Co-writers, co-directors and brothers Alex and Andrew J. Smith—who outdo The Revenant for sincerity, depth and gorgeousness—mount their tale with enough confidence to cut away from the action.

This one’s a crucible of sweaty pre-natal panic, weird knocks at the door, mind games and ultimately, a roaring, miniature apocalypse set inside a single claustrophobic living room. If that already sounds like your home, it's time to go and give it a try.

Even though our clown-busting heroes predate the sweet kids on Stranger Things, they feel more generic. No performance here captures the adolescent longing that this story—essentially a coming-of-age tale—requires; only Sophia Lillis, playing the “Molly Ringwald” in an all-boys club of self-described losers, comes close to developing a distinct psychology.

Home Again is too superficial to maintain tension as a character-driven drama, and not funny enough to overcome an aimless plot and confused tone.

Bell’s film ends up stuck between being a standard audience-pleaser and something more subversive. For a movie about marriage, you wish it would commit one way or the other.

The Shape of Water is a movie of too many ideas, including love. For that reason alone, it drinks like a bottomless glass of velvety wine.

Human Flow is rooted in specific current national and political situations, yet it offers a portrait of forced human movement and suffering that feels almost timeless.

As medium-grade satire (hardly another The Truman Show), Downsizing works fine enough. But it makes a series of wrong moves that throw off the delicate tone, raising the pretension levels to toxic.

Beach Rats could have explored that ethical quandary with more depth; instead it settles for something blocked, oblique and fascinating.

Their movie is a tedious slog filled with pinging bullets, show-offy long takes ripped out of the Children of Men playbook and zero humor.

The tone balances realism and optimism with the accent on the latter; ultimately Patti Cake$ has the kind of uplifting, defiant-misfit mood that’s easy to compare with fellow Sundance hit "Little Miss Sunshine."

It’s a film that doubles and trebles in complexity as it dives inward to a place of strange intimacy, one that’s a lot like Spike Jonze’s "Her": manufactured, yes, but no less affecting for its desperation.

When the plot stops cold for a beauty-pageant performance of exquisite purity, you’ll feel like you’re watching the most American film of the year.

As exposed as the actors allow themselves to be, their mostly improvised script never takes them anywhere, and the rough edge of their banter seems to acknowledge as much. At least they get to eat.

For all its timeliness, the movie works best when it’s echoing the 15-year-old The Rules of Attraction, upping the vapidity of Ingrid’s prey.

Pattinson is great in what is surely his best post-Twilight performance to date.

The demon doll from the Conjuring movies remains creepy, even if this prequel feels occasionally wooden.

The richly built The Glass Castle—splendidly attentive to the details of the Walls's eclectic childhood home and elevated by Ella Anderson's performance as a young Jeannette—is on the overlong side, but it does right by a tough true story that begs neither contempt nor pity.

Kidnap may strain plausibility, but it's no more absurd than "Taken," and it’s a kick to watch Karla, a woman with no particular set of skills, become a capable warrior based on pure maternal ferocity.

Fogel is a little out of his depth, but he has a killer tale to tell.

Sheridan can’t quite shake a hint of Silence of the Lambs–esque familiarity, but that’s a wonderful standard to be reaching for. More to his credit, he fills his thriller with sharp observations among his Native American characters (not merely paid lip service), as well as the sudden crack of gunfire. You learn to look for tracks and clues; it’s a film that makes you a better viewer.

Onscreen, The Dark Tower serves up a generic, half-baked scenario no different from a slew of better-known YA properties in which young, wide-eyed protagonists discover their connections to a hidden fantastical world.

The plot is a touch obvious, but Menashe still plays like a more culturally specific Kramer vs. Kramer, setting up a testy, fascinating dynamic between micromanaging rabbis and a naturally warm dad with wisdom of his own.

While it’s not a perfect female-centric spy thriller (let’s keep trying), Atomic Blonde winks to the future with exciting possibilities.

Stupid, offensive and as substantial as a text message, this toxic piece of kiddie trash isn't worth the pixels.

To watch Bigelow’s expertly calibrated chaos during the riots’ escalation – nothing short of block-by-block guerilla warfare – is to witness something depressingly familiar to anyone who has seen the videos of today’s police brutality, of violently botched arrests and furious community responses, and worried that it would never get better.

Girls Trip is so successful because it lets its cast of improvisers ease into a bond that feels bone-deep.

Despite its creator’s puckish charm, the movie occasionally sputters and detours down dead ends. Still, the promise on display is impressive; consider the film a calling card from someone to keep a very close eye on.

Wish Upon claims to be based on the classic 1902 supernatural short story "The Monkey's Paw." In reality, it’s a mix of "Mean Girls," "Final Destination" and the "Insidious" franchise, the latter on which director John R. Leonetti worked as a cinematographer. You'll be wishing you were watching any of those other films.

Like its thematic companion, Orlowski’s 2012 doc on melting glaciers "Chasing Ice," the sober and urgent Chasing Coral is thankfully far from discouraging. Instead it’s a motivating wake-up call that makes one want to drop everything and join the onscreen crew, rebelling against today’s political priorities

This is welcome summer fare; if we’re going to have space operas, let them sing in the strangest accents possible.

The blend of humor, pathos and wall-crawling antics is perfectly judged. After a handful of overblown misfires, Marvel appears to have rediscovered its heart.

The monkey business is somber, brutal and utterly persuasive in this dazzling third entry of a sci-fi series that's only getting better.

An oblique history of ’80s disarmament laden with revealing off-camera asides, The Reagan Show makes the glossy surface profound. It’s the most crucial and unique doc of the moment, apart from the one that’s unfolding on the news every night.

The result is a supercharged piece of fun unlike any motorized choreography since John Landis destroyed a fleet of cop cars in "The Blues Brothers."

Clangorous and nonsensical, the fifth installment of the toys-to-world-saviors franchise still has a spark of grandeur that could only come from one director.

Alternately funny, touching, tough and hopeful, In Transit never tells you how to feel, but it sure makes it easy to feel it.

Given its multitalented cast, Rough Night should have committed to the darkness (originally, the screenplay’s title was Move that Body). In execution, the women are asked only for flop sweat and nervous jabbering. Party on.

The film gets so many exquisite details just right—the vacuous party guests, Hayek’s slightly self-righteous pose, the happy clink of the wine glasses—that it’s a letdown to realize the movie doesn’t have a proper ending. You take it home with you and argue about it.

The film glows with the kind of sweetness last seen in John Crowley’s "Brooklyn." All it asks of you is an open heart.

It’s all well and good for the under-12s, but this movie never packs the kind of emotional punch we know Pixar is capable of.

The Beguiled has its jolts and its laughs, but mostly this glides along like a mildly saucy yet poetically made parable, well-dressed, well-designed and well-performed.

The actors are what save it. Not only does Johnson build on his subversive 
persona of hulking, dim-witted likability, 
but he’s joined by Neighbors’ Zac Efron, today’s reigning king of the hazy one-liner.

A taut kidnapping drama, this ferocious Australian export leaves no doubt about the limitless potential of a handful of characters in close quarters.

An epic, often funny testament to creative fearlessness.

Put your fingers in your ears when the talking starts, and you might enjoy the view.

It Comes at Night is a film of tense gradations, a chamber piece set at the twilight of humanity.

As the film advances its more adventurous ideas about privacy, it suddenly feels like a lecture written by a twelve-year-old. Worse, The Circle ends precisely when it’s getting interesting; you’ll wonder if the production simply ran out of money. Movies about the dangers of rampant interconnectivity are welcome in this day and age, but let’s please make them a little more courageous.

You have to swallow some inadequacies to get the most out of The Promise. It is appealingly photographed and boasts some stunning location work, yet it’s also saddled with the tone of a biblical epic, invisibly watermarked with the label important.

A beautifully organized documentary (befitting its subject, urban planning), Matt Tyrnauer’s elegant profile sets up its iconic NYC showdown along geometric lines.

Built out of complex performances etched with economic flair, unobtrusive camera work and the faintest tinge of comic whimsy (the film’s score, by Japanese trumpeter Jun Miyake, is marvelous), Norman is an intimate film that simply has no drawbacks.

This one’s unforgettable indeed, just not for the right reasons.

Don’t think too much about the plot; it’s about as water-tight as a corporate-pension scheme. All three stars deliver exactly what you expect from them — nothing more, nothing new — but their onscreen familiarity is a strange comfort in itself.

The question at the movie’s heart is: What is best for Mary? The answer Gifted chooses is predictable, but that doesn’t stop the movie from messing with your tear ducts.

As Holocaust-era movies go (Chastain’s maternal saint begins to secretly hide Jews in her cellar), this one is neither too pretty nor too ugly—which might doom it to a particularly banal shade of detachment.

It’s definitely a horror movie but a wonderfully witty one, not for gentle souls.

The script shoehorns in more identity-grappling this time—half-baked and sub-Westworld though it is—and the squelchy synth score (by Black Swan’s Clint Mansell) supplies a playfulness that’s unearned by the visuals. Find a handy film geek to tell you all about how Ghost in the Shell was a massive influence on The Matrix. Better yet, just rewatch The Matrix.

Even if you have mixed feelings about the new suits and other shortcomings, Power Rangers will leave fans feeling sentimental.

The grandeur of this movie is off the charts. For a certain kind of old-school film fan, someone who believes in shapely, classical proportions and an epic yarn told over time, it will be the revelation of the year.

A swirly-girly sameness has taken over Malick’s flow; his movies aren’t supposed to feel like fashion spreads but they do, even as hushed narrators speak about their aching souls and lost loves.

For a faith-based film that aims to promote spiritual healing and prescribe forgiveness, The Shack is almost unforgivably joyless and visually bland.

For all its updated bluster, this update still can’t escape the shadow of 1933’s magical King Kong.

But mostly, knock it for reducing Ice Cube to the tired sneer he’s been successfully avoiding in recent films, especially in last year’s Barbershop: The Next Cut.

The main reason to commit to this movie’s tough story of orphan loneliness is the screenplay by Céline Sciamma, herself a major French talent devoted to tales of youthful resilience. (Her 2014 film "Girlhood" is breathtaking.)

In the film’s second half, the two characters have roughly swapped social positions — Mindy is about to get married — but their sexual attraction (never fully expressed) remains a palpable thing. Try this one.

A horror film with the power to put a rascally grin on the face of that great genre subverter John Carpenter (They Live), Get Out has more fun playing with half-buried racial tensions than with scaring us to death.

Visually ripe and located just around the corner from melodrama, A Cure for Wellness is a cousin to Guillermo del Toro’s recent "Crimson Peak," another thriller nostalgic for the deep-pocketed lushness of ’30s-era horror-branded studios like Universal, the makers of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein."

These beasts awaken something within the people, making them kinder and more playful. If Kedi did the same for audiences, that wouldn’t be so bad.

Call Me by Your Name has a choking emotional intensity that will be apparent to anyone who’s ever dared to reach out to another.

Director Showalter does a beautiful job of twining Nanjiani and Romano’s similar slump — you smile at what a perfect almost-father and son they already are — and he steers Hunter to a rapprochement of uncommon complexity and grace. And we thought we were watching a Judd Apatow film.

Alas, this is a film that builds to a backroom compromise on carbon emissions, not the most thrilling of dramatic structures. The serious issue of global warming won’t be minimized by a mediocre documentary, but it has yet to find a filmmaker inflamed with rage and visual passion.

The film plays like a Trump-state "Big Lebowski," as Ruth and Tony’s amateur sleuthing teases out a much deeper conviction, perfectly stated by its main character.

You must see Oklahoma City, if only to know the enemy. They’re not stuck at the airport.

There’s no denying the movie’s climactic gathering of females bent on saving the species.

Lowery is committing to nothing less than the scope of eternity; frankly, sometimes it feels as much. But by doing so, he does more to explore supernatural sadness than any thriller I can think of. He’s crafted something strange and wonderful, with a romantic metaphysics all its own.

The movie has the proportion of a fable but the scope of a mythical lifetime.

Split trots out many of Shyamalan’s pet moves (it’s amazing how well we know this filmmaker), including his tendency to infuse genre nonsense with the deeper trauma of child abuse.

It feels too flabby for the company it keeps.

While Monster Trucks may be bizarre, haphazard and deeply silly, hey, it’s a movie about monsters that live in trucks. It was never going to be Citizen Kane.

If you like sexy vampires or ferocious werewolves, you can do much better than this exhausted, computerized sequel.

Wilson’s play, about dreams deferred and a son seeking approbation (The Leftovers’ Jovan Adepo), could have used a more cinematic rethink. But even flatly presented, it has a richness of rage that’s unmistakable.

The animation itself might not be the most inventive out there (this isn’t Pixar), but where Sing soars is in its one-by-one attention to its ensemble of beasts and its obvious passion for music: It’s nearly impossible to watch this film and not be humming the Beatles’ "Golden Slumbers" for days afterward.

Like the product that inspired it, The Founder is tasty enough while it lasts but never quite fills you up.

Tonally, it’s a touch awkward (like the movie as a whole), but Larraín’s endgame set on a snowy mountainside is as abstract as the final moments of "The Shining" — a film that’s also about the life of the mind.

The film aims for the stars but might have gone stratospheric if it cooled its jets ever so slightly.

It’s just impossible to get past the core ridiculousness and arm-twisting manipulation of the plot.

There’s a lot of cinema to admire here. And being reminded of the directorial talents of Affleck—undeniably a more accomplished filmmaker than an actor—is no minor event.

There might have been a thorny dark comedy in this chauvinistic pissing contest. But in trying to get us to like both opponents, the film undercuts most of its sharpest comic potential, leaving us instead with musty jokes.

Scorsese has hit the rare heights of Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, artists who found in religion a battleground that often left the strongest in tatters, compromised and ruined. It’s a movie desperately needed at a moment when bluster must yield to self-reflection.

Masterfully addressing the American racial divide, past and present, director Raoul Peck’s six-years-in-the-making documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, is a galvanizing, ominous film, thrumming with a sense of history repeating itself.

Jennifer Aniston delivers the saltiest lines as the company’s ruthlessly humorless CEO, though it’s a coal-lump of a part.

Along with the film’s hippy-ish musings on the relationship between humans and the elements, it gives the film a moving, supernatural touch.

By the end of this most ominous lullaby, it’s clear that the film isn’t a puzzle meant to be solved—it’s an oblique return to childhood, to a time when there was no clear boundary between imagination and reality, when everything you didn’t understand was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.

Rules Don’t Apply flies along at an inhuman speed; the edits are sharp, skipping years at a time, and the production values are unshowy. Like everything this star-director has done, the film is deceptively smart. It’s just a little too late to the game.

What makes Always Shine transcend, though, is its long-telegraphed yet still unexplained switcheroo — not exactly new to fans of "Mulholland Drive" (or even "Freaky Friday") but near-experimental in its implications, given the context of two women struggling to make their professional marks.

Mainly it lacks director Terry Zwigoff who, as he did with "Ghost World" and "Crumb," suggested a vital, original voice.

If you can stomach the fear, go. Confident hands created this film. Its nightmare lingers for weeks.

Chastain is a wonder. Her character could give Cersei Lannister in "Game of Thrones" lessons in cunning and wreaking vengeance.