Nick Schager

Tom Six's threequel races to the bottom with abandon, all while indulging in tired wink-wink self-consciousness that includes Six himself showing up to witness his movie monster made real (and to be slandered by Laser as "a poop-infatuated toddler").

The film’s placid aesthetics help the directors strip away any artificial barriers between the audience and their subjects, thereby eliciting immense, compassionate engagement with Tori and Lokita’s plight.

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

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

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

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.

Favoring long, unbroken takes that allow the rhythmic, full-bodied songs to breathe as they ebb and flow from beginning to end, Anderson’s aesthetics unobtrusively capture the magic of Greenwood and company’s global partnership

With an insightfulness born from firsthand experience, Rocks in My Pockets posits depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia as conditions that, though potentially lethal, remain manageable, if only through persistent battle.

Rarely has the terminal seemed as interminable as it does in Lullaby.

More turns out to be just about right in this case, with the film offering up such an onslaught of brutal, breakneck action that it’s easy to forgive its less compelling narrative excesses.

Those with a craving for out-there mystery and dread, however, will get a heady buzz from its bizarro madness.

Foreign Parts engages in sociological inquiry without narration or contextual handholding, utilizing incisive, striking aesthetics (a panorama of hanging side mirrors, worn shoes trudging through grimy puddles) to elicit potent subcultural immersion.

Carano’s badass-beauty charm notwithstanding, it’s a grim, formulaic saga in desperate need of some genuine B-movie fury and flair.

Staging multiple sequences as extended Altman-esque tapestries in which overlapping voices uneasily harmonize with the soundtrack's swelling jazz, On the Rocks is like a blood pressure–raising anxiety attack extended to an hour and a half — except funny.

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

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

Christopher Nolan's capper of his Batman trilogy is a summer blockbuster of grand inclinations in both form and content.

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

Has its heart in the right place but little else, starting out competently and then slowly falling apart with each clumsy step along its "Game of Thrones"-lite path.

The Guard is John Michael McDonagh's caustically funny riff on cop and crime films.

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

Frank De Felitta's guilt over having aired the footage is moving, yet it's ultimately countered by this piercing film's stance - promoted by the subject's proud children and grandchildren - that Wright's statements, far from a slip of the tongue, were an intentional act of courageous defiance.

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

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

Waltrip’s earnest and forthright narration lends Blink of an Eye its intimacy and insight.

Admirable only for its sincere responsibility-over-selfishness message and for giving "The Wire" alums Chad Coleman and Jamie Hector some big-screen work, Life, Love, Soul otherwise proves to be just a low-rent Tyler Perry–style melodrama.

Devolves into such a morass of shrill chaos and affected symbolism that it’s difficult to feel anything other than exasperation with its central maternal crisis.

A reimagining that’s thrillingly, monstrously alive.

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.

A monument to dark desire and the corruption it breeds, and a masterpiece of unholy terror that instantly takes its place alongside the genre’s hallowed greats.

Based on the harrowing book by Eric Schlosser (who not only co-wrote, but also appears in the film), this unsettling production...is equal parts history lesson, cautionary tale and nerve-rattling thriller, using all manner of nonfiction devices to elicit both horror and outrage over the precariousness of our deadliest arsenals.

A thriller that grows fouler and scarier with each step toward damnation, as well as providing an unforgettable showcase for Nicolas Cage as a zealous maniac unlike any other.

Helen's extreme behavior is at once a reaction to, and rebellion against, her mother and father (and their separation), which, along with a captivating go-for-broke lead turn by Juri, lends the film a poignancy to help offset the juvenile shock-tactic impulses.

Twelve long years after "The Blair Witch Project" pushed the first-person-POV subgenre to horror's forefront, and four years after [Rec] expertly refined the formula, Grave Encounters can't even pretend to be anything other than hopelessly derivative.

Prospects are dim no matter where these people choose to reside, and A River Changes Course captures their struggle with an ethnographic gaze that generally maintains enough detachment to avoid excessive, judgmental handwringing and heartstring-tugging.

This trippy work maps the intersections of West and East, body and spirit, faith and terror with beguiling grace.

A sober military thriller that excoriates Joe Biden’s decision to pull out of Afghanistan in 2021 and, in the process, to strand the thousands of local interpreters who had risked their lives to aid the American cause.

When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

The film proves a piercing character study whose narrow view frustrates complete empathy.

The film shrewdly opts not to proffer its own hypothesis about the true reasons behind the Gibson family buying Frédéric Bourdin's story.

A portrait of millennial estrangement and discontent that, despite suffering from sporadic redundancy, strikes a raw cringe-comedy nerve.

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

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.

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 surface-level portrait about a scientific advancement that could change the world for the better or the worse, and a man who knows how to wield it but can’t necessarily be trusted to do so.

A hot-blooded crime story whose affectations outweigh its subversions.

An investigation into the myriad means by which the internet can be wielded to nefarious ends.

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

In a finale rife with twisted feelings of resentment, fury, and self-loathing, the film transforms into a grave meditation on the corrosive shadow cast by the decisions, and crimes, of yesterday.

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 outrageous based-on-real-life tale that's perfectly suited to director Michael Bay's insanely overblown stylistic and thematic temperament.

Herzog’s latest proves a masterful inquiry into technological evolution.

Nightmare’s skill wasn’t that it invented such associations—which had already been thoroughly mined by its ’70s predecessors—but that it refined them in uniquely disturbing ways, drenching itself in an atmosphere of unreality positioned somewhere between waking and slumbering states.

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.

Blue Caprice otherwise proves a deft mood piece, one that probes its characters’ states of mind while remaining wholly unmoved by their grievances and hang-ups.

It’s material primed for mushiness, yet Eastwood shrewdly marries sentimentality to both self-deprecating humor (including a late bullhorn gag) and darker, more desolate undercurrents.

An overpowering work of excavation and confrontation—as well as a timely and urgent warning about the continuing threat of antisemitism.

While The God Committee routinely resides on the precipice of preachiness, Stark’s script (via St. Germain’s source material) avoids one-note sermonizing and characterizations at most turns, instead maturely investigating the messy intersection of medicine, morality and commerce.

Driven by both empathy and a passion for justice, “How to Survive a Plague” director David France’s stellar documentary charts an investigation into the still-unsolved death of trans icon Marsha P. Johnson, along the way illuminating the persistent discrimination that exists today, and the bonds of community designed to counter it.

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story paints a rich portrait of Reeve as an individual, celebrity, activist, and family man, bolstered by commentary from his children and friends and, additionally, from Reeve himself.

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

Like many similarly twisty tales, Reversion's narrative logic is undermined by its characters' irrational behavior.

A mushy concoction that's not only unfulfilling, it's gag-worthy.

Doesn’t ultimately put its star through the slam-bang paces often enough, but as a human weapon pushed to the limit, the actor proves ideally fit for such rugged genre environs.

Overwhelms via length and monotony, employing a challenging form that’s both its greatest strength and, ultimately, its most frustrating weakness.

A portrait of the eve of 2008's financial crisis that plays out with funereal inevitability, Margin Call loves speechifying, but the film is far more assured when lingering in the silence of its morally compromised characters.

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.

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

Bernal is a charismatic force of nature, his magnetism so great that it elevates Williams’ drama above its clunkier, clichéd elements.

Aided by three-dimensional performances that exude a convincing mixture of bitterness, selfishness, desperation, and hate, Ayouch film casts a sharp gaze on tragedy, and the larger socio-economic issues that beget fanaticism.

From hairstyles and clothes to autumnal-hued cinematography and a raft of clichéd incidents involving pills, suicide, sneaking out, and blackmail, everything feels dainty to the point of stale.

As rigorous and stimulating as its thematic inquiries are, A Dangerous Method ultimately rests as much on its performances, and in that regard, it succeeds far more than it fails.

A testament to its maker’s staunch belief in the cause of shark preservation, it’s a plea for transparency and conservation whose gorgeous 4K cinematography should make it an enticing proposition for nonfiction cinephiles and activists alike.

A work that proves hopelessly at odds with itself all the way to a conclusion that fizzles at the moment it should explode.

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

Throws a bevy of familiar, rousing punches on its way to a feel-good finale. Yet in the fearsome eyes of Destiny, it boasts its own unique power.

By acknowledging and publicizing its subjects’ writing, the film proves a stirring tribute to those who fight; in their stories, it offers a potent reminder that war is a hell suffered both externally and—more permanently—internally.

Sitting through Peckinpah’s controversial classic is not unlike watching a lit fuse make its slow, inexorable way toward its combustible destination—the taut build-up is as shocking and vicious as its fiery conclusion is inevitable.

It’s a unique, associative blend of sounds and images that aims to convey details as well as underlying truths about Frank’s life. Unfortunately, it also often leaves one feeling aesthetically pummeled to the point of exhaustion.

Taking the macro view, [Fulton and Pepe] seem to miss out on the types of thorny micro details — about McGee’s relationship with his mother, or about Viland’s own history preceding her tenure at Black Rock — that would have provided additional complexity.

For all its genre-bending cleverness and technical dexterity, Rango's overstuffed plot fails to consistently blend its brainy pretensions with its chase-and-slapstick family-film obligations. Like Dirt's H2O supply, laughs are scarce.

A history lesson that compensates for a lack of breakneck thrills with ominous timeliness.

Such tension ultimately unravels during a latter half that rushes through too many underwhelming revelations, but that’s not enough to completely offset the film’s beguiling air of despondency.