Nick Schager

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.

J.J. Abrams's latest puts a modern spin on classical material, though here reinvention isn't the goal so much as slavish duplication embellished with muscular CG effects.

Destined to be passionately adored and despised, it’s a provocation, a stunt, a dare, and an experiment—as well as a bold one-of-a-kind experience that...shouldn’t be missed.

The result is a film that eschews in-depth insight in favor of easily digestible who's-going-to-win suspense, a tack that's aided by Kargman's rather poignant (and visually graceful) evocation of pre-performance anxiety but ultimately leaves the material feeling deflated once the winners emerge.

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.

A Compassionate Spy takes a far more rose-tinted, one-note view of Hall—a tack that requires skirting past major conflicting particulars and eschewing the very uncertainty that Hall himself exhibits in numerous archival interviews.

Pablo Larraín employs ultra-widescreen cinematography for constricting close-ups and inhospitably alienating compositions that generate a nasty chill, the director keeping the army's brutality off screen to amplify a sense of oppressive malevolence.

Insidious Chapter 2 picks up where its predecessor left off-- in abject silliness.

[Bayona's] finest film to date, and a fitting tribute to those who both perished and managed to escape their fateful mountain tomb.

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.

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.

It’s a singularly off-kilter vision of repurposed invention, though even at 72 minutes, the film struggles to keep itself afloat, its central conceit too slender to maintain its sense of mirth or wonder.

In virtually every closeup, Donald Cried practically seethes with barely suppressed emotion, though Avedisian cannily couches his characters’ very real, raw feelings amid a ridiculousness born of Donald’s wholesale weirdness.

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.

Even when their bananas premise grows a bit stale, the directors prove at least semi-serious about their material’s rawer emotions, thereby making the film an uncanny character study about an alienated anthropomorphic primate who yearns to be himself.

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.

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

Etziony and Hanuka's on-the-fly footage suggests that DIRT's desire to help in Haiti was noble, but that its success in making a difference was minimal at best — thus leaving the film feeling primarily like a critical snapshot of how dysfunctional Western humanitarians often use overseas crises for their own ends.

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.

It's an effective primer on a voluble and charismatic mayor who embodied the spirit of the city he loved.

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

Striking in its evocation of a demanding time and place, this intimate drama about individual and national transformation heralds the arrival of an arresting new filmmaking voice.

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

Affording viewers a trip to the Chilean desert to gaze up at the crystal-clear sky, Cielo is a rapturous act of cinematic contemplation.

An endearing, infuriating, and despairing non-fiction portrait of a country’s final descent into oppressive authoritarianism, all of it shot covertly by one brave teacher, it’s a striking work of rebel cinema.

O'Nan and Weston's rapport is engagingly prickly but their "Shins meets Sesame Street" tunes have a tweeness also found in the director's music montages and lens flares. Only in its even-handed treatment of Alex's fundamentalist-Christian brother (Andrew McCarthy) does the film feel like something less than a corny cornucopia of manchildren-grow-up clichés.

With both hostility and compassion, the damaged duo slowly come to understand themselves and their respective pain-a familiar path that's energized by subtle lead performances, a tactile sense of place and surprising insight into the way people connect as they help each other heal.

A true-crime documentary of invigorating analytical clarity and evenhandedness.

While its unconventional approach eventually becomes a tad wearisome, Morgen’s film proves a uniquely revealing exploration of the development, and eventual disintegration, of the heart and mind (and spirit) of a musician incapable of finding solace in, or transcendence through, his angst.

Stacy Keach engages in highway warfare in Road Games, an Australian thriller that drums up suspense from its assured plotting and direction, and generates humor from its star’s charismatic lead performance...Taut all the way through to its well-staged finale, it’s a superior genre import—and one that also features, in Quid’s silent travel partner Boswell, the finest big-screen performance ever by a dingo.

More than the film’s activist message, however, it’s writer-director Tommy Avallone’s portrait of whatever-it-takes parental risk and sacrifice that will help it resonate with audiences no matter their views on marijuana.

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

[An] insightfully open-ended inquiry into the role of humor as it relates to unspeakable tragedy.

It's simply one wearisome '90s crime-cinema cliché after another.

The film rests on the desperate chemistry of a paunchy, weathered Owen and a tense, quietly ferocious Riseborough.

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.

Most useful to the ongoing dialogue about domestic terrorism is Against All Enemies’ investigation into the present and historical ties between American hate groups and armed servicemen and women.

A portrait of life’s impermanence, it’s a bittersweet small-scale saga whose occasional sluggishness is offset by its sensitivity.

Proof that Sandler still has the capacity to spearhead (as opposed to just for-hire headline) a competent movie—including one featuring those closest to him.

The Saint of Second Chances is a testament to prioritizing goofy, compassionate family entertainment over winning and profit, as so many associated with the Saints readily attest.

Is Josh "Skreech" Sandoval the least deserving documentary subject ever?

The camera tracks every emotional up and down, through tests and surgery, with an unfussy precision that allows the themes to arise naturally.

Armed Response has less story than your average first-person shooter video game — and far fewer moments of exciting action or nerve-wracking suspense as well.

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

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.

A narratively and emotionally disjointed journey, its fine lead performances, moving details, and racial commentary never cohering into an affecting spectacular.

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

Its formal lyricism offset by a script that’s intolerably clunky, it’s an affected portrait of euthanasia and friendship that gets lost in translation.

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

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.

Despite its familiarity, Chapter & Verse manages to make its material both fresh and authentic.

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

A biographical portrait that doubles as an origin story for today’s amoral political landscape, its marriage of incisiveness and timeliness should make it an indie hit this fall.

Although handsomely mounted and occasionally chilling, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a one-note tweet.

Bolstered by deft editing that keeps the proceedings moving at a light, graceful clip, this behind-the-runway look at one of fashion's legendary brands has a sleek, efficient stylishness in keeping with its subject.

Goes heavy on convincing musical performances to make up for the fact that it has nothing astute to say about its subject—in large part because it doesn’t seem to really know him.

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.

Victor Kanefsky's documentary nonetheless manages to be as cursory as it is intimate, skimming over so much of Cenedella's life and career that it imparts only a hazy impression of who he is and what he believes.

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.

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

An inspired-by-real-events drama that finds honor, decency, and sacrifice in the legal profession, The Attorney is a rousing old-Hollywood tale of one man risking everything for a just cause.

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

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

Despite looking great, it comes off as a humdrum knockoff of yesterday’s fashion.

Despite winning the Best Actress (for its female ensemble) and Jury Prize awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s a bold gamble that doesn’t quite pay off.

A movie about cancer has no right to be as consistently amusing as Paddleton — a triumph for which credit should be spread around, even if it most deservedly goes to Ray Romano.

Director Jaume Balagueró's film is nothing if not a well-executed bit of escalating craziness.

An underrated entry in the horror subgenre, generating consistent unease through long, ominous pans—up and down staircases, through hallways—that assume the perspective of its searching-for-peace specter.

Writer-director Freida Lee Mock’s concise and potent chronicle uses a wealth of archival video and numerous new interviews with its subject to properly contextualize Hill’s testimony as a landmark moment in the fight for gender equality.

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.

A Man Called Ove — preaching tolerant togetherness as the key to happiness — earns its sentimentality by striking a delicate balance between barking-mad comedy and syrupy melodrama.

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.

Everything and everyone lurches about in a desperate bid to be hilariously weird, and the effect is to make the proceedings feel hopelessly strained, as if they know that there’s nothing funny going on and thus must compensate via out-there quirkiness and constant mugging.

Queen to Play does slightly buck convention by depicting intellectual development (rather than lovey-dovey triumph) as the key to reshaping identity, as well as a form of class advancement and spiritual enlightenment. Such notions, however, are drowned out by deafeningly creaky conventions of cutesy self-discovery.

Newcomer Russell, at once tough and vulnerable, canny and damaged, delivers a performance of nuanced naturalism that starkly conveys the sorrow and sacrifice that sometimes come with learning to achieve self-sufficiency.

A rather obvious and pedestrian lesson, if one that’s embellished with a few memorably macabre sights.

Like the finest noir, what springs forth from Saleh’s film is the dreary belief that the bad sleep well while the rest are left to suffer in the streets.

[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.

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.

[Geoghegan] allows his film’s message about intolerance and oppression to emanate naturally from the action, thereby letting the proceedings gradually transform into a revisionist fantasy of defiance, expulsion and vengeance.

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.

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.

It may eventually champion love as the guiding light amidst so much homicidal darkness, but Meyer’s film—happy ending be damned—resonates most deeply when confronting the ugly, inescapable reality that man’s murderous past is likely also his future.

Overflowing with super-slow motion, color filters and the clunkiest of flashbacks, The Last Lions frequently amplifies the melodrama to borderline-excessive proportions.

Opting to leave somewhat open the question of whether its subject was a traitor to her Jewish people or a conscientious scholar determined to conduct rational analysis free of public and peer pressure, it remains a mildly intriguing drama of the often unavoidable and contentious intersection of intellectual analysis and personal prejudices.

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

Evil Dead Rises is confirmation that—like so many that have come before it—Raimi’s legendary horror saga has run out of steam, continuing onward only because its easy-to-market IP value remains relatively high.

As a literal origin story about how we live today, it’s a captivating history lesson with global appeal.

Riley shrewdly maintains focus on how the players co-opted the merciless tactics of their invective-hurling adversaries for their own, and the region's, self-actualization.

A sweet and sad slice-of-life about the comfort and sorrow of solitary repetition, buoyed by a Yakusho performance that rightly earned him the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The Animal Kingdom is what an X-Men movie would look like if it doubled-down on its tolerance-for-outsiders metaphor and did away with any exciting superpowered spectacle.

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

An agonized drama about the burden of yesteryear and the conflicting ways to embrace and transcend it—one that’s rich in character, conflict, detail, desire, and history.

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

The film exhibits a contemplative quiet and attentiveness to detail that enhances its issues of regret, bitterness, and confusion, many of which are rooted in thorny parent-child relations.

In “Feast of the Epiphany,” a narrative-documentary hybrid, the line between fiction and reality is demarcated quite clearly, even as those two modes remain in constant dialogue — and the conceit is entrancing precisely because of its elusiveness.

Style can't fully compensate for a tale that, underneath its gorgeous affectations, proves undercooked, especially during a third act that provides duly titillating answers to its initially beguiling mysteries.

A refreshingly eccentric spin on the staid biopic.