I’d argue that the Jackass movies, including this one, are mostly filled with joy.

This is a film made with tenderness, more an exploration than a definitive statement, and a reminder that awkward sex isn’t necessarily bad sex: if anything, it’s the ultimate proof of our bewildering, imperfect humanness.

If the movie is handsome in an oak-paneled-office way, there’s life in it too. You feel there’s something at stake for the two young would-be heroes, as there is for the world.

As usual for Farhadi’s films, A Hero is beautiful to look at. Even the interior scenes are brushed with a golden light, and sometimes that light feels like a benediction. But as humanist works go, A Hero demands extra measures of patience on the viewer’s part.

The spies in The 355 approach their work, and the work of being a woman, with grim determination. Rarely has a spy thriller so much resembled a pile of ironing.

To see this movie in the theater is a special, shuddering pleasure, a tilting-at-windmills affirmation of what movies, seen big, can mean. This is movie as black magic. To give yourself over to it feels a little dangerous. It also feels great.

The Hand of God is a lovely film, occasionally oddball in the best way, and astute in the way it handles tragedy and loss.

This an unnervingly compassionate portrait of a truly bad egg.

The Tender Bar is generally a sweet, affectionate film, it deflates whenever J.R. isn’t in Manhasset—because that means there’s no Ben Affleck.

At its best, it’s a chronicle of how a great team made a great show—and proof that the “behind every great man is a great woman” aphorism can work the other way around, too.

Red Rocket isn’t the warmest of Baker’s films; it has a flinty edge that makes it hard to embrace. But as movie characters go, Rex’s Mikey, a magnetic egomaniac, is an extraordinary creation.

McKay keeps piling on the sardonic observations, and the outlandishly ill-behaved characters, long after the movie has crumpled under their weight.

This, possibly, is the best kind of movie, the stealth achievement that has been hiding in plain sight all along.

Licorice Pizza feels pleased with how casual and effortless it is, which is the exact opposite of being casual and effortless.

The movie is tender like a rainstorm: only in the aftermath, after you’ve allowed time for its ideas to settle, does its full picture become clear. It’s the kind of movie that makes everything feel washed clean, a gentle nudge of encouragement suggesting that no matter how tired you feel, you can move on in the world.

No matter how she got there, Gaga’s performance in House of Gucci is both tremendous fun and ultimately touching, likely despite any technique rather than because of it.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is less about zapping ghoulies than it is about Family, Reconnection and Forgiveness, which by now should be trademarked entities like Pepsi, Saran Wrap and Legos. Never funny or disreputable, Ghostbusters: Afterlife feels fully parent-approved—and where’s the fun in that?

Going into C’mon C’mon, you may think you know exactly what it’s going to be. Coming out, you’ll probably see that you were mostly right, but that you also got a million little firefly flashes of feeling you weren’t expecting. And that right there is the Mike Mills touch.

It’s one of those crowd-pleasing movies that doesn’t make you feel embarrassed to be part of the crowd—you feel buoyed rather than talked down to.

It’s both intimate and almost comically egotistical—yet Branagh has clearly poured so much love into it that you can’t be too hard on him. It’s hard to resist the movie’s affectionate energy.

Though there are patches that are sad to watch, it is for the most part a delight, a biopic that brings its subject to life in a way that’s both respectful and open-hearted.

A Mouthful of Air makes it past those potential flaws on the strength of Seyfried’s performance. To look at her face—to watch as her delight in her son shifts almost imperceptibly into a private hell—is enough.

Though beautifully made and acted, The Souvenir had the sad, chilly pallor of a centuries-old miniature portrait, a bit of the past you could hold in your hand and yet never fully grasp. The Souvenir Part II puts the earlier film in a bigger, more detailed frame, rushing in with swirls of context, color and perspective.

The French Dispatch is high Andersonia, an elaborate movie contraption with a million tiny parts moving in concert, and depending on your threshold, it might all just be too much.

Movies about artists trying to make art might be deadly, but movies about people living are where it’s at. And in the end, there’s more living than writing going on in Bergman Island.

Halloween Kills is scattershot and febrile, a confused film in which people spend a lot of time milling around, figuring out what to do next.

The Harder They Fall is fueled by Tarantino-style energy and grim wit, and if nothing else, it’s a spectacle—those glossy, muscular horses, and the gorgeous people riding them, are almost enough to carry a movie by themselves. But this picture works so hard at entertaining us that it strips its own gears; its churning style can’t quite keep the story going.

Titane only makes you think it’s revving you up—until you realize there’s nothing going on beneath the hood.