It's July, when a critic's fancy turns to making a list of his favorite movies so far this year.
In no particular order, they are:Black Panther – Heady super heroics, with a blast of Afrofuturism.
You Were Never Really Here – An immersive urban nightmare lets Joaquin Phoenix show why he's The Man.
Annihilation – Color-blasted sci-fi that uses every inch of the screen.
1945 – A Hungarian morality tale digs into a post-Holocaust panic.
Won't You Be My Neighbor – A reminder that we could use a dose of Mr. Rogers now more than ever. Try not to cry.
Game Night – One of those dumb comedies that turns out to be very smart, featuring a perfect comedic performance from Jesse Plemons.
Thoroughbreds – Patricia Highsmith meets Mean Girls.
The Endless – An open-ended horror that knows it doesn't need to make anything obvious.
Sorry to Bother You – Magical socialist realism that goes places you didn't know existed.
Leave No Trace – A quiet father/daughter story that cuts to the bone.
Blindspotting – Gentrification blues and the complexity of race relations in Oakland.
A Quiet Place – A killer family movie, in the sense that it's actually about family.
Lean on Pete – A boy and his horse in an America littered with broken dreams.
Hereditary – A clinic in the visual grammar of the horror movie.
First Reformed – Few films plumb issues of faith so fearlessly and unblinking.
The Death of Stalin – Gallows humor from the mind behind Veep.
Foxtrot – A mesmerizing Israeli film about the moral consequences of war.
1985 – A small-town coming out movie with an indelible sense of time and place.
