June 14, 2024

Inside Out 2

★★★★☆

100 min | PG | June 14, 2024 | Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar

Riley hits puberty and new emotions move in. Anxiety takes over. Pixar remembers how to make adults cry in a children’s movie. The formula works because the feelings are real.

In a Violent Nature

★★★★☆

94 min | R | June 14, 2024 | IFC Films

A slasher movie told from the killer’s perspective. The camera follows Johnny as he walks through the woods and murders people. It is ambient horror. It is also genuinely disturbing.

June 7, 2024

The Watchers

★★☆☆☆

102 min | PG-13 | June 7, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Ishana Night Shyamalan makes her directorial debut with a forest horror film starring Dakota Fanning. The Shyamalan twist gene is hereditary. So is the inconsistency.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

★★★★☆

115 min | R | June 7, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return for a fourth Bad Boys. The formula has not changed. It still works. Nobody is more surprised than the franchise itself.

May 24, 2024

The Garfield Movie

★★☆☆☆

101 min | PG | May 24, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Chris Pratt voices Garfield in a heist movie about a cat reuniting with his deadbeat dad. The lasagna-loving indoor cat deserves better. So does the audience.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

★★★★☆

148 min | R | May 24, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

George Miller tells the origin story nobody asked for and makes it feel essential. Anya Taylor-Joy becomes Furiosa. Chris Hemsworth goes full maniac as Dementus. The Wasteland expands.

May 17, 2024

IF

★★★☆☆

104 min | PG | May 17, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

John Krasinski makes a family film about forgotten imaginary friends. The concept is Pixar-level. The execution is Hallmark-level. Ryan Reynolds cannot save it.

May 10, 2024

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

★★★★☆

145 min | PG-13 | May 10, 2024 | 20th Century Studios

The Apes franchise jumps forward generations and finds a new story worth telling. The motion capture is stunning. The world-building is patient. Caesar’s shadow looms over everything.

May 3, 2024

The Fall Guy

★★★★☆

126 min | PG-13 | May 3, 2024 | Universal Pictures

David Leitch makes a love letter to stunt performers with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. The chemistry is electric. The stunts are real. Hollywood makes a movie about why movies matter.

April 26, 2024

Challengers

★★★★☆

131 min | R | April 26, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios

Luca Guadagnino makes a tennis movie that is actually a three-way love story shot like an action thriller. Zendaya commands the screen. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross turn tennis into war.

April 19, 2024

Abigail

★★★★☆

109 min | R | April 19, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Radio Silence makes a vampire movie disguised as a heist movie. A twelve-year-old ballerina murders a house full of criminals. The blood is everywhere and the fun is relentless.

April 12, 2024

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

★★★☆☆

115 min | PG-13 | April 12, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Godzilla and Kong team up to fight a bigger ape. The human characters exist to explain things. The monsters exist to destroy things. The film exists because the last one made money.

Civil War

★★★★☆

109 min | R | April 12, 2024 | A24

Alex Garland makes a war film set in a fractured America and refuses to tell you whose side to take. Kirsten Dunst anchors it with the exhaustion of a woman who has seen too much.

April 5, 2024

The First Omen

★★★★☆

120 min | R | April 5, 2024 | 20th Century Studios

A prequel to The Omen that has no business being this good. Nell Tiger Free carries a horror film about institutional evil and forced motherhood with ferocious commitment.

Monkey Man

★★★★☆

121 min | R | April 5, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Dev Patel writes, directs, produces, and stars in a revenge thriller set in India. The ambition is staggering. The action is brutal. The politics are real.

March 22, 2024

Late Night with the Devil

★★★★★

93 min | R | March 22, 2024 | IFC Films

A 1977 Halloween broadcast goes horribly wrong. David Dastmalchian delivers a career-defining performance. Found footage horror has never been this polished or this terrifying.

Immaculate

★★★★☆

89 min | R | March 22, 2024 | Neon

Sydney Sweeney produces and stars in a nunsploitation horror film set in an Italian convent. The final act is ferocious. This is not the Sydney Sweeney movie the industry expected.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

★★★☆☆

115 min | PG-13 | March 22, 2024 | Sony/Columbia Pictures

The Ghostbusters franchise continues with too many characters, too much nostalgia, and not enough reason to exist. McKenna Grace deserves her own movie. This is not it.

March 15, 2024

Arthur the King

★★★★☆

107 min | PG-13 | March 15, 2024 | Lionsgate

Mark Wahlberg does an adventure race through the Dominican Republic and adopts a stray dog. Based on a true story that is genuinely remarkable. The dog acts better than most of the humans.

March 8, 2024

Love Lies Bleeding

★★★★☆

104 min | R | March 8, 2024 | A24

Rose Glass makes a steroid-fueled queer noir about love and violence in the desert Southwest. Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian generate heat that could melt asphalt.

Kung Fu Panda 4

★★★★☆

94 min | PG | March 8, 2024 | Universal/DreamWorks Animation

Po gets a fourth adventure that he probably does not need but mostly earns. Awkwafina brings energy. The animation is gorgeous. The franchise treads water with style.

Imaginary

★★☆☆☆

104 min | PG-13 | March 8, 2024 | Lionsgate

Blumhouse makes a horror movie about a haunted teddy bear. The bear is named Chauncey. The scares are named absent.

Cabrini

★★★★☆

145 min | PG-13 | March 8, 2024 | Angel Studios

Angel Studios tells the story of Mother Cabrini, the Italian nun who built hospitals and orphanages in 1890s New York through sheer force of will. Cristiana Dell’Anna is a revelation.

March 1, 2024

Dune: Part Two

★★★★☆

166 min | PG-13 | March 1, 2024 | Warner Bros. Pictures

Denis Villeneuve finishes what he started. The second half of Frank Herbert’s novel is the dangerous half. Villeneuve handles it with intelligence and spectacle in equal measure.

February 23, 2024

Ordinary Angels

★★★★☆

117 min | PG | February 23, 2024 | Lionsgate

Hilary Swank plays a recovering alcoholic hairdresser who mobilizes a community to save a dying child. Based on a true story. Earns its sentiment without drowning in it.

Drive-Away Dolls

★★★★☆

84 min | R | February 23, 2024 | Focus Features

Ethan Coen goes solo with a lesbian road trip crime comedy set in 1999. It is slight and messy and more fun than it has any right to be.

February 14, 2024

Madame Web

★☆☆☆☆

116 min | PG-13 | February 14, 2024 | Sony Pictures

Sony scrapes the bottom of the Spider-Man IP barrel and finds Madame Web. Dakota Johnson looks like she wants to be anywhere else. So does the audience.

Bob Marley: One Love

★★★☆☆

107 min | PG-13 | February 14, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

The authorized Bob Marley biopic hits every expected beat with craft and caution. Kingsley Ben-Adir commits fully. The film does not.

February 9, 2024

Lisa Frankenstein

★★★☆☆

101 min | PG-13 | February 9, 2024 | Focus Features

Diablo Cody writes a teen horror comedy set in 1989. Zelda Williams directs. The vibes are immaculate. The script needed another pass.

February 2, 2024

Argylle

★★☆☆☆

139 min | PG-13 | February 2, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Matthew Vaughn makes a spy movie about a spy novelist caught up in a real spy plot. Two hours and nineteen minutes of that. With a cat.

January 26, 2024

Sometimes I Think About Dying

★★★★☆

91 min | PG-13 | January 26, 2024 | Oscilloscope Laboratories

Daisy Ridley disappears into a quiet office worker who fantasizes about death. A tiny, precise film about the terror of human connection.

Miller's Girl

★★☆☆☆

93 min | R | January 26, 2024 | Lionsgate

A student-teacher boundary thriller that thinks it is smarter than it is. Martin Freeman deserves better material.

January 25, 2024

Land of Bad

★★★★☆

110 min | R | January 25, 2024 | Lionsgate

Russell Crowe flies a drone. Liam Hemsworth runs through a jungle. A straightforward military thriller that works because it commits to being exactly that.

January 19, 2024

Origin

★★★★☆

141 min | PG-13 | January 19, 2024 | Neon

Ava DuVernay adapts a nonfiction book about caste into a narrative film about grief, obsession, and the architecture of human cruelty. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor anchors a film that should not work but does.

I.S.S.

★★★☆☆

95 min | R | January 19, 2024 | Bleecker Street

War breaks out on Earth. Astronauts on the International Space Station get orders to take control by any means necessary. The premise is better than the movie.

January 12, 2024

The Beekeeper

★★★★☆

99 min | R | January 12, 2024 | Amazon MGM Studios

Jason Statham punches his way through a phishing scam revenge thriller. David Ayer keeps it lean and mean. This is exactly as stupid and satisfying as it sounds.

Mean Girls

★★★★☆

112 min | PG-13 | January 12, 2024 | Paramount Pictures

The Broadway musical adaptation of the movie based on the book. Reneé Rapp owns it. The meta-layers are dizzying but the songs hold up.

January 5, 2024

Night Swim

★★☆☆☆

98 min | PG-13 | January 5, 2024 | Universal Pictures

Blumhouse turns a backyard pool into a horror villain. The pool is scarier than the movie.

American Fiction

★★★★☆

117 min | R | December 15, 2023 | Amazon MGM Studios

Cord Jefferson adapts Percival Everett’s novel into a razor-sharp satire about race, publishing, and the stories America wants to buy. Jeffrey Wright carries the whole thing on his back.