Nick Schager

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.

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.

With thrilling dexterity and acerbic wit, finds a way to mock crass commercialism, cultural misogyny, corporate greed, worker exploitation, bigotry, social media hate, and the many systems and forces conspiring to crush us all.

A WWII horror story rooted in separation, alienation and a cold indifference that shakes one to the very core.

Operates in a single, precious sub-Kelly Reichardt register, its every second marked by studied images, sounds and performances.

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.

Its anger is matched by its empathy, both of which abound in its tale of woe set in the nightmarish region between Belarus and Poland.

Delivering scares at a pace that rarely allows one to catch their breath, and with enough gruesome surprises to consistently startle.

The Exorcist: Believer trots out Burstyn for continuity credibility and then treats her with stunning disrespect—the most brazen of many indications that the film is a soulless cash-in on an established name brand.

Poor Things is a work about distortion, assemblage, and invention, and thus it’s apt that the film deforms and amalgamates to beget something thrillingly unique.

A sci-fi story that spirals about in circles on its way to a predictable and underwhelming twist and an even less satisfying conclusion.

A visually striking but shoddily written and crushingly derivative amalgam of assorted genre forefathers.

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.

Merely more of the same gung-ho corniness, delivered with a chintziness and wink-wink self-consciousness that undercuts its aggro appeal.

A beautiful and bountiful bite-size film, it stands as Anderson’s second triumph of 2023 (following June’s Asteroid City) and a mini-masterwork in its own right.

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.

A directorial debut of poised peril that should inspire both laughs and a few sleepless nights.

Far from a stuffy history lesson, it’s a film that’s at once urgent, rousing, and alive.

In a streaming landscape already saturated with takedowns of Big Pharma and its pill-popping perfidy, it’s a generic version of far more powerful originals.

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.

Knox Goes Away isn’t the first (or fifth) genre effort to play with memory, although it might be the flattest.

The best one can say about it is that it at least doesn’t feature a lovably cartoonish genocidal dictator.

A high-octane action extravaganza sure to satiate genre fans’ delirious bloodlust.

Though stirringly headlined by Kate Winslet, it’s a by-the-books affair in almost every respect.

No matter Jodie Comer’s committed effort to wring something emotional from this cataclysmic saga, the film proves soggy in every respect.

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 triumphant satire about race, exploitation, family and identity that’s as rich and captivating as [Wright's] tour-de-force.

By weighing everything so heavily, and obviously, in one direction, it eventually comes off as a thinly disguised sermon about ugly oppression and noble suffering and defiance.

Ripped from yesterday’s headlines, it’s as fast, flashy and superficial as the director’s prior efforts, and also as exaggerated.

As an authorized project primarily designed to celebrate rather than investigate, that hatred goes largely unexamined in this non-fiction affair.

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.

It may be messy, but then, what child’s story isn’t?

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.

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

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.

As self-contained as any episode of the television show upon which it’s based. It’s also as efficient and straightforward as that predecessor, if not quite as disposable, thanks to its peerless star.

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.

A damning portrait of an unrepentant cheat and the unregulated system—and unsuspecting people—he bamboozled for his own gain.

Prepare to bang your head and raise your horns to what is surely the most epically metal release of 2023—and a satisfying conclusion to a gonzo parody par excellence.

Any grown-up’s desire for such material will be swiftly neutered by [the film], which despite boasting the participation of genuinely funny people like Will Ferrell, Jaime Foxx, Isla Fisher, and Randall Park is a mirthless mutt of a movie.

Arguably the most derivative offering the tired genre has yet to offer, borrowing elements from so many forebearers that it plays like a conventional pastiche.

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 testament to the vitality and fragility of memory that itself serves as an act of preservation—of a prized past, a fraught present and an everlasting devotion.

Heart of Stone plays like reheated leftovers, its flavor familiar but diluted.

Whether hewing to the letter of Stoker’s source material or branching off in novel directions, this B-movie distends itself without purpose.

Great racing sequences aside, it’s so clichéd and unadventurous that it makes its source material seem deep by comparison.

With no twists or clues to keep things lively and volatile, one’s mind instinctively begins to ponder how things are being precisely timed, where the other actors are moving to in the background, and the many other behind-the-scenes logistical challenges inherent to such an endeavor.

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.

[Wheatley’s] chaos and madness is of a blandly cartoonish variety, neither serious enough to scare nor outlandish enough to elicit laughs.

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

Considering Rogen’s participation as both a writer and actor, it’s surprising that Mutant Mayhem plays it so safe, not merely in terms of plot but with regards to its comedy.

Without greater context, though, Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case comes across as slight, and that notion is reinforced by a finale that draws no meaningful lessons from its tragic saga.

Just as busy, corny, and predictable as its 2003 iteration—as well as destined to swiftly pass into the cinematic afterlife that is both convenience store bargain bins and cluttered streaming platform libraries.

The cautionary tale is a familiar one. But it’s told with enough flashy verve and humor, along with a gossipy bombshell audio recording, to play as a breezy non-fiction look back at a phenom that had its 15 minutes—or, at least, enough time to get through an evening’s worth of quiz questions—in the smartphone spotlight.

A divided epic of awe and horror, fission and fusion. It’s simultaneously a unified portrait of a conflicted man and a singular achievement for Hollywood’s reigning blockbuster auteur.

A story of courage, trust and tragedy, the last of which materializes in ways that are at once shattering and uplifting.

Thanks to a couple of novel twists, it manages to outpace its predecessor in tension and originality—if not quite reinvigorate the franchise.

Another [Petzold] masterwork about characters who are trapped by internal and external circumstances from which they find it intensely difficult to escape.

Its characters may be desperate to remember the things they’ve willfully suppressed, but as this dud confirms, some things are best left forgotten.

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.

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.

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.

Exhibits a superficial interest in ribald revelry and yet, in most respects, neuters its wilder impulses.

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.

Would have no reason to exist if it didn’t constantly foreground the issue of race, and yet affords no pointed or amusing commentary on the subject.

At its deadliest, it’s a feat of breathtaking cinematic showmanship on par with recent standouts The Villainess, Carter and John Wick 4—even if its tale is as threadbare as its carnage is copious.

[Hamm’s] charm—and a reunion with his 30 Rock co-star Tina Fey—can’t salvage a middling caper that’s critically low on comedic or criminal verve.

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

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.