No one does head trips quite like Christopher Nolan. The British director has successfully bridged the philosophical and the popular with hits like Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy. His latest film, the sci-fi epic Interstellar, is his passion project. Executive produced by theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, the film attempts to channel 2001: A Space Odyssey in its exploration of lofty scientific concepts such as black holes, event horizons and fifth-dimensions. And, while the film does get bogged down by its excessive plotting and self-seriousness, Nolan provides enough visual grandeur and emotion to make the plot’s mental gymnastics worth the effort.

Matthew McConaughey gives an incredibly grounded performance as Cooper, a former pilot turned farmer who is caring for his teenage son Tom and 10-year-old daughter Murphy after his wife’s death, with the help of his aging father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow). They live in a near-future version of earth that is decimated by a global dust bowl, a blight that has destroyed most major crops and caused a massive food shortage. Most major technological enterprises, including space travel, have been abandoned in favor of concerted efforts to increase the world’s food supply.

Through some rather convoluted plot machinations, Cooper is recruited by an underground NASA organization to pilot a ship that will hopefully find a habitable replacement planet for humanity to travel through via a mysterious worm hole that has opened up near Saturn. Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) have come up with an incomplete equation that, when finished, will allow a mass-transit of humanity to the new planet. A much less desirable “plan B” involves a “population bomb,” which would use fertilized egg embryos to re-populate the new planet, saving humanity but sacrificing the remainder of earth’s population. All along, Cooper must cope with the fact that, in his mission to save humanity, he may never see his family again.

The early scenes on the farm are incredibly effective, as Cooper juggles his responsibility to his family with the dangers of his grim mission. McConaughey, fresh off of his Oscar win, give a marvelous performance here. His down-to-earth presence help keep the film’s lofty ideas grounded in the realm of human experience. His relationship with his daughter (and, to a lesser extent, his son, whose arc feels kind of brushed over) is affecting, and the early dialogue shows Nolan’s knack for setting up grand ideas without pulling us away from the plot’s emotional center: the relationship between a father and his children.

Interstellar is a heady mix of lofty philosophical quandaries and grounded human emotions.

McConaughey is backed by fine supporting performances (particularly Hathaway and a surprise guest actor I won’t spoil), but what really sends the film into the stratosphere is its technical wonders. Much like Inception, Interstellar would be a much lesser film without its mind-blowing visuals and sound design. The vast scale of space is given the grand scope it demands, creating a sense of awe and wonder at the cosmos that few sci-fi films have ever conveyed quite so forcefully. The sound design is out of this world, bolstered by a Hans Zimmer-penned score that’s one of the best I’ve ever heard. Nolan reportedly asked Zimmer to score the film off of a few lines of dialogue, providing no major plot details or even a genre. The result, a mix of electronics and pulsing organs, is beyond remarkable. Even better, the score knows when to stop; there are several thrilling silent sequences that help convey the scope of outer space better than any music (or sound effects) ever could.

Where Interstellar falters is in maintaining its momentum over its lengthy running time. After a while, Nolan’s storytelling flaws start to surface. His insistence on grand, speechifying dialogue grows tiring (Dr. Brand’s repeated recitation of a Dylan Thomas poem is particularly eye-rolling). And the plot’s far-reaching intellectual theories, while intriguing, exceed its grasp. Inception contained similar heady concepts, but ultimately did a much better job of giving the audience the tools it needs to fully grasp the messages and meanings it was trying to convey. This film contains no such handholding, for good or ill.

And yet, all of the reasons why I love Christopher Nolan are here to. His emphasis on the power of love and an optimistic faith that humanity will always find a way to work toward its own good is refreshing in a world of cynical auteurs. His work produces a genuine awe at the complexity of life and existence that are tough to find elsewhere. And, of course, his technical chops are through the roof; there are sequences here that are beyond jaw-dropping, both in their technical complexity and their artistic composition.

Interstellar is not for everyone. And I don’t mean that in a condescending, “this movie is only for smart people” way. I think Nolan reached a point where he let his grand ideas run a bit amok. This nearly three-hour marathon is so dense that there are stretches where it’s a bit tough to sit through. It’s the kind of movie that practically requires internet research afterwards in order to make some sense of it all. And, for those who think movies should give us all of the tools we need to figure out things on our own, that may be a fatal flaw. I wouldn’t disagree.

But I can also say that I can’t wait to see Interstellar again. With the exception of Nolan’s more populist Dark Knight trilogy, the director’s best films, like Inception and The Prestige, require multiple viewings to unravel not just the dense plots, but the complex and sometimes overwhelming emotions they convey. But, the moment where I finally “get” a Nolan film have been some of the most rewarding I’ve ever had watching movies. I look forward to the moment when Interstellar fully clicks for me. Or, maybe it’s just a load of bunk. But, with its grand spectacle, epic scale and heartfelt emotion, Interstellar strikes me as simply stellar.

In the ruthless media satire Network, TV news anchor Howard Beale, fed up with the rampant voyeurism in American journalism famously screams, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.” But for Lou Bloom, the so-called hero of Dan Gilroy’s arresting drama NIghtcrawler, the diatribe might include a line like “I will always give the people what they want.”

Bloom is a lonely drifter, traveling the night streets of L.A. looking for a sense of purpose when he comes across a fiery car crash and a man (Bill Paxton) filming the wreckage to sell to a local TV news outlet. He buys his own video equipment and police scanner, and starts tracking down breaking news stories. But journalistic ethics is the last thing on Bloom’s mind; his increasingly pushy methods leave him with few friends in law enforcement. Soon, a local station and its increasingly desperate news director (an icy Rene Russo) notices Bloom’s results, and soon he gains a reputation as the guy who will get the footage no one else can. But how far will he go to get the perfect shot, particularly when he’s the first to come across evidence at a major crime scene?

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Bloom in a revelatory performance. He’s hyperactive, twitchy and odd, but there’s a seething…something simmering underneath. Is it anger? Grief? Apathy? The film doesn’t provide any answers, but Gyllenhaal’s giant, expressive eyes tell more than dialogue ever could. His high-pitched, squealing voice and rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness cadence spill over every scene, giving the film a sharp, relentless edge. Gyllenhaal has consistently proven himself to be one of the best actors around, and here he turns in perhaps his finest performance. This is the kind of movie where the hero starts out creepy and unlikeable and grows into something much worse. It’s easy to lose an audience with an antihero so repulsive, but Gyllenhaal’s performance kept me engaged every step of the way.

In its depiction of a wandering loner prowling the streets of a metropolis, Nightcrawler has obvious parallels to Taxi Driver, my all-time favorite film. I see echoes of Paul Schrader’s concept of “God’s lonely man,” a disillusioned, post-Vietnam cynic looking for something in this world he doesn’t despise.

Nighcrawler is a ruthless dissection of the exploitation inherent in our modern mediated culture.

For Bloom, the looming shadow is not Vietnam but our increasingly isolating and sensationalist media culture, which emphasizes voyeurism over any sense of humanity. Studies have shown that TV news doesn’t help us feel more connected to the suffering of others; it actually insulates us from it. No matter how sad we might feel when we hear of a violent car wreck, our inner thoughts say, “I’m glad that wasn’t me.” In one of the film’s most memorable lines, news director Nina tells Bloom, “Think of our broadcast as a woman running down the street with her throat cut open.” That takes “if it bleeds, it leads” to a whole new level.

Rather than rail against this morally vacuous culture, as Travis Bickle did in Taxi Driver, Bloom dives in headlong, heedless of the human lives (and deaths) around him. Like with Bickle, we never get a true sense of who Bloom really is, or how he got to be so messed up. He remains cold and unknowable, almost like a robot. His eventual partner offers up this valuable critique that he doesn’t sound like a human being when he talks. Some might find this lack of empathy off-putting, but I think it works as a sort of meta-commentary on how hard it is to know someone when we view them as just another statistic. And, based on his actions, there would be nothing that could redeem Bloom in our eyes anyway.

The film is a slow, steady burn, building up to a relentlessly intense second half, featuring one of the most thrilling, realistic car chases I’ve ever seen. Like Travis Bickle, we’re shocked less by Bloom’s actions than we are of a culture that allows him to get away with them, and maybe even rewards him for it. This is a remarkably polished debut for writer-director Dan Gilroy. His cynical, bleak view of L.A.’s seedy media underbelly is both terrifying and kind of funny; with a strain of pitch-black humor sprinkled throughout. James Newton Howard’s brilliant score, which starts out impossibly hopeful, builds to a cacophonous climax, descending into absolute chaos alongside Bloom’s paper-thin sanity.

Network was an eerily prescient film, predicting the rise of the 24-hour news cycle and the obsession with TV ratings over everything else. We didn’t listen to Howard Beale’s pleas, or, for that matter, Truman Burbank’s in The Truman Show. We’re more obsessed with watching other peoples’ lives than ever before. But reality TV is not interested in human beings, really; it’s interested in caricatures, controversial figures that lie on the opposite poles of any argument, while most people lie in the more sensible middle (the same can be said for our political culture). Is it really so surprising that such a culture might produce someone like Lou Bloom, interested not in other people but only in the mannequins that exist in his mind and how they can serve him?

The experience of watching Nightcrawler is dehumanizing and maybe even soul-sucking, but no matter how repulsed you are by it, you won’t be able to take your eyes off it. Sounds like how I feel when I turn on the evening news.

“What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done?” At the opening of Gone Girl, Nick Dunne asks these questions regarding marriage to his wife, Amy. He also says he wishes he could get these answers by cracking open her skull.

This thin, delicate balance between love and violence, control and chaos, is a major draw of Gillian Flynn’s breakout 2012 novel as well as David Fincher’s film adaptation. Amazingly, nearly everything that made the book so engrossing has found its way to the screen.

It’s tough to discuss the film’s plot without giving away the many twists and turns, but here’s an extremely basic summary: on the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick (Ben Affleck) comes home to find his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) gone without a trace. Nick’s twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon), along with Amy’s parents, police and seemingly the entire town of North Carthage, Missouri begin a dogged search for the missing housewife. Soon, Amy is the subject of a national media frenzy. But, as the days go by and revelations begin to pile up, everyone begins to ask the question that has already been on their mind: could Nick have killed his own beloved wife?

Gone Girl is a brilliant adaptation of tricky source material.

The movie shoots back and forth between Nick’s search for Amy and Amy’s rosy (and then, gradually, less and less so) recollections of the early days of their marriage. This parallel structure worked so well in the book, and helps the film build a slow, relentless intensity. The audience is forced to piece together each part of the mystery at the same time as the characters; we never feel like we’re ahead or behind Nick in figuring out what happened to his wife. This pacing imbues even the plot’s small revelations with greater meaning.

The pacing is only one of the things that makes Gone Girl one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I’ve ever seen. The source material is tricky to say the least, but Flynn has done a bang up job adapting her own book for the screen. If anything, the tight screenplay improves upon the book, keeping the story’s unique dialogue and pitch black humor while excising some of the overlong book’s more extraneous elements.

It also helps that the acting, down to the smallest part, is spot-on. Everyone here seems perfectly cast. Ben Affleck has never given a more natural performance; he’s totally believable as a down-and-out unemployed everyman, kicked to the curb by the recession but finding ways to stay positive in the midst. Not a movie star, but an average guy put in the middle of a very bad situation. Coon is given a very juicy supporting role as Nick’s sister, and Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry, cast against type, do wonders with their small but pivotal roles.

But there’s no denying that Pike is the breakout star here. Hers is an incredibly deep, layered performance, revealing Amy’s character slowly, never giving everything away. Pike’s eyes alone convey the idea that we’ll never quite figure her out, no matter how much information the movie gives us. I guess you could say she plays a woman, a real, flesh-and-blood one who refuses to be categorized or put in a box. Such a performance is surprisingly rare in our modern movie landscape. She even helps make the book’s somewhat unpalatable denouement infinitely more intriguing.

Apart from being a faithful adaptation, Gone Girl is exquisite genre filmmaking. Although some initially questioned it, David Fincher is the perfect director for this material. Although he has made a career off of crime thrillers like Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac, Fincher has really always been concerned with issues of identity. He explored it as it relates to our modern media saturated landscape in Fight Club and Zodiac, and here he’s interested in those fundamental questions Nick asks at the beginning of the film. How can I ever truly know this person in my bed? Or myself? Or anyone, really?

These are questions another famous thriller director, Alfred Hitchcock, asked repeatedly throughout his career. In fact, Gone Girl feels like the type of movie Hitchcock would have made if he didn’t have to tiptoe around the Hollywood production code. Amy strikes me as the perfect quintessential bombshell blonde, a tough-as-nails woman who won’t live her life by anyone else’s standards but her own. Nick is the film’s Scottie Ferguson, endlessly chasing after a woman he can never truly understand. I’m sure Fincher would chuckle over all the comparisons to Vertigo, but the film seems to invite them at every turn.

Fincher was wise to bring along his crew from The Social Network and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who won an Oscar for scoring The Social Network, have crafted another killer soundtrack that helps ratchet up the intensity to obscene levels. I love the now recognizable Fincher “look” cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth brings to his films, and Gone Girl’s sumptuous color palette and uncomfortably slow camera movements give it a unique rhythm all its own. Kirk Baxter won an Oscar for editing Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and his name may be in the drawing again here. A sequence near the halfway point of the film in particular is easily the finest cutting job I’ve seen all year. It’s the kind of editing that dares you not to breathe as you watch it work its magic.

The quintessential question in Gone Girl is not “do we really know or spouse?” but rather, “do we really know anyone?” And how to do we go about the process of knowing? Like Fincher’s best films, The Social Network and Zodiac, the movie doesn’t provide any answers, particularly in its bitterly ironic conclusion. But it asks some provocative and uncomfortable questions that will leave you pondering long after the lights go up. This is far more than your average thriller. Be ready for it.

Once October hits, Oscar-bait season begins in earnest. There will likely be too many good movies to keep track of them all, so now is a perfect time to catch up on some of this year’s most buzz-worthy indie films. These are the ones that you may have overlooked, but that you’ll probably hear more about as we approach awards season. Here are four of my top picks, available on demand now.

SNOWPIERCER

If the writers of Looney Tunes took The Hunger Games and set it on a train during a post-apocalyptic Occupy Wall Street movement, you’d begin to approach an attempt to describe the inspired sci-fi pastiche that is Snowpiercer.

In a future frozen, uninhabitable version of Earth, the remaining population lives on a large train that circles the globe once a year. The rich live the high life in the front, while those in the back live in squalor, feasting on nothing but bland protein blocks while their children are taken to the front of the train for a mysterious purpose. On the 17^th anniversary of the train’s never-ending voyage, a man named Curtis (Chris Evans) leads a revolt against the vicious Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton) in hopes of reaching the front and eradicating the train’s oppressive class system.

The movie is the English-language debut of Korean director Joon-ho Bong, who made the awesome horror film The Host. The plot is pretty simple, but there are so many clever little surprises running throughout the film that it’s hard to take in in just one sitting. The train, with its dozens of cars, is a genius plot device that allows Bong to show the audience pretty much whatever he wants. No two cars are alike, and each one holds a new, unexpected surprise for our freedom fighters. One may be a greenhouse, the next a classroom for the train’s privileged children. While the film’s cinematography first appears to be another slice of generic sci-fi dystopia, it quickly becomes one of the more visually arresting sci-fi films in memory.

Although the film has some grand ideas, it’s also quite violent, but not distractingly so. Curtis and his fellow have-nots have to literally fight their way to the front, and the resulting action is beyond spectacular. There is an epic, grandly orchestrated action set piece about halfway through that I think will go down as one of the finest in cinema history.

But grand visuals and action can’t carry a movie’s emotions on their own, and thankfully Snowpiercer’s wacky characters are brought to life through sharp writing and tremendous acting. Evans shows a depth here that he’s only hinted at before. But Bong has assembled an international cast that is to be envied, including Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, John Hurt, Ed Harris and the brilliant Korean actor Kang-ho Song. But the biggest pleasure here is watching an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton spot oversized glasses and false oversized teeth to play the most entertaining and bonkers villain of the year.

Even with its mostly English dialogue, Snowpiercer is a Korean movie at heart, which means it’s incredibly bizarre. It’s so strange it almost defies categorization. But, even when its grand ambitions and left-field surprises threaten to derail it, the film remains a sci-fi treat that actually has something important to say. The ending is stunning, leaving us with just the right mix of hope and despair. No cinematic tale of haves and have-nots has ever been so visually arresting, consistently surprising or just plain bonkers. I guarantee you’ve never seen anything like it.

THE CONGRESS

Speaking of things you’ve never seen before, The Congress makes Snowpiercer look as comforting and familiar as a new Marvel blockbuster. It is easily one of the most ambitious movies ever made, a philosophical treatise on the nature of modern celebrity, the unreliability of memory and the concept of identity in the digital age. As you might expect, the movie takes on way too many grand ideas and ends up a bit of a mess. But it’s also an arresting work of art that defies categorization.

Robin Wright gives a spellbinding performance as a fictionalized version of herself, struggling to find fulfilling roles as an actress after her glory days of Princess Bride fame have faded. While taking care of her daughter and son, who has been diagnosed with a degenerative disease that is slowly making him deaf and dumb, her agent (Harvey Keitel) tells her of a new program, one that will “sample” her and allow a digital likeness of herself to star in endless future movies. The catch is that Robin Wright the person can never act again.

The world of The Congress is one where everything is homogenized, including the movie studios (Wright works for Miramount). The first half of the film is a sly, cynical commentary on the soullessness of the Hollywood studio system, but the script skewers it in a way that feels genuine rather than cheap (and, let’s face it, Hollywood had it coming).

In the second half, the film flash-forwards 20 years and something…else emerges. Miramount studios has become an “animation zone,” a place where even average citizens now have the ability to be whoever they want to be, whenever they so desire. And Wright, or at least her likeness, is their hero, a true embodiment of what people can do when they leave their physical manifestations behind. The film ponders over which is better, real life or this new escapist fantasy land?

The second half of the film is indeed animated, building off of director Ari Folman’s experience making the all-animated Waltz With Bashir, which I think is one of the best films of the past decade, animated or otherwise. Wait…you haven’t seen it? You should go fix that…now. I’ll wait…you’re welcome.

Anyway, the stunning animation here is less realistic than Waltz, recalling instead the gangly, stylized creations of Walt Disney and other early animated creations like Betty Boop. The animated portion is a visual feast in a strange land where people can be Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe or Abraham Lincoln. The resulting trippy visual kaleidoscope reminds me of the brilliant animation of Yellow Submarine. It has to be seen to be believed.

The Congress has important things to say about a society hooked on the drug of the age, the internet, and how it combines with our culture’s moral relativism to create, in essence, a new communist dictatorship, this one led by the entertainment industry. But it never really finds a way to say it; the trippy visuals are so bafflingly bizarre that they ultimately distract from any human drama the story is trying to convey, and the plot veers sharply into the realm of the nonsensical.

Thankfully, the last fifteen minutes are pretty amazing, suggesting a tight pacing and dramatic momentum that I wish the rest of this very slow movie would have adopted. That, along with the sheer audacity of the visuals, make this half live action, half animated sci-fi mindbender worth checking out.

LOCKE

Locke is a difficult movie to describe without giving away what makes it so interesting. It’s essentially an hour and a half of watching a man driving in a car as his life erodes around him. Yes, the entire film takes place inside a car, which is actually way more interesting than it sounds.

The man is Ivan Locke, played brilliantly by Tom Hardy, who is forced to make some incredibly tough life decisions from the driver’s seat of his car. The movie consists of Locke’s phone conversations (don’t worry, he’s got a hands-free device) with several important people; his wife and children, his boss and co-workers at a construction company preparing for the largest concrete pour of their lives and a woman giving birth to his child who is not his wife (yikes).

Hardy, who is the only person we see in the film (we hear the voices of the other characters) is absolutely arresting. Few actors can pull off a truly solo performance; even Cast Away featured scenes with other actors. Hardy plays Locke as a good man who has made a very bad decision and is dealing with the earth-shattering consequences. He’s a man that refuses to lie, and insists on doing the right thing even if, in this case, the right thing will rip his life apart.

Thanks to director Steven Knight and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, the single location never gets boring; the camera movements and lighting changes create a relentless pace. The film is also mercifully short, ensuring the gimmicky structure doesn’t get stale. In fact, I think the film’s in media res structure and single location give it a startling realism we’re unaccustomed to in the age of effects-driven blockbusters featuring exotic, globe-spanning locations.

We also stay with the movie because Locke is a good, honorable man dealing with the consequences of a single, sinful decision. It’s a film of quiet but devastating revelations, never building to any sort of traditional dramatic climax. We never see the result of Locke’s decisions, though we do get some hints. The film ends as it begins, with Locke on the drive of his life.

The film maybe feels a bit too slight, but its focus on the life of one man is also what makes it stand out. An individual life is important, and that’s something to remember in an age where action-movie extras are disposed of in increasingly creative and brutal ways. Locke is a powerful testament to the way one wrong decision can create ripples that forever alter our lives. It’s definitely a one-of-a-kind viewing experience.

STARRED UP

If you want to become a movie star, land a lead role in a British prison drama. It worked for Michael Fassbender in Hunger and Tom Hardy in Bronson. Now, if there is any justice in the world of cinema, the same will happen to Jack O’Connell, the star of the engrossing prison film Starred Up.

O’Connell stars as Eric Love, a violent teenage offender who is being transferred (or starred up) early to an adult prison. There, he attends an experimental group rehabilitation program while struggling under the “protection” of another prisoner, his unpredictable father, Neville (a brilliant Ben Mendelsohn).

The film is reminiscent of other modern British prison dramas like Hunger in that it focuses on the mundane, quiet experiences of prison life as much as it does the moments of danger. The pacing and camerawork are methodical and painstaking.  It also highlights the unjust balance of power that often exists in prison. While a supportive counselor (Rupert Friend) believes in Eric’s rehabilitation, those in power seem more intent on keeping Eric violent, unpredictable and therefore malleable. This injustice is more frightening than the film’s bone-crunching violence.

The movie is filled with very fine performances all around, but it really is O’Connell that gives the movie its soul. He is a seething mix of rage, anger and hope. He perfectly embodies a man just trying to survive while hoping and knowing that life is about so much more than survival. O’Connell is starring in this year’s Oscar hopeful Unbroken, and I can’t wait to see how he’ll fare in a big studio prestige picture. He’s definitely got a big career ahead of him.

The film builds to a very satisfying climax, even as it indulges in a few prison movie clichés. When Starred Up hits, it hits hard, and the totality of this gritty, unflinching story will leave you breathless and maybe even a bit winded. Thankfully, the script leaves room for the quiet, desperate moments of hope that are never completely out of reach even in a place as seemingly hopeless as prison. This is an utterly compelling and engrossing film, one that will likely be remembered as one of the finest of the year.

It’s a rare and wonderful opportunity to be able to walk into a theater with almost no knowledge or expectations about the movie you’re seeing. To be fair, Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel’s latest superhero franchise starter, has been getting a ton of buzz, but I wasn’t quite sold, and, despite Marvel’s always-aggressive marketing campaign, I still had no idea what the movie was about. Guardians is not exactly a AAA comic book franchise, and there’s no characters to immediately identify with as in other Marvel projects like The Avengers.

As it turns out, that’s a very good thing, because, in a summer movie world inundated with sequels and reboots, it helps Guardians to feel even more original and refreshing. It’s the most visually stunning and consistently surprising movie to come out of the Marvel comics canon yet, not to mention the funniest.

Even in its opening credits sequence, Guardians displays its commitment toditching the superhero genre’s trend toward sober introspection when our main hero, earthling outlaw Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) who also goes by the moniker Starlord, puts on his trusty pair of headphones and rocks out to his retro cassette deck as it blasts “Come and Get Your Love.” Turns out he’s on the remote planet Morag for more than an uninhibited dance session; he’s eyeing a powerful and mysterious orb that plenty of folks in the galaxy would be willing to pay big bucks for. But lots of other creatures are looking for the orb as well, and some of them are after much more than a payday.

Guardians gives a fresh blast of originality to the Marvel comics universe.

It isn’t long before Quill finds himself in trouble with the law after a public brawl with a seedy cast of characters, including the green-skinned assassin Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and the bounty hunting duo of anthropomorphic raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and tree-like humanoid Groot (Vin Diesel). Turns out they all have their reasons for wanting the orb.

The gang, constantly at each other’s throats, ends up in prison, where they meet strongman Drax (Dave Bautista) and agree to break free, deliver the orb and split the profits. But they soon find that they may have a motivation beyond money for keeping the orb safe.

Ronan, a menacing member of the alien Kree race, knows the orbs world-destroying potential, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it.

One of the great joys of Guardians is its effervescent, irreverent energy. Although the movie’s main conflict still has dramatic weight, it never takes itself too seriously as it shoots out ‘70s pop tunes and a consistent barrage of sly pop culture references. In tone, it more closely resembles the original Star Wars—if every character was a permutation of the cynical Han Solo—than any of Marvel’s previous efforts. The members of this ragtag, uncouth group of unlikely allies flips the bird, constantly threaten one another with death and behave in a manner generally unbefitting a world-saving hero. And that is oh-so-satisfying.

In a breezy two hours, director James Gunn and cowriter Nicole Perlman accomplish the rare feat of introducing a new cast of initially unlikable characters, making them likable and giving them something important to do. The Avengers had the advantage of whole movies of buildup, which makes Guardians’ feat even more impressive. On top of that, every major character gets a chance to shine, showcasing both the strong writing and the pitch-perfect acting that give the film so much of its bite. Saldana gets to kick tons of ass as Gamora, capping off a string of impressive sci-fi roles in the likes of Star Trek and Avatar. Wrestler Bautista gets to show his acting chops in a surprisingly nuanced performance as Drax, who is seeking revenge on Ronan for slaughtering his family. But Cooper and Diesel steal the show in vocal performances that will have the audience buzzing. Cooper channels his best Robert Downey Jr. as the titular fast-talking, foul-mouthed raccoon. It seems like he and Tony Stark would get along swimmingly (hint, Avengers crossover, hint, hint). Diesel gets an amazing amount of mileage from just three words (“I am Groot”), showing the strange creature’s tender side as well as his occasional uber-satisfying Hulk-style freak-out.

The film is also the first superhero movie in some time that I believe has a truly distinct visual style. From the most recent Captain America to Man of Steel, the genre has struggled to find a colorful visual palette befitting its source material. Guardians’ world is bustling and alive, with entire worlds and races of creatures bursting with color and personality. It recalls everything from Star Wars to The Fifth Element to Blade Runner. In both its mind-blowing special effects and its imaginative art direction, it’s easily the most visually impressive movie of the summer, if not the year.

Unfortunately, Guardians continues Marvel’s negative trajectory of bland villains. Lee Pace is awesome, and he hams it up as best he can as the maniacal Ronan. But he’s no Loki. He wants to become all-powerful and destroy the planet Xandar because…he’s evil, I think? I don’t think comic villains always need complex motivations or an emotional backstory, but they do at least need personality, and Ronan sadly doesn’t pass the test.

More than anything, however, I think Guardians of the Galaxy succeeds in being relatable. The Guardians are what we might call “sinners under one roof,” aggressively flawed, sometimes even nasty creatures who put aside their difference for the greater good. The Avengers touched on this, but how fallible is Captain America, really? Here, every hero is despicable in some shape or form. Yet, they’re able to bring out their redeeming qualities for the benefit of the universe. They’re not refined heroes in any sense of the word, but they get the job done just the same. And we have a hell of a time watching them. As Billy Joel sang, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners and cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.”

Ten years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine a movie like X-Men: Days of Future Past ever getting made. Early genre efforts in the post Spider-Man millennial boom, including the successful X-Men 2, were just beginning to scratch the surface of what the comic-based superhero movie could do. It wasn’t until 2012’s wildly successful Avengers movie that filmmakers really began to show how much could be accomplished within the confines of a summer superhero blockbuster. That movie piggybacked off of multiple origin stories in an attempt to tie together what Marvel Comics likes to call its “cinematic universe.”

What director Bryan Singer is doing with the X-Men franchise is even more ambitious. After six previous installments, including two Wolverine spin-offs, the franchise has reached a similar zenith of universe-building. Singer, who helped kick off the superhero craze with 2000’s original X-Men, has teamed up with screenwriter Simong Kinberg to make, for better or worse, the most “comic book” movie ever made. It’s also far and away the finest X-Men film to date.

Days of Future Past, based off of a highly praised and successful run in the comics, brings together the original X-Men cast with the younger generation of First Class. In the year 2023, mutants are on the run from unstoppable killing machines called Sentinels, and the few remaining mutants, including familiar faces such as Magneto and Professor Xavier, make a last-ditch effort to send Wolverine (whose self-healing abilities allow him to make the trip successfully) back in time to 1973 to ensure that the Sentinels are never created in the first place. This involves reuniting the young (and feuding) Xavier and Magneto to help stop the rogue, shape-shifting mutant Mystique from assassinating a mutant-hating research scientist and thus setting off a vicious and bloody mutant/human war.

Days of Future Past is the best X-Men movie to date.

In story structure, Days of Future Past is indeed the most “comic book” movie ever made. When time travel is used as a plot device, it opens up a world of possibilities, and Singer has taken such possibilities to their ultimate extreme. In the comic world, characters may die and be reborn multiple times, and lengthy, alternate histories can be wiped away with one sci-fi twist.

This is the world the X-Men movie universe now resides in. Don’t expect an easy sit—this is ambitious, heady stuff, two hours filled with talk of teleporting consciousness and time ripples. It’s the most challenging entry in the genre since The Dark Knight Rises—it is, in more ways than one, the thinking man’s Avengers.

Thankfully, the movie also works as straight-up blockbuster summer entertainment. With all of the plot threads being juggled, it’s amazing how well-paced, engaging and, most importantly, relatable the story and characters are. A large part of that is as much do to the small details as it is to the impressive action set pieces. All the humorous in-jokes, asides and references will have longtime series fans rolling. The period details are also spot-on; the costumes, the music, even the retro, non-digital Times Square standing in stark contrast to the neon nightmare in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The production design rivals the best we’ve seen in the genre.

The acting is as brilliant as ever. Hugh Jackman turns in yet another pitch-perfect performance as Wolverine, who once again acts as the outsider to this strange world. He’s both funny and fierce; we thankfully get plenty of humorous Wolverine moments, something largely missing from the characters’ spin-off movies. James McAvoy has also really come into his own as the young Xavier, displaying a more ambiguous, dark devil’s advocate to Patrick Stewart’s bland do-gooder. Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, two of the finest working actors, add depth to their characters’ actions and motivations (and get some bad-ass action scenes to boot).

Your enjoyment of the movie will largely depend on what kind of X-Men movie you’re expecting. As a sequel to First Class, it’s brilliant and harrowing. As a sequel to the original X-Men trilogy, it’s really a non-event. We get brief moments with returning characters like Storm, Iceman and Kitty Pride, but the film devotes the vast majority of its running time to the events of 1973, with the events of 2023 acting as a framing device. In other words, if you’re expecting any answers or character development from the original cast outside of Wolverine, prepare to leave empty-handed. After all, if Wolvie is successful, these future versions of the characters may very well no longer exist.

This leads to a series of unanswered questions that may alienate longtime series fans. How, exactly, is Xavier alive in 2023? How did Magneto get his powers back after getting the cure in X-Men 3? These and other major questions are not even addressed, possibly because Singer wants to distance himself from that third film, which he did not direct, and many saw as a big disappointment. He can certainly make those kinds of decisions, but all the previous X-Men films still exist, and refusing to even acknowledge some of their major events will frustrate some viewers.

This dichotomy between old and new also extends to the film’s new characters. Those introduced in the future timeline, such as Bishop (who can absorb energy) and Blink (who has some awesome action scenes involving her ability to create portals) are hardly even introduced beyond some visually impressive displays of their powers. New characters introduced circa 1973 fare much better. Even Peters gives a brilliant turn as Quicksilver, the mutant version of The Flash. The less I say about his character, the better, but he gets the best comedic lines, and he even manages to play a scene involving a very intense prison break for laughs, in what is sure to go down as the single greatest scene in the entire X-Men saga. Peter Dinklage continues his hot streak as antagonist Bolivar Trask, and he does wonders with an underwritten role.

But, what makes Days of Future Past so damn good—if you can look past some admittedly steep plot holes—is just how fresh and bold much of it feels. The cheesy one-liners of Singer’s earlier X-Men films have been replaced with unrelenting emotional intensity. It’s not exactly revolutionary, but in embracing a truly “comic book” story structure, it opens itself up to interpretations, alternate theories and even criticism that most by-the-numbers superhero movies would never subject themselves to. It willfully flaunts the continuity of its previously established universe, it contains no consistent villain or even hero and it occupies a world of moral greys, even as many of its characters speak in blacks and whites. The ending feels a bit too happy and convenient, but I hear from comic fans that it’s true to the original story, and opens up the universe in some intriguing directions.

More than that, it’s just plain fun; reaching Avengers level heights with its crowd-pleasing spectacle. But there remains much to ponder beneath the big-budget glitz. The film’s revelations (or lack thereof) will either leave you enthralled or frustrated. But they will not leave you bored.