In the summer of 1967, the raid of an after-hours bar in a black neighborhood in Detroit precipitated one of the most deadly and destructive riots in the history of the U.S.

Four people walked out of the screening I attended of A Ghost Story . I found it to be a profoundly beautiful and sad story of loss and the passage of time, of impermanence and change. So who’s right? The people who couldn’t stand it, or me, who found the movie’s images and emotions sticking around for days after?

If you’d asked me just a couple days ago if it would matter that I’d spend a good three-quarters of a movie having no idea what was going on, I would have said: Yes. Yes, that would matter. But that was before I’d seen Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets . I have no problem admitting that it really did take me about that long before I knew what was really happening, because I also have to admit that Valerian is wildly inventive. It’s directed by Luc Besson, who also made The Fifth

I probably don’t need to tell you that love is hard. But it could be harder.

South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho has no shortage of imagination. His wildly entertaining movies The Host and Snowpiercer jammed together genres delightfully to tell their stories, and now he’s back with the tale of the superpig, Okja .

Let’s just get one thing out of the way right up front— Baby Driver is a terrible name for a movie. I don’t care if it comes from a Simon & Garfunkel song, every time I mention it to people it’s met with skepticism and sometimes even eye rolling. Luckily, that’s about the worst thing I’m able to say about Baby Driver .

I finished watching The Beguiled in the late afternoon, around that time when the sun is at an angle that creates shadows all around and the world starts to look just slightly magical. And for a moment, I wasn’t sure that I’d actually left the theater.

What is it about dinner at the movies? My Dinner With Andre, Big Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie … the great ones show us something deeper about ourselves and the world we live in.

I saw Cars 3 on the same day I watched the top ten showcase from Tallgrass’s Down to the Wire film race, in which teams of filmmakers had a mere 24 hours to make a short film. To mix a bunch of metaphors, the gap in creativity on display did not reflect kindly upon Cars 3 .

The scariest thing is not knowing. Not knowing why the old man is sick. Not knowing why they have to burn his body. Not knowing why they don’t go out at night. Not knowing who’s breaking into the house. Not knowing if he’s telling the truth. Not knowing.