows the dust off a classic Ibsen play to find its queer defiant heart

This intriguing fraction of a biopic rises above a clumsy script and stagnant direction on the strength of watching rock icon Bruce Springsteen, admirably played by Jeremy Allen White, show depression who’s the boss.

Keanu Reeves is an angel of fun in this bright but tonally broken Aziz Ansari comedy about the hell of living in a gig economy.

In Jafar Panahi’s latest masterpiece, one of the very best movies of the year, five Iranian dissidents debate killing their former torturer.

Josh O’Connor and director Kelly Reichardt tell the story of an amateur art thief who’s not as smart or cool as he thinks he is, though the movie is both those things

Ethan Hawke brings back the mask that launched a thousand screams in a tricky treat of a horror sequel that’s perfect for Halloween

Ethan Hawke gives one of his greatest performances as a Broadway musical legend who ends up breaking his own heart in Ricard Linklater’s enthralling, encapsulated biopic

Uneven in tone and pacing, Guillermo del Toro’s passion project about a monster and his creator still roars to life as a thing of beauty and terror.

Ruth Ware’s murder-at-sea bestseller is star powered by Keira Knightley, but this water-logged whodunit sinks like a stone.

Alternately terrific and tepid, Bill Condon’s swirl of song, dance and Technicolor keeps the musical alive on screen with the help of Jennifer Lopez, a star who can hold the camera and bend it to her will.

A numbingly dull follow-up to two “TRON” epics that even Jared Leto and a great score by Nine Inch Nails can’t make great again.

Linda is a beast of a role and Rose Byrne plays her with everything’s she’s got and then some. No list of the year’s great performances would be complete without this tour de force.

Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst find the heart but not the soul in a true-life crime drama that should have cut deeper and hurt more.

There’s good reason to throw stones at Luca Gaudagnino’s teasing provocation about cancel culture. So have at its dawdling, blowhard, philosophical pretensions, but the film—riding on the power source that is Julia Roberts—stubbornly lingers in the memory.

Bigelow’s triumphant return, after seven years, is essential cinema, without closure but not without hope. The house she has built for our attention is scary as hell, but in whatever remains of it, humanity still has a future.

The best high-wire director of his generation wakes up the sleeping giant of American cinema by turning this radical blast of action, fun and fervor into the movie of the year.