Pain and Glory is one of Almodóvar’s most personal storytelling endeavors. It is also one of his best.

Hustlers is a movie that goes for broke right from the jump, it’s feminine gaze directed oftentimes within as it celebrates these friendships, cherishing the familial bonds the women end up creating even as society turns a blind eye towards their collective travails.

The Farewell is one of the best films of 2019. Heck, it might even be one of the best of the entire decade.

I do hope Toy Story 4 is the last of the series, if only because the bow it puts on Woody’s four-film expedition is tied with such loving perfection I have trouble imagining the filmmakers could ever do better than what they miraculously accomplish here.

Booksmart is one of the best movies of 2019.

Sunset is a daring, thought-provoking motion picture that overflows in disturbing resonance, Nemes drawing parallels between the personal saga of a woman looking for answers to questions she didn’t even initially know, the birth of WWI and the groundwork for the fascist resurgence we’re seeing in the United States and several European countries right this very second here in the 21st century over a hundred years after this story is set.

Not going to mince words: I’m in love with idiosyncratic director Yorgos Lanthimos’ mind-bending historical drama-comedy-thriller-satire-political commentary oddity The Favourite.

Roma is a feast. It is a feast for the eyes. It is a feast for the senses. Most of all, writer/director Alfonso Cuarón’s latest is a feast for the soul, this meditative marvel of memory, regret, friendship, family, history and love a majestic treasure trove of emotion that is stunning in its empathetically human largess.

The Guilty asks tough questions about right and wrong that straddle the line between good and evil with heartrending clarity, and no matter how selflessly pure the act innocence and guilt still mix via an uneasy symbiotic relationship with neither attribute able to exist without the companionship of its polar opposite sibling.