Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is an elegant, old-fashioned plea for decency, and it made me cry more than once with both sorrow and joy. I think it will do the same for anyone who sees it, and everyone should.
Stranger Than Heaven is an ambitious, deeply moving, and brilliantly realized crime saga that will raise the bar for the genre.
For those willing to tolerate its quirks and accept the rough edges, Control Resonant offers much to admire. It's unlike anything else you'll see this year, perhaps even next year and the many more after that, and that counts for something.
Street Fighter is an aggressively stupid movie that knows it's an aggressively stupid movie. It's also a lot of fun with occasional fleeting glimpses of emotion, and it's the best Street Fighter adaptation to date.
Messy and surprisingly dull with flashes of poignancy, VisionQuest is less than the sum of its parts, mostly because of how unwieldy the MCU has become.
Disco is dead, says Summer Eternal, but Red Rooster will carry its torch.
Castlevania: Belmont's Curse is not just one of the best games this year; it's one of the best Castlevania games ever made. It is a challenging, consistently engaging, and superbly designed adventure epic that reminds us why this series defined an entire genre in the first place.
Valor Mortis feels like the next frontier for the Soulslike genre. It is a massive undertaking to rewrite the language we use to understand these games, and One More Level succeeds in stamping its mark on it.
Wings of Theve is the best entry in the franchise and one of the most beautiful games released this year. It's accessible, tremendously exhilarating, and so much fun that any complaints feel minor compared to what you get.
If only Matchbox the Movie were a worse film, at least then it would be interesting. But it isn't, and it isn't.
The Social Reckoning is the story of patriarchal caricatures breathlessly mansplaining journalism, ethics, and even mansplaining to any woman within earshot.
The Devils is a sublime, timeless provocation that has lost none of its potency.
