I don’t think I was more surprised by any movie this year than The Holdovers. I found its initial trailer to be off-putting (I’m just about done watching trailers!), but decided to give it a try anyway after being letdown by several big movies that were out. And I couldn’t have been happier to be wrong!

The prequel focuses on Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the future villainous President Snow of the original Hunger Games series, as a young man, following the events that lead to his “breaking bad.”

In this latest in a series of movies reimagining the classic mystery novels of Agatha Christie and directed by Kenneth Branagh, I was constantly astounded by the great work of its individual pieces to produce a movie both highly entertaining and genuinely suspenseful and mysterious. 

Writer/director James Gunn understands what makes these kinds of comic book stories compelling and what gives them stakes: a group of misfits comes together to form a kind of family, where each member is stronger together, and their concern for each other is their strength. They’re kind of losers, and that’s great!

Director Lee Cronin, a relative newcomer on the horror scene, ably directs the film, which pays homage not only to Raimi’s frenetic camera movements but to other classic horror films as well, including an incredible homage to The Shining.

The story of Air is about the real-life ragtag group of executives in Nike’s, at the time, nearly non-existent basketball shoe line, who come together to try and land Michael Jordan as a spokesperson for their basketball shoes against all odds. In the hands of Ben Affleck’s directing and an all-star cast of incredible performances, the film is elevated and you feel like you’re watching something a little more substantial. 

Knock at the Cabin is a tense thriller about—maybe?—the end of the world, where four strangers invade the vacation rental of a gay couple and their daughter. What follows is a muddled, pseudo-philosophical exploration on the nature of belief and what one would do—or wouldn’t do—to stop the world from ending. 

At its best, M3gan embodies the unhinged gleefulness of 80’s horror movies like Child’s Play, while keeping it fresh by inverting old tropes and subtly infusing the movie with a critique of our dependence on technology for our emotional needs. And while, for me, there could have been a little more gore, to its credit the movie actually manages to still create thrills while maintaining a PG-13 rating.

Where the movie actually sings is in its dark meditation on grief, loss, and the weight of responsibility left to the living. Overall, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is an interesting entry in the Marvel universe, but a mixed bag to be sure.

Tár and The Banshees of Inisherin, two of the year’s best films, examine the power and cost of art to sublime ends, admittedly through very different lenses. And both films will undoubtedly be strong contenders for the upcoming awards season.

It proves a film does not need to do away with jaw-dropping action sequences and classic movie structures to make a film that is not only extremely entertaining but emotional and thought-provoking. The epic film centers on an all-female group of warriors, the Agojie, in 19th century Africa, as they defend their homeland from rival kingdoms funded by slave traders.

Our movie reviewer Mo Burford takes a look at two big films this summer, Nope and Bullet Train. Nope had Burford saying yep to a second showing in two days. “Bullet Train is fun, especially if you like lots of hand-to-hand combat and big, mildly comedic characters; and it was a fine use of eleven bucks during a scorcher of a summer,” he writes.

Read Mo Burford’s reviews of Jurassic World: Dominion, Elvis, and Thor: Love and Thunder and learn what these three movies have (and don’t have) in common with JAWS.

Top Gun: Maverick is a little silly on the surface, but at its heart it is about jaw-dropping aerial maneuvers, which left me feeling like a little kid excited to go home and pretend to be a death-defying pilot myself.

I have watched darn near every Marvel movie that has come out in the last 11 years, and I have to be honest, I’m quite sick of them. However, I’m happy to report that Doctor Strangle and the Multiverse of Madness was (mostly) a happy departure from the norms of the Marvel Comic Universe and that I genuinely enjoyed watching it.

It’s beautiful and sad and fun and amazing to behold up on the big screen. What else can you ask for from a movie? This is the superhero movie I have been waiting for—but it’s also not just a superhero movie. Daniels (director duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Schienert) have truly created a marvel, but thankfully not for Marvel. The action in Everything Everywhere All at Once was some of the best I’ve seen in years.

Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is as emotionally captivating as it is breathtaking to behold. The singing, dancing, acting, and direction all come together in a nearly perfect union to bring an old story into the present.

The Batman brings us back to Gotham—albeit a more squalid, rainy and corrupt version—where Batman (Robert Pattinson) is only in his second year as the caped crusader and finds himself squaring off against The Riddler (Paul Dano), The Penguin (Colin Farrell) and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).

And while the film doesn’t always make great choices around its characters, it is always making interesting choices with the camera. If there is any real romance in the film, it's between Anderson and the making of movies: his love of cinema is palpable.