And let’s be honest — the story of a man who uses balloons to float his house to a foreign land, accidentally picking up a young wilderness explorer scout as he does, feels perfectly Pixar. Raging Bull is one of Martin Scorsese’s most brutal movies, which is really saying something considering his track record. Don’t get me wrong — the man is a genius — but the typical Scorsese film has a ton of violence.
With an appropriately dark sense of humor throughout, channeling the mischievous spirit of the source material, this new Matilda will charm a whole new generation of delinquents. This is a wild one—a Chilean black comedy satire reimagining dictator Augusto Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire who is just done with it and now craves his own final death. As director and co-writer Pablo Larraín’s farce continues, it incorporates Vampire Pinochet’s children, the exorcist nun they hire to kill their father for the inheritance, a Russian vampire butler, and—in a gloriously deranged twist—Margaret Thatcher. Shot in black and white, and almost entirely in Spanish, El Conde sits somewhere in the space between high schlock and high art.
Turns out, with more of the same, but also plenty of fresh pleasures. Paddington (bouncily voiced by Ben Whishaw) matches wits with washed-up actor Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant, chewing scenery like fine steak), being framed for theft and getting sent to prison. Like all great sequels, it works superbly as a double bill with the original. A crew, consisting of two astronauts and a robot named HAL 9000, is sent to Jupiter to investigate a mysterious artifact. It’s technically not a horror movie, but the ending to 2001 may be the most unsettling one on this list. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is an enormously popular “Spaghetti Western,” thusly called because it is a Western made by an Italian filmmaker and was filmed in Italy.
It’s a little hard to believe that the Schindler’s List director also came up with this dino adventure movie, but what’s even more impressive is that the two films came out mere months apart. This could not be more different, but if you’re looking for a film about these prehistoric creatures, stick to the classic. There’s so much loving attention paid to the dinosaurs’ look—there isn’t a ton of CGI, with a greater reliance on practical effects—but more importantly, the human characters are just as interesting. This classic film is ostensibly about a dozen white men on a jury arguing over whether a young Puerto Rican man actually killed his father (the class and race dynamics feel unfortunately familiar, 60-plus years later).
Rockwell, who directed the film, grew up in New York—and has both genuine love and deserved derision for her hometown. Rockwell’s feature debut follows Inez (a revelatory Teyana Taylor) from the mid-’90s, when she gets out of Rikers, to the present. As she tries to rebuild her life in Harlem, with a son she smuggled out of state custody, the threat of being discovered and the pressure of providing for him large. Rockwell’s character study highlights the ways people define a place, and how a place rubs off on people. A Thousand and One is clear-eyed about the toll of gentrification without being overly sentimental for a more vibrant, but still imperfect past incarnation of the city. In totality, the movie finds great beauty and pathos in a nuanced, unexpected, and drawn-out sort of tragedy.
This gorgeous black-and-white Mexican film follows an indigenous domestic worker who has to deal with unexpected changes in her own life and that of the family she works for, based on director Alfonso Cuarón’s memories of his own nanny from childhood. There’s a reason why some critics claim The Shawshank Redemption is the best drama film of all time. The moving story follows Andy (Tim Robbins), a man sentenced to serve two life terms at the high-security prison Shawshank for murdering his wife and her lover.
With Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Edgar Wright leaned all the way in to the things that make his directorial style so singular – excellent needle drops, a bold colour palette, whip-pans and whip-smart wit alike. Michael Cera is the put-upon protagonist, but it’s Ramona’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) seven deadly exes that set the screen alight, including free movie sites Chris Evans and Brie Larson – before they were saving half the universe together. With masterful touches of magical realism and stunning shots that stick in the mind throughout, Scott Pilgrim is one of Wright’s most memorable. The goal of /r/Movies is to provide an inclusive place for discussions and news about films with major releases.
Ridley Scott’s comeback (after a bad run with 1492, White Squall and G.I. Jane). And, thanks to the scope of Scott’s visual ambition combined with a leap forward in CGI quality, the movie that showed the industry you could make colossal historical epics commercially viable once more. For a Western world raised on Disney movies, Spirited Away was a bracing change of pace – pure, uncut Studio Ghibli. Taking in bathhouses, spirits of Shinto folklore, and morality without clear-cut distinctions of good and evil, Hayao Miyazaki’s major crossover hit is distinctly Japanese. It’s the film that brought Studio Ghibli – and anime at large – to mainstream Western audiences, an influence increasingly felt in the likes of Moana and Frozen II.
This period piece takes the cake for its beautiful scenery and in-your-face chemistry between Macfadyen and Kiera Knightley. What looks from the outset like a typical rom-com delves deeper into the motions of mental illness, as a bipolar man tries to reconnect with his estranged wife following his release from a psychiatric ward. He meets a recently widowed woman (Jennifer Lawrence) with her own problems, who convinces him to join a dance competition with her to help him win his wife back. For all the latest movie news, reviews, lists and features, follow @PasteMovies.
The visual effects artists behind this movie (and its several existing/future sequels) are all geniuses, and at least half of the box office money should go to them. We’re in the clubhouse turn of the awards season honoring the best movies of 2022. So it’s worth looking back on what IndieWire’s critics survey of 165 film writers picked as the 50 best movies of 2022 back in December, before the Oscar race had fully taken shape.
When the near-destitute Kim family starts working in the home of the much wealthier and incredibly classist Park family, it’s only a matter of time before something terrible happens. The tension between both families builds unrelentingly for two hours, but it’s practically impossible to predict where Parasite will go. Bong Joon-ho won a million awards for writing and directing it, and it’s one of those movies that you can’t stop thinking about for days after watching it. Based on the title, 12 Angry Men might seem like the absolute worst way to spend 96 minutes. In reality, it’s a concise, compelling courtroom drama in which a jury has to decide whether or not a man will be convicted for murder.
The trick was to only do it twice during the entire running time, with that first diner meeting virtually fizzing with alpha-star electricity. Christopher Nolan’s tribute to 2001 and The Right Stuff (with a little added The Black Hole) presents long-distance space travel as realistically as it’s possible to with the theoretical physics currently available. From the effects of gravity to the emotional implication of time dilation, it mixes science and sentiment to great effect.
This psychological thriller explores the (very) dark side of devotion to one’s art, and it won Portman the Best Actress award at the 2011 Oscars. This early Hitchcock movie boasts an impressive 98% percent Rotten Tomatoes score, and it’s still considered one of the best of its time. Starring Princess Grace Kelly and James Stewart, the film revolves around a man confined to his wheelchair whose pastime involves spying on his neighbors (through the rear window—get it?). Things take a turn for the worst when he believes he’s witnessed a murder. The film that prompted so many parodies and remakes (another one is coming in 2023!), nothing lights a candle to the original.
David Lynch messes with Hollywood itself in a mystery tale that’s as twisted as the road it’s named after, while presenting Tinseltown as both Dream Factory and a realm of Nightmares. It also put Naomi Watts on the map; her audition scene remains as stunning as it was 20 years ago. William Friedkin’s horror masterwork, in which a 12-year-old girl is possessed by a demon, has a reputation as a shocker (in the good sense), with the pea-soup vomit, head-spin and crucifix abuse moments the most regularly cited. But the reason it chills so deeply is the way it sustains and builds its disquieting atmosphere so craftily and consistently throughout. Your choice of James Bond movie probably depends on who your favorite Bond is. If it’s Daniel Craig, then you can do no better than Casino Royale.
L. Stine, with lashings of gore and a tone drawing on ’80s slasher flicks that delivers some genuine scares over the three films. It’s a bit too self-aware in places, but definitely one for the shouldn’t-be-as-good-as-it-is pile. We’re glossing over the “nepo baby” factor here—producer Adam Sandler takes a backseat supporting actor role here, allowing his two real-life daughters the spotlight—as this earns a pass by being a great teen comedy on its own merits. Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is obsessing over her upcoming bat mitzvah, insisting that it has to be perfect to set the course for the rest of her life, while older sister Ronnie (Sadie Sandler) provides backup in trying to convince their parents to throw a lavish party. Unfortunately, Stacy’s current life is far from perfect, chasing both acceptance from the popular kids at school and the affections of clueless Andy (Dylan Hoffman), who barely notices her.
