Logan

For the past seventeen years, the films in the X-Men franchise have largely stuck to the family-friendly PG-13 rating. But it's clear from the opening frames that Logan, which is arguably the most violent R-rated superhero movie ever made, obviously isn't interested in courting that family audience. This is made specifically for fans who thought the previous films didn't go far enough in depicting the carnage in which Wolverine often finds himself embroiled, and if you consider yourself one of those fans, you're going to go nuts for this movie. If not...well, your mileage may vary.

Logan
Director: James Mangold
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen

John Wick: Chapter 2

With its long takes, wide shots of intensely choreographed action sequences, and proliferation of headshots, 2014's John Wick was hailed as an action movie classic the moment it was released. It was going to take a considerable effort from director Chad Stahelski to top it with a follow-up, but thankfully, John Wick: Chapter 2 is the best sequel fans could have possibly hoped for. It builds on everything that happened in the first movie, expands the franchise's fascinating mythology, and, of course, ups the ante with visceral, jaw-dropping action scenes. This movie rules.

John Wick: Chapter 2
Director: Chad Stahelski
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Common, Ruby Rose, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne

Passengers

Sony is purposefully obscuring a key factor of this movie that isn't so much a shocking reveal as it is the major driving force of the plot. This action occurs very early on in the film, but it's not even hinted at in any of the trailers, so if you don't want to know about it, stop reading now. Consider yourselves warned.

Passengers is a $150 million sci-fi film based on an original idea. It has slick production design, cool visual effects, and it features two of the biggest, hottest movie stars in the world in Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. It's a film that seemingly has everything going for it, but the film can't quite escape the feeling that it's less a modern day blockbuster and more like a '90s movie you'd see in constant rotation on TNT. It has a handful of decent moments, but despite the efforts of everyone involved, there's a hurdle in the story the movie can't quite leap — and it's a doozy.

Passengers
Director: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Star Wars has been a cultural landmark for almost forty years, but it took until 2016 to finally get a movie in the franchise that doesn't once utter the name "Skywalker." It's refreshing in that regard, but Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first film to spin-off from the main saga, has been hyped as a "standalone" movie, and that couldn't be further from the truth. Rogue One does not and cannot stand alone — it's often paralyzingly dependent on the audience's knowledge of the events of A New Hope. Still, the good moments outweigh the bad, and if nothing else, the film showcases flashes of the potential these spin-off movies have to expand the franchise's universe beyond the actions of its most important family.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Director: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Mads Mikkelsen, Ben Mendelsohn

Arrival

Skillfully plotted and spectacularly executed, Denis Villeneuve's Arrival sidesteps the empty bluster of much of today's explosion-driven sci-fi and instead provides intelligent, highly emotional genre entertainment that scratches an itch we didn't even know we had. It's full of discovery, wonder, and suspense, has a potent and impressive score, and contains a stellar performance from Amy Adams. In short, it's a total stunner of a movie in the best possible way.

Arrival
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker

Doctor Strange

It's been less than ten years since Marvel Studios kicked off its grand experiment with Iron Man and changed Hollywood forever, and it's interesting to look at the ways the company has both relied on what's worked and pushed its own boundaries since then. The studio's fourteenth (!) movie, Doctor Strange, is, when you break it down, a relatively formulaic origin story, but in many ways its the studio's most daring creation yet. This is the most visually stunning film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and while co-writer/director Scott Derrickson leans on familiar beats in the screenplay, it's his stylistic eye that makes the movie leap off of the screen and truly command your attention.

Doctor Strange
Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Rachel McAdams, Chiwetel Ejiofor

The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train is a mysterious, mid-budget thriller aimed squarely at adults — in other words, it's the kind of movie Hollywood rarely makes anymore. While it does suffer from some unintentionally comedic moments, it's otherwise a pretty straightforward adaptation of Paula Hawkins' bestselling novel with its best asset being a standout performance from Emily Blunt.

The Girl on the Train
Director: Tate Taylor
Starring: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Luke Evans, Justin Theroux

Queen of Katwe

Hollywood regularly churns out underdog sports movies, but rarely do modern entries in the genre work as well as Queen of Katwe, a true story that centers on a non-traditional subject (a Ugandan girl) and a non-traditional game (chess). Like this year's Eddie the Eagle (side note: holy crap, Eddie the Eagle came out this year?! I would have pegged it as a 2014 or 2015 film for sure), the film leans heavily on the formulaic aspects of its genre, but it's so enjoyable to watch these actors and these characters, it hardly matters that you know every major beat before it happens.

Queen of Katwe
Director: Mira Nair
Starring: Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong'o

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

As Hollywood continues its obsession with remaking and rebooting classic films, the conversation will continue about the best and worst examples of this phenomenon. John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly are consistently raised as examples of how to do it correctly, while more recent remakes like Total Recall and RoboCop are widely seen as wastes of time that give their predecessors a bad name. Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven falls into the latter camp. It's a soulless retread that not only fails to justify its existence, but fails to excite, inspire, charm, or otherwise elicit any emotion aside from contempt. This may be one of the most tedious action movies I've ever seen.

The Magnificent Seven
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Haley Bennett, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard

The Light Between Oceans

When I sit down to watch any movie, there almost always ends up being at least one aspect of it that strikes me as as "wrong" in some way or another. I don't actively search for these elements — they just pop up along the way, and I'm sure you notice them too. Sometimes it's a character making a decision that doesn't feel justified, or a shot that seems particularly out of place. Sometimes it's a super cheesy line of dialogue, or an actor edging just a bit too far over the top as to briefly pull me out of the performance. Too many of these moments can ruin a movie, but for the most part, they're just little blips that I observe and sail right past. For me, The Light Between Oceans is the extraordinarily rare film that does not contain a single false note. I was utterly lost in the film from beginning to end, engulfed in every detail from the stitching on the characters' clothing to the heartbreaking events that propel its story. Tinged with melancholy and brushed with a light touch of hope, The Light Between Oceans is an unforgettable experience.

The Light Between Oceans
Writer/Director: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz

Don't Breathe

After remaking Evil Dead in 2013, director Fede Alvarez is back with his sophomore feature Don't Breathe, a startling, twisty thriller that's one of the most intense theatrical experiences I've had this year.

Don't Breathe
Co-writer/Director: Fede Alvarez
Starring: Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Stephen Lang

Hell or High Water

A rare bright light in a largely disappointing summer movie season, Hell or High Water is a sizzling modern noir western with a nifty script and a trio of superb performances.

Hell or High Water
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster

Sausage Party

Sausage Party, the first R-rated CG animated movie, has been a passion project for actor Seth Rogen and his friends for the past eight years. They somehow convinced a studio to finance their twisted vision, and the resulting film may be one of the most obscene mainstream comedies ever made. But beneath the vulgar language and orgies of CG food characters having graphic on-screen sex, I was surprised to find that the film has an actual message to it. I can't think of a mainstream studio film from the past decade that discusses religion quite like this one does, and considering how everyone tends to walk on eggshells about that topic in our country right now, it's interesting to see a movie — this movie, of all movies — so willing to address it head-on.

Sausage Party
Directors: Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon
Starring: Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Salma Hayek, Nick Kroll

Jason Bourne

Over the course of three movies from 2002-2007, Matt Damon explored the essential question of the Bourne franchise: who is Jason Bourne? Ultimatum gave him (and us) the answer: Jason Bourne is David Webb, a former soldier who volunteered to be a part of Treadstone, a secret organization that essentially turned him into a killing machine. With his identity issues finally solved, the story came to an end...or so we thought.

Jason Bourne
Co-writer/Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Julia Stiles, Vincent Cassel

Star Trek Beyond

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the Star Trek franchise, so it makes sense that this summer's Star Trek Beyond in some ways feels like a throwback to the original series and has plenty of nods to the franchise's past. Thankfully, it isn't as much of an obvious retread of past material as Star Trek Into Darkness, largely due to the wise decision of director Justin Lin (Fast Five) and co-writers Simon Pegg and Doug Jung to put the Enterprise crew squarely in the middle of their five-year mission to explore strange new worlds. This allows for the sorts of fresh moments, new species, and exploratory feeling many Trek fans felt were lacking in the previous two movies, and while this one definitely has some terrific moments, I still can't help but wish we got a more cerebral version of this story than the one we ended up with.

Star Trek Beyond
Director: Justin Lin
Starring: Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin

Ghostbusters: Answer The Call

When a female-led reboot of Ghostbusters was announced, I never could have anticipated just how terrible internet commenters would react to the news. More toxic hatred was spilled online about this movie than any in recent memory, and things only got worse when the trailers started coming out. Having loved director Paul Feig's previous film, Spy, which also had some awful trailers advertising it, I held out the slightest sliver of faith that Ghostbusters (which has now officially been retitled Ghostbusters: Answer The Call to avoid confusion with the original) would end up being worthwhile...so it's with a massive sigh of relief I tell you that the movie is pretty damn good.

Ghostbusters: Answer The Call
Director: Paul Feig
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon

The Secret Life of Pets

Not all animation has to reach the lofty standards of Pixar, Walt Disney Animation, or Miyazaki. Since there will always be a generation of kids who have never seen a movie before, it stands to reason that there will always be a market for slapstick humor aimed directly at them. Illumination Entertainment — they of the Despicable Me movies, Hop, and now The Secret Life of Pets — seem to have that particular market cornered, and the company is seemingly content with churning out the kinds of movies whose highlights can best be described with a phrase like, "Well, at least I was sitting in air conditioning for an hour and a half."

The Secret Life of Pets
Directors: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney
Starring: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate

The Shallows

Two hundred yards from the shore of a secluded beach, Nancy (Blake Lively) lies bleeding on a rock. She's been bitten by a massive, bloodthirsty shark which stalks the small cove in which she's trapped, and her time is running out. This is the fundamental conflict of The Shallows, director Jaume Collet-Serra's new film that proudly stakes its claim as a modern B-movie.

The Shallows
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Blake Lively, Sharkster A. Sharkington

Raiders! The Story of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

You've probably heard the story by now: Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark comes out in 1981 and blows everyone's minds, but three Mississippi kids' minds are arguably blown more than anyone else's. Against all odds, and without the internet or even a VHS copy of the movie to assist them, they set out to complete a shot for shot remake of the movie to be filmed in their houses, backyards, and surrounding town. For the next seven years, they work tirelessly through every summer vacation and spring break to finish this thing, sacrificing any semblance of a "normal" childhood in the quest to achieve their ultimate goal. An astonishing seven years later, they finally wrap production, and fifteen years after that, their movie becomes a sensation among hardcore film fans. So...what next?

Raiders! The Story of The Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
Directors: Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen
Starring: Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, Jayson Lamb

Dying Laughing (LA Film Fest 2016)

A poetic, brutally candid examination of stand-up comedy, Dying Laughing features a murder’s row of famous comedians telling honest, genuine stories about the art form they love.

Dying Laughing

Directors: Lloyd Stanton, Paul Toogood

Starring: Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, Jerry Lewis, Sarah Silverman