Nick Schager

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.

With nothing lurking beneath his character’s brawny exterior, and even less to his up-and-down tale, Johnson proves merely an adequate contender in his bid for dramatic credibility.

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.

A work of tremendous look-at-me energy: all prolonged close-ups and studied master shots of actors weeping, screaming, laughing, longing, and freaking out with sweaty, grimy intensity.

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.

Rife with symbolic weight, the action is thematically jumbled, and worse, it takes so long establishing its scenario that it never develops a sense of urgency and madness.

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

So rote that even an A.I. wouldn’t dare try to pass it off as original.

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.

With very rare exceptions, it’s less entertaining than a year’s worth of marriage counseling.

It won’t revolutionize the genre, and in fact would have benefited from considerable additional polish, but it’s just cute enough to warrant two hours of Netflix subscribers’ time.

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.

Heed its title’s advice and just don’t.

Despite attractive aesthetics, its fights grow wearisome, especially as the material crosses the two-hour mark and, in the process, zooms past multiple potential endings.

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.

The amusing thrills intermittently appear, but the novelty is gone.

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.

A sluggish and monotonous country-ified neo-noir that fails to innovate and, worse, to utilize its magnetic leading lady and her capable co-stars.

[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.

The legendary star spends the majority of this misfire looking alternately bored and really bored—an emotion that viewers will find all-too-relatable.

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

Arguably the least inspired film in the actor’s canon, if not all of movie history.

The epitome of a knock-off B-movie—and one that’s only mildly entertaining when it shows its cards and goes full-on gonzo.

An aggressively fine intergalactic adventure whose earnest optimism and sweetness flirts—faithfully and dully—with hokiness.

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.

An odyssey that—weird characterizations notwithstanding—is tiresomely unexceptional.

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.

A would-be franchise re-starter that resembles a Saturday morning cartoon come to overstuffed, helter-skelter life.

A globetrotting action comedy whose primary selling point is the chemistry of headliners (and The Suicide Squad castmates) Idris Elba and John Cena.

Even the least violent passages of this follow-up are a tedious drag, courtesy of a story that asks nothing of its lead Charlize Theron and her underwhelming co-stars except endless, enervating moping.

The underwhelming result is similar to its signature beasts: a handsome clone that serves no purpose except to line its creators’ pockets.

Switching genres in a futile effort to justify the series’ continued existence, this misbegotten creation is a leaden and aimless bit of cinematic malware—not to mention the most convoluted 2025 theatrical release to date.

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.

An old-school Jerry Bruckheimer-produced spectacular, albeit one that never deviates from a familiar summer blockbuster course and, consequently, fails to truly kick into adrenalized overdrive.

[Song’s] sophomore effort embraces a lighthearted rom-com template and then plays its material inaptly seriously—making it the cinematic equivalent of a sugary soda gone terribly flat.

It’s not improbability that dooms this Al Pacino-headlined genre throwaway but a crushing lack of originality and a form that makes its clichés even harder to swallow.

Sinister even when it’s slyly winking at its audience, it’s a satisfying meal of tasty horror cheese.

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

Prescient about the dangers posed by AI and, more pressingly, the cutthroat, avaricious, and egotistical madmen who wield it, the film is an incisive portrait of 21st-century villainy, if ultimately a satire that can’t quite locate the funny in the horror.”

Cartoonishly gory and drearily unoriginal and predictable, it’s a collection of tired devices and shout-outs that plays like training wheels slasher cinema.

Merely a cheeky pantomime rather than an actual adventure in which one might get swept up.

It’s jovial, zany, and sweet, and it recreates its adorable title alien via CGI (and a Sanders voice performance) with pitch-perfect accuracy.

A feature-length ego-stroke of monumental hubris that instantly assumes pole position in the race for year’s worst movie.

Lipovsky and Stein elicit not a single solid performance from their cast, and their tale’s twists are illogical even by the material’s established guidelines.

When it kicks into gear in its second half, it provides the over-the-top thrills that fans have come to expect, and which are guaranteed to leave their hearts in their throats.

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

Come for the healthy servings of capuzzelle, zeppole, and scungilli, but prepare to choke on the stale and squishy platitudes about family and tradition.

A mesmerizing film about the sweep and swirl of life, love, and the relationship between yesterday and today.

[Its] staginess is offset by their blistering investigation of morality, manipulation, individual and social responsibility, and masculine power.

If its fondness for stock formulas and scares means that it’s not shocking, it also knows how to play the hits—and, of course, to deliver on its promise of killer clowns in cornfields.

Amusing, energetic, and just clever enough to sustain its brief runtime, it serves up a boisterous and bruising brand of B-movie bedlam.

Cage makes a meal of it, attuning himself to director Lorcan Finnegan’s wacked-out frequency to deliver another tour-de-force of grief, regret, anguish, and seriously psychotic fury.

Rehashing clichés with formal polish but little novelty, this oater is a dour affair made all the grimmer by the fact that there isn’t a second of its 139 minutes that isn’t colored, in some way, by the on-set shooting that made it notable, and notorious, in the first place.

With Florence Pugh as the intensely magnetic center of this ramshackle maelstrom, and despite a couple of familiar Marvel shortcomings, it’s a protean superhero saga that stands on its own—regardless of its title’s qualifying asterisk.

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

Lacks any sense of internal logic and is even lighter on surprising scares, dispensing only clichés that are as moldy as the haunted house in which his characters are confined.

A brutal buddy film pairing Affleck’s killer with his equally murderous brother, it locates the humor in its mayhem and, for it, proves a superior sequel in every respect.

If the spell it casts is somewhat familiar, it’s nonetheless enlivened by surefooted atmosphere, excellent puppetry, and charismatically outsized performances from Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe.

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.

Never coherently articulates (or draws connections between) its various concerns, proving a handsomely horrific vampire bloodbath that, ahem, bites off more than it can chew.

Gracefully balancing its lighter and darker concerns, it’s a witty ride whose poignancy—like adulthood itself—sneaks up on you.

A canny cautionary tale about the perils of looking for Mr. Right—and of keeping your phone powered on at dinner.

A taut and terrifying portrait of courage under fire.

Part Die Hard, part wish-fulfillment saga for a post-2024 present that didn’t come to pass, it’s a fantasy of feminist and U.S. might that’s chockablock with implausibilities.

Unsurprising from start to finish and yet proficiently executed thanks to its impressive cast, it’s the definition of serviceable.

Energized by Ariella Mastroianni’s disoriented and frazzled lead performance, it begins unnervingly and ends, like all such sagas should, with haunting bleakness.

Block-headed from start to finish, it’s cinema in service of nothing more than IP exploitation.

Even at a brisk 85 minutes, it’s a bigger slog than a day spent mowing the grass.

Unlike its unique and fantastical title creature, it’s a commonplace monster mash which serves up only frenzied commotion and tired social commentary.

A macho fantasy about a dad acting out his daughter-saving fantasy by rescuing a surrogate child, with Statham talking tough and acting tougher in typically forthright fashion.

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

A hypnotic star child of out-there wonder and internal corruption and chaos.

No Magic Mirror is needed to identify it as the lamest Mouse House re-do of them all.

An ignominious tour-de-force for the esteemed headliner, who gets to indulge in just about every caricatured mannerism and colloquialism in the stale La Cosa Nostra cookbook.

A superb thriller that employs common genre devices for a canny and caustic rumination on right and wrong, love and lust, virtue and vice.

Burdened by a hazy and mannered style that drains it of urgency and feeling, it’s a self-conscious curio that’s less dreamy than dreary.