Daniel Schindel

It’s an energetic, frequently hilarious, always visually riveting ride.

Half of the best gags in The Nice Guys are of the physical variety. Some of the action scenes escalate into full-on live-action Looney Tunes madness.

Blade Runner 2049 marries its ideas to its narrative in a way that blockbusters too often fail to these days. More importantly, it puts these ideas to a poignant end, bringing its characters to tragic or bittersweet reckonings in a manner that would do any of the old sci-fi masters proud.

Rat Film stalks between being repellent, riveting, and darkly humorous.

The connective tissue between the different shots is sometimes thin, and some images are of course far less interesting than the others. But those hiccups can’t degrade the unique, involving effect of the documentary as a whole.

Into the Inferno is a memento mori aimed at the whole human race, and only Herzog could make one this non-pretentious, funny, curious, and respectful at the same time.

Leave No Trace’s acute sense of place and how people relate to it makes for great, emotion-laden naturalism.

Bisbee ’17 collapses past and present into one another, and in doing so achieves a singularly strange and unsettling vision of apparently intractable American hatreds.

Once again, Spike Lee has found an innovative theatrical production and brought it to blistering cinematic life.

Structurally, Hale County This Morning, This Evening does not do much to distinguish itself from other contemporary vérité documentaries which focus on quotidian details within a certain milieu. But even so, it still finds value in the unique incidents it captures.

American Animals is a legitimately exciting, funny, suspenseful, and at one point deeply upsetting crime film, ably demonstrating a command of genre trappings in service of a narrative about people warped by those very clichés.

Of Fathers and Sons is a vital addition to the cultural picture of the Syrian conflict.

Shirkers finds the emotional grounding and even universality in a very strange story.

The Edge of Seventeen isn’t John Hughes for a new generation – it’s much more honest than that.

Crucially, the emotional scenes are some of the ones in which the film lets off the throttle for a bit.

Krisha showcases artistry that’s quite accomplished for a debut feature. That it’s all in service of a story that doesn’t seem to know what it really wants to do or say (other than dismantle its lead) is a shame, but there’s true promise here.

Little Men could have been so much more if its perspective leaned towards the opposite direction.

10 Cloverfield Lane is a fun one-location, three-person play, and each new twist it takes only makes it more exciting.

Conceived out of Lowe’s own experiences with pregnancy and shot while she was herself seven months along, the movie is a distinct blend of black humor, viciousness, body horror, and pathos.

[Stillman's] dry sense and cutting sensibility are suited to the meaner edge this story has in comparison with the rest of Austen’s oeuvre.

Against the backdrop of a coming-of-age ritual, The Wound finds its greatest insights in contrasts between tradition and modernity.

Raising Bertie is a moving chronicle, and a potent treatise on institutional failings that knows to demonstrate said problems instead of merely preaching them.

Where many historical films are concerned with the movers and shakers of well-known events, Men Go to Battle is all about the micro view. It tells a story that happens to be set against a volatile backdrop, but is more about what it was like to live day-to-day in such a time.

The sections about the school are good enough on their own that trying to fold them into a larger statement on Afghanistan as it is now dilutes the potency of those smaller stories. Still, as a fresh view of life in a country Americans may too easily dismiss as a hopeless hellhole, it’s a welcome piece of work.

While Zexer might not yet have a directorial voice, her story sense is sharp.

This doc may actually benefit more from a viewing outside any contemporary hype vortex.

The documentary’s vision of history as tied to spaces is more difficult to dismiss than its apparent weaknesses would suggest.

There is undeniable craft here, and an impossible-to-ignore signal that everyone involved in the project deserves attention going forward. What does work is strong, sometimes powerful.