Movies

★★★☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★★

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

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

★★★☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★☆☆

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.

★☆☆☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★★

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★★

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.

★★★★★

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.

★★★☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.

★★★★☆

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.

★★★★☆

119 min | R | August 16, 2024 | 20th Century Studios

Fede Alvarez takes the Alien franchise back to basics. Young colonists trapped on a derelict space station with xenomorphs. The scares work. The fan service is excessive. The third act goes somewhere new.

★★★☆☆

130 min | PG-13 | August 9, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Blake Lively stars in the adaptation of the Colleen Hoover phenomenon. The domestic violence subject matter is handled with more care than expected. The romance around it is handled with less.

★★★★☆

102 min | R | August 9, 2024 | Neon

A teenager moves to a German Alps resort and discovers something profoundly wrong. Hunter Schafer anchors the dread. Dan Stevens goes full maniac. Tilman Singer makes horror weird again.

★☆☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | August 9, 2024 | Lionsgate

Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart star in a video game adaptation that wastes every single one of them. Eli Roth directs. Nobody survives.

★★★☆☆

105 min | PG-13 | August 2, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

M. Night Shyamalan makes a thriller about a serial killer trapped at a pop concert with his daughter. Josh Hartnett is genuinely great. The film around him is genuinely Shyamalan.

★★☆☆☆

91 min | PG | August 2, 2024 | Sony/Columbia Pictures

A beloved children’s book gets the live-action treatment nobody wanted. Zachary Levi draws things with a purple crayon. The magic of the source material evaporates on contact.

★★★★☆

128 min | R | July 26, 2024 | Marvel Studios/Disney

Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman team up for the MCU’s first R-rated film. It is a buddy comedy disguised as a superhero movie disguised as a eulogy for the Fox Marvel universe. The cameos are insane.

★★★★☆

122 min | PG-13 | July 19, 2024 | Universal Pictures

The sequel to Twister that nobody expected delivers summer blockbuster thrills with genuine craft. Glen Powell is a movie star. Daisy Edgar-Jones grounds the spectacle. The tornadoes are terrifying.

★★★★☆

101 min | R | July 12, 2024 | Neon

Osgood Perkins makes a serial killer film that feels like a nightmare you cannot wake from. Nicolas Cage disappears into prosthetics and madness. Maika Monroe anchors the dread.

★★★★☆

132 min | PG-13 | July 12, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum make a romantic comedy about faking the moon landing. The premise is fun. The execution is uneven. The two leads carry it through the rough patches.

★★★★☆

103 min | R | July 5, 2024 | A24

Ti West completes his horror trilogy with Maxine Minx in 1985 Hollywood. Mia Goth goes full movie star. The Night Stalker lurks. The ambition is bigger. The results are messier.

★★★☆☆

94 min | PG | July 3, 2024 | Universal/Illumination

Gru gets a baby. The Minions get superpowers. Illumination gets another billion dollars. The franchise runs on fumes and merchandise.

★★★★☆

99 min | PG-13 | June 28, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

The Quiet Place franchise goes to New York City on the day the aliens arrive. Lupita Nyong’o plays a dying woman who just wants a slice of pizza. The best entry in the series.

★★★★☆

116 min | R | June 21, 2024 | Focus Features

Jeff Nichols makes a motorcycle club movie that is really about the death of American rebellion. Austin Butler broods. Tom Hardy mumbles. Jodie Comer steals the whole thing.

★★★★☆

164 min | R | June 21, 2024 | Searchlight Pictures

Yorgos Lanthimos makes a three-part anthology about control, devotion, and obedience. Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone play different roles in each segment. It is long and strange and not for everyone.