Nick Schager

[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.

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

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.

In a genre overly taken as of late with “elevated” trauma scares, its gritty, skillful menace is a breath of fresh air.

Unabashedly romanticizing its subjects as paragons of strength and style, it doesn’t have much substance lurking beneath its surface—but then, with a surface like this, it doesn’t really need any.

Occasionally stumbles along its well-worn path. Still, courtesy of [Mortensen] and Vicky Krieps’ excellent lead performances, it delivers moving measures of the genre’s beauty, brutality, and sorrow.

While its assortment of recurring images, conversations, scenes, and dynamics intermittently borders on the exhausting, it plays as an intriguing meditation on desire, dreams, and the things that make us who we are—and without which we’re lost.

A stylishly pessimistic portrait of one man’s villainy and, just as stingingly, the way in which it infected all that he touched—as if through the very blood.

Chronicles the whirlwind phenomenon and, it turns out, the tricky process of looking back and learning to both accept the good and let go of the bad.

A film that’s as sweet as it is scary, and whose frights are the sort that come from all-too-relatable fears about being alone, being apart, and being unable to hold onto the people and memories that matter most.

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

O'Conner continues to exhibit a deft knack for melding interpersonal drama with athletic competition in ways that, despite his tales' clichés, earn their melodramatic manipulations through genuine empathy for characters' plights.

A yuletide fable that boasts Aardman Animation's peerless mix of whip-smart comedy and cheery heart.

The Lorax is a modest gem, failing to significantly enhance its source material's ideas but still delivering a zany, rollicking, multi-character version of Seuss's environmental cautionary tale.

Affords an intimate and wrenching view of a national collapsing under the weight of unbearable traumas, and of the young children who are the prime victims of that strain.

While incapable of comprehensively contextualizing the craze and only somewhat convincing in its portrait of the power of cocktails to reenergize the traditional local-dive scene, the documentary remains a succinct and lively tribute to the art of the drink—not to mention a handy compendium for those seeking a prime NYC joint to quench their thirst.

The Contestant outs the Japanese reality show as a pioneering work of manipulative heartlessness, happy to put Nasubi through the ringer for ratings and, also, for spectators eager to chuckle at his mistreatment (and marvel at his cooperation in it).

It’s easy to see the film’s punches coming before they’re thrown, but that doesn’t lessen their wallop when they land.

The film proves — in both style and attitude — a successful bridge between the old and the new, and one that, no matter its emotional slimness, ultimately never loses sight of the fretful angst with which all kids must, at some point, contend.

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.

A blistering portrait of rebellion against social discord, marginalization and oppression, and a call to arms for true democratic ideals of dignity, justice, and fairness.

Sweetgrass achieves a borderline abstract splendor that's furthered by the directors' avoidance of delving deeply into its human subjects, whose backstories and general circumstances are only alluded to through fly-on-wall scraps.

If immaculately realized, Silence is also an increasingly monotonous, patience-testing slow-burner, with characters repeatedly voicing their fears about God’s silence (often in voiceover), debating the merits of apostatizing in service of a compassionate cause, and suffering in quiet.

In sticking its landing, Linoleum proves a case study in why no story can be fully judged until it’s over.

Even in a crowded true-crime field, it’s something of a doozy.

Justice is more of a stinging, straightforward recap than a formally daring non-fiction work, but its direct approach allows its speakers to make their case with precision and passion.

Though its verité aesthetics are often more serviceable than inspired, and its vague who-what-where-when-why set-up neuters some of its lingering impact, the film’s depiction of entrenched prejudice remains astutely realized.

The story places a premium on delivering its disreputable sex-and-violence goods with a minimum of fuss or pretension.

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

Asif Kapadia's documentary is ultimately less affecting and insightful on a universal thematic scale than on an individual, personal one.

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.

Beginning with a series of traps before escalating into sword-to-sword skirmishes, Miike's centerpiece boasts sharp momentum and nasty muscularity.

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.

Perhaps most surprising is that the portrait it presents is not of a tortured soul but of a man, and actor, who was comfortable in all the roles he inhabited.

In the race to achieve unadulterated fourth-wall breakage, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie is the new pack leader.

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.

As a pulpy game of cat-and-mouse, however, it provides enough thrills to compensate for its illogicalities, and in Josh Harnett, it boasts a star adept at locating the fiendishness in fatherhood.

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.

A true masterpiece of unintentional comedy...fantastically surreal.

Fortuitously timed, providing an insider’s view of this most tabloid-y of political tales and the woman at the center of it all.

Jirí Barta's film is a disturbing through-the-looking-glass reflection of traditional fairy tales.

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.

A morass of the worst of humanity and, also, a tech industry that seems perfectly comfortable profiting from it.

[Ford’s] presence—along with a winning turn from Anthony Mackie as the patriotic title character—makes this adventure a sturdy return to franchise form.

A rollicking tale of the inextricable bonds between life and art, and the value of ensuring that the latter remains preserved for future generations.

Ray’s plaintive artistry lends this weepy noir a melancholic beauty.

It delivers supernatural and Earthly suspense in a period-piece package whose wit and personality help overshadow its rougher bump-in-the-night patches.

If Abbasi’s film doesn’t say anything particularly novel about either, it still manages to damn the Don as he would his adversaries: with no restraint or remorse.

Even when it’s trying one’s patience with throwaway gags or bits of over-the-top brutality, Why Don’t You Play In Hell? is a rather canny celebration of the very type of no-holds-barred cinema that it’s peddling.

Subscribes to the belief that moderation is a four-letter word, flying about with an abandon that begets exhilaration as well as exhausting messiness.

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.

Mostly, however, Doin’ It In The Park thrives simply via its myriad sights of nobodies juking and dunking their way past opponents, exuding an authentic for-love-of-the-game competitiveness that’s as infectious as it is intense.

As a ruminative travelogue-cum-dissertation, Rodrigues and Guerra Da Mata’s film is often haunting, and its portentous and mournful atmospherics ultimately help compensate for the nagging impression that it’s a work almost too personal for an outside viewer to fully penetrate.

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.

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

Courtesy of an intense lead performance from Lupita Nyong’o, it packs a moderate silent-but-deadly punch.

The film may be as fragmented as its protagonist and, ultimately, unable to reconcile its disparate facets, but its headliner’s portrait of desire, degradation, and delirium is a sight to behold—and the performance of his career.

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.

Envisions Napoleon as a complex mix of the imposing and the absurd, his dreams of conquest—and single-minded ability to make them a reality—matched by his folly and awkwardness.

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 true-crime documentary of invigorating analytical clarity and evenhandedness.

Remains a mesmerizing time-capsule portrait of ’80s-era hopes and fears about computers.

A first-rate rebound from the relatively underwhelming Vol. 2, it’s a bursting-at-the-seams adventure that, minor missteps aside, reminds viewers why this ragtag crew remains one of the MCU’s highlights.

Schlesinger’s portrait of his two characters’ scheme, which comes to involve transactions with KGB handler Alex (David Suchet) and unravels courtesy of Andrew’s burgeoning heroin habit, is consistently suspenseful, thanks to swift pacing and a script that mires itself in its protagonists’ confusion and paranoia.

Overflows with inspired craziness, doling out an all-night odyssey of sex-centric crises, death-defying conflicts, and Neal Patrick Harris-centered insanity with snowballing momentum, as bits pile on top of bits with intoxicating verve.

The Gullspång Miracle is a cinematic Matryoshka doll, and director Fredriksson recounts her layered saga with an intimacy that can be downright awkward.

Never dull if also only intermittently surprising, it’s another of the director’s sturdy star-studded genre efforts.

Makinov's film expertly crafts a sense of dawning madness that hinges on its villains' unspoken fury at their elders.

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.

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

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

Courtesy of charming and goofy performances by Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon as strangers who find themselves at war over their loved ones’ weddings, it’s amusing enough to do just fine on a screen of any size.

A non-fiction affirmation of Carville’s belief that you can’t affect change without power, and you can’t attain power without winning.

Well acted and wise enough to not excessively linger in its atmosphere of genial camaraderie and underlying regret and nostalgia, Turkey Bowl accomplishes its small-scale goals with aplomb.

Errol Flynn’s wicked, wicked charm helps keep this high seas adventure afloat.

The filmmakers profile the prolific Mark Landis with a non-judgmental straightforwardness that allows the sheer brazenness of his scams to generate both shock and amusement.

Alternately electric and maddening, it’s likely to polarize audiences more than any multiplex offering this year.

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.

Even if historical erroneousness intermittently undermines the film’s outlandish attempts at lionization, They Died with Their Boots On endures as one of the finest Flynn-de Havilland collaborations, providing a grand stage for the duo’s playful, poignant rapport.

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.

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.

With Furiosa, however, [Miller] chooses to follow the playbook he penned less than a decade ago. Consequently, the results are—for better and worse—only as epic as you’d expect.

The proceedings somewhat sidestep the issues of risk and responsibility—including the raised, but never fully tackled, question of whether others should have gone back to try to save their fellow, trapped compatriots—that seem most in need of investigation.

Doggedly manipulative and yet consistently affecting, Broken piles on the miserablism to almost unbearable effect.

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

Erik Sharkey’s documentary is far less adventurous than Struzan’s own creations, using a straightforward chronological structure and talking-head format to pay tribute to Struzan’s legendary output.

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

Helander’s latest tells its story with compact concision, even as it also indulges in great gooey gobs of over-the-top mayhem.

The outrage elicited by Scouts Honor over that situation is compounded by the agonizing commentary of victims.

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

[A] portrait of one woman’s heroism and the means by which it’s motivated by guilt, regret, fury, and despair—the last of which, ultimately, proves inescapable.

Content to faithfully hew to convention, A Single Shot rarely surprises, but its portrait of foolishness and fallibility, and its atmosphere of inevitable doom, remain sturdy and captivating.

In raising some of the questions that desperately need to be asked before next January, it serves as an urgent warning.

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.

Headlined by a serviceable Liam Hemsworth and a fantastic Russell Crowe in all his hammy scene-stealing glory, it’s the bro-iest bro-fest that ever bro’d—and I say that with far more affection than condescension.

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

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

This wrenching documentary—culminating with commentary from some of the 100 other families who contacted director Roosevelt with similar tales of false-abuse-allegations woe—gives captivating voice to their sorrow and outrage.