The Debut is Jesse Eisenberg's funniest and most formally adventurous film yet, anchored by a spectacular Julianne Moore and a Paul Giamatti performance pitched at exactly the right level of theatrical terror.
Forbidden Compass is colorful, frantic and occasionally funny, but Tom and Jerry spend too much of their own movie serving a mythology that has little need for them.
Wild Horse Nine has all the barbed dialogue and bruised male friendship expected from Martin McDonagh, but John Malkovich gives the film a melancholy center that keeps its political cynicism from curdling into empty provocation.
Runner knows the appeal of watching Alan Ritchson turn every available object into a weapon, and Owen Wilson gives the mayhem an affable pulse, even when the movie around them feels assembled from familiar parts.
Buddy is at its funniest and creepiest when its smiling orange unicorn behaves as if murder is simply another lesson of the day.
Finding Emily borrows freely from the romantic comedies that came before it, but its best moments understand that being young and in love now means being watched, catalogued, and analyzed in real time.
Idiots has the rhythm of an early-2000s studio comedy and the dirt-under-the-fingernails sensibility of a Macon Blair crime story.
Wile E. Coyote takes Acme to court in a clever live-action/animation hybrid that understands the old cartoons worked because failure itself could be funny.
A stacked comic cast can only do so much with a script that mistakes wellness satire, raunch and friendship speeches for a personality of its own.
Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat make an easy, believable comic pair in a stoner comedy that is sweet, chaotic, and only intermittently as funny as it thinks it is.
SIX the Musical Live! is an energetic, sharply performed record of a theatrical phenomenon, led by six performers who understand exactly how to own an audience.
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie delivers dinosaurs, rescues and a surprisingly sweet message about confidence with exactly the efficiency its young audience expects.
Dafoe gives one of those performances that removes acting rather than displays it, in a melancholy comedy that stays smaller than its own best questions.
A feverish reclamation of slasher mythology, powered by the charged chemistry of Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.
Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner bring charm, comic ease, and genuine warmth to a glossy New York romance.
Broken Lizard’s chemistry and the unexpectedly endearing Farva-Thorny wedding conflict provide enough scattered laughs for established fans.
Olivia Wilde takes command of Gregg Araki's bright, bawdy comeback, a sex comedy with more nerve than discipline.
A committed Zoey Deutch and a game ensemble keep David Wain’s absurd Hollywood comedy afloat when its joke machine begins running on fumes.
A lively tribute to silent comedy and old studio filmmaking proves the Minions are funniest when cinema itself becomes the punch line.
Four exceptional actors turn a provocative invitation into one of the year's funniest and most emotionally precise relationship films.
Pixar finds a real reason to return to Bonnie's room, placing Jessie at the center of a funny and unexpectedly moving fight for a child's attention.
Anna Faris and Regina Hall remain fearless comic performers in a revival that confuses naming recent movies with actually parodying them.
Keke Palmer leads Boots Riley's fashion revolution with swagger, humor, and enough visual invention to survive a plot carrying ten ideas at once.
Inde Navarrette gives a fearless breakout performance in a darkly funny nightmare that transforms romantic fantasy into a violation of free will.
The cast still knows exactly how to wear these characters, even when the movie surrounding them feels like a familiar outfit in cheaper fabric.
