David Cronenberg’s lean 90s output concluded with a bang as the cult movie auteur turned his signature gross-out, cheeky, high minded aesthetics to video games. The film centers on Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allegra Gellar, a star video game designer who works with consoles that, in true Cronenberg fashion, resemble fleshy globs that plug into your spinal column with an umbilical cord. After a failed assassination attempt puts her in the hands of a peak-era Jude Law the pair set out on the lam. Featuring a bevy of character actors, eXistenZ relishes in the logic of gaming as Cronenberg teases out an effective parable on addiction and religious transcendence while somehow making mutant amphibians feel essential to the plot. — Andy Helmkamp