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