March 2, 2025

Last Breath

★★★★☆

93 min | PG-13 | February 28, 2025 | Peacock

Alex Parkinson remakes his own 2019 documentary as a survival thriller. Woody Harrelson leads a rescue effort hundreds of feet below the ocean. Taut, efficient, terrifying.

February 23, 2025

The Monkey

★★★★☆

98 min | R | February 21, 2025 | Neon

Osgood Perkins adapts Stephen King’s cursed toy monkey story and leans fully into horror-comedy chaos. Theo James plays twin brothers haunted by random death. It works.

The Unbreakable Boy

★★★☆☆

109 min | PG | February 21, 2025 | Pure Flix

Jon Gunn adapts a true story about a boy with brittle-bone disease and autism who transforms his family. Zachary Levi tries. The film is earnest to a fault.

February 17, 2025

Captain America: Brave New World

★★★☆☆

118 min | PG-13 | February 14, 2025 | Walt Disney Pictures

Anthony Mackie officially takes up the shield and the MCU delivers its most middling entry yet. Competent, forgettable, and overstuffed with setup for movies nobody asked for.

February 16, 2025

Paddington in Peru

★★★★☆

106 min | PG | February 14, 2025 | Sony Pictures Releasing

Paddington goes to Peru and the franchise maintains its improbable winning streak. Dougal Wilson steps in for Paul King and delivers exactly what’s needed.

February 9, 2025

Heart Eyes

★★★★☆

97 min | R | February 7, 2025 | Sony Pictures Releasing

Josh Ruben makes a Valentine’s Day slasher that understands the genre and executes with precision. Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding sell the premise completely.

Bring Them Down

★★★★☆

105 min | R | February 7, 2025 | Mubi

Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan destroy each other over land, livestock, and pride in rural Ireland. No heroes. No easy answers. Just escalation and consequence.

Love Hurts

★★☆☆☆

83 min | R | February 7, 2025 | Universal Pictures

Ke Huy Quan plays a retired hitman whose brother wants him dead. Ariana DeBose shows up as the ex-partner. The film is eighty-three minutes and feels longer.

February 3, 2025

Companion

★★★★★

97 min | R | January 31, 2025 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Drew Hancock’s directorial debut is a nasty, clever thriller that earns its twists and never apologizes. Sophie Thatcher continues her winning streak.

February 2, 2025

Valiant One

★★☆☆☆

87 min | R | January 31, 2025 | Lionsgate

A military helicopter crashes in North Korea. The survivors must escape. You have seen this movie a dozen times and those versions were not good either.

Dog Man

★★★★☆

89 min | PG | January 31, 2025 | DreamWorks Animation

DreamWorks adapts Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel with genuine respect for the source material and young audiences. Smart, fast, and surprisingly heartfelt.

January 28, 2025

The Brutalist

★★★★★

215 min | R | January 24, 2025 | A24

Brady Corbet makes a three-hour-and-thirty-five-minute epic about architecture, ambition, and the cost of artistic vision in America. Every minute earns its place.

January 27, 2025

Presence

★★★★★

84 min | R | January 24, 2025 | Neon

Soderbergh shoots a haunted house movie from the ghost’s point of view. The formal experiment works. The emotional core lands. This is what mastery looks like.

January 26, 2025

Flight Risk

★★☆☆☆

91 min | R | January 24, 2025 | Lionsgate

Mel Gibson directs Mark Wahlberg in a contained thriller that never finds a reason to exist. Ninety-one minutes feels long.

January 20, 2025

One of Them Days

★★★★★

97 min | R | January 17, 2025 | Sony Pictures Releasing

Lawrence Lamont directs his first feature. Syreeta Singleton writes her first screenplay. They deliver a comedy that feels lived-in and urgent. Hollywood needs more of this.

January 19, 2025

Wolf Man

★★★☆☆

102 min | R | January 17, 2025 | Universal Pictures

Leigh Whannell swings for the fences again with Universal’s monster IP and lands somewhere between ambitious and frustrating. The Invisible Man was lightning. This is the bottle.

January 13, 2025

Better Man

★★★★☆

134 min | R | January 10, 2025 | Paramount Pictures

Michael Gracey depicts Robbie Williams as a CGI chimpanzee and makes it work. The boldness of that choice elevates what could have been another paint-by-numbers music biopic.

January 12, 2025

Den of Thieves: Pantera

★★★★☆

144 min | R | January 10, 2025 | Lionsgate

Gerard Butler chases O’Shea Jackson Jr. across Europe in a heist sequel that knows exactly what it is and delivers without apology. Sometimes that’s enough.

December 28, 2024

Nosferatu

★★★★★

132 min | R | December 25, 2024 | Focus Features

Robert Eggers remakes the vampire and makes you forget every bloodless franchise that came before.

December 27, 2024

Mufasa: The Lion King

★★★☆☆

118 min | PG | December 20, 2024 | Walt Disney Pictures

Barry Jenkins trades poetry for paycheck. The Lion King gets a backstory nobody asked for, rendered in photoreal animation that still can’t make fake animals emote.

December 25, 2024

Babygirl

★★★★☆

114 min | R | December 25, 2024 | A24

Nicole Kidman plays a CEO who starts an affair with a young intern. Halina Reijn directs an erotic thriller that is actually erotic and actually thrilling. Kidman is fearless.

A Complete Unknown

★★★★☆

141 min | R | December 25, 2024 | Searchlight Pictures

Timothee Chalamet becomes Bob Dylan in a biopic that covers 1961 to 1965. He sings live. He plays live. James Mangold makes the rare music biopic that trusts the music.

December 20, 2024

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

★★★★☆

110 min | PG | December 20, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

The Sonic franchise introduces Shadow and Keanu Reeves voices him with tragic sincerity. Jim Carrey plays two Robotniks. The whole thing is ridiculous and consistently entertaining.

December 13, 2024

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

★★★☆☆

134 min | PG-13 | December 13, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

An animated Lord of the Rings film tells the origin of Helm’s Deep two hundred years before Frodo. The battle sequences are impressive. The characters are not.

Kraven the Hunter

★☆☆☆☆

127 min | R | December 13, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Sony’s Spider-Man Universe dies the death it deserved. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays a Marvel villain nobody asked to see as a hero. J.C. Chandor deserves better. Everyone deserves better.

November 27, 2024

Moana 2

★★★★☆

100 min | PG | November 27, 2024 | Walt Disney Pictures

Disney sends Moana back to sea with a new crew and a bigger quest. The animation is stunning. The songs are not. The sequel does enough to justify its existence without matching the original.

November 22, 2024

Wicked

★★★★☆

160 min | PG | November 22, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Jon M. Chu brings the first act of the Broadway juggernaut to screen with two lead performances that justify twenty years of development hell. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are the real deal.

Gladiator II

★★★★☆

148 min | R | November 22, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

Ridley Scott returns to the Colosseum twenty-four years later. Paul Mescal fights well. Denzel Washington steals everything. The film cannot escape its predecessor’s shadow but it fights hard.

November 15, 2024

Red One

★★☆☆☆

124 min | PG-13 | November 15, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans team up to save a kidnapped Santa Claus. The film cost $250 million. It looks like it cost $250 million. It feels like it cost nothing.

November 8, 2024

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

★★★★☆

99 min | PG | November 8, 2024 | Lionsgate

Dallas Jenkins adapts the beloved 1972 children’s book about the worst kids in town hijacking the church Christmas pageant. Wholesome does not mean toothless. This one earns it.

Heretic

★★★★☆

110 min | PG-13 | November 8, 2024 | A24

Hugh Grant plays a polite monster who traps two Mormon missionaries in his house for a theological debate that turns lethal. Grant has never been this terrifying or this entertaining.

November 1, 2024

A Real Pain

★★★★★

90 min | R | November 1, 2024 | Searchlight Pictures

Jesse Eisenberg writes and directs a film about two cousins on a Holocaust tour in Poland. Kieran Culkin gives the performance of his career. Ninety minutes. Not a wasted frame.

October 25, 2024

Venom: The Last Dance

★★☆☆☆

109 min | PG-13 | October 25, 2024 | Sony Pictures

The Venom trilogy ends with a whimper disguised as a bang. Tom Hardy talks to himself for two hours while the plot happens around him.

Conclave

★★★★☆

120 min | PG | October 25, 2024 | Focus Features

Edward Berger turns a papal election into a political thriller. Ralph Fiennes leads an extraordinary ensemble through Vatican corridors where every whisper is a weapon.

October 18, 2024

We Live in Time

★★★★☆

107 min | R | October 18, 2024 | A24

Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh fall in love across a decade told out of order. John Crowley makes a romantic drama that trusts its actors more than its structure.

Smile 2

★★★★☆

127 min | R | October 18, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

Parker Finn takes his Smile franchise and makes the rare horror sequel that improves on the original in every way. Naomi Scott gives a star-making performance as a pop star losing her mind.

Anora

★★★★★

139 min | R | October 18, 2024 | Neon

Sean Baker makes his masterpiece. A Brooklyn stripper marries a Russian oligarch’s son and the fairy tale collapses in real time. Mikey Madison is extraordinary.

October 11, 2024

The Apprentice

★★★★☆

120 min | R | October 11, 2024 | Briarcliff Entertainment

Ali Abbasi makes a film about how Donald Trump became Donald Trump. Sebastian Stan disappears into the role. Jeremy Strong steals the film as Roy Cohn.

Terrifier 3

★★★★☆

125 min | Unrated | October 11, 2024 | Cineverse

Art the Clown goes Christmas. Damien Leone escalates from Halloween to the holiday season and delivers the most transgressive slasher sequel in years. The kills are extraordinary. The budget is still nothing.

Saturday Night

★★★★☆

109 min | R | October 11, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Jason Reitman makes a film about the ninety minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live aired. It is frantic and funny and more interested in the chaos of creation than the mythology of the show.

October 4, 2024

Joker: Folie à Deux

★★☆☆☆

138 min | R | October 4, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Todd Phillips makes a Joker sequel that nobody asked for and turns it into a jukebox musical that nobody wanted. The result is a film at war with itself and its audience.

September 27, 2024

The Wild Robot

★★★★★

102 min | PG | September 27, 2024 | Universal/DreamWorks Animation

A robot learns to be a mother on a wild island. Chris Sanders adapts Peter Brown’s book into one of the most beautiful animated films ever made. You will cry. Everyone cries.

Megalopolis

★★★☆☆

138 min | R | September 27, 2024 | Lionsgate

Francis Ford Coppola spends forty years and $120 million of his own money to make his dream project. The result is a glorious, incoherent mess that only a genius could make this badly.

September 20, 2024

Transformers One

★★★★☆

104 min | PG | September 20, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

The Transformers franchise goes animated and tells the origin story of Optimus Prime and Megatron as friends who became enemies. The best Transformers film since 1986. That is not a joke.

The Substance

★★★★☆

140 min | R | September 20, 2024 | Mubi

Coralie Fargeat makes a body horror film about aging in Hollywood that goes further than anyone expects. Demi Moore gives the performance of her career. The last thirty minutes are insane.

Never Let Go

★★★☆☆

101 min | R | September 20, 2024 | Lionsgate

Halle Berry lives in a cabin with her twin sons, tethered by ropes to keep an unseen evil at bay. The atmosphere is suffocating. The answers are not worth the wait.

September 13, 2024

Speak No Evil

★★★★☆

110 min | PG-13 | September 13, 2024 | Universal/Blumhouse

James McAvoy plays the worst dinner host in cinema history. The American remake of the Danish original changes the ending and earns the change. Social politeness as a weapon has never been this terrifying.

September 6, 2024

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

★★★★☆

104 min | PG-13 | September 6, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Tim Burton returns to the property that made him Tim Burton. Michael Keaton is still Beetlejuice. Catherine O’Hara steals the film. The nostalgia is earned more often than not.

August 23, 2024

The Crow

★★☆☆☆

111 min | R | August 23, 2024 | Lionsgate

The Crow gets rebooted again. Bill Skarsgard replaces Brandon Lee. The gothic romance is gone. The visual style is gone. What remains is a generic revenge film wearing the wrong costume.

Blink Twice

★★★★☆

102 min | R | August 23, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios

Zoë Kravitz directs her first film about a tech billionaire’s island paradise that is actually a nightmare. The allegory is obvious. The execution is sharp. Naomi Ackie is a star.