It may be dedicated to the Communist Revolution, but its real heart belongs to classic Hollywood. Since then, I have watched many more new releases in person, including at two festivals where I gorged like a famished person (so many thanks to both the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival). I had spent the first part of the year on book leave, and while I’d streamed plenty of new and old films then (hello, Marie Dressler!), I missed going out (anywhere). I missed really, really big bright images and I missed the rituals, including the quick search for the most perfect seat and the anticipatory wait for the movie to begin, for someone to hit the lights and start the show. There are many classic boxing movies, but none have brought the genre into the 21st Century quite like Creed. Though it’s technically a Rocky spinoff, writer-director Ryan Coogler completely reinvigorated the franchise by focusing on Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan), a young boxer desperate to honor his father’s legacy and forge one of his own.
When it all boils over, you’ll understand why Clint was always the consummate movie cowboy. The joke in most teen movies is that the stories tend to feel a lot like they were written by older people looking back at high school fondly (or not), and the casts usually feel a bit too old to be hanging around lockers and gym classes. What makes Fast Times at Ridgemont http://inrnews.com/ High such a classic is how young it feels. It actually has the messy, sporadic vibe of teen life, jumping between subplots with energy and unfocused angst. There’s a reason Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli is still an iconic character. Inception is the kind of movie you don’t really “get” the first time you see it, but it lingers with you and rewards repeat viewings.
Naturally, many sports movies appeal to sports fans because of their focus on the joys and heartbreak of the game—but if you’re not into sports, there’s not as much to draw you in. Not true with the 1988 drama Eight Men Out, which is both an exceptional sports movie and a thoroughly engrossing historical drama. Centered on the real-life 1919 “Black Sox” scandal that saw several members of the Chicago White Sox conspire to throw the World Series, Eight Men Out is a great period piece told by an incredible cast, even if you couldn’t care less about baseball. Starting from the most ingenious, trailer-perfect line of dialogue ever (“No one can be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself”), The Matrix arrived on the scene at the turn of the century and changed action movies forever. A twisted dystopian tale about a computer hacker (Keanu Reeves) who begins to doubt the realness of the “real world” and is taken on an insane cyber adventure through a robot-controlled world, it introduced “bullet time”—a slow-mo effect that would be endlessly imitated ever since.
The revelations that follow are of a semi-oblique sort, the better to cast an eerie pall that never tips over into exposition-heavy leadenness. Grief and guilt are an identical monster in this disquieting thriller, which gets suspenseful mileage out of shrewd perspective-manipulating imagery and skillful pacing. Most of all, though, it benefits from Hall, whose superb turn as the devastated Beth is equal parts solemn and seething, vulnerable and fierce, unstable and assured. Natalie Morales’ Plan B is a refreshingly candid and open-minded celebration of pro-choice teen sex and friendship, but the real draw of this abortion-themed comedy is its potent humor.
But we’ve arguably already lived through 100 years’ worth of upheaval, progress, pain, destruction, hope and heartache in the world — not to mention the film industry — since 2000. We thought it as good a time as any to look back at the films that have, to us, stood the ever-unfolding test of time. Variety, which recently celebrated its 117th anniversary, is a publication as old as cinema. (We invented box office reporting, in addition to the words “showbiz” and “horse opera.”) And in making this list, we wanted to reflect the beautiful, head-spinning variety of the moviegoing experience. We don’t just mean different genres; we don’t just mean highbrow and lowbrow (and everything in between).
- It’s also bolstered by some of the most imaginative visual effects ever devised—cities folding in on themselves, a zero-gravity fight scene inside a spinning hallway, etc.
- A Chinese immigrant (Michelle Yeoh) is struggling to connect with her husband (Ke Huy Quan) and her adult daughter (Stephanie Hsu) all while trying to pass a tax audit.
- Four boys in the 1950s set off on a sunny afternoon to see a dead body.
- Like any trend or era, the Blaxploitation period of the 1970s was definitely a mixed bag when it came to quality—some movies were made just to cash in, with little care about production value or story.
When the son accidentally kills himself during an autoerotic asphyxiation incident, the man forges a suicide note that causes everyone to reevaluate his son and makes him an unwitting local celebrity. You don’t want to root for him (or for anyone in this movie, really), but Williams is magnetic and engaging and the story unfolds in wildly unpredictable ways. Night on Earth is made up of five short stories—each one taking place in a cab at the same time in different cities around the world.
And of course, debating the “best movies ever” has enlivened dinner party conversations and social media feeds for decades—in fact, we guarantee the following list will have overlooked at least one good movie you’ll be shocked wasn’t included. Not only do you not need to be a fan of Sparks–the L.A.-via-London band led by siblings Russell and Ron Mael–to enjoy The Sparks Brothers; you don’t even have to know who they are. Edgar Wright’s enthusiastic non-fiction portrait of the group provides a chronological rundown of their unkillable career, which has continued to thrive despite failing to achieve the household-name status that often seemed to be its destiny. Cleverly edited archival-footage montages and diverse animated sequences are instinctively attuned to Sparks’ all-over-the-place wavelength, expressing the joyous anything-goes attitude that has long guided their music.
A quiet and slow-burning mediation on life, love, and the interconnectedness of people, The Double Life of Veronique is moving and mysterious. It also features one of those scores that is heartbreakingly melancholy (but also incredibly beautiful). It will have you searching to see if you have your own doppelgänger out there somewhere. A lot of directors have stylistic quirks, and Steven Spielberg’s is that he loves to show you characters reacting to something before he shows you what they’re reacting to (go back and watch any of his movies, you’ll see it). Watching Laura Dern’s and Sam Neil’s faces reacting to a nature reserve filled with living, breathing dinosaurs before you see them yourself just encapsulates the mix of joy, wonder, and excitement that makes this movie so great.
I Carry You With Me exudes empathy for these individuals’ plights, which includes suffering sidewalk beatings from random homophobes and the slings and arrows of their disapproving clans. Ewing shoots their travails in warm hues and with handheld camerawork that often spies them through barriers, suggesting their imprisoned condition. Those circumstances don’t completely change once they reach the United States, as conveyed by late non-fiction passages that address the real Ivan and Gerardo’s present-day trapped-between-two-worlds situation.
The quips come so fast—apologize to your closed captioning system now. A stop-motion musical fairy tale about Jack Skellington, the “Pumpkin King” of Halloweentown, who, bored with scaring people, stumbles on the concept of “Christmas” and tries to step into Santa’s boots. Featuring some of the best songs—”This is Halloween” and “What’s This? ” are definite standouts—and a slew of ingeniously unique characters and designs, this is like literally nothing else you’ve ever seen. Oh, and for the record, we’re on the “This is a Halloween movie” side of the “Halloween Movie” vs. “Christmas Movie” debate about this one, but make your own call. Based on the memoirs of the former British soldier, Lawrence of Arabia tells the story of how T.E.