Nick Schager

Makes a compelling case for games as not only clever hand-eye coordination exercises, but also as manifestations of their creators' emotional and philosophical viewpoints.

Mistakenly assumes that the woe-is-me routines of the rich and famous are the stuff of great drama.

It’s arguably the greatest expression yet of Fincher’s style and worldview—caustic, unrelenting, and wickedly funny.

A romantic comedy that tears down, and then builds back up, its intertwined characters to amusingly penetrating effect.

With formal polish and deep compassion, it proves to be the most heartwarming film of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Painting a multifaceted portrait of the racing legend during a particular moment of personal and professional crises, the auteur’s first feature since 2015’s Blackhat hums with steely passion and pain.

With an aesthetic ingenuity to match its pooch’s impressively expressive performance, it’s a thriller that ably justifies its central gimmick.

They Drive by Night never coalesces into a coherent whole, but as far as sturdy ’40s Hollywood melodramas go, it’s a pretty sweet two-for-one movie deal.

A look at Coppola’s creative process that proves significantly more illuminating and entertaining than the director’s finished product.

In countless over-the-top set pieces, Yuen delivers striking combat clarity without sacrificing the visceral editing and crazy digital effects of modern bloodbaths.

A fiery sermon of despondency and damnation, as well as a memorable nightmare of marriage, motherhood, and madness.

Director Arcel handles the material with a stately grace that compensates for the story's predictable trajectory, though humdrum period detail and monotonous pacing too often leave the proceedings feeling only partially aroused.

The ubiquitously involved star’s charisma can’t completely overshadow a sluggish plot... Nonetheless, its hard-charging chase sequences make it a vintage Dukes of Hazzard-flavored noir.

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

Doesn't waste a moment on recognizable reality, consumed as it is with checking off various items from its list of clichés.

A tense, fatalistic saga of bad luck and worse decisions, it’s a throwback that feels as fresh and alive as its predecessors did decades ago. Not to be missed, it stands as one of the most welcome surprises of this moviegoing year.

The result is even better than his initial design: a sharp, hilarious, self-aware, and acutely insightful work of both celebration and critique.

Another of Eastwood’s inquiries into the nature of justice, the limits of the legal system to attain it, and the possible need, in that case, to take matters into one’s own hands.

A cautionary tale about…making “a pact with the devil.” However, Milli Vanilli doesn’t have much to reveal that isn’t by now well-known pop lore.

Pushes everything past the point of moderation and decency until it becomes a riotous discourse on the personal and cultural forces that drive women to madness in search of physical perfection.

Rambling in the best manner imaginable, it’s an amusingly heartbreaking (and hopeful) portrait of misery’s messiness.

Cromwell delivers his defiantly gruff dialogue with amusing relish, while still grounding his protagonist’s actions in desperation and desolation. And his nostalgic conversations with Bujold while the two lay in bed have a naturalness that almost overshadows the creakiness of the surrounding material.

Partnered with the always ridiculous Rudd, Robinson reconfirms his standing as the reigning master of discomfort. Together, they make "Friendship" the funniest movie of the year.

Follows festival tradition by featuring a stellar breakthrough performance from a well-known actor—in this case, Will Poulter’s sterling turn as a junkie caught in a prison of his own making.

It’s a stagy setup whose theatrical roots are always front and center, yet it’s one that’s handled with aplomb by director Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum), whose latest has enough visual panache to compensate for the static, conversational nature of the work.

Casts itself as a frightening saga about tyranny’s capacity to acclimate its subjects to slaughter and slavery, and to coerce them into performing (and celebrating) self-destruction under the guise of unity, strength, and progress.

No matter a committed performance (two, actually) from Robert Pattinson, it’s an original that plays like a rehash—and an underwhelmingly unfunny one at that.

Alternating between time periods and geographic locations, all of it connected by McElwee's narrated thoughts, the film proves a bracing and sometimes uncomfortable peek into private fears and regrets about mortality and missed opportunities. It's also, in its portrait of wayward Adrian, further proof that there's nothing more difficult, frustrating, messy, and insufferable than teenagerdom.