Nick Schager

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.

One of the director’s finest, its thematic scope and emotional power growing with each new revelation.

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.

Thanksgiving is less a cheap rollercoaster ride than a faithfully grisly throwback, complete with more than a few subtle (and not-so-subtle) shout-outs to Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.

Both a comprehensive primer and a nostalgic celebration, it successfully makes the case that few 20th-century funnymen were as daring, pioneering, or outright amusing.

Never more than skin-deep and ultimately overstays its welcome but which comes alive when—especially in its latter half—it indulges in its most wildly deviant impulses.

This rote affair would deserve the designation “for fans only,” if not for the sneaking suspicion that even they won’t be wowed by this return trip to Panem.

The film is moment-to-moment lively, sharp, and funny. Too bad that, like a dream, its pleasures are all over the place, and dissipate almost as quickly as they arrive.

An irrelevant B-team affair which further suggests that the MCU can’t survive, short- or long-term, without the active participation of its most famous characters.

Provides only some of his story, its up-close-and-personal view masking as much as it reveals.

Jacobson’s documentary resounds as merely a small victory in an ongoing war.

The Devil on Trial still allows David and others to argue that demonic possession did take place, but given the evidence on display, many will likely find that up for considerable debate.

An affectionate homage that captures the psychosexual delirium of its genre inspirations, it’s a throwback chiller steeped in blood, kink, and the terrifying thrill of violation.

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

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.

When it comes to its central legal struggle, though, it leaves out so many crucial details that it cuts itself off at the knees.

Just as there’s no reference to the many falsehoods Diana has apparently told about her past, there’s zero overt mention of the controversy surrounding her signature triumph—thereby proving that the film cares more about rah-rah uplift than thorny inquiry or messy reality.

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.

A boldly demented science fiction saga (executive-produced by Steven Soderbergh) that melds the unsettling body horror of David Cronenberg and the seductive surrealism of David Lynch with a menacing video game-inflected spirit of its own.

As appealing a turn as the Oscar-winning actor has given, and it does much to elevate this inspired-by-real events tale of unlikely alliances and an even more improbable victory.

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.