Nick Schager

It boasts some of the nerve-wracking anxiety of Uncut Gems and the keenness of last year’s standout Playground, even if it doesn't eventually pull off its delicate tightrope act.

As highlighted by its pitch-perfect finale, South Mountain demonstrates a realistically complex conception of stock ideas like “vengeance,” “moving on” and “healing,” and Ethan Mass’s cinematography echoes the material’s dualities in its delicate interplay of light and dark. Guiding the material from start to finish, however, is Balsam.

Debut writer-director Shaka King dramatizes her characters' descent into disarray with disarming intimacy.

From one wild mood swing to the next, it keeps us interested with aplomb, with Mike Makowsky’s script never lingering too long on any one element, the better to keep the pace brisk, and unpredictable.

Blending archival footage and new interviews with Nilan, his family, journalists, and fellow combatants, Gibney celebrates hockey's fisticuff traditions while also recognizing how such brutality ultimately takes its greatest toll on those who perpetrate it.

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

A midnight movie that recognizes that there’s no existence without sacrifice, and no birth without death.

Hoover’s style seems equally fit for a bleak documentary, suspenseful thriller, black comedy, dystopian sci-fi nightmare and grisly horror film.

Electrified by virtuoso filmmaking, its enraged message comes through loud and clear.

Full of the very thrills one might expect from a summer blockbuster.

This is a swift and searing attempt to pull back the curtain on Jobs and, in the process, investigate the relationship between the myth and the man.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It’s an ode to self-discovery and acceptance that’s as funny as it is sweet.

A gut-wrenching saga about illuminating the darkest corners of private lives, and about the difficulty—and perhaps unjustness—of genuine Christian forgiveness.

With leads Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller generating considerable sparks, and violent set pieces that up the supernatural ante one out-there revelation at a time, the director’s latest proves a bonkers B-movie on a big-studio budget.

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.

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

It’s Dynevor, though, who makes Fair Play sizzle. Balancing fiery sensuality and severe determination, the red-headed 27-year-old actress lights up the screen.

There’s no way to get a total read on what Qualley’s protagonist is up to, which turns out to be the primary thrill of this snapshot of personal, professional, and class warfare.

[A] winning film ... Genre fans won’t want to miss it.

A collision of agony and ecstasy that approaches the divine even as it reveals piousness to be an outgrowth of, and justification for, earthly suffering, it’s like nothing the genre has seen before.

As a hitman on an assignment in a far-flung locale, [McShane's] as good as he’s ever been, exuding a heft and danger that typifies this understated and affecting genre effort.

Barry Keoghan is arguably the most electric actor working today, and he absolutely ignites Bird.

Invigorates its well-worn formula through meticulous stewardship and an excellent performance from headliner Gustav Dyekjær Giese as a boxer who attempts to realize his dreams of glory in the most daringly illicit manner imaginable.