Mean Johnny Barrows (1976)

Spirited inverts the tropes of the holiday musical genre to update an age-old tale for 2022. It's a paean to those who make grand spectacles possible.

This film manages to be simultaneously topical and timeless. Without being preachy, it highlights society’s flawed relationship with tech; insights into the complex ideas of family struggle are expertly dispersed among a perfectly paced and balanced story.

Its predictability shouldn’t distract from the enjoyment that the pure cinematic imagination behind the camera elicits. It is a movie of crises both moral and mortal, oozing with CGI, and thoroughly enjoyable.

"Up" features one of Pixar's few Asian-American heroes and explores the institutionalized hardships elderly people face. Also, Dug is a good boy.

The Night Doctor achieves telling an original story in which the pace accelerates progressively while supported by dark aesthetics.

The horror franchise that had moviegoers watching behind their fingers but on the edge of their seats. The Conjuring quartet released its final installment this year, and it did not disappoint.