Baker's best to date: a Brooklyn dancer marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and the magic curdles into a frantic chase across nighttime New York. Mikey Madison carries every frame — the movie runs on her energy and her bruises. No moralizing, no labels: just two people who ran into each other at the wrong time.
Villeneuve pulls the whole desert into a single line: revenge, faith, politics. Timothée Chalamet finally has something to sink his teeth into, and Zendaya keeps the film grounded just as it tries to tip into pure epic.
Three and a half hours that pass like a single breath. The story of an émigré architect shot on 70mm, and the film stock itself becomes a character: heavy, grainy, alive.
Body horror about an industry that literally devours women. Demi Moore lands the role she's been preparing for her whole career, and the finale leaves you needing a step outside.
Closed Vatican doors, paper ballots, and intrigue worthy of le Carré. Fiennes plays it so restrained that a single pause carries the weight of ten monologues.
Eggers does what he does best: reconstructs 19th-century dread down to the smell of damp. Bill Skarsgård isn't a seductive vampire — he's a rotting body you can't refuse.
Tennis as a metaphor for everything: sex, ambition, jealousy. Zendaya conducts two men and her own career; the Reznor/Ross score hits like a match point.
DreamWorks remembers how to make big family movies that hit adults the hardest. A robot learns to mother a gosling, and by the third act you're crying without knowing when it started.
Garland isn't filming politics — he's filming the people with cameras who keep clicking the shutter when they should be running. Kirsten Dunst reclaims top billing in one move.
Miller stretches the Fury Road universe further, and even when the climax can't quite match its predecessor, the world stays alive down to the last rusted bolt. Chris Hemsworth is unrecognizable.