Nick Schager

This creepy nerve-rattler confirms that the director’s excellent 2024 breakout Oddity was no fluke.

A no-frills survival thriller that’s as rugged as its wilderness setting.

Thanks to a host of colorful performances and an emphasis on over-the-top violence, they mostly pull off their double-dip trick.

A stirring celebration of bravery, camaraderie, and human ingenuity that goes big in every respect, not least of which by recognizing and foregrounding the majesty of larger-than-life movie stardom.

A rousing elegy to an underworld saga par excellence and, in particular, to a ruthless and tormented gangster whom, in Murphy’s expert hands, stands as an undisputed crime-fiction icon.

An uplifting portrait of the possibility of rebirth—even for the most famous person on Earth.

A superb companion piece to the director’s 2022 biopic Elvis, it’s a feat of showmanship both by Presley on stage and Luhrmann behind the camera.

It might not deliver hilariously fatal blows, but it’s smart and spikey enough to leave a pleasurably painful mark.

An audacious indie that plumbs the depths of passion, loyalty, and sacrifice with beguiling earnestness and intensity.

No matter the out-of-this-world nature of their adventure, they remain an amusing and endearingly down-to-Earth doofus duo.

A film that lives up to its title by being, in every way, basic—and, in the process, confirms that there’s a reason some clichés endure.

With Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell as its tempestuous engine, it’s a captivatingly silly saga about the pitfalls of our modern techno-obsessiveness.

A steamy, sad, and amusing snapshot of desire and identity.

A joyous return to form for the Evil Dead auteur, whose no-holds-barred verve is equaled by that of Rachel McAdams.

Electrifying a taut tale of tough times and the desperate men they breed, [Hawke] makes sure that, even when it could stand to be a tad weightier, this genre film packs a wallop.

A stirring testament to both [Rushdie's] resilience and to freedom as a vital bulwark against the forces of extremism and evil.

Never quite as funny as it wants to be, but making up for that in the violence department, it’s a healthy serving of slam-bang cinematic comfort food.

A medley of fears, anxieties, and regrets that repeatedly messes with the senses, it exists at the nexus of sanity and madness, life and death, Heaven and Hell, and sound and image.

A hysterical, insightful, and ultimately moving portrait of the difficulties of keeping long-term relationships alive.

Follows festival tradition by featuring a stellar breakthrough performance from a well-known actor—in this case, Will Poulter’s sterling turn as a junkie caught in a prison of his own making.

This intensely empathetic film—co-starring Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan—has a tendency to tip into strident affectation. But thanks to newcomer Reeves, it still lands more than its fair share of punches.

Consistently funny and erotic, if ultimately a bit too straightlaced for the incendiary subject matter at hand.

A delightful film about the dim-witted and the disreputable. And though its humor ultimately wanes, it compensates with a surprising measure of tenderness.

A winningly weird comedy—premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival—about isolation and community.

With his maiden cinematic venture, Wilson doesn’t break new ground so much as continue his idiosyncratic artistry on a larger scale.

A horror-comedy that takes a scalpel—or, more accurately, several weapons—to its jaunty protagonist, all while reveling in his darkly disturbed spirit.

A rugged affair that’s canny and concussive enough to compensate for a somewhat deflating ending, it proves that its headliners remain cinema’s preeminent BFF duo.

As the fourth entry in a long-running franchise (written, like its ancestors, by Alex Garland), it is, to borrow a phrase uttered by its protagonist, “miraculous”—and marks this zombie saga as a nightmare with few equals.

Understated, graceful, and moving, it’s the first great film of 2026.

A sturdy continuation of this cataclysmic big-screen series, whose large-scale set pieces are rooted in the fear, anguish, and compassion of its appealing main characters.

Taut and entrancing, it’s a stark reminder that adolescence sucks.

A movie manufactured to tug at the heartstrings. That it does so this gracefully and movingly is a testament to Winslet’s understated stewardship and a script by her son, Joe Anders, whose manipulations are as gentle as they are affecting.

Proves a deliriously amusing vehicle for both glamorous, charismatic actresses. It won’t win Sweeney or Seyfried any prizes, but it’s the sort of hysterical thriller that, in the ’80s and ’90s, was a theatrical staple.

A tour-de-force of unbound creativity, its silky staging, enchanting performances, and playful inventiveness combining to make it one of the year’s undisputed big-screen highlights.

A taut, tense, of-the-moment thriller with real (reel?) bite.

Strap in, hold on, and succumb to this ecstatically inventive one-of-a-kind film.

An assured directorial debut about media reliability that unnerves by embracing the unknown.

With star Imogen Poots vividly capturing the roiling contradictions born from her character’s crises, it’s a raw, rugged wound of a film.

A breakneck rollercoaster—about ping pong!—infused with a manic desperation that’s almost as electric as its athletic centerpieces are taut.

If its melodrama is unabashedly manipulative, it’s not altogether ineffective at eliciting waterworks.

A film about the unremarkable that’s anything but.

A story about home, inheritance, and fiction’s ability to reveal truths capable of bringing alienated individuals together, it’s a tumultuous, moving triumph.

The series’ second-best installment and a rousing start to what appears to be a grand new franchise future.

With an uninhibited fieriness that’s rooted in profound need and longing, Lawrence—opposite a beleaguered Robert Pattinson—delivers one the finest performances of her career, energizing the writer/director’s portrait of feminine rage, sorrow, and mania.

A raucous mélange of the demented and the degrading, indulging in the very garish, grotesque, X-rated madness it condemns.

Stone is a mesmerizing riot in this bleak satire of our current state of disorder—as is her co-star Jesse Plemons, who matches her intensity and manages to outdo her craziness.

Even at its stagiest, it’s a film that, courtesy of both its director and star, burns with unbridled passions.

A film whose tension (and inventiveness) waxes and wanes, although courtesy of Hawke’s unforgettable masked fiend, it continues to boast an iconic horror movie visage destined to ruin viewers’ sleep.

If [Cooper’s] third behind-the-camera venture rarely gets completely under the surface, it nonetheless hits a sufficient number of wise and witty notes.

A caustic portrait of the rat race as legitimately killer, and another feather in the cap of one of world cinema’s true maestros.

A sly, sinister film about self-loathing, sacrifice, and the things people will do to survive—with a great tormented performance from Dakota Fanning at its center.

In an age of bland, unimaginative cookie-cutter blockbusters, there’s something refreshing about a movie that puts a premium on looking and sounding badass.

Buoyed by a superb cast headlined by Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett, it’s a film of quiet, droll grace, even if it’s delicateness occasionally veers into slightness.

[Its] vignettes are uneven and occasionally repetitive and yet, at their best, deliver the sort of macabre mood and mayhem that make the series an enduring spooky-season pleasure.

With an aesthetic ingenuity to match its pooch’s impressively expressive performance, it’s a thriller that ably justifies its central gimmick.

A timely cautionary tale whose overwhelming suspense is apt to leave viewers sick with dread.

Though its daring gestures don’t always pay off, it’s a tale of internal and external brutality, of fathers, sons and clans scarred by violence, that serves as a sturdy showcase for its exceptional star.

Saying little but speaking volumes about American disaffection, apathy, self-interest, and foolishness, [O’Connor’s] performance bolsters this askew heist film and cements his status as cinema’s most magnetic new leading man.

A look at Coppola’s creative process that proves significantly more illuminating and entertaining than the director’s finished product.

Electrified by virtuoso filmmaking, its enraged message comes through loud and clear.

Casts itself as a frightening saga about tyranny’s capacity to acclimate its subjects to slaughter and slavery, and to coerce them into performing (and celebrating) self-destruction under the guise of unity, strength, and progress.

Hermanus’ latest establishes him as a filmmaker of uncanny grace and Mescal and O’Connor as two of Hollywood’s finest young stars.

Both a nail-biting thriller and a messy moral drama, rife with tensions between justice and vengeance, healing and suffering, and reality and fantasy.

The film around her never quite comes together, but Foster is more than enough reason to embark on this off-kilter investigation.

A collision of agony and ecstasy that approaches the divine even as it reveals piousness to be an outgrowth of, and justification for, earthly suffering, it’s like nothing the genre has seen before.

Blending horror and humor, sweetness and scares, and fantasy and family melodrama, it shoots for the moon—and, more often than not, scores a bullseye.

A refreshingly eccentric spin on the staid biopic.

A beguiling psychodrama about familial fractures, slippery identity, and the difficult means by which people move on from tragedy.

A reimagining that’s thrillingly, monstrously alive.

Linklater’s latest is a moving and multifaceted ode to a bygone era and an artist whose creativity and contradictions were equally titanic.

A big-hearted fable of self-actualization, tolerance, and togetherness.

Snappy, sweet, and moving, this crowd-pleasing winner starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner continues the genre’s much-needed revitalization.

With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs.

Mimicking the form, and channeling the spirit, of ’70s big-screen blockbusters, it’s a bravura tale of community, persecution, and the way in which memory is both stolen and recovered.

Reeves’ goofy childlike routine lends the film the sweetness it seeks.

An unforgettable portrait of the search for unity at the edge, and end, of the world.

Johnson’s franchise remains a sly and sure-footed delight, as well as demonstrates, with its religiously minded latest, that it’s capable of coloring its Christie-esque mysteries in a variety of shades.

A frenzied plea for compassion and a stirring tribute to the men and women who sacrifice their lives, and sanity, for those in need.

Heartbreaking barely begins to describe it, although the terms masterful and transcendent also apply.

This funny and charming slice-of-life tale has the spirit of a low-fi ’70s romantic comedy, complete with characters who resonate as authentic inhabitants of their particular time and place.

In this age of Luigi Mangione, it’s a snapshot of violent anti-establishment resentment and fury that’s eerily timely—and smartly leaves its own perspective on its mayhem open for debate.

A dreamy tale of loss and grief, death and resurrection, as well as a supernatural reverie about the mysterious relationship between the present and past—one in which the living are reborn as ghosts.

It doesn’t totally work, but it has a lot of fun trying.

Campy, corny, and carnage-laden goofiness, all of it spearheaded by Peter Dinklage as a working-class schlub who’s transformed into a deformed do-gooder.

A romantic comedy that tears down, and then builds back up, its intertwined characters to amusingly penetrating effect.

Distinguishes itself by putting a distinctly 21st-century spin on its time-honored template, as well as via a black sense of humor.

Like the best of its genre, it affords tantalizing entrée into a universe lurking just below society’s surface to which few are privy, and stages engrossing cloak-and-dagger games between players who know the rules and, more dangerously, how to break them.

Confirms that Washington is rarely more alive than when in front of Lee’s lens. Eighteen years after their last collaboration, the two continue to bring out the best in each other—no matter that, in this case, Lee perhaps goes a tad overboard on his end.

Surrealist absurdity of the highest (or is that lowest?) order, a comedy that’s so unabashedly out there that it practically dares audiences to reject it.

[Its] tale about a California serial killer with supernatural intentions is filtered through a persuasive verité lens that, however skin-deep, underscores the enduring effectiveness of its non-fiction devices.

Escalating at a mad rate until it tips into outright lunacy, it’s a higher and more hellish brand of nightmare.

No matter its title, it’s a full-bodied triumph bursting with humor, tenderness, and imagination.

It’s no novel reinvention, but it’s cute enough to at least partially overcome its strained and uneven structure and performances.

A big, brash, laugh-out-loud crime spoof led by a great Liam Neeson performance.

Taking aim at the left, the right, and every mad thing in-between, it’s a fierce and funny provocation designed to p--- off everyone along the political spectrum.

If genre fans will always know what it’s up to, that’s just another way it pays faithful homage to its by-the-numbers precursors.

Cloud is a portrait of merciless 21st-century commerce and social cruelty that’s filtered through various genre lenses.

Rife with Trump-era parallels that only augment its global relevance, it’s a warning about those who seek power by claiming holy authority.