Richard Crouse

Part screwball comedy, part fight for survival, “Anora” is a triumph of controlled chaos. As in his earlier films, “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket,” director Sean Baker keenly observes his characters with empathy and emotion in stories that examine money, class, and power. Mikey Madison, best known to date as the oldest sibling on the sit com “Better Things” and being burned alive in both “Scream (5)” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” hands in a career re-defining performance as sex worker Anora a.k.a. Ani. An electric combination of tough-as-nails ferocity, self-assurance, desperation and poignant vulnerability, she is as compelling and charismatic a lead as we’ll see at the movies this year.

A story of sexual power, control and humiliation, “Babygirl” is risky and frisky with a fearless performance from Nicole Kidman.

“Better Man,” the biopic of Take That singer-turned-solo superstar Robbie Williams is a sex, drugs and British Pop story given an audacious treatment by “The Greatest Showman” director Michael Gracey. A surreal mix of “Behind the Music” and “Planet of the Apes,” it is a raw portrayal of the singer’s vulnerabilities and foibles in which he’s rendered throughout as a CGI monkey. No explanations are offered, and none are needed. Whether it’s a comment on the performing monkey nature of his work, or his ever-evolving emotional state, or whatever, it’s a startling and surprisingly effective gimmick in a wildly entertaining film.

“Conclave,” the story of the ritual to elect a new Pope, reflects a spiritual process marred by very human foibles. It’s a very timely study of the quest for power which seems even more relevant in a US election year. “The men who are dangerous are the men who want the power.”

Ron Howard’s “Eden” is a star-studded—Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Sydney Sweeney, Jude Law and Daniel Brühl— story of backstabbing, ego and survival set against the unforgiving landscape of a deserted Galápagos Island. Based on a true story, it’s a heart of darkness tale done on an operatic level.

Hugh Grant delivers a career redefining performance as the charming face of theological curiosity in “Heretic.” A two-hour doctrinal cat-and-mouse game with two Mormon missionaries (Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher), the movie digs deep, gets dark but never forgets to have fun.

As idiosyncratic movie as we’re likely to see this year, “Megalopolis” is a forty-years-in-the-making passion project from Francis Ford Coppola that brims with imagination, ambition and, unfortunately, self-indulgence. Equal parts hammy and hopeful, dense and dazzling, it’s the work of a filmmaker with nothing left to prove.

Told from the point of view of the ghost, the scares in “Presence” are muted and not particularly supernatural. The horror here is the carefully observed, callous behavior between several of the characters. It’s a stylish, visually interesting twist on a ghost story that entertains the eye but may not move the spirit.

An intense look at the chaotic ninety minutes before the first broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” on October 11, 1975, “Saturday Night” captures the anxiety, the humour and the sheer nerve it took to get the show off the ground. We know how it ends—“SNL” celebrates 50 seasons this year—but a great ensemble cast brings this love letter to show business, tenacity and Lorne Michaels to vivid life.

A revenge drama about legacy, genetic memory, social media and a cat named Potato, “Seeds” is a tense thriller that delivers its message with plenty of humor before the going gets gory. At a quick 85 minutes “Seeds” features great performances— Graham Greene, as the host of a television true crime show who speaks to Ziggy in her dreams and Goldtooth are standouts—and succeeds both as a revenge drama and an expression of Indigenous legacy and power.

“The Shrouds” revisits David Cronenberg’s go-to themes of body horror, invasive technology and paranoia in a film that promises to be a provocative and empathetic study of grief.

“The Substance” has a lot on its mind. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat infuses the story with her thoughts on youth, beauty, fame and Hollywood’s unrealistic beauty standards, and uses body horror coupled with the bonkers, Grand Guignol ending to make her points. It goes on a bit too long, but Fargeat’s gruesome vision, and the finale’s ankle-deep bloodbath, is a thing of terrible beauty.

Part rom com and part essay on what lingers after we’re gone, “We Live in Time” is a five-hankie tear-jerker fueled by the intimate and charismatic performances of its leads Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

Based on Peter Brown’s award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller of the same name, the animated “The Wild Robot” will put you in the mind of “The Iron Giant,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “WALL-E,” but carves out its own, unique, rewarding space. Brimming with compassion, humor and kindness, it has the makings of a classic.

A modern riff on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 18th-century novella “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” “Young Werther,” takes a love-at-first-sight premise, the stuff of rom coms, and uses that as a springboard to examine self-absorbed youth, unrequited love, rejection and the true nature of love.