It doesn’t take a dystopian future or a sci-fi bent to present a teenage girl who faces enormous stakes and near-constant potential for violence, and The Hate U Give represents Hollywood’s first real ability to recognize that.

The High Note isn’t an ecstatic, tenuously held burst; instead, it’s a mellow pleasure, sleekly directed by Ganatra, who turns Flora Greeson’s occasionally programmatic script into something of smooth, sensual warmth. It is, above all else, an inviting opportunity for two likable actors, Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross, to simply exist on screen together, fluid in their casual appeal and gracefully bringing a sappy, aspirational story to mostly credible life.

The film offered [Monroe] the chance to deliciously unravel as a mentally disturbed babysitter, and she also gained real-world survival skills that she’d put to use nearly a decade later.

Decision to Leave no doubt deserves a repeat viewing. Even if the finale is still a slightly hard to parse bummer, there is all the other meticulous craftwork to appreciate and discover anew. In this instance, maybe there is no getting too close to the case.

Sorry to Bother You is a surreal ride.

The film is rich with male feelings and even manages to have a sense of humor about its own sadness. Phoenix is fine here—his usual loose cannon—as is Gyllenhaal, whose educated snob routine doesn’t overplay its hand an inch. Though I’m tempted to launch a federal investigation into his mutt of an accent. But it’s Reilly who really carries the movie.

The film shows—and says plainly, at one point—that people with extreme wealth are so divorced from reality that they become almost another species. Yet it doesn’t fully explore the weirdness of that, the chilling tragedy of it. Instead, Scott has made simply a competent thriller that dazzles only in the ingeniousness of its lightning-quick and proficient re-staging.

Clarke, too, shines as a woman who’s made sacrifices Han cannot imagine. To the extent that the movie is a western at heart, its smartest, subtlest influence is the Joan Crawford classic Johnny Guitar, about a woman who makes her way in the Wild West against all odds, and in the face of all morality.

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things knows its limits. It’s careful about when to be twee, when to strive for profundity, and when to hold back. The film has an agreeably modest scale, despite its lofty considerations of physics and the makeup of existence.

Godzilla vs. Kong competently, efficiently does its job, which is really all you can ask of the fourth movie in a rickety franchise.

The film somehow gets more interesting as it goes, swirling up into a climax that is mordant and corny and monster-movie fantastical.

Jon M. Chu’s film certainly delivers on the lavish trappings of the former interpretation, but if the latter is meant to be the mood of the film, it falls a little short. I wanted things to be a little crazier, I guess, wild high-society intrigue staged with the satisfying bite of mean, wicked satire.

We’re served both the galvanization and the despair, the victories eked out bit by painful bit and the looming defeat, as an implacable monolith dismisses puny mortal concerns like so many gnats. It’s tough stuff, but it’s worthy stuff too.

A New Era really, really should be the end of Downton Abbey, but I’d happily watch these freaks stumbling through the 1930s if they were so inclined to let me.

But the real star of this thing is Clemons, so natural and expressive, whether speaking or singing.

No matter how you may think you feel about child actors, the Temple infant will get you.

The film has a sneaky momentum.

The film is a winning reminder of the pleasures of the midrange movie, one stylish enough to feel distinct but not too caught up in an effort to sell some startling, singular vision. It’s proudly genre and fills its allotted space with humor and detail.

It Ends With Us is a tearjerker that indulges in its red-meat drama, but then gives it the grace of shading and complexity—and rare humanity.

It’s a fun movie, packed with escapades and just-shy-of-cloying cutesy humor, but there is a resonant depth, too.

Eurovision has its clunky stretches—Ferrell’s script, written with Andrew Steele, could be a little tighter, a little sharper, and still keep its rambling appeal—but the film is routinely rescued by a deftly staged music number or an invigoratingly off-color joke.

While Isle of Dogs is basically a fizzy, ornately mounted assembly of quirks and barks, the sheer artistry displayed—in everything from Alexandre Desplat’s taiko drum score to the occasional bits of stunning 2-D animation—is so expertly accomplished, and so clearly fueled by love, that you can’t help but grin.

Joel Edgerton’s earnest, solidly made film will be most effective on, and maybe necessary for, those immediately suffering under the crush of anti-gay bigotry, and those perpetrating it.

As is, The Bikeriders plays as if a longer, more robust version disappeared somewhere in the editing room. But a spell is lightly cast nonetheless, enough to make it sting when things start to go sour for Johnny and Benny and the rest.

Luca does, despite its vagueness, successfully pull off some of the usual Pixar tricks, provoking warm tears and weary sighs as one considers the familiar trajectories of life.

Honeyland is thankfully too interested in the particulars of Hatidze to reduce her to demographic trivia. What matters, the movie tells us, isn’t that she’s exceptional in the trivial sense, but that’s she’s exceptional in who she is. Another message, to be sure, but one that finally rings true.

Despite some distraction and not quite enough music, Soul manages to tap into deep emotion as its characters explore the limits of mortality and what it means to be passionate about life.

There are moments of high drama in Infinity War—between father and daughter, brother and brother, mentor and protégé, lover and lover—that these actors, as deep in this series as we are, deliver on with teary intensity. And there’s a haunting final sequence that is as grave and, I daresay, almost poetic as anything the film series has done.