So Long, Blue Boy (1973)

A sweet slice-of-life anime that visualizes all the ways we creatively hide our vulnerabilities from the world.

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

Not every film can make a shopping mall feel both magical and menacing, but Forbidden Fruits challenges that.

"WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?!!!!" "EVERYTHING!!!!!" This is but one of a multitude of highly emphatic questions, and subsequent answers, being asked in the newest feature film from one of the current masters of horror, Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Us" and "Nope"). I must give Peele credit in that he continues to push the boundaries of specific genres and their associated tropes in order to provide what ends up amounting to subtly then jarringly intense, yet still character and story-driven, cinema that speaks more to indie stylings than mainstream.

Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing is a gritty, darkly funny thrill ride through 1998 New York, with Austin Butler delivering a raw, magnetic turn as Hank Thompson—a washed-up ex-ballplayer turned bartender whose life implodes after cat-sitting for his punk neighbor drags him into a violent underworld of gangsters, crooked cops, and chaos. Brutal yet unexpectedly hilarious, the film blends noir grit with midnight-movie absurdity, proving Aronofsky can reinvent himself while Butler cements his status as a true movie star.

Mark Anthony Green was unable to connect all of the pieces in his debut feature film, leaving Opus as a middling entry in an already oversaturated genre.