This is not your daddy’s Neil Armstrong biopic.

When we are taken off the ground during any of the multiple space flight scenes, Damien Chazelle’s First Man offers moviegoers the most visceral cinematic experience of the year. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. That men were being shot into space using primitive ‘60s technology has never been felt more. We feel the terrifying limits of the rocket as it creaks, shakes, and rattles.  Numberless analog dials whir and scratch.…

You know what Avengers: Infinity War is at its heart? It can hardly be classified a movie, as there is not much of a beginning, middle, or end. There is no hero’s journey here with an introduction of characters, conflict, and resolution. Instead, it’s a massive, expensive episode of a television series. More specifically, and bear with me here, it’s a giant episode of Dragon Ball Z. Maybe that’s not a bad thing to you. But that’s what it is.…

With the context of hindsight on our side, it’s safe to say that this is one of the best films of the 2000s.

It’s startlingly effective in every sense—from the Coen brothers’ evocative writing and directing, to Roger Deakins’s cinematography, to the pacing, to the perfect casting, to the nuanced way that timeless themes of good vs. evil are explored.

It’s a neowestern with a noir sensibility. Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss is remiscent of a John Wayne-like character from a…