Visionary writer/director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, Enter the Void, Love) is back to deliver another hypnotic and hallucinatory experience with CLIMAX. The film is a dazzlingly choreographed party turned nightmare, and it is easily Noé’s most accessible film to date (and possibly his best). On thing is for sure, it’s definitely one helluva club banging party.

James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez join forces to bring the 1990s Japanese manga series Gunnm (also known as Battle Angel Alita) by Yukito Kishiro to the big screen. With Rodriguez’ energetic direction, Cameron’s big budget and effects, and a strong female lead, Alita: Battle Angel'‘s empowering adventure proves to be a multitude of things: a solid anime adaptation, the best Rodriguez film since Planet Terror, and a pretty darn fun early blockbuster experience.

Writer/director Nicolas Pesce follows up his hauntingly hypnotic debut, The Eyes of My Mother, with something even more sadistic. Amidst its sleek stylization, Piercing trades in the penetrating psychological horror for something more perverse and distinctly offbeat. Not without its intriguing qualities and moments, Piercing just doesn’t land with the same effect as Pesce’s previous offering.

Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game) returns after a six-year hiatus with Greta, a psychological thriller with horrific tendencies. With a strong performance from Isabelle Huppert and Jordan’s sleek direction, Greta manages to be entertaining despite its often times wackadoodle 90s-inspired antics.

Writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski follows up his 2015 Oscar-winning Ida with a film that is just as immaculately crafted. Cold War, which has again earned Pawlikowski an Oscar nomination, comes in a petite package while moving expansively through history. Hitting on key moments in the lives of its two leads, the film ensnares you in its rich story, history, and characters, both beautiful and devastating.

Writer/director Dan Gilroy reunites with Nightcrawler’s Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo to pop shots at L.A.’s vapid art scene with the promise of black humor and the horroresque. The premise, while not very unique, creates the opportunity for kooky fun to be had; however, the reality is that Velvet Buzzsaw is just as soulless as the quirky and cutthroat characters that litter its messy narrative.

With Split, M. Night Shyamalan picked up the spare and proved that he still had the ability to craft decent and enjoyable films. With Glass, he seeks to continue that, capping Unbreakable and Split with a trilogy that has the potential to start an original cinematic universe. However, as history has shown us, Shyamalan can be his own worst enemy. Will he shatter to glass, or continue to course correct his heavily tarnished career? 

Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda is back with another deeply humanistic film that centers around family. With Shoplifters, Kore-eda focuses on the notion of what constitutes a family, and his aimless, yet confident style wraps the viewer up into the lives of the Shibata family, touching on an array of emotions that all hit home.

Over the course of the year, we see a lot of films, and between our day jobs and our passion for seeking out new films, we don’t always have as much time as we’d like to write formal reviews for every single thing we see. Some, like Bad Times at the El Royale or The Rider, we don’t get around to seeing until way late in the year, and others, like Searching or Incredibles 2, we’ve yet to even see… So, before we drop our end of the year list, we thought we’d bring yah all up to speed on the other films we saw this year and how we felt about them, especially if some of them might just crack our top 10.

Robert Zemeckis is responsible for many of cinema’s most beloved films; however, Welcome to Marwen sadly isn’t one of them. In fact, as far as his writing and director efforts go, Marwen marks his career low. Despite the film’s impressive effects and its enthralling true-life source material, you get the sense that Zemeckis doesn’t really know how to tell this story. The result is a jumbled mess of an experience that oscillates between the serious and the absurd with no grace or effect.

er (most known for Deep Impact and Pay It Forward) returns after a 9 year hiatus to bring a portion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life to the big screen with On the Basis of Sex. Working from a script penned by newcomer and RBG’s nephew Daniel Stiepleman, Leder crafts her first thoroughly solid feature that manages to be enjoyable and inspiring, despite its formulaic biology.

Karyn Kusama (The Invitation, Jennifer’s Body) is back, and she’s set her sights on the unflinching vendetta story. Her vision is as uncompromising as Nichole Kidman’s transformative performance, and her direction is the most confident it’s been since The Invitation. Streaked with elements of Noir and bathed in bright sunlight, Destroyer does for the gritty thriller what You Were Never Really Here did for the hit man film — though not as effectively.

“Vice” is a subtly appropriate title for Adam McKay’s most recent film. On the surface, the film is an introduction to America’s 43rd Vice President Dick Cheney, but on a deeper level, it introduces us to the persona behind the title: a quiet man with his own vices and a thirst for power.

Barry Jenkins follows up 2016’s phenomenal effort Moonlight with If Beale Street Could Talk, a powerful story of love and injustice intertwined. Using the rich lyricism of author James Baldwin’s source material, Jenkins brings this painful, yet moving story into a vibrant reality. It may not have the capacity to outshine Moonlight, but it’s still a potent testament to Jenkins’ masterful abilities as a visual storyteller.

Mary Queen of Scots marks the directorial debut of Josie Rourke, who brings a the right sense of female empowerment to the project but fails to give it any oomph. Riddled with historical inaccuracies and bloated with too much unnecessary plot points, the film barely gets by on the performances of its leads. 

From Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) comes an engaging and energetic new slant of the heist thriller. With a fantastic ensemble cast and bold direction, Widows delivers popcorn thrills with a touch of elevation.

Without the finesse of Ryan Coogler, Creed II doesn’t have the power or stamina to be a true contender; however, for fans of the franchise, its time tested formula still manages to land a few solid blows.

Back from an 8-year hiatus, acclaimed Korean director Lee Chang-dong (Poetry) returns with the masterfully erected and quietly affecting Burning, an adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” (which was itself inspired by William Faulkner’s novel of the same title). The film paints in the gaps of Murakami’s haiku-like source material to craft a slow-burn thriller that lingers like the smell of smoke long after the credits roll.