No, this is a case where no one’s coming out clean, and Chinatown is a hardboiled mystery with zero soft spots. A research team based in Antarctica unearths an alien vessel frozen in the tundra for thousands of years. Once defrosted, it unleashes a killer organism that hunts down the trapped science team. For one, the “alien” isn’t some rubber monster—it behaves more like a virus, infecting and imitating members of the crew before bursting (in full gory detail) out of them in a spray of tentacles and blood.
There are no easy answers proffered by this tender and compassionate film, just an irreconcilable combination of happiness, relief, and frustrated longing for an unachievable happy ending. It’s tempting to call Unforgiven Clint Eastwood’s love letter to the Western genre where he got his start, but this isn’t exactly a sweet and sentimental movie. The story of an aging gunfighter reluctantly pulled back into his old violent ways is harsh and brutal, but the inevitable slow burn from retired cowboy to shotgun-wielding avenger is deliberate and precise.
That they recount their own biographical narratives here only further underlines Jia’s focus on the act of storytelling as a means of understanding, processing, expressing and passing down unique and universal human experiences. Split into chapters and shot with a lyrical focus on contemplative faces and serene, changing landscapes, Jia’s snaking, inquisitive non-fiction work proves a subtle rumination on shifting individual and national Chinese identity. So too is the movie industry, which has been on quite a rollercoaster ride courtesy of COVID-19 and our up-and-down efforts to contain it. In July, I watched one of the most mediocre movies that I’ve seen this year — and it was glorious.
His style and substance comes to the fore with In the Mood For Love, a slow-burn romance about two people who connect over their spouses’ affairs. It pairs acting icons Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung and is set in 1960s Hong Kong. Both leads are fantastic, and every frame is an insanely gorgeous mix of color, shadow, and light. Mirrors, staircases, pulsating colored lights http://nextmovietrailer.com/ and descents into literal and figurative infernos are all part of Wright’s stylish film, which eventually takes a sharp turn from Repulsion-style psychological freak-out to supernatural fright-fest. The director swings big with every bold aesthetic gesture, aiming to deliver scares and sexiness alongside pointed commentary about inherited female sexual trauma.
Everything about this movie, directed by Denis Villeneuve, works, from Adams’ performance to the score and cinematography. A veteran detective (Morgan Freeman) teams up with an eager newcomer to the department (Brad Pitt) to track a serial killer who murders people in elaborate ways based on one of the seven deadly sins. Director David Fincher creates a rain-soaked, depressive urban landscape of grays and browns and dots it with visceral scenes of carnage and horror that will stay with you long after the movie’s over. It’s not for everyone, but no doubt a masterfully constructed and executed trip to the dark side. It’s no secret Pixar changed the world of animated movies forever, showing that computers could create intricate, elaborate worlds just as well as (if not better than) hand-drawn animation. But Pixar’s real triumph was being able to do that without skimping on those important details like story and character.
As if that isn’t enough, she finds herself at the center of a war for the multiverse, sending her on an adventure that could determine the fate of the entire world, and of her family. Detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by a woman named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband in what Gittes believes will be a routine infidelity case. What follows is a cesspool of corruption, deceit, and murder that pretty much throws any hope for a neat and tidy ending out the window early on.
From the vast armies bathed in bold colors to the outward representations of an elderly warlord’s descent into madness, this is a spectacle in the best sense of the word. If there were ever a way to measure a movie’s chemistry and charm, it would have to be called the Grant-Russell Test, because no movie has the kind of rapid-fire banter and crackling spark that forms the heart of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell’s His Girl Friday. The story of a newspaper editor who tries to keep his ex-wife (and former ace reporter) from remarrying, Friday is like watching two expert tennis players serve overhand smashes at each other over and over.
Romantic comedies are fewer and further between than they were in the ‘90s, but some are still just as good. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix’s adaptation of Jenny Han’s novel that follows Lara Jean (Lana Condor), a hopeless romantic whose fake relationship with her middle school crush (Noah Centineo) turns into something she never expected, is proof that the genre is still thriving. Rian Johnson’s whodunit Knives Out captured an audience thanks to its all-star cast—Chris Evans!
This being from director Guillermo Del Toro, the fantasy world is hardly glitter and rainbows. It’s an eerie, sometimes terrifying place, with characters that come out of nightmares. This is a journey that takes you in a lot of unexpected directions.
- Romantic comedies are fewer and further between than they were in the ‘90s, but some are still just as good.
- Night of the Living Dead was also incredibly groundbreaking at the time for having a heroic African-American lead, which makes the absolute gut-punch of an ending even more incredible for the social and political implications behind it.
- No matter where they premiered (or were seen), offerings from illustrious auteurs and promising newcomers were everywhere, led by the latest from Joel Coen, Joachim Trier, Roy Andersson, Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose dramas comprise our top five.
- Carrey and Winslet seemingly swap personas—this time, Carrey is the dramatic heavyweight and Winslet is the flippant wildcard.
- 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.
- Neither does the proliferation of movies that evoke the wonder and glory of the movie past.
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For our purposes, it’s something that defined or changed a genre or had a significant cultural impact. There are a lot of classics on this list, and you might be surprised by how relevant some of them still feel. But if you’re looking for something a bit more recent, there are plenty of contemporary films on here too. We’ve included many Oscar contenders—winners and losers alike—as well as movies that will give you something solid to talk about at a party or around the water cooler. Nothing starts a conversation like, “Have you seen [fill in the blank]?” Who knows? You don’t really know where it’s going, and when it gets there, it blows you away.
Keith Thomas’s feature debut has a great sense of its insular milieu as well as the trauma and stress of escaping an extremist religious environment, and the writer/director drums up suspense from set pieces that exploit silence to eerie effect. Davis’s harried countenance is the glue holding this assured thriller together, lending it an empathetic anguish that helps cast its action as a story about confronting the (personal and historical) past as a means of transcending, and escaping, it. Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) brings glamorous style to familiar spy-movie clichés in Cliff Walkers, a knotty 1930s-set espionage saga in which four Chinese communist agents sneak into Japan-occupied Manchuria to smuggle out the sole survivor of a torture camp. This quartet splits up into couples to achieve their covert aim, only to be immediately and constantly beset by encounters with comrades who may be double (or triple?) agents. Be it early shots from the perspective of its parachuting-through-trees protagonists, or a snowy attempt to infiltrate a metropolitan gala, Zhang blends Hitchcockian suspense with Dr. Zhivago beauty, all while shouting out to (among others) Charlie Chaplin and Sergio Leone.