Chris Nashawaty

Westerns can be a tough nut to crack, but Hostiles may be the finest example of the genre since "Unforgiven."

DuVernay has done a great service with Selma. Not only has she made one of the most powerful films of the year, she's given us a necessary reminder of what King did for this country...and how much is left to be done.

There’s enough slapstick and silliness to keep kids entertained.... But the film also has a bittersweet streak about the loss of innocence and the fleetingness of childhood.

One of the great unheralded films of the late ’60s.

Tim Skousen and Jeremy Coon’s new documentary, Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, isn’t the kids’ finished film. It’s a film about the making of their film — and it’s amazing.

Rowlands gives a harrowing performance as a housewife coming unhinged.

Based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s best-seller about cracking the byzantine Watergate cover-up, the movie is a victory lap for American journalism — the triumphant flip side to Network‘s self-loathing take on the media.

It’s utterly demented, slightly terrifying, and most of all hilarious. It’s also one of the giddiest and most stinging political satires since Thomas Nast took on Tammany Hall.

Easily one of the most personal and most powerful films of the year.

This is visceral, big-budget filmmaking that can be called Art. It’s also, hands down, the best motion picture of the year so far.

Affleck has never had a role that matches his minimal, anti-charisma style like this one. His tendency to be mumbly and awkward and withholding fits his character perfectly. And Hedges, as a temperamental teenager working through loss in his own authentically teenage way, is a real discovery. Michelle Williams, as Lee’s ex-wife, doesn’t get many scenes, but she cracks your heart open in the ones she has.

Bogart is hilariously crusty as a hard-drinking river rat who journeys downriver on a rickety steamer with a prim missionary (a flawless, lock-jawed Hepburn), trying to stay one step ahead of the Germans.

The best documentaries reveal the ways in which truth can be stranger (and wilder and weirder) than fiction. And director Tim Wardle’s stunning and tragic Sundance sensation, Three Identical Strangers, is stranger (and wilder and weirder) than most.

Timeless and essential.

Douglas Tirola’s doc about the satirical bible’s rise and fall is fascinating, funny, smart, juvenile, tragic, and likely to offend just about everyone. It’s a must-see for anyone who cares about comedy.

If you can appreciate the sight of two totally dialed-in performers simmering until they boil over, that's enough. And P.S., that's pretty much the definition of jazz.

With a taut and timely screenplay by Taylor Sheridan, Sicario is a brilliant action thriller with the smarts of a message movie.

Anyone who loved Gone Girl the book will walk out of Gone Girl the movie with a sick grin on their face. You can stop being nervous.

Shot in shaky handheld style, [REC] is a bit like George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, but, you know, actually scary.

More narratively straightforward (but also masterfully edited in F for Fake style), the documentary takes its title from a Welles quote about the fickle hypocrisy of the movie business and about his other favorite subject: himself. And that quote couldn’t have been more spot-on for a man who was most appreciated most only when it was too late.

Visually dazzling and morally devastating.

In the end, cancer may have cruelly taken Roger Ebert's voice, but it couldn't silence his greatest gift: his ability to speak to his audience directly, honestly, and with empathy. Thumbs up.

Yes, Locke is a bit of a storytelling stunt: For the entirety of the movie, Ivan is the only character on screen. But even with nothing to cut away to and no flashbacks to offer context, the film manages to stay as tight as a vise.

Gazzara struts like a polyester peacock, playing a doomed nightclub owner in debt to the wrong people.

Experiencing the lovely and lyrical Roma, you get the impression that at age 56, Cuarón not only wanted to get these still-vivid memories down on film, but that he also needed to. You’ll be glad he did. Because movies with this much empathy and humanity don’t come along very often.

Davis Guggenheim’s latest documentary is a forceful and exquisitely made piece of advocacy journalism.

Action-packed and jaw-droppingly epic (it was the first time director John Ford ever shot in Monument Valley), Stagecoach is the perfect Western to show to people who don’t like Westerns.

Hell or High Water isn’t a flashy movie, but it has an undeniably resonant sense of small-scale justice, not to mention an authentic sense of place that will remind you of other Texas-set masterpieces like John Sayles’ "Lone Star" and the Coen brothers’ "No Country for Old Men." See it, and then spread the word.

It’s one of those rare puzzle-box mysteries where, even if you can’t work it all out, you trust that it all makes sense. And when you do finally solve it — for me, around the fifth viewing — it fills you with the giddy sense of accomplishment you get from polishing off a stubborn New York Times Sunday crossword.

There's a long tradition of filmmakers poking fun at the movie business. But no one bit the hand that fed him more viciously or with sharper fangs than Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard.

Room is more than the title of one of the year’s most powerful movies — it’s a state of mind that’s unbearably tense and as claustrophobic as a straitjacket

I suppose you could call The Big Short a comedy. It’s very, very funny. But it’s also a tragedy. Behind every easy drive-by laugh is a sincere holler of outrage.

Hepburn doesn’t know whom to trust and neither does the audience, which is what makes this Hitchcock-lite thriller so much fun. The chemistry between the two leads — something surprisingly missing between Depp and Jolie — is electric.

If you’re willing to surrender to his singular vision, you might just walk out of the theater seeing the world in a new way — which is probably more than you can expect from the new Kevin Hart comedy.

Mitchum looks like a doomed slab of granite and gives a dynamite performance. The tough-guy dialogue and working-class Boston locations are so realistic it almost feels like you’re watching a documentary.

It’s the kind of pure, straight-no-chaser pop fun that not only keeps taking your breath away over and over again, it restores your occasionally shaky faith in summer blockbusters.

It proves that Morgen isn’t interested in hagiography. He wants to show us the real Kurt Cobain, warts and all.

Tautly directed by Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), the film hums as a tense shoe-leather procedural and a heartbreaking morality play that handles personal stories respectfully without losing sight of the bigger, more damning picture.

It’s a feast for the ears, eyes, and soul.

This couldn’t be further from the corsets and curtsies of your typical Hollywood prestige period piece. It’s more like "All About Eve" directed by a Satyricon-era Fellini all hopped up with enough sex, deviance, hypocrisy, decadence, and spicy profanity to make your average Masterpiece Theatre patron reach into their PBS tote bag for some smelling salts.

Eighth Grade is an absolute delight that stings with truth. It’s heartbreaking, heartwarming, and a total charmer.

The kind of Swiss-watch precision and attention to detail that would eventually get Kubrick labeled Hollywood's most notorious perfectionist.

It’s a ridiculously raunchy and very, very sweet comedy about staying connected to the most important people in your life.

It's both weird and wonderful.

Snowpiercer sucks you into its strange, brave new world so completely, it leaves you with the all-too-rare sensation that you've just witnessed something you've never seen before...and need to see again.

A pulse-pounding procedural that pieces together the murder of a left-wing youth leader (Yves Montand). A baroque government cover-up is foiled by a tenacious inspector (Jean-?Louis Trintignant) whose rat-a-tat interrogations are like machine-gun fire. This is an amazing film.

It’s like a security blanket for our troubled times.

Like Michael Apted in his "Seven Up!" documentary series, Linklater makes you feel as if you're watching a photograph as it develops in the darkroom.

The NASA mission at the heart of the must-see documentary Apollo 11 reminds you what it feels to be truly awestruck.

It’s the rarest kind of moviegoing experience: an absolute masterpiece.

It’s stunningly ambitious and thrillingly alive the way the best movies are.

Thanks to Gabe Polsky's enthralling new documentary, we finally get to see these athletes for who they really were—it humanizes a group of men who were cast by history in the role of villains.

It taps into every parent's worst nightmare — the horror of being unable to protect an out-of-control child.

I’m not quite sure how Rees (2011’s Pariah) has done it, exactly, but the depth of heartbreak and humanity in this — just her second feature film — is remarkable.

With the exception of Waleed F. Zuaiter, who does a remarkable good-cop act as an Israeli agent, the cast is composed of first-time actors who bring realism to a tragic story. It manages to punch you in the gut and break your heart at the same time.

Like "Far From Heaven," Carol mines society’s narrow-mindedness and the dangers of living a double life. But what was true more than a half century ago remains true now: The heart wants what it wants, society and propriety be damned.

I don’t mean to give the impression that John Wick 3 is anything grander than a gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movie. But as gorgeously choreographed, gratuitously violent action movies go, it’s high art.

A dizzyingly tense and creepy workout.

In the end, the answer may be only slightly deeper than “because it’s there”, but for 100 nerve-racking minutes, Free Solo brings us one man’s suicidal quest with sympathy, grace, and a ton of adrenalin.

Naturally, if you’re putting it before youngsters’ innocent eyes for the first time, you’ll want to stick close by in order to play grief counselor when Bambi’s mother ”meets” a hunter in the woods.

A sobering look at the bureaucratic trials and life-and-death decisions rookie doctors face on their daily rounds.

Clever, funny, and wonderfully bloody.

Part of being in a punk band involves having to play some pretty hostile venues. But the one in writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s new white-knuckle thriller, Green Room, makes the typical mosh-pit dive look like a kindergarten run by nuns.

David Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s documentary Tickled is so crazy that it feels like a hoax. Only it’s not. At least, I don’t think it is.

Dench and Coogan's chemistry is undeniably great. In the end, he manages to give her the answers she seeks and she manages to give him a heart.

With this heartbreaking yet hopeful new documentary about his life’s work, Salgado shares the stories behind these split-second black-and-white moments, giving them even more dimension.

It shows us how rare love is — and how we need to grab it and not let it go.

This deliciously feisty doc contextualizes their verbal brawls and the odd love-hate (mostly hate) rivalry between two men who seemed able to regard their own sense of heroism only through the other’s villainy.

Like "Almost Famous," Ponsoldt’s film gets at something deep and true about the journalist/subject dynamic and the phony intimacy and tiny betrayals implicit in it. It’s a profoundly moving story about a towering talent who seemed to feel too much and judge himself too harshly to stick around for long. What a shame.

While this sequel lacks the novelty of the first course, it's just as soulful and silly.

Even though Jarmuch has a distinct directorial style, it’s his style. It’s impossible to imitate. These days, I can’t think of a higher compliment.

The Guilty is an absolute workout that pulls the rug out from under you just when you think you have it figured out. The last ten minutes will keep you rattled long after you’ve left the theater.

Tough to watch, but essential.

While its strange rhythms may not be for everyone, it does provide something unusual in today’s movies: a truly original experience for the mind and the soul.

It's Bale, and his almost biblical quest for justice, who burns his way into your soul.

Exploding with infectious originality, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You may be the most wonderfully bizarre film of 2018.

[A] harrowing documentary.

Yimou’s lovely import is the kind of lump-in-your-throat drama they don’t make much anymore, at least in Hollywood. Watching Coming Home you’ll wonder why that is — and who we can write a letter to to fix it.

More connect-the-dots detective thriller than traditional doc, John Maloof and Charlie Siskel’s revelatory riddle of a film unmasks a brilliant photographer who hid in plain sight for decades working as an eccentric French nanny.

Thanks to two pitch-perfect performances, Paddleton is bittersweet and poignant beyond words.

Molly’s Game is a cool, crackling, confident film that appeals to your intelligence instead of insulting it. At the movies, it may be the closest we’ll get to a Christmas miracle.

As the film goes on, their rebellious thirst for freedom and independence slowly builds to a physical and psychological emancipation that Moselle never quite follows through on. Still, she’s discovered a stunning, stranger-than-fiction story and tells it with sensitivity, intimacy, and compassion.

Sure, showing that girls can be as horny and impulsive and raunchy as guys isn’t exactly the most radical statement. But when it’s done this well, it certainly is a welcome change-up.

As an introduction to a first-class director who shouldn’t require any introduction at all, By Sidney Lumet is a thoughtful and thought-provoking treat.

John Wick, is not only a return to badass form for the actor, it's also one of the most excitingly visceral action flicks I've seen in ages.

It's the rare kind of moviegoing experience that will haunt you long after you leave the theater and lead to some very awkward conversations with your spouse.

In The Great Buster, Bogdanovich has provided a brilliantly enthralling primer.

Kusama ratchets the story’s tension masterfully, building to a final shot that’s as chilling as it is perfect.

It’s about perseverance, compassion, and empathy.

As father and son speed toward some doomsday reckoning, Nichols keeps us guessing in a way that evokes "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Midnight Special is a more modest, more enigmatic film than that one was, but it’s no less gripping.

It’s a daring, cynical gem.

As brilliantly funny as Chris Rock is, he's never been able to replicate the high-voltage danger and electricity of his stand-up act on the big screen. But in his latest film, the sharply satirical Top Five, he not only makes a case for why he should be a bona fide movie star, he also proves he's a writer-director to be reckoned with.

In 1960 this was a shocking, sexually charged symphony of taboo-smashing terror. And thanks to the artistry of Alfred Hitchcock, it remains one today.

Loach’s film isn’t as stridently political as it probably sounds. These are just proud people who want to be treated with respect. There’s one slightly melodramatic turn near the end that felt off, but by then I was already three tissues deep.

Farhadi’s intrigue doesn’t feel like the stuff of a Hollywood thriller. It’s more realistic, more pedestrian than that – which gives it a real ring of low-key emotional truth.

It’s obvious that Kaufman has always seen the world differently from the rest of us. And even if it takes a little time to settle into Anomalisa’s disorienting, herky-jerky groove, Kaufman ends up bewitching us with his fresh take on the oldest and most hackneyed of cinematic themes: boy meets girl…and anxiety ensues.

It’s a fully immersive experience that begs to be anchored by someone who’s lit from within by blinding neon, but who also, amidst all of the nutty squalls of genre scuzz can still wear his broken heart on his sleeve. And, these days, that list is a short one. In fact, there’s really only one name on it. Thankfully, Cosmatos found him.

City of Ghosts shows us what journalism can do in the face of evil. Its message is haunting, humane, and ultimately hopeful.