Nick Schager

El Velador doesn't pass judgment or manipulate emotionally, instead choosing simply to consider the arduousness of survival in a land wracked by slaughter.

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 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.

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

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

Boasting an exceptional Nicole Kidman performance as a woman recklessly in search of who she is and what she wants—as well as the orgasm that she’s long coveted—it’s a thrilling and amusing shot of cinematic Viagra.

Pulsates with harsh, anguished emotion, thanks in no small part to splendid visuals that make it the most beautiful film of the year.

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.

A drama expertly modulated to raise both eyebrows and pulse rates, led by a superb Léa Drucker performance that’s rooted in uncontrollable self-destructive passions and intense self-preservation instincts.

A quietly explosive tale of disconnection and betrayal, its placid exterior masking a wellspring of combustible tensions that are both impossible to ignore and difficult to resolve.

[Boasting] an ambitious and exhilarating story that matches its style, it’s the finest thing Villeneuve has helmed and the 2024 film to beat for outsized sci-fi showmanship.

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

Evan Glodell's debut has the sweetness of a lullaby reverie and the blazing ferocity of a monster-car nightmare, a first-comes-elation, then-comes-madness structure that resembles that of "Blue Valentine," another tale focused on the commencement, and then collapse, of an affair.

Painting a multifaceted portrait of the racing legend during a particular moment of personal and professional crises, the auteur’s first feature since 2015’s Blackhat hums with steely passion and pain.

Both understands our private relations as enigmas to those on the outside, as well as wields that mystery for a subtle, striking examination of the imaginative means by which we fill in personal and collective blanks.

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.

Subscribing to the belief that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Tarkovsky locates Stalker’s spiritual center in his protagonists’ weathered countenances.

A peerless example of using exacting form to not simply inform and enhance content, but to create a profound link between movie and moviegoer.

A model of tone, concision, and emotional and psychological insight, led by a staggering performance from John Magara and an equally moving one from pint-sized co-star Molly Belle Wright.

He’s a grand chronicler of his own biography, and expertly goaded on by Morris, whose queries challenge present and past statements and compel further elaboration and contemplation.

Israel's fractured psyche is plumbed via narrative splintering in Policeman, Nadav Lapid's compelling drama about his homeland's burgeoning social unrest.

Lino Brocka's portrait of familial treachery and societal abandonment channels its melodrama through the filter of neorealism.

The titular “stuff” is shown to be a combination of courage, determination, and recklessness, but, as Kaufman’s stirring epic reminds us, an equally important motivation for greatness is the fear of being merely second best.

It’s a feature debut that portends big things for the up-and-coming filmmaker.

Barriers both transparent and persistently present encase the characters of A Separation, constricting them in ways social, cultural, religious, familial, and emotional.

Humor and sorrow are equally immediate emotions throughout, whether in the writer-director's traditionally structured setup-punchline scenes or his strange non sequiturs

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

It's a thriller, a heist caper, and a surprisingly moving romance all in one, and it seems destined to be one of the breakout hits of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

At first glance, Tuesday, After Christmas seems, in both form and content, only a modestly ambitious endeavor. Yet the singular attention with which it carries out its aims-and the rigorous success it ultimately attains-is nonetheless unsparing, and bracing.

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

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

[Gudegast] infuses his inspired-by-real-events tale with the muscularity of its metal-titan namesake, all while pivoting everything around the grungy, rugged charisma of his star.

Habitually shooting her characters through narrow doorways and windows, the better to convey their isolation as well as their squeezed-by-circumstance states, the director fashions a sinister atmosphere, aided by intermittent pregnancy and corpse imagery.

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

With an unhinged Sally Hawkins spearheading its mayhem, this sinister saga firmly establishes the filmmakers’ place near the head of the contemporary horror class.

Ultimately, the truths of Hard Truths are as simple and poignant as they are difficult to initially discern. An unmistakable certainty, though, is that this reunion of Leigh and Jean-Baptiste was too long in the making—and should be repeated once again post haste.

A gripping, unnerving, and altogether thrilling saga that both continues its predecessors’ illustrious legacy and initiates what’s shaping up to be a promising new horror trilogy.

True cinema is John Lithgow terrorizing Geoffrey Rush in a nursing home with his creepy hand puppet.

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.

Mordantly, head-spinningly convoluted, it’s a unique take on the director’s favorite themes, laced with bleak wit and encased in an icy chill that’s fitting for a tale fixated on the grave.

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.

The director’s latest is a distinctly cool, dynamic Soderbergian riff on Michael Powell’s "Peeping Tom" via "The Haunting," with a dash of "Paranormal Activity" sprinkled around its edges.

Rock ‘n’ roll portraits this vibrant, introspective, and nimble don’t come around very often.

Its poignancy and humor is amplified by its canny decision to let Fox tell his own tale.

Provides a remarkable snapshot of the war crimes that—as the daily news reminds us—are still being perpetrated today

A delightfully zonked marital satire that lurches in various demented directions.

An electric thriller with blood on its hands, flesh in its mouth, and deviance on its mind.

Together, [Culkin and Eisenberg] make for a winning pair, balancing each other in a variety of ways that speak to the material’s larger concerns about loss, grief, remembrance and regret.

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

One of the director’s finest, its thematic scope and emotional power growing with each new revelation.

A small-scale tragedy about arrogant intolerance and self-centeredness that’s at once highly specific and, more depressing still, universal.

With wit, wonder, warmth, and a few wink-wink nods to the Indiana Jones movies, it’s further evidence of this franchise’s cute and cuddly preeminence.

A giddy grotesquerie that has midnight-movie crowd-pleaser written all over it.

Not for the faint of heart but precisely the sort of nightmare that fans of Cronenberg (and his father David) crave.

Pushes everything past the point of moderation and decency until it becomes a riotous discourse on the personal and cultural forces that drive women to madness in search of physical perfection.

An old-school melodrama of pride, folly, and sacrifice that’s electrified by yet another superb turn from its leading man.

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.

Pictures of Ghosts isn’t a timeline but a winding journey through remembrances of things past, and it moves with entrancing gracefulness through a history that’s near and dear to Kleber Filho’s heart.

As Toho Studios’ new Godzilla Minus One proves, the Japanese know how to get the iconic radioactive behemoth right.

Knowing just how much to say aloud and how much to suggest through visual and aural means, this superb Irish fable feels at once modern and ancient, and hums with mystery and malice.

A zombie film unlike any other, focused less on mayhem than on grief, loss, and the quiet, tragic terror begat by the dead’s return.

A snapshot of an annual family gathering that’s laced with an array of prickly emotions, it’s an evocatively ragamuffin and rowdy mood piece.

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.

Even in a genre that’s long indulged in excessiveness, this is the ruthless over-the-top carnage aficionados covet.

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

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.

Another of Eastwood’s inquiries into the nature of justice, the limits of the legal system to attain it, and the possible need, in that case, to take matters into one’s own hands.

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.

A superb coming-of-age saga that lives in the intersection of youthful euphoria, despair, insecurity, irresponsibility, and fearlessness.

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

Told with a sensitivity that’s matched by its subtlety, it earns the waterworks it quickly and consistently elicits.

A stark window into the conflicted soul of [Ceylan's] homeland, whose tensions and schisms are subtly evoked throughout the course of this challenging, if ultimately rich and rewarding, 197-minute import of longing, resentment, compromise, and self-interest.

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.

Cares far less about scares than thrills, and it generates plenty of giddy ones as it mires its characters in a predicament of head-spinning proportions.

A marvel of slapstick invention that in terms of pure unbridled creativity puts most big-screen comedies to shame.

A boldly demented science fiction saga (executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh) that melds the unsettling body horror of David Cronenberg and the seductive surrealism of David Lynch with a menacing video game-inflected spirit of its own.

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One isn’t quite as dynamic as McQuarrie’s preceding Fallout, but it’s not far off that standout’s pace, and it finds a way to concoct a satisfying resolution to its tale even as it sets up its closing 2024 chapter.

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

A quiet and formally rigorous portrait of a paternalistic society, the crimes it breeds, and the fury, shame, regret, and self-loathing that follows.

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

Capturing the pulse-pounding emotional whirlwind of its source material (and its characters), it’s a florid reimagining that’s at once bold, beautiful, and, at its peak, brilliant.

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

A tense, fatalistic saga of bad luck and worse decisions, it’s a throwback that feels as fresh and alive as its predecessors did decades ago. Not to be missed, it stands as one of the most welcome surprises of this moviegoing year.

Initially teasing a condemnation, only to come away with something less certain and more fascinating, it straddles various lines, and perspectives, with impressive confidence.

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 film about the unremarkable that’s anything but.

A true-crime thriller that also operates as a damning commentary on societal misogyny—especially in Hollywood—it’s as chillingly sharp and canny as its deranged fiend.

A compassionate portrait of mourning and the bonds that keep us united.

Last Stop Larrimah is a tale about provincial dynamics and the hostilities they often breed, as well as about the unique types of men and women who willingly choose to spend their days and nights on the outer edges of civilization.

Suggests that the Taliban are engaged in an elaborate role-playing performance for which they’re unqualified.

A unique saga of fathers, sons, and brothers, of fate, vengeance, and survival, and of a wind-up simian toy that just might be the Grim Reaper.

Delivering the male-entertainment goods while radiating a newfound degree of tender romanticism, it’s a fairy-tale coda that’s at once sensual, lyrical, and liberating.

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

Its sentimentality expertly balanced by its humor, The Holdovers is a story about the lies we tell ourselves (for good and ill) and the reality of our not-so-dissimilar human conditions.

A fiery sermon of despondency and damnation, as well as a memorable nightmare of marriage, motherhood, and madness.

Composed to seem at once off-the-cuff and mannered (replete with varying film stocks), La Chimera blends sweetness, sorrow and silliness with a lyrical touch.

A stinging political, social, and media critique made from digitally altered bits and pieces of entertainment favorites, at once hilarious, enraged, and as zonked out of its mind as many viewers will prefer to be while watching it.

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