It’s a methodic meditation on living with pain that can’t be shed, and in the oily-black corners of our shared fears, Lonergan has discovered something beautiful, human, and new.

The conversations in Portrait of a Lady on Fire are among the most memorable people have had on a screen in some time, with each line a stanza in a poem, a reversal, a shift in perspective. With every exchange, the relationship between Marianne and Héloïse changes subtly.

In many ways, this is an Old Man movie — a slower late-period work by a filmmaker ruminating on his advancing age, and on the beloved classics he made as a younger guy. But it’s Scorsese’s version: pulsing with more life than most younger filmmakers, before giving way to stark, chilling regret.

One of Marriage Story’s biggest successes lies in its straightforwardness. It’s not a story out to change how you think of relationships or marriage. It strives for honesty, even if it’s cliché.

Its complete lack of restraint, cynicism, or self-consciousness invites viewers to drop their own reservations and just feel the big, broad, simple emotions as they're played out on-screen, through memorable songs and elaborate fantasy sequences.

Uncut Gems is about the thrill of the gambit, the jolt of glee and terror in watching someone pursue the next shiny thing.

It's dizzying and tremendously sad, but simultaneously exhilarating due to Nemes' complete control of his environment, and complete merging of his narrative and compositional elements. It isn't just a unique story, it's a unique execution.

It might have come out in Japan in 1991, but you could think of it as a new film — Only Yesterday is truly timeless.

Plenty of films give the viewers far more information and still wind up feeling opaque and distanced from the characters' lives. But The Fits is all about the experience of the moment, and it winds up feeling remarkably immersive and lyrical.

Cooper’s A Star is Born is unquestionably a film born out of our current era and modern struggles with addiction. In that way, it serves as a potent reminder that even the most familiar stories can be used to examine the issues and concerns of a given moment.

For all the methodical pacing and old archetypes, Hell or High Water is a thoroughly contemporary action film, complete with fast chases and flashes of dark comedy. But like the classic Westerns, it invites viewers to evaluate, one more time, the myth of the American outlaw, and the idea of criminals as heroes.

It’s gripping, funny, and full of spectacle, but it also feels like a turning point, one where the studio has finally recognized that its movies can be about more than just selling the next installment. In the process, the studio has ended up with one of the most enthralling entries in its entire universe.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout merges the franchise’s big-budget spectacle with an utterly ferocious style of action filmmaking that far surpasses what McQuarrie executed in either Rogue Nation or Jack Reacher.

Hereditary is a hell of an intense ride, made for a crowd that enjoys heart-clutching adrenaline spikes. The cast is unerringly terrific.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a raucous, smart, self-referential adventure. The comics-inspired visuals are stunning, and the emotional coming-of-age story is relevant and inspiring, even as it acknowledges the many Spider-Man movies that have come before it.

For those capable of falling into the spell del Toro is casting, The Shape of Water is a breathless film, anchored by Hawkins’ visible, ardent longing for connection, and her fierce defiance when the things she loves are threatened.

For a first film, made on a shoestring with a largely non-professional cast, Krisha is remarkably textured.

Baby Driver is exhilarating, fantastically entertaining, and mildly frustrating, all at the same time.

Calling Crip Camp a feel-good movie feels contrary to its purpose, even as it is tremendously inspiring. It’s more of a reminder that something that seems impossible can be done; it just takes an immense, downright unfair amount of work to will it into existence and support from others who may not be impacted but benefit from a more equitable society because everyone does.

Like so much of Key & Peele’s comedy, Get Out is refreshing in its naked, frank aggression about confronting racial issues, with comedy, drama, and sharp, unsparing insight.

It's a rousing, thrilling adventure, beautifully animated in rich, deep hues with a look that meets neatly between the flow of hand-drawn cels and the smoothness of digital animation. But it's also a powerfully emotional piece, about family and friendship, about betrayal and disappointment, and about first love and old enmities.

Linklater is in many ways a kind of movie secret agent, making films that are unconventional in form and function, but so effortlessly entertaining that the audience may not ever realize that’s what they’re seeing. Everybody Wants Some!! still pulls that trick off, but despite its laughs and moments of fun it can’t help but feel like a step back.

By replacing the class system of Victorian England with the dynamic of the occupier and occupied, Park has tapped into something uniquely complex about a chapter of history that is rarely explored. There is a deep, festering malady at the heart of The Handmaiden, exacerbated by idle fantasy, cultural projection and denial.

There’s a lot going on in Tarantino’s latest film, including an exploration of the delicacy of a moment in time and how easily an era can be swept away.

Wilde’s film gets a lot of comic mileage from its lead actors’ ability to create a funny, believable relationship. Feldstein and Dever are both terrific in it.

While it falls short of its predecessors, the film is generally more confident and inventive than any of the non-Toy Story Pixar sequels.

Eggers’ filmmaking is bold, confident, and endlessly patient, luring the viewer into a world that is seductive in its barren beauty and measured pace.

If only there was as much thought put into the characters as there was the visuals. For all of his convoluted backstory, Kubo is a remarkably unconflicted character, and barely faces a moment of internal turmoil throughout the entire film.

Some will say it’s pretentious, obtuse, and masturbatory, and they’d be able to find plenty of evidence. But there’s so much to love here, largely because the film is something of an inkblot. Concealed and mute, Affleck the ghost acts as a cypher on which to place one’s hopes, fears, and closely held suspicions about the meaning of life.

It’s a breathtaking piece of filmmaking that’s filled with some of the most intense portrayals of spaceflight ever put on-screen. But for all its technical wonder, First Man’s focus on Armstrong’s relentless stoicism ends up feeling more like a hindrance than a revelation. It’s an epic, ambitious film, but it ends just shy of true greatness.

The miracle of Weiner is that like the complicated man at its center, it's open to interpretation. Schadenfreude seekers who just want to see Weiner sweat and suffer will get their money's worth. But so will curious viewers who show up in a spirit of inquiry, looking for the full story. They'll get more than one.

Audiences will likely come away from The Last Jedi with a lot of complaints and questions. But they’re at least likely to feel they’re in the hands of someone who cares about the series as much as they do, someone who loves its history, but sees the wide-open future ahead of it as well.

Thanks to Möller’s staging, a script full of twists, and a compelling performance from lead actor Jakob Cedergren, it’s a riveting, nerve-racking surprise — and it has a few things to say about how even the best intentions can lead to disturbing abuses of power.

While Palm Springs is a fun rom-com, it’s a story haunted by the idea that we’d secretly be tempted by a world where nothing really matters, to absolve ourselves of responsibility.

It's a cynical look not just at society and its structures and strictures, but at love itself. But it's still mesmerizing in its oddity, and it's exceptionally daring.

The film hits all the necessary beats for a straightforward horror film in an eerie post-apocalyptic setting. But it’s more effective as a portrait of four people who have constructed a deceptively peaceful life under the constant, inescapable threat of death.

It lacks Hitchcockian tension or Christie-level dignity, but it’s funny, surprising, and intriguing in the way it flips the usual murder-mystery script.

Marjorie Prime is superbly acted, and it’s certainly interesting. Hamm strikes a wonderful balance as a talking re-creation that feels almost human, and the rest of the cast is equally nuanced.

Despite its flaws, one thing about Blade Runner 2049 is most welcome: it is trying to be about something. It is trying to be deep, rich, and complex. We’ve grown so used to lowest-common-denominator blockbuster cinema that it’s almost shocking to watch a big science-fiction movie, featuring these kinds of stars, swinging for the fences in this way. It’s hard not to be impressed by, and a bit grateful for, the ambition and care evident in every frame.

The extraordinary success of Arrival is that it combines its bravura style and grand sci-fi questions with tremendous emotional intelligence and a heart so full it’s ready to burst.

Peele directs Us with a masterful collection of horror-movie tricks — jump scares that actually pay off, a cat-and-mouse game in an isolated place filled with bright lights and deep pools of impenetrable shadow, a throat-closing Michael Abels score full of intense drumming and choral chanting that elevates the action to operatic levels of drama. But his greatest asset is the performances, which turn an already creepy premise into something endlessly inhuman and unnerving.

McKay's film is coated in sugar to make it go down easy, but at its center, it's a bitter pill to swallow.

All the beats proceed exactly as expected, but they hit with admirably precise timing, amid a strikingly beautiful landscape where every leaf is rendered with loving clarity. The humor, the wonder, and the awwww moments all hit home comfortably. This is such a perfect execution of the Disney formula, it feels like the movie the studio has been trying to make since Snow White.

Even without its distinctive look, Shadow would be memorable, an accomplished fusion of what Zhang does well, but the visuals take it to another plane. It becomes a kind of dark dream of the past, with unmistakable reflections of the present.

A film that so perfectly reveals its characters both through the way they charge past calamity, and the way they subtly reflect their own pasts.

She Dies Tomorrow is a house of mirrors, a film much more interested in the reflections it offers you than in conjuring anything overly specific for you to ruminate.

Incredibles 2 is a lighter and more incident-packed adventure. The same characters are running through some of the same emotions but with much less of a sense of weight and impact.

Ad Astra is poised to kick-start the most passionate style-vs.-substance debate cinephiles have had in years. Individual viewers will probably find that where they fall on that well-worn cinematic divide will determine how much they appreciate this visually breathtaking, emotionally inert drama.

One of Arnold's greatest accomplishments in American Honey is in illustrating, with a loose and comfortable storytelling style, how these misfits build a form of easy intimacy without really opening up to each other, or getting attached.

Abrams and his collaborators have made a movie that feels resoundingly fresh and new by paying tribute to a style and story that is decades old.

The Endless rapidly develops from a mysterious, elliptical story about cult survivors and strained relationships into a much larger and stranger movie, essentially the Aliens to Resolution’s original Alien.

Annihilation is a portentous movie, and a cerebral one. It’s gorgeous and immersive, but distancing. It’s exciting more in its sheer ambition and its distinctiveness than in its actual action.

It's a patient film, and it requires some patience from its audience. But its rewards are gentle and winning, and for once, a cinematic history lesson doesn't feel artificial and processed in every pore.

Many documentaries become less interesting the more you already know about the subject. But Feels Good Man presents a heavily covered story in a thoughtful and vivid way. Even its standard talking-head segments are peppered with compelling absurdities.

While Green Room shares an aesthetic sensibility with his last film (he shot and directed all his features), Saulnier is up to something very different this time around — something simpler, perhaps, but more immediately satisfying.

Carney’s emphasis is more on performance than craftsmanship. His camera lovingly covers the actual act of bringing music to life, and he makes being in the middle of a band look like the most revitalizing and rewarding place on Earth.

Unlike Fisher’s book, the film is warm and comforting, occasionally sad but more often giddy and gleeful. It’s a melancholy final visit in light of the recent death of both its subjects. But it’s still a rare chance for viewers to sneak behind those weird, eccentric compound gates, and hang out as if they were part of the family.

It’s a meticulous piece of filmmaking, so honed and refined in execution that it becomes nearly unbearable at times.

Regardless of how the film looks, Soderbergh’s pacing and gift for editing are what keep the action tight, while McCraney’s crisp dialogue livens up potentially mundane, exposition-heavy exchanges. His script lets the cast — especially Sohn, Beetz, and Holland — tear into one memorable exchange after another.

A Silent Voice didn’t necessarily demand to be an animated feature. But because KyoAni’s creators are able to put so much expressiveness into the characters, it communicates much of what they’re feeling without words.

Endgame was never designed to stand on its own as a single well-crafted movie, and it was never designed to follow the MCU formula. It was designed to cap a decade of buildup around a single gigantic story.... In that sense, it’s certainly a triumph: it’s ambitious, towering, and above all, daring in its difference.

It’s the visual language of video games, but video games pull it off because that distanced voyeurism also comes with something additive: interactivity. Eventually, you will become involved. That is not something a film can offer.

Claire Denis’ grotesque, mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind new science fiction movie.

The colorful characters don't entirely hide the fact that this is a lesser Pixar film, coasting on Finding Nemo's popularity, and telling a too-similar story that isn't as ambitious or emotionally intense.

Favreau and Marks’ version is surprisingly daring in its use of violence, and its physical and emotional darkness. It’s also creative, occasionally in bizarre and colorful ways.

First Love is the kind of film that’s designed for seen-it-all genre fans who know these tropes (the scheming criminal, the dewy ingenues, the cold-hearted lady assassin, and so on) and appreciate seeing them tweaked in new directions, and treated with an air of fond familiarity rather than dour airlessness.

The weight of graphic, grotesque violence hangs over the entire movie. But the daring emotional violence lingers longer, well after the lights go down on the final shot.

It’s a heightened, sometimes stagey take on a trashy exploitation flick, but it is mesmerizing.

Franco has created a movie that is not just hilarious, accessible, and an incredible amount of fun in its own right, but it had me more eager to revisit Wiseau’s train wreck than ever before.

J.A. Bayona has created an unforgettable, emotional experience with A Monster Calls, one that lets us grapple with our most basic human fears and worries, while lighting a beacon of hope that can shine through that darkness.

The sharp editing turns the film into a comedy about how wickedly successful the Temple’s trolling is, and how humorless and easily riled their opponents are.

While the film doesn’t disguise its origin as a Twitter thread, it generally doesn’t treat it as a gimmick, either — because in 2020, the internet is just where people share the weirdest, funniest, and most frightening moments of their lives.

The film moves effortlessly, with plenty of tense thrills and surprise reveals. It’s relentless, but rarely rushed. The action is terse, and in one unexpected case, breathless and terrifying.

Like learning how to cook a meal you grew up eating, Mucho Mucho Amor connected me with my past. It’s like the way air smells different and your heart feels a little bit bigger when you’re home with people you love and miss.

Wonder Woman represents a number of delicate balancing acts: between humor and gravitas; angst and adventure; full-blown, unvarnished superhero fantasy and the DCEU’s usual unpacking of what those fantasies mean.

While the style may outpace the substance, that doesn't make the style any less magnificent. And when it comes to sheer customer satisfaction, The Revenant checks nearly every box, up to and including the man vs. wild throwdown. It just makes a jarring, memorable statement about how often the wild is likely to win that uneven fight.

The best part of Shirley is Elisabeth Moss as a sharp-tongued and gloriously frumpy agent of chaos.

It is undeniably effective in setting mood and tone, and it’s the kind of film that will leave audiences talking no matter what they think of it. If the sole purpose of art is to create an emotional response, Mother! is a masterpiece.

The film barrels through a variety of emotional colors: scares, laughs, moments of emotional vulnerability, and it’s a testament to director Dan Trachtenberg that the pieces fit so seamlessly together.

It’s visceral in its grim realism, yet it’s also poignant and cathartic in its use of the fantastical. Above all, it’s a reminder of how genre storytelling can provide real-world social commentary, not just breezy escapism.

Ultimately, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World feels like an ambitious experiment from a first-time filmmaker trying everything at once. It’s scattershot, but it’s also goofy, creepy, and just wild surprising fun.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is an enjoyable enough expansion on the first film. But its final-act setup for John Wick: Chapter 3 is more trying than promising.

In terms of narrative ambition, and giving meaningful screen time to an ever-growing stable of onscreen characters, Civil War rivals Joss Whedon's MCU standout The Avengers. And in terms of sheer thrill, it surpasses Avengers — at least for fans who come prestocked with an emotional investment in these characters.

Jawline is a nuanced exploration of digital celebrity and the gap between “real” and online lives, issues that are particularly relevant during a mass reevaluation of social media. But it’s also a timeless, bittersweet film about a teenager with ambitious dreams and few opportunities to realize them.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower doesn’t just borrow elements from Ghibli, it feels like a complete continuation of the studio’s work. It’s a welcome relief for every animation fan who thought that particular era of Japanese animation had, after 30 years, quietly come to a close.

It’s still an immensely satisfying and entertaining watch, because it spends so much time just watching Williams throw all his energy into whatever he does.

It's only appropriate that the film is as competent, efficient, and mildly dull as the people it celebrates.

See You Yesterday is a compelling blend of nuanced drama, teenage adventure-comedy, and thought experiment. Its protagonists make a great duo, alternating between sophisticated genre-savvy observations and adolescent vulnerability.

It’s an enthusiastic, hilarious reboot of the idea of what a Marvel movie can actually be, resulting in an effervescent, delightfully self-aware ride that was the most fun I’d had in a superhero movie in years.

Nair's film is a joyous triumph in the way it makes the story accessible, without losing sight of the specifics that make it not just a true story, but a complete and real one.

Spider-Man: Homecoming brings the character back to his basics. In the process, it shows why he’s always been such a popular draw, and it makes a strong argument for a branch of the MCU / Sony heroverse that operates on a smaller scale than the rest of the world.

Much like its eponymous plaything of the future, M3gan packs a surprisingly potent punch that takes a handful of narrative bugs and turns them into a delightfully comedic horror feature.

For all Thompson's talent and promise, King Jack still rests most on the actors, and the way they suggest inner worlds deep enough to get lost in, without pushing or forcing the point.

From a technical and filmmaking standpoint, nothing about Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower stands out.... It’s as dry and straightforward as a reputable news report. But from a content standpoint, the film is riveting.

Hail, Caesar! is immensely entertaining, but it's also frustratingly discursive, with so many incomplete sidelines and distractions that it suggests an overcrowded but exciting TV pilot more than a self-contained film.

Paul already has a pile of awards acknowledging his acting talents, but his work in El Camino is staggering, given the high difficulty factor that comes with having to play so many variations of this character.

Doctor Strange is at its most entertaining when it’s unapologetically different from anything Marvel has done before.

The horror of The Invisible Man comes from the knowledge that not only would Griffin’s schemes work should such a technology exist, but also from knowing that they already do.