Nick Schager

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.

Barriers both transparent and persistently present encase the characters of A Separation, constricting them in ways social, cultural, religious, familial, and emotional.

A three-hour drama whose slender story serves as the skeleton for a formally exquisite examination of loss, faith, family, and connection, it's the year’s first masterpiece.

To hell with equivocation or beating around the bush: Terrence Malick's 1978 Days of Heaven is the greatest film ever made. And let the word film be emphasized, since Malick's sophomore masterpiece earns this exalted designation from its position as a work of pure cinema. [22 Oct. 2007]

Heartbreaking barely begins to describe it, although the terms masterful and transcendent also apply.

More terrifying than any horror film, and more intellectually adventurous than just about any 2013 release so far, The Act of Killing is a major achievement, a work about genocide that rightly earns its place alongside Shoah as a supreme testament to the cinema's capacity for inquiry, confrontation, and remembrance.

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

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.

Both a nail-biting thriller and a messy moral drama, rife with tensions between justice and vengeance, healing and suffering, and reality and fantasy.

The film retains a measure of tempered hope, born not simply from the father's command-cum-wish to his slumbering offspring ("Don't become a miserable apple-polisher like me, boys"), but also from a final act of youthful compassion that binds Ozu's intensely human characters in glass-half-full solidarity.

Exuding nobility, modesty, and down-home wit, Henry Fonda assumes the iconic top hat as America’s 16th president in Young Mr. Lincoln. Far from a traditional decades-spanning biopic, John Ford’s drama instead provides a snapshot of a moment in Lincoln’s life.

Its formal showmanship unconvincing and off-putting, the film is a case study in the hazards of prizing style over substance.

More impressive than its nimbleness, however, is its poise and empathy, the latter of which is chiefly bestowed upon its protagonist.

The titular “stuff” is shown to be a combination of courage, determination, and recklessness, but, as Kaufman’s stirring epic reminds us, an equally important motivation for greatness is the fear of being merely second best.

A film that, regardless of its easy-going pace, demands active engagement with its action—a request that’s innately in tune with its depiction of creation through dialogue.

A harrowing 215-minute epic of perseverance, trauma, exploitation, and anti-Semitism, it’s a bracing examination of the scars of war, the difficulty of recovery, and the genius, madness, and self-destruction begat by calamity.

Composed to seem at once off-the-cuff and mannered (replete with varying film stocks), La Chimera blends sweetness, sorrow and silliness with a lyrical touch.

Melville’s 1967 masterpiece, which—through assuming the same systematic attention to detail as its iconically cool protagonist—achieves an atmosphere of mesmerizing, otherworldly beauty and grace.

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.

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 breakout (produced by Barry Jenkins) that heralds Victor as an idiosyncratic and exciting new American artist.

Even at its conclusion, Holmer’s film refuses to provide easy answers regarding its meaning, instead using poised formal techniques to impart that which is not spoken — and, in the process, portends impressive things to come from its confident, capable director.

Like so much of his celebrated work, documentarian Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery is long, leisurely paced, wide-ranging, meticulously crafted, intellectually intricate, and touched with profundity.

As incisive as it is thrilling, Carpenter’s film is also gorgeous. Carpenter’s imagery is a thing of propulsive beauty that both enhances suspense and expresses his characters’ ever-changing relations to one another. It’s a fleet, ferocious piece of genre craftsmanship.

A breakneck rollercoaster—about ping pong!—infused with a manic desperation that’s almost as electric as its athletic centerpieces are taut.

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

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.

There may be no American movie more patriotic than Yankee Doodle Dandy, a jingoistic biopic of famed Broadway star George M. Cohan that transcends its innumerable genre clichés through the sheer willpower of its star.

Without narration or a conventional storyline, it’s a uniquely insightful memoir-cum-critical-treatise.

As superb as any feature debut in recent memory, its power derived from its marriage of graceful writing, subtle direction, and unbearably expressive performances. Movies don’t come much more exquisitely heartbreaking than this.

A stark window into the conflicted soul of [Ceylan's] homeland, whose tensions and schisms are subtly evoked throughout the course of this challenging, if ultimately rich and rewarding, 197-minute import of longing, resentment, compromise, and self-interest.

Ultimately, the truths of Hard Truths are as simple and poignant as they are difficult to initially discern. An unmistakable certainty, though, is that this reunion of Leigh and Jean-Baptiste was too long in the making—and should be repeated once again post haste.

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.

Pictures of Ghosts isn’t a timeline but a winding journey through remembrances of things past, and it moves with entrancing gracefulness through a history that’s near and dear to Kleber Filho’s heart.

A harrowing first-person view of a ceaseless nightmare, defined by both blistering immediacy and crushing sadness.

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.

Anything but a morose tale of a bright light snuffed out far too soon, Bernstein’s documentary is an inspiring heartstring-tugger.

The film serves as an authentic examination of the mid-twentieth-century immigrant experience — and an intimate exploration of one woman's attempt to understand who she is and where she wants to belong.

Reynolds’ film conveys a legitimate, stirring sense of awe about mankind’s innate desire for adventure, discovery and communion with all that surrounds it.

An alternately evocative and lumbering portrait of a multifaceted community.

J.C. Chandor creates an austere snapshot of human struggle, ingenuity, and perseverance, one that's predicated on Robert Redford's fantastic performance.

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

It’s an investigation into memory, intolerance, corporate-labor conflicts and race relations that’s as audacious as it is timely — and further confirms that director Robert Greene is one of America’s finest new voices in nonfiction.

A tour-de-force of unbound creativity, its silky staging, enchanting performances, and playful inventiveness combining to make it one of the year’s undisputed big-screen highlights.

A quietly explosive tale of disconnection and betrayal, its placid exterior masking a wellspring of combustible tensions that are both impossible to ignore and difficult to resolve.

Snapping necks and shooting limbs have rarely been carried out in service of such a principled cause — or been executed with such formulaic tedium.

Though Point Blank is rife with existential malaise, it is also one of the most ferociously sexy crime movies ever made.

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.

Setting a new benchmark for diverse, agile, breathtaking animation, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is as striking as non-live-action films come.

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 superb companion piece to the director’s 2022 biopic Elvis, it’s a feat of showmanship both by Presley on stage and Luhrmann behind the camera.

A stirring testament to both [Rushdie's] resilience and to freedom as a vital bulwark against the forces of extremism and evil.

An alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) harrowing and hallucinatory story of an OB-GYN who discovers that her every attempt at nurturing life leads only to more death.

Not for the faint of heart but precisely the sort of nightmare that fans of Cronenberg (and his father David) crave.

A story about home, inheritance, and fiction’s ability to reveal truths capable of bringing alienated individuals together, it’s a tumultuous, moving triumph.

A caustic portrait of the rat race as legitimately killer, and another feather in the cap of one of world cinema’s true maestros.

Director Wes Ball’s adaptation of the second book in author James Dashner’s popular series is the exact opposite of its predecessor, presenting a sprawling adventure that, when not liberally cribbing from more illustrious sci-fi forefathers, spends plentiful time fleshing out the dull details of its oppressed-youth scenario.

Together, [Culkin and Eisenberg] make for a winning pair, balancing each other in a variety of ways that speak to the material’s larger concerns about loss, grief, remembrance and regret.

Robert Altman’s most overlooked gem.

A sumptuous period-piece celebration of sensory delights—both culinary and otherwise—infused with all manner of complex, intoxicating flavors.

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

Led by performances imbued with barely concealed sorrow, regret and longing to come to terms with that which has been lost, Kaili Blues affords a view of people, and a nation, caught in between a haunting yesterday and — as implied by the film’s conclusion — a hopeful tomorrow.

Bolstered by performances that convey profound grief and remorse without look-at-me histrionics, The Past is steeped in the believable micro details of its scenario while also expanding to universals.

A steamy, sad, and amusing snapshot of desire and identity.

When it comes to sleek, stylish genre movies, Soderbergh remains a maestro at the top of his game.

Even though Chatwin is only seen in a handful of snapshots and one brief video snippet, Herzog brings him to vivid life.

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.

Given that the camera always seems to fall or get knocked into the perfect position to capture the craziness at hand, any vérité pretenses soon prove ridiculous. But it’s no more ridiculous than the plot, which incessantly wastes time trying to flesh out its characters, but barely bothers with building suspense.

Pulsates with harsh, anguished emotion, thanks in no small part to splendid visuals that make it the most beautiful film of the year.

Subscribing to the belief that the eyes are the windows to the soul, Tarkovsky locates Stalker’s spiritual center in his protagonists’ weathered countenances.

A peerless example of using exacting form to not simply inform and enhance content, but to create a profound link between movie and moviegoer.

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.

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.

Though its real-life story ultimately proves a little too one-note, it makes up for its thinness with a powerhouse lead turn from Sydney Sweeney as a woman caught in a nerve-wracking mess of her own making.

An unforgettable portrait of the search for unity at the edge, and end, of the world.

Rasoulof’s film damns Iran for its fanatical, corrupting, chauvinistic tyranny, all while generating breakneck suspense and, ultimately, resolving its tale with a disaster that contains within it a measure of hopefulness.

Her documentary sporadically locates profound truth amid its myriad musings about the momentous and the everyday. Often, however, Anderson's hushed-tone articulations of her thoughts on these subjects prove affected, and her stream-of-consciousness style, though acutely constructed, is more alienating than inviting.

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.

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

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.

Bolstered by superb lead turns from Chris O’Dowd and Andie MacDowell, as well as a formal structure that enhances the roiling emotions propelling its characters into a downward spiral, Love After Love is an assured debut feature that announces its writer-director as a formidable new American indie voice

Revisionist mythmaking of the most bland variety, the Jerry Bruckheimer produced King Arthur purports to tell the true tale of the ancient British hero and his valiant Knights of the Round Table by stripping away the magic, mystery, and majesty of the fable and replacing it with grim n' grimy realism.

Modest and moving, it’s a new sports-movie classic, as sneakily effective as the pitch which gives it its title.

An off-kilter creation that feels like the wacko offspring of Aki Kaurismäki and Abbas Kiarostami’s cinemas.

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

Though there are times when the material could be tighter, Newnham’s latest film is a compelling celebration of the revolutionary Hite.

When the jokes don’t actually materialize (or land), the proceedings become bogged down in drama that the film’s one-dimensional characters can’t sustain.

Provides a remarkable snapshot of the war crimes that—as the daily news reminds us—are still being perpetrated today

Initially teasing a condemnation, only to come away with something less certain and more fascinating, it straddles various lines, and perspectives, with impressive confidence.

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.

A masterful film that invites contemplation and, in return, delivers lyrical beauty, haunting mystery, and more than a bit of unexpected terror.

Akin doesn’t untangle his main character’s inner life; rather, he simply recognizes that healing is a process that both begins with oneself and is aided by those we allow into our lives and hearts.

The phoniness of their cross-country saga is compounded by a gaggle of cipher sidekicks.

With an intimacy and empathy that's all the more powerful for its modesty, the film investigates the complicated feelings of resentment and affection between wife and husband.

Funny and charming as ever, it’s a welcome cinematic reprise for the British icons, even if this latest outing is slight enough to suggest that it might have been perfectly fine as a short.

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

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

A marvel of slapstick invention that in terms of pure unbridled creativity puts most big-screen comedies to shame.