The best movies on Hulu span international hits and cheeky originals, with its curated selection fitting squarely between the content glut of Netflix and the highly selective Criterion Channel. More experimental than its peers, Hulu’s film library offers a surprising range of arthouse picks and Hollywood blockbusters. Still, navigating this catalog and finding something great to watch could stand to be a bit simpler. That’s where we come in.
Our 2025 list of the best movies on Hulu is updated regularly, reflecting movies that have left the service due to streaming churn and those that have been added. Sure, Hulu is best known for its TV arsenal, but its movies shouldn’t be discounted. In particular, the streamer’s relationship with the distributor Neon means that ton of excellent indies find their home here after they wow us in the theater. So whether you’re after Anora‘s scintillating romantic drama or the updated sci-fi action of Prey, Hulu has you covered—and so do we.
Here are the 50 best movies on Hulu right now:
1. Alien
Year: 1979
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt
Rating: R
Conduits, canals and cloaca—Ridley Scott’s ode to claustrophobia leaves little room to breathe, cramming its blue collar archetypes through spaces much too small to sustain any sort of sanity, and much too unforgiving to survive. That Alien can also make Space—capital “S”—in its vastness feel as suffocating as a coffin is a testament to Scott’s control as a director (arguably absent from much of his work to follow, including his insistence on ballooning the mythos of this first near-perfect film), as well as to the purity of horror as a cinematic genre. Alien, after all, is tension as narrative, violation as a matter of fact: When the crew of the mining spaceship Nostromo is prematurely awakened from cryogenic sleep to attend to a distress call from a seemingly lifeless planetoid, there is no doubt the small cadre of working class grunts and their posh Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) will discover nothing but mounting, otherworldly doom. Things obviously, iconically, go wrong from there, and as the crew understands both what they’ve brought onto their ship and what their fellow crew members are made of—in one case, literally—a hero emerges from the catastrophe: Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the Platonic ideal of the Final Girl who must battle a viscous, phallic grotesque (care of the master of the phallically grotesque, H.R. Giger) and a fellow crew member who’s basically a walking vessel for an upsetting amount of seminal fluid. As Ripley crawls through the ship’s steel organs, between dreams—the film begins with the crew wakening, and ends with a return to sleep—Alien evolves into a psychosexual nightmare, an indictment of the inherently masculine act of colonization and a symbolic treatise on the trauma of assault. In Space, no one can hear you scream—because no one is listening. —Dom Sinacola
2. Decision to Leave
Year: 2022
Director: Park Chan-wook
Stars: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il
Rating: R
A detective finds himself falling for his murder suspect, who is fingered for killing her husband. If that sounds like a plot ripped straight from an Alfred Hitchcock film, that’s because it’s textbook Park Chan-wook. The Korean director has been taking inspiration from Hitchcock for much of his career, one defined by twisty mysteries and perverse thrillers that the Master of Suspense likely could never have fathomed. Park’s latest is perhaps the director’s most Hitchcockian in the most crucial aspects, though also more subdued compared to his track record. Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is an overworked detective who is—in true clichéd, noir form—married to his job more than to his actual wife. The latter lives in quiet, foggy Iso while the “youngest detective in the country’s history” works weeks in Busan, where the crime and murder that sustains him runs rampant. The couple tends to talk about how to keep their marriage lively instead of actually acting upon it. Hae-jun’s wife (Lee Jung-hyun) relays helpful facts about the health benefits of having regular sex, suggesting that they commit to “doing it” once a week. Still, Hae-jun spends more time on stake-outs than in his own bed due to insomnia, which plagues him as a symptom of his pile of unresolved cases. Concurrently with another active case, Hae-jun finds himself adding another crime to his growing folder: A mountain-climber who fell tragically to his demise. Though by all appearances an accident (despite the late climber’s proficiency), the mountaineer’s much younger Chinese wife, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), quickly elicits suspicion from Hae-jun and his hot-head partner Soo-wan (Go Kyung-Pyo). Park introduces the film’s femme fatale in the most unassuming way: Camera on Hae-jun, with her measured voice off-screen as she enters the morgue to identify her deceased husband. Hyper-stylized, surprisingly funny and a little convoluted, at its heart, Decision to Leave is a tragic story about love, trust and, of course, murder. Arguably, Decision to Leave is more of a romance than anything else; the crime/mystery aspect of the narrative is the least interesting part, though one could assume that’s entirely intentional. While not negligible, the crime is more of a conduit through which the real meat of the story, the relationship between Hae-jun and Seo-rae, is catalyzed and slowly evolves. Their romance is dependent upon requited longing and looming, unresolved threat—the kind of threat that fuels Hae-jun’s sleepless life, the kind that he can’t live without. From the string-centric score to the noir archetypes, to the themes of romance, betrayal, obsession and voyeurism, Decision to Leave is Park’s most clear evocation of Hitchcock to date. Because of this, it becomes somewhat evident where the story will go, even when things take a turn. But the familiarity of the crime narrative reads as intentionally superficial, a vehicle for a more unconventional exploration of the standard detective/femme fatale romance which has laid the foundation for Park’s own sumptuous spin. While not Park’s best work, nor a masterpiece, Decision to Leave is an extravagant and hopelessly romantic thriller that weaves past and present into something entirely its own.—Brianna Zigler
3. Anora
Year: 2024
Director: Sean Baker
Stars: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Darya Ekamasova, Aleksei Serebryakov
Rating: R
By sheer volume of people screaming obscenities and insults at and past each other, Sean Baker’s newest film harkens back to his breakthrough Tangerine, in which a trans sex worker recently released from jail embarks on a day-long journey to track down her cheating boyfriend/pimp. Anora runs nearly an hour longer, is shot on 35mm film instead of an iPhone, and follows the whirlwind courtship of its title character, an exotic dancer played with fire by Mikey Madison, and the aftermath once she marries the son of Russian oligarchs. The movie uses this extra time, and a gorgeously expanded frame, to live in its scenes a little longer, past some of the big laughs they contain. When confronted with Russian and Armenian muscle, Ani reacts with combative self-defense. She’s not willing to leave her marriage quietly, or possibly at all. But Madison’s performance is less shticky than it might seem from the Brooklyn accent and brassy attitude; notes of panic and hurt creep onto her face in between her passages of crowdpleasing bravado. Baker’s whole movie is like that: wildly entertaining even as a surprising range of emotions show themselves. —Jesse Hassenger
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
Year: 2001
Director: Wes Anderson
Stars: Gene Hackman, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray
Rating: R
While Wes Anderson’s first two films took place in the Texas of his youth, The Royal Tenenbaums moves to his adopted city of New York to tell a story that bridges childhood and adulthood and the tremendous effects one has upon the other. The title refers to Gene Hackman’s character, Royal Tenenbaum, the patriarch of a family of childhood prodigies: Chas (Ben Stiller), a math genius with a head for business; Richie (Luke Wilson), a tennis star; and adoptive daughter Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), a playwright. The movie begins with Royal announcing his separation from his wife, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), before picking up years later with the children having gone on to great success (and great failure). As Etheline prepares to marry her longtime accountant (Danny Glover), Royal announces that he has stomach cancer and attempts to reconcile with the family he abandoned. The dysfunction and struggle for redemption would become hallmarks of Anderson’s oeuvre, but here, with a talented cast that also included frequent collaborators Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Kumar Pallana, the auteur’s gift for wringing humor out of hopelessness is unmatched. As every piece of set dressing, every item of clothing and every symmetrical camera frame seems painstakingly managed, the characters are spiraling out of control; their despair is deeply felt, and their redemption serves as a euphoric release. —Josh Jackson
5. Palm Springs
Year: 2020
Director: Max Barbakow
Stars: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, June Squib, Conner O’Malley, Jena Friedman
Rating: R
Imagine living the same day of your life over and over, stuck within an hour and a half of Los Angeles but so closely nestled in paradise’s bosom that the drive isn’t worth the fuel. Now imagine that “over and over” extends beyond a number the human mind is capable of appreciating. Paradise becomes a sun-soaked Hell, a place endured and never escaped, where pizza pool floats are enervating torture devices and crippling alcoholism is a boon instead of a disease. So goes Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs. The film never stops being funny, even when the mood takes a downturn from zany good times to dejection. This is key. Even when the party ends and the reality of the scenario sinks in for its characters, Palm Springs continues to fire jokes at a steady clip, only now they are weighted with appropriate gravity for a movie about two people doomed to maintain a holding pattern on somebody else’s happiest day. Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned time loop to force folks trapped in neutral to get retrospective on their personal statuses.—Andy Crump
6. Office Space
Year: 1999
Director: Mike Judge
Stars: Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, Stephen Root, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader
Rating: R
Great comedy almost always has a dark heart. (The flipside is also true of great horror: It almost always teeters on the edge of farce). But this makes sense: Laughter is our response to absurd and unexpected contradictions; comedy needs its darkness to fully flourish. Mike Judge, the writer/director of Office Space, knows this well. His humor concerns the lowest, saddest schmucks on the corporate ladder (thus 99% of us can relate) who mostly feel dead inside, turning to Kung Fu films and cheap beer to escape. It’s a subject as old as capitalism itself: Most of us are unhappy, not doing what we want, feeling our dreams escaping us more and more with each passing day. For protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), his goal is a subversive joy: Independently, from no wellspring of societal angst (unlike, say, The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock), he wants to do nothing. And besides being a hilarious antidote to scores of predictable, cookie-cutter hyperactive hero-protagonists, his needs feel absolutely real, and is what the corporate rat race deserves in an anti-hero. The do-gooder replaced by the do-nothing. It also helps that Judge has a cast perfectly on board with his tone. Together, they turn caricature into depth, a cartoon into vivid life. —Harold Brodie
7. Thank You For Smoking
Year: 2006
Director: Jason Reitman
Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, David Koechner, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, J. K. Simmons, Robert Duvall
Rating: R
Before Juno and Up In the Air, Jason Reitman’s penchant to revel in small details was on display in his first film, Thank You For Smoking, a witty, biting satire with insight and soul. Based on the novel by Christopher Buckley, the film follows Nick Naylor—head lobbyist for Big Tobacco—and his journeys across America as he spins on behalf of his industry while still trying to be a role model for his 12-year-old son. Supported by a wonderful cast that includes Maria Bello, William H. Macy, Robert Duvall, Adam Brody, Rob Lowe and Sam Elliott, Aaron Eckhart perfectly captures Naylor’s unique combination of cleverness, confidence, moral slickness and persistent likability. —Tim Regan-Porter
8. Thelma
Year: 2024
Director: Josh Margolin
Stars: June Squibb, Fred Hechinger, Richard Roundtree, Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, Malcolm McDowell
Rating: PG-13
Every good action hero knows you’ve got to stick to your guns. Ethan Hunt is a marathon-running master of disguise. John Wick has never lost count of his remaining bullets. Jackie Chan’s various inspectors and agents view the world as their personal set of monkey bars. When writer/director Josh Margolin’s debut Thelma keeps its sights trained on its rogue granny on a mission (June Squibb), its hilarious geriatric reframe of action-movie tropes has a game champion. Like its absentminded hero, the film can sometimes get sidetracked right when things are getting good, wandering down schmaltzy or twee narrative paths. But when it lets Thelma (and Squibb) do her thing, the comedy is perfectly cute and a stellar showcase for what an actor’s late career can offer.
In fact, much of Thelma is about adjusting our ideas around aging. There’s novelty in the comedic turns from the 94-year-old Squibb and her 81-year-old co-star, Richard Roundtree (in his final film role). These actors get to tap a well that’s unique to their age and the genre without sticking them into the boxes that generally contain old performers. They’re not utterly dignified, wisdom-dispensing elders. They’re not tragic victims of time. And they’re certainly, blessedly not the dreaded “rapping grannies” who are more punchline than performer. As the pair abscond on their quest to retrieve Thelma’s stolen savings, solicited from her cookie jar and mattress by phone scammers, they’re clearly complex, pulling off warm humor, endless charm and impressive stunts. A 94-year-old doesn’t have to ride a motorcycle off a cliff to make you gasp. —Jacob Oller
9. A Real Pain
Year: 2024
Director: Jesse Eisenberg
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Liza Sadovy, Daniel Oreskes
Rating: R
When we meet cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) it’s in an airport as they prepare to embark on a trip of great ancestral significance, traveling to Poland to participate in a Jewish historical tour in honor of their recently deceased grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who played an outsized role in their family hierarchy, having been particularly close with Benji until her passing. The latter has since clearly fallen into depression, something etched in the fatigue lines of Culkin’s face from the moment we first see him on an airport bench, desultorily scanning the unfamiliar faces as they swirl around him. Both cousins likely see the trip as some kind of conduit for emotional outpouring or transformation, but the relative lack of it ultimately afforded to them is seemingly part of Eisenberg’s thesis: We plan for events like a vacation to change who we are as people, but we’re naive to view change as something so transactional. Throughout, A Real Pain resists the gravitational pull of storytelling convention that insists upon clean character arcs and affirming revelations, opting for a more realistic journey in which it’s difficult to say what, if anything, has truly changed. This both makes the film interesting as a narrative experiment and no doubt frustrating to a subset of the multiplex audience weaned on weepy dramedies of this sort, in which everyone ultimately learns the specific lesson their character requires to unlock growth, like an RPG character earning XP. —Jim Vorel
10. The Prestige
Year: 2006
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, David Bowie
Rating: PG-13
In The Prestige two competing magicians try to outdo each other, but are really trying to achieve a brand of immortality. They are competing for the same audience’s faith, and they need all of it, because it is not something that can be shared (many religious institutions hold similar dogma for similar reasons). Each wants to invoke utter and absolute belief in their audiences, much like Nolan wants to do in his own, as if that achievement grants the doer divinity, whether or not it is built on tricks and illusions. Nolan begins the film with a trick, in fact, a shot of top hats littering the forest floor, with the voice-over asking, “Are you watching closely?” It is a shot out of time and place from the rest of the film, Nolan once again doing as he pleases, manipulating our perception of what we’re seeing and when so as to emulate the pledge, turn and prestige of the “magic” acts the film portrays. Our faith is built on lies we tell ourselves and others, Nolan seems to posit, and it’s a thesis on which he elaborates with his Dark Knight trilogy, insinuating that symbols are sacred not for their truth, but simply for what they inspire. —Chet Betz
11. Prey
Year: 2022
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Starring: Amber Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Dane DiLiegro, Stormee Kipp, Michelle Thrush, Julian Black Antelope
Rating: R
Filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator prequel Prey succeeds by daring to embrace what prior sequels did not: Simplicity. The basics of Predator cinema boil down to skull trophies and rival combat, but most of all, the thrill of an uninterrupted hunt. With brutal ease, writer Patrick Aison translates Predator codes to hunter-gatherer dichotomies in Native American cultures. There’s nothing scarier than the laws of natural hierarchies on display in their most elemental forms, and that’s what Prey recognizes with menacing regard. Trachtenberg understands what Predator fans crave, and executes without mercy. Set in the Northern Great Plains of 1719, Prey pits a Predator challenging any species’ alphas—wolves, bears, people—against a Comanche tribe. Taabe (Dakota Beavers) leads other boys on hunts while his sister Naru (Amber Midthunder) practices her deadliest skills in secrecy. She’s dismissed by most for her gender, but not by Taabe. Naru’s chance to defeat a lion (thanks to Taabe) and earn her warrior’s rite of passage fails when a Predator’s alien technology distracts from afar—which no one believes. Only Naru can protect her family and tribespeople from the unknown Yautja threat since no one will listen, which will be the warrior-wannabe’s ultimate test. Prey is inarguably the best Predator since the original. The film gets so much right, paying homage to John McTiernan’s 1987 masterwork—through cigars and direct quotes that it’ll have fans hooting—and adding Indigenous representation with real cultural strength. Trachtenberg and Aison keep things simple, and that’s the special sauce. The performances are tough-as-nails, action sequences absurdly gory and intensity streamlined like a high velocity arrow. By going back to beginnings, Prey sheds pounds of franchise dead weight for a leaner, meaner Predator prequel with all the spine-tearing, one-liner-spouting gladiatorial conquest that fans desire—computer-generated or not. —Matt Donato
12. In & Of Itself
Year: 2021
Director: Frank Oz
Stars: Derek DelGaudio
Rating: NR
How do you translate In & Of Itself—a stage meditation on identity and the self that needs to be a profound, shared experience—into something someone watches passively on a screen? If you’re Frank Oz and Derek DelGaudio, you do it by pulling off another great piece of “magic”—figuring out via performance, lens and subtle editing how to transmute the heart of the show without sacrificing the emotion that those two summoned 552 unique times inside that black box theater. Like Oz, DelGaudio is a multi-hyphenate performer, writer and magician—and the antithesis of what that last word usually conjures in the mind. He doesn’t use jazz hands, or sport gaudy tattoos or flashy clothes. Oz captures him as the play presents him: An understated, sad-eyed everyman who knows how to tell a compelling story. And he does just that. In the same space and format of the stage show, he conjures six wildly different stories/puzzles/tricks that take the viewer on an existential journey. Each one is almost deceptively simple, but the payoffs are bold and contingent on the participant being present and open to the gifts that DelGaudio bestows. Miraculously, it all manages to still translate through our seemingly impersonal screens.—Tara Bennett
13. My Cousin Vinny
Year: 1992
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Stars: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Ralph Macchio
Rating: PG-13
It’s easy to make fun of the stuffy middlebrow respectability that somehow eliminated the possibility of a legitimate Marisa Tomei Oscar win. But the truth is, it’s exactly that sense of propriety that makes Tomei’s Oscar one of the most satisfying on record, alongside Kevin Kline’s Best Supporting Actor win for A Fish Called Wanda four years earlier. Though My Cousin Vinny isn’t as expertly tuned, satirically inclined or flat-out as uproarious as A Fish Called Wanda, it’s fueled by similar cross-pond cooperation: British-born Jonathan Lynn directs a fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York personal-injury attorney attempting to defend his cousin (Ralph Macchio) falsely accused of murder. Like Wanda, the movie establishes a crime story in an opening that avoids big gags in favor of clearly, cleanly laid-out set-up, leaving the rest of the movie plenty of room for character comedy. And while Pesci is very funny—it’s his best outright comic performance—it’s Tomei who really makes music out of her profane, Noo Yawk-accented dialogue.–Jesse Hassenger
14. Tombstone
Directors: George P. Cosmatos, Kevin Jarre
Year: 1993
Stars: Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Michael Biehn, Powers Boothe, Robert Burke, Dana Delany, Sam Elliott, Stephen Lang, Joanna Pacula, Bill Paxton
Rating: R
The gang’s all here, perfectly cast, in this revisionist telling of the events leading up to carnage at the O.K. Corral and its aftermath. Kurt Russell is outstanding as barely retired lawman Wyatt Earp, who moves to the film’s namesake mining town. There he reunites with his brothers (Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton) and Val Kilmer’s superbly iconic Doc Holliday, partnering to open a gambling saloon before a band of outlaws threatens the peace. Though George P. Cosmatos was credited as director after screenwriter-initial director Kevin Jarre was fired, Russell has since said he himself handled the bulk of the duties. Whoever had the ultimate word, the result is a thrillingly old-fashioned Western tweaked for modern audiences. The extensive A-list ensemble includes Robert Mitchum as the film’s narrator, Harry Carey Jr. as Marshal Fred White and Charlton Heston as ranching tycoon Henry Hooker. —A.S.
15. Biosphere
Year: 2023
Director: Mel Eslyn
Stars: Mark Duplass, Sterling K. Brown
Rating: NR
It makes a lot of sense that in Mel Eslyn’s feature debut Biosphere, the last two people left on Earth after the apocalypse are Billy (Mark Duplass), the most recent U.S. president, and Ray (Sterling K. Brown), the head honcho’s life-long best friend/trusted advisor. It would also make sense to want to avoid them; most rational, hierarchy-hating individuals would rather face the noxious toxins of a scorched planet that spend 106 minutes listening to the fears and desires of two dudes who almost certainly had a hand in the fall of civilization. Yet Billy and Ray immediately endear themselves to viewers, recounting Mario fan theories and decades-old drama that recruits even the most hardened of anti-American cynics into their bro-y camaraderie. This isn’t your usual capsule film about how two people cope with the encroaching end of humanity, though. Weirdly (and rather beautifully), it’s a story about the proliferation of life despite, say, some initial biological setbacks. When one of the men begins to notice staggering changes to his own body, questions of gender, sex and procreation eventually arise, making things a tad awkward for a lifelong best friendship predicated on cisgender heterosexuality. Once initial hesitations subside, however, the bond between the two transforms and strengthens into something wonderfully unexpected. With a script co-written by Eslyn and Duplass, Biosphere retains the distinct brand of organic conversational comedy that’s been present in the duo’s collaborative crossover for the past nearly 15 years. (Eslyn originally met Duplass and Lynne Shelton while working on their 2009 film Humpday, and is now the president of Duplass Brothers Productions.) While Biosphere and Humpday in particular both deal with the social construct of sexuality and the consequences (and potential joys) of eschewing these stark labels, Eslyn’s effort is able to heighten this investigation through a sci-fi lens and static setting, leaving society behind to engage in a narrative experiment that could only exist with such complete destruction of American social and political mores. To that point, the film feels on par with a successful stage play, especially as it pertains to the filmmaker’s utilization of a single location and ability to generate intense chemistry from the two actors involved. Biosphere’s interrogation of gender, sexuality and biology isn’t some cheap, thoughtless ploy to speak to any semblance of a “current moment,” but rather begs deeper questions about the precarious nature of human life. More aptly, Eslyn’s film asserts that humanity’s future survival – and potentially its only hope – relies on a shift in our collective thinking regarding who we are and how we can help each other.—Natalia Keogan
16. That Thing You Do!
Year: 1996
Director: Tom Hanks
Stars: Tom Hanks, Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Ethan Embry, Charlize Theron
Rating: PG
A lovingly brutal, silly, and strange look at fame and the entertainment industry, the ’60s-set story of the one-hit Wonders and their shark-with-a-heart-of-gold manager (Tom Hanks, also in his directorial debut) is a charming hug of a movie. That Thing You Do is just as deceptively sharp and icky-sticky sweet as its central candy-coated pop tune, with odd deadpan supplementing the wide-eyed comedy delivered by its young cast. Adam Schlesinger’s earwormy tune and Hanks’ abilities as a first-time helmsman/writer keep the film brisk and light even as it dumps on the business of being a star–and those Average Americans who’ve been trained by cigar-munchers to go nuts for them. But, like Hanks’ slick-suited cynic, That Thing You Do can still see the bright side. Charming turns by Liv Tyler and Tom Everett Scott compliment more broadly comic (but still excellent) performances by Johnathon Schaech and Steve Zahn, giving the film that extra oomph of comfort needed to keep its ending happy and its journey a fun little farce that never takes itself too seriously.–Jacob Oller
17. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Year: 2024
Director: Wes Ball
Stars: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy.
Rating: PG-13
It should have never been a surprise that the Planet of the Apes franchise would rear its head again, though Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is content to build off the goodwill of the reboot trilogy rather than attempt another full reinvention. Wes Ball (director of the Maze Runner trilogy) takes charge from Matt Reeves, but continues to follow the legacy of science-project-turned-war-captain Caesar. Caesar’s quest for ape liberation, amid humanity’s downfall to the Simian Flu pandemic, and heroic death have afforded him martyrdom—legend status further down the timeline; as the film puts it, “many generations later.” That’s where we meet up with Noa (Owen Teague), a young ape whose main character traits are that he is young and an ape. He lives with his clan at a small, remote outpost where they have developed a pocket of peaceful habitation following the many years over which apes have slowly grown to be the dominant, more intelligent species compared to the ever-rare vestiges of humanity. Noa doesn’t even know what a “human” is—all he knows is that his clan refers to those things as “Echos” and that he’s occasionally seen a small one scavenging for food from their stock. That becomes the least of Noa’s problems when a rival ape tribe storms his home, killing his father and taking most of his family and friends hostage for someone calling themselves Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand). With that, Noa hops on his horse and sets out into the mysterious world beyond his encampment, and quickly learns how much his elders kept from him. Ball and writer Josh Friedman veer away from the suffocatingly bleak and dour tone that fueled Dawn of and War for the Planet of the Apes, and more towards traditional action-adventure blockbuster spectacle. Though the immediate plot machinations of Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes are more directly of the “ape vs. ape” variety than before, this dichotomy of human and ape coexistence is one carried over from the previous trilogy and, indeed, one inherent to the franchise itself. It’s compelling to see how the growth of the ape population, as humans have continued to shrink into the shadows, affects this dynamic so many years later. But the big problem here is that Kingdom feels like table-setting for a more interesting movie that could come later down the line.–Trace Sauveur
18. Little Miss Sunshine
Year: 2006
Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Stars: Steve Carrell, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Paul Dano, Abigail Breslin, Alan Arkin
Rating: R
If the key to comedy is timing, then Little Miss Sunshine proves that what’s true for performers is also true for filmmakers. Mom, Dad, two kids, Grandpa, and Uncle Frank—a suicidal college professor recently spurned by his lover—sit down at the dinner table in an early scene. It must’ve taken a dozen camera setups to catch every glance and muttered comment, and while the ensemble cast may have impeccable timing, in a scene like this they’re at the mercy of the editors. But they’re in good hands. The chaotic dinner scene pops like syncopated jazz, setting the tone for a warm, funny film that has more smiles than belly laughs; a film that somehow includes Friedrich Nietzsche and Marcel Proust in a story about a road trip and a beauty contest. All the adult actors, save Carell, have played dramatic parts in the past; their versatility is critical, and Carell seems ready to join their ranks. —Robert Davis
19. Anatomy of a Fall
Year: 2023
Director: Justine Triet
Stars: Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner, Swann Arlaud, Samuel Theis
Rating: R
Anatomy of a Fall is the tale of a stone-cold female author who steals her husband’s book idea, then mercilessly murders him. It’s also the sorry story of a widow who must defend herself in court after her depressed husband commits suicide by jumping from the attic window of their remote home in the French Alps. The truth remains ambiguous; we may learn the ending of the trial, but we will never know what really happened. The facts of the case: Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) is a writer whose books often borrow from her life—the death of her mother, the emotional rift from her father, and the accident that left her 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) partially blind. Her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), also a writer, was unable to pick Daniel up from school on time, leading to the accident, and thus blamed himself. One morning, Daniel goes on a walk with his dog Snoop and returns to find his father dead in the snow. Sandra, the only other person present in the house at the time, is the prime suspect, although she claims she was asleep. Although filmmaker Justine Triet leaves the ending ambiguous, it’s fairly easy to parse which of these two films she set out to make. Sandra might be an icy protagonist, but Triet’s view of her is largely sympathetic. If your romantic life were put under the scrutiny of the law, without time for preparation, would you come out as the victim or the perpetrator? While it may be fun to debate whether or not Sandra is guilty, Anatomy of a Fall is most compelling as a picture of a grieving child working his way through his father’s death. Its interrogation of a marriage is a touch too clinical to deliver any real dramatic gut punches, due both to the nature of the procedural genre and Sandra’s chilly personality. But Machado-Graner’s tear-jerking performance as a heartbroken kid searching for impossible answers after discovering his father’s lifeless corpse is another story. Anatomy of a Fall may not reinvent the wheel, but it’s still one of the most sharply made courtroom dramas in recent memory. —Katarina Docalovich
20. Plan B
Year: 2021
Director: Natalie Morales
Stars: Kuhoo Verma, Victoria Moroles, Michael Provost, Myha’la Herrold, Jolly Abraham, Jay Chandrasekhar
Rating: NA
The meeting of past and present is on full display in Plan B which puts a new spin on one of the tried and true plots of the genre—the road trip. Sunny (Kuhoo Verma) is a responsible student trying to do everything right. Her best friend Lupe (Victoria Moroles) seems to walk more on the wild side, but it’s really just bravado hiding some inner insecurity. When Sunny’s mom Rosie (Jolly Abraham) goes out of town for a real estate convention, Lupe convinces Sunny to throw a party to get the attention of Hunter (Michael Provost). “Who plays hockey in a cardigan? He’s like an athletic librarian,” Sunny sighs. But after one too many shots of some very questionable alcoholic punch (pickle juice is involved), Sunny has sex for the first time with the super religious and super geeky Kyle (Mason Cook from the late, great TV series Speechless). The next morning, to her horror, Sunny discovers the condom and its contents have been inside her all night long. The quest for the Plan B pill begins. All films require a willing suspension of disbelief and Plan B does need its viewers to not ask too many questions. Suffice to say a lot of Sunny and Lupe’s problems could have been solved by a simple Google search on their phones. But once you set aside any lingering doubts, the movie is a delight. That’s in large part due to first-time director Natalie Morales. Morales, known for her roles on Parks & Recreation, The Middleman and Dead to Me, clearly understands these characters and the emotional angst of high school. Perhaps because Morales is an actress herself, she’s even more conscious of ensuring that the female leads are treated with the respect they deserve.—Amy Amatangelo
21. Handling the Undead
Year: 2024
Director: Thea Hvistendahl
Stars: Renate Reinsve, Bjørn Sundquist, Bente Børsum, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bahar Pars, Inesa Dauksta
Rating: R
A zombie tragedy of false hope and brutal realizations, Handling the Undead adapts John Ajvide Lindqvist’s follow-up book to Let the Right One In with contemplative quiet. Director and co-writer Thea Hvistendahl positions three families afflicted by the sudden resurrection of a newly dead loved one as isolated units, staring in disbelief at the thing we’ve been trained since birth to avoid. A grandfather and mother care for a boy whose distended belly and unseeing eyes are like punishments inflicted upon them. An elderly woman jabbers away about her garden with the wife that walked back from her funeral. A comedian and his children ride an emotional roller coaster after his wife doesn’t stay dead after a car accident. Each is shot in strict compositions defined by straight lines, distancing angles and obscured frames. Hvistendahl’s lovely yet unnerving aesthetic is as cold and tangible as its corpses, paced with plenty of time for us to think. In this telling, the realities of death don’t go away with the unreality of revitalization, and the cannibalistic motivations that drive similar genre stories to crisis are avoided in favor of a creeping, omnipresent desperation. Where Let the Right One In‘s austere and icy vampire tale played more to our sympathies for its characters, Handling the Undead allows us to project our own fears and sadnesses onto its unaware zombies—just like those still living in its world.–Jacob Oller
22. Edge of Tomorrow
Year: 2014
Director: Doug Liman
Stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson
Rating: PG-13
Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) spends his days in the film’s near-future setting spinning the armed forces’ ongoing efforts against a hostile alien race (dubbed Mimics) without ever setting foot on a battlefield. At least until a gruff general (Brendan Gleeson) sends him on a particularly dicey mission. The result is Cage’s death, but the story doesn’t end there. Instead Cage awakes at the beginning of the day he died with his memory intact, and quickly discovers the resurrections will recur every time he dies. His only hope of escaping the endless cycle lies with super-soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who knows from experience exactly how Cage might be able to use this new ability to help humanity win the war of the worlds. Based on the manga All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka and adapted for the screen by Christopher McQuarrie (Cruise’s current go-to director completely in sync with his physically-defying action spectacle) and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, Edge of Tomorrow recalls other notable time loop sagas, including Groundhog Dayand Source Code in the witty and engaging way it moves its story forward piece by piece. As Cage relives the same day over and over again, he also learns how to become a true soldier, trains with (and falls for) Rita, discovers how the aliens function and ever so patiently formulates the perfect plan of attack. Like a video game hero with infinite lives, Cage has the opportunity to refine and correct every mistake he makes along the way. However long Cage is on that journey, Edge of Tomorrow is a blast, and Cruise carries the surprisingly amusing action like a pro—his skill with deadpan comedy proving even more valuable than his infamous enthusiasm for sacrificing his flesh over and over and over. —Geoff Berkshire
23. Rye Lane
Year: 2023
Director: Raine Allen-Miller
Stars: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah, Simon Manyonda, Benjamin Sarpong-Broni, Poppy Allen-Quarmby
Rating: NR
Part of the joy of making a romantic comedy is reimagining the stakes of a story, relitigating what is deemed cinematic. Rather than the traditional blockbuster terrain, you are charting the more familiar fallout from relational misunderstanding. Romantic comedies are bound by relatability, and truly great romantic comedies understand this relatability grows from specificity. Where many recent examples of this genre fall short is in dodging this degree of specificity, scared to ground an audience in the monotony of the everyday. Rye Lane leans into this perceived monotony, animating everything with the promise of new love. Rye Lane takes place over the course of a day, following Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) as they wander across South London, concocting new, increasingly ridiculous ways of spending time together. They use local landmarks as a set of interpersonal stepping stones, guiding one another through the physical ruins of their own romantic histories. Everything is captured in sharp, bright colors, reflecting the joy buried in every corner of this city. But the color scheme is only one way director Raine Allen-Miller navigates the playfulness of Dom and Yas’ dynamic. She stages elaborate setups to heighten their budding relationship: A cinema full of multiple Doms, passionately cheering Yas on as she recreates her recent breakup, is both a funny joke and a constructive character beat, showing two people who bond over a shared way of coping. Allen-Miller experiments with the focus and angle of the camera, switching between the extremes of the fish-eye lens and wide shots to capture the blurred and busy texture of the city. Their love story is one dedicated to recontextualizing their surroundings, to overhearing an embarrassing conversation and seeking out the other’s amused gaze, to buying burritos from the stall in Brixton and letting the other one order for you. Each new location is a gateway into understanding the other person, a prompt for a new story. In this way Rye Lane builds a lovingly transportive setting. Thanks to Rye Lane’s specificity and care for its central relationship, Allen-Miller has made one of the best British comedies–certainly one of the best London-based films—of the last decade.—Anna McKibbin
24. The First Omen
Year: 2024
Director: Arkasha Stevenson
Stars: Nell Tiger Free, Tawfeek Barhom, Sônia Braga, Ralph Ineson, Bill Nighy
Rating: R
Unless it’s something like the Evil Dead franchise, I generally don’t give horror sequels or prequels a passing thought other than “obvious insta-garbage.” How wrong I was about The First Omen, the feature debut of writer/director Arkasha Stevenson. Her film immediately struck me not as a franchise cash-in, but as the work of someone who deeply understands what makes good horror tick and who made this installment almost completely their own. The small handful of Marvel-esque Easter eggs are entirely negligible for how well the film succeeds at being an affecting and stomach-churning work of modern horror. The First Omen kicks off with a queasy conversation between two English priests, Father Harris (Charles Dance) and Father Brennan (Ralph Ineson), over the conception of an unknown cursed child, a girl (Damien is a boy, yes—but I’ll keep this review spoiler-free) whose birth will bring forth an all-powerful evil. Kept elusive and told via a collage of disturbing yet striking images, we leave this scene and cut to the arrival of a young American nun-to-be named Margaret (Nell Tiger Free). She befriends her new roommate, the free-spirited Luz (Maria Caballero), who is determined to use her remaining days of secular freedom spent as the hedonistic young woman she still is. One night, Luz gets a reluctant Margaret all gussied up and drags her to a disco, where Margaret meets a nice Italian boy with whom she shares an intimate moment. The next day, she wakes up in a puddle of her own sweat, the memory of the previous night already erased; Luz assures her that she got Margaret home safely. A grave encounter with Father Brennan portends impending doom, and Margaret begins to see and experience strange, diabolical things. Stevenson, aided by co-writers Tim Smith and Keith Thomas, makes The First Omen remarkably fresh while utilizing old tricks. Pans and zooms give the filmmaking a throwback feel (cinematography credited to Aaron Morton), jump scares function as earned accoutrement for a well-crafted atmosphere instead of supplanting actual horror filmmaking, and there are images that are genuinely difficult to look at—not just because they make the audience look at something particularly visceral, but because of the way the shot is blocked, the way the lighting is lit, the way a body is not quite as it should be. Not overtly gory but just off, which is often far more skin-crawling than blood and guts ever are. The First Omen is an exceedingly successful first feature, and an invigorating film within a genre’s increasingly limp mainstream.–Brianna Zigler
25. Minding the Gap
Year: 2018
Director: Bing Liu
Rating: NR
In a year rich with slice-of-life glimpses at pubescence in flux care of the arrested development of skateboard crews, Minding the Gap is undoubtedly the best of its cinematic ilk—not because it’s “real,” but because it’s so clearly focused on interrogating the toxicity that keeps these kids from truly growing up. In Rockford, Illinois, just a smidge too far outside of Chicago to matter, three kids use Liu’s camcorder to chronicle their days spent avoiding responsibility and the economic devastation suffered by so many Rust Belt cities of its kind: Zack, a cute and reckless elder of the crew, about to embark on fatherhood with his (noticeably younger) girlfriend Nina; Keire, a seemingly always-grinning black kid who stays stiffly quiet whenever Zack claims that he has permission to use certain racial epithets, or when another kid insists that white trash kids have it the same as black kids; and Bing, the director himself, one of the few from his friend group able to escape Rockford. Splicing nostalgic footage of their time skating with urgent documents of their burgeoning adult life, Liu builds a portrait of the modern male in Middle America, lacing ostensibly jovial parties and hang-outs with shots of Rockford billboards vilifying absentee parents and pleas from Nina not to tell Zack that she admitted on-camera he’s hit her. As Liu discovers more and more about the abuse indelible to the young lives of his two friends, he reveals his own story of fear and pain at home, terrorized by his stepfather up until the man’s death, pushing him to confront his mother in the film’s climax about what’s been left unsaid about their mutual tormenter. It all breathes with the nerve-shaking relief of finally having these burdens exposed, though Liu is careful to ground these moments with the harsh reality of Rockford and those towns like it: Billboards beg men not to leave, not to hit their family members, not to take out their deep-seated emotional anxiety on their loved ones, because it will happen anyway. Zack, who was abused, will pass on that abuse. We hope he won’t, because we see simultaneously how he skates, how all of his friends skate together, the act less about being great at skating (though a sponsorship could help their pocketbooks), and more about finding respite from the shackles of their worlds. That Liu shoots these scenes—especially the film’s opening, set to a stirring classical score—with so much levity and beauty, with so much kinetic freedom, only assures that, for as much as Crystal Moselle and Jonah Hill love their subjects, Liu lives with them. He’s shared the weight of that. —Dom Sinacola
26. Lee
Year: 2024
Director: Ellen Kuras
Stars: Kate Winslet, Andy Samberg, Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Andrea Riseborough, Noémie Merlant, Josh O’Connor
Rating: R
When Antony Penrose discovered a box of journals, love letters and thousands upon thousands of photographs taken during World War II hidden in his mother’s attic, he saw a woman he did not recognize. His mother, Lee Miller, had never recounted her experiences of the war to her family, nor did she go to much effort to promote her work. It was only after her death in 1977 and upon the discovery of these items that her son would come to learn who his mother really was—which would in turn provide the inspiration for Ellen Kuras’ Lee, a gripping biopic documenting the life of the photojournalist.
Kuras avoids fashioning Lee as a generic war biopic by using Miller’s life story as a means through which to explore the myriad experiences of women during war. The relationships Miller (Kate Winslet) builds with women—and the combative nature of most of her relationships with men—shape much of the film. As a female photographer and war journalist, she is constantly belittled by her male peers; fellow photographer Cecil Beaton (Samuel Barnett) makes scathing remarks about her age and appearance, she is forbidden military access where her male counterparts are welcomed, and she is told point blank by a colonel that they “don’t send women into combat.” Each double standard fuels Miller’s desire to pursue her career with that much more fervor despite the warnings from her friends and colleagues of the danger ahead. —Nadira Begum
27. Independence Day
Year: 1996
Director: Roland Emmerich
Stars: Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Vivica A. Fox, Randy Quaid
Rating: PG-13
They pretty much don’t make action movies like Independence Day anymore, although if you ask someone who caught Independence Day: Resurgence, they’ll tell you that’s probably a good thing. Regardless, there’s a certain sheen to this particular brand of FX-driven pre-2000s disaster blockbuster, an earnestness of conviction in terms of clear-cut characters like Jeff Goldblum’s “David Levinson”—call it a willingness to believe that the audience will be 100 percent on board with a protagonist from the very beginning, rather than questioning his methods. As for the rest of the cast, we get a who’s who of ’90s delights, whether it’s an ascendant, wisecracking Will Smith—one year before Men in Black would cement him as leading man material—or Bill Pullman as the flyboy American president ready to deliver one of cinema’s greatest jingoistic addresses. Independence Day doesn’t shy away from its inspirations as pulp (it might as well be a remake of Earth vs. The Flying Saucers as far as the alien motivations are concerned) but it dresses up its Saturday morning cartoon plot with undeniably ambitious spectacle, even when viewed 20-plus years later. That exploding White House, not to mention the effortless camaraderie of Goldblum and Smith in all their scenes together, cement Independence Day among the most rewatchable sci-fi action films of the past two decades. —Jim Vorel
28. How to Blow up a Pipeline
Year: 2023
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Stars: Ariela Barer, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck, Sasha Lane, Jayme Lawson, Marcus Scribner, Jake Weary, Irene Bedard
Rating: R
Andreas Malm’s 2021 book How to Blow Up a Pipeline saw its argument for more climate activism morph into an argument for different climate activism. Money isn’t cutting it. Protests aren’t either. Maybe sabotage will. Its vitality flows like an antidote to the poisonous nihilism surrounding the climate crisis from progressives; its fiery points threaten the crisp piles of cash collected by conservatives. Filmmaker Daniel Goldhaber’s air-punching, chair-clenching, heart-in-mouth adaptation is the best way to convert people to its cause—whether they’re dark green environmentalists or gas-guzzling Senate Republicans. Adapting a nonfiction treatise on the limits of nonviolent protest into a specific, heist-like fiction is a brilliant move by Goldhaber and his co-writers Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol. In its execution of a carefully crafted plan, held together by explosive and interpersonal chemistry, it thrusts us into its thrilling visualized philosophy. How to Blow Up a Pipeline isn’t naïve enough to rely on optimism, opting instead to radicalize competence. Think of How to Blow Up a Pipeline like a word problem. The most exciting word problem you can imagine, where the two trains leaving the station collide in an explosive snarl of steel, your onboard loved ones saved only by quick thinking and teamwork. How to Blow Up a Pipeline contextualizes its concepts into actions so we can better understand, internalize and identify with them. There’s not a moment lost getting us there. Malm’s chapters (”Learning from Past Struggles,” “Breaking the Spell” and “Fighting Despair”) are elegantly transposed, their high-level arguments humanized into character and conversation. The ensemble—led by student protestors Xochitl (Barer) and Shawn (Marcus Scribner), whose plan organically gathers together surly Native bomb-builder Michael (Forrest Goodluck), horny crustpunk couple Rowan (Kristine Froseth) and Logan (Lukas Gage), terminally ill Theo (Sasha Lane) and her reluctant girlfriend Alisha (Jayme Lawson), and disillusioned landowner Dwayne (Jake Weary)—is colorfully drawn and filled out through savvy, well-cut flashbacks. Everyone has their reasons, and we have everyone’s back. By structuring its simple plot (blow up a goddamn pipeline) as a zigzag, How to Blow Up a Pipeline builds its team without losing steam. It’s as efficient and thoughtful in its planning as its heroes, and the results are just as successful. It’s as satisfying as any good bank job, only it’s stealing a little bit more time on this planet from the companies looking to scorch the earth. Responding to tragedy not with hopelessness but with proficiency, it’s not a dreamy or delusional movie. It knows its sabotage doesn’t take place in a vacuum. It understands that people get hurt. What makes How to Blow Up a Pipeline great, is that it so deftly wins us to its cause anyway. It’s absolutely electric filmmaking.—Jacob Oller
29. Longlegs
Year: 2024
Director: Oz Perkins
Stars: Maika Monroe, Nicolas Cage, Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, Kiernan Shipka
Rating: R
The first thing I wanted to do after seeing Longlegs is take a shower. Some horror movies have you looking over your shoulder on the way out of the theater, jumping at shadows in the parking lot. These are the horror movies that follow you. Longlegs doesn’t follow you. You’re drenched in Longlegs. It’s all over you—in your hair, on your clothes—by the time the credits roll. Its fear is less tangible than a slasher or a monster, even less than a demon. It’s just something in the air, in the back of your mind, like the buzz of a fluorescent lamp. Oz Perkins’ Satanic serial killer hunt is his most accessible movie yet, putting the filmmaker’s lingering, atmospheric power towards a logline The Silence of the Lambs made conventional. Precisely crafted and just odd enough to disarm you, allowing its evil to fully seep in, Longlegs is a riveting tale of influence and immersion. After FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) successfully, and mysteriously, locates a killer on little more than a hunch, her charming boss, Agent Carter (Blair Underwood), assigns the quiet savant to a long-dormant investigation into a suspect known only by how he signs the coded letters found at the crime scenes: Longlegs (Nicolas Cage). Only, the mystery to be solved isn’t Clue. You’re not filling in weapon, location, suspect. The question crawling under Longlegs’ skin is how grounded this case actually is, whether it’s a truly by-the-book procedural or whether that book is bound in skin and filled with spells. Lee is tight-lipped and uneasy in her own skin, a child’s soft voice wrapped in a blue FBI windbreaker. But she doesn’t balk at corpses, or head for the hills once she realizes she’s on Longlegs’ radar. Longlegs could also feel like familiar territory for Cage, at first glance. And that’s all we get at first, glances. Like any good monster movie, we’re denied a close look at Longlegs for a decent chunk of the movie’s three segments, but once we see him, that’s all you can think about. You see how a demonic seed has been planted and left to its own devices, down in some forgotten cellar, festering in the dark. As Perkins’ story progresses, you wonder where else those seeds have spread. It’s rotten Americana, every god-fearing Bible-thumper’s fears proven right. Longlegs contains a handful of impressively controlled performances, a dilapidated aesthetic rich with negative space, a queasy score, a methodical but always gripping pace, and one of the most original and upsetting horror villains in a long while. Perkins’ haunted vision is so convincing, you also might feel like scrubbing it off of you after you’ve hustled back to the safety of your home.–Jacob Oller
30. Perfect Days
Year: 2023
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Kôji Yakusho, Yumi Asô, Tokio Emoto
Rating: NR
Actor and recently christened Cannes Film Festival award-winner Koji Yakusho introduced my New York Film Festival screening of his new Wim Wenders-helmed film, Perfect Days (which shares its name with the Lou Reed song it samples) with a plea. He implored us to make use of Tokyo’s magnificent public restrooms if we were ever to visit the city. I was struck not only by the multitude of public restrooms ready for use at a moment’s notice in Tokyo, but the quality of these restrooms. I digress—because in real life these same public restrooms might not have a person like Hirayama (Yakusho) to take care of them. Hirayama is a quiet, solitary man who revels in the bare-bones simplicity of his life, happy to wake up before the sun creeps out and start his day of making toilet bowls sparkle. Hirayama chooses his words so carefully that most of the time he does not speak at all, especially when paired with his motormouthed “Tokyo Toilet” cohort Takashi (Tokio Emoto), who practically speaks for him, but establishes Hirayama’s persistent peace of mind. When Hirayama is not spending the bulk of his time tending to bathrooms, he’s taking photos of the sun, peeking behind the trees, with an old Olympia film camera, or showering at the public bathhouse, or digging up saplings to repot in his home, or listening to his ancient cassette tapes of Lou Reed and Nina Simone. But the rhythm of the man’s tranquil day-to-day is interrupted when his teenage niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) drops by his tiny apartment for an unannounced visit, having run away from her mother, Hirayama’s estranged, wealthy sister. Though directed by the German Wenders, Perfect Days’ co-writer, Takuma Takasaki, admitted before my screening that the film made him appreciate Tokyo, a city he knows and loves very well already, even more. It’s clear that Wenders has an extensive rapport with Japan’s capital, and his camera (cinematography credited to Franz Lustig) lovingly paints the city as a place defined by its coexistence between urbanism and nature—like Hirayama attempting to coexist in simplicity against the demands of the 2020s. Still, there is despair and heartache tucked into the sentimental folds of the frame, all of which is carried masterfully by the great Koji Yakusho. Perfect Days revels in its ambient minimalism as much as its own protagonist, though something is missing. One might ask for more from Perfect Days, a film that finds itself a bit too understated in its understatement. But sometimes it is just nice to be reminded that there are pockets of beauty in a world which does all it can to extinguish them—like finding a store that doesn’t make you buy something in order to get a code to use the bathroom.—Brianna Zigler
31. Sideways
Year: 2004
Director: Alexander Payne
Stars: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh
Rating: R
Sideways is a pretty great buddy comedy (featuring a hilariously brazen performance from Thomas Haden Church), but it’s an even better romantic comedy. At its heart is the tender relationship between Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Maya (Virginia Madsen), two bruised divorcees who forge a tenuous connection to each other. From both of their beautiful speeches expressing their love of Pinot Noir to the wonderfully poignant open-ended knock at the door, their romance is note-perfect.–Jeremy Medina
32. BlackBerry
Year: 2023
Director: Matt Johnson
Stars: Glenn Howerton, Jay Baruchel, Matt Johnson, Michael Ironside, Cary Elwes, Rich Sommer, Saul Rubinek, SungWon Cho
Rating: R
There is much to love about Matt Johnson’s BlackBerry, and then there is the ineffable gravitational pull of its furious white-hot core: A 40-something pale man’s bald pate, so smooth it seems forged by eons of tectonic movement, from which erupts perfect sleazy ‘80s-business-guy bon mots alloyed to unbridled sociopathic rage. Johnson’s always been at the heart of his films, starring in The Dirties and Operation Avalanche and serving as the source of most of the chaos steering Nirvanna the Band the Show, his series with Jay McCarrol, but in BlackBerry he plays Doug, some guy who technically doesn’t even exist. No, Doug is nothing in BlackBerry next to the movie’s everything, Glenn Howerton as Jim Balsillie, a vessel for the alarming voice of Canada’s most radioactive co-CEO. Lives inevitably wilt in his orbit. “I’m from Waterloo, where the VAM–PIRES hang out!” he hollers at a room of NHL executives, each syllable pronounced as if the sentence is punctuated by tombstones. Based on Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry, the film tells of the rise and fall of the pocket device company, from its exploited beginnings in the mid-’90s as the brainchild of the timid, always-inward-looking Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and his best friend Doug, to the company’s collapse in the wake of the iPhone’s emergence (and more than one SEC violation on Jim’s part). Johnson’s regular cinematographer, Jared Raab, shoots the film more like D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ Clinton doc The War Room than The Social Network, BlackBerry’s inescapable predecessor, but Johnson’s aim is no less Icarus-like: To make a period piece about the founding of a transformational and dramatically tragic tech company with an inimitable, blackly comic performance at it center.—Dom Sinacola
33. Happiest Season
Year: 2020
Director: Clea Duvall
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Dan Levy, Burl Moseley, Aubrey Plaza
Rating: R
The grounded sobriety of Happiest Season lasts long enough for a reprieve from the still-present cornball Christmas melodrama, which director/co-writer Clea Duvall stages with the relish of someone who appreciates that melodrama in spite of themselves. But frankly, if every Hallmark movie was this over-the-top hilarious, they’d all at least be watchable as background noise, but then we’d have less reason to appreciate Duvall’s appropriation of their core components in Happiest Season. Kristen Stewart, continuing to prove wrong all the smug remarks about her one-dimensional dourness starting around 2008, remains a treasure. She’s lively, lovely, and having a wonderful time vibing with Mackenzie Davis. The latter ends up shouldering juicier theatrical speeches and breakdowns as her character, Harper, unravels under the dual pressure of being the daughter she thinks her parents want and being the girlfriend she wants to be to Stewart’s Abby. The ensemble keeps things fresh throughout these conventional plot beats, with Mary Holland coming out ahead as Duvall’s friction-seeking SRBM. Anytime the atmosphere chafes, Holland flies into the room and annihilates it with adorable, well-meaning awkwardness. She’s a gift, but the whole cast glitters in this holiday fare. Everyone’s tuned to Duvall’s wavelength, playing their human sides while keeping the mood appropriately hammy and saccharine—just sweet enough without killing the pancreas. And that’s the film’s secondary message: It’s okay to like Christmas schmaltz. The greater message, of course, is that it’s okay to struggle with the sometimes-bruising process of coming out. Duvall dovetails the seasonal pap with her characters’ pain, treating it like ointment for their mellowing emotional stings. The message isn’t just about liking Christmas. The message is that everybody deserves a Christmas movie.—Andy Crump
34. Cobweb
Year: 2023
Director: Samuel Bodin
Stars: Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, Cleopatra Coleman, Woody Norman
Rating: R
Samuel Bodin’s upstart Cobweb arrived seemingly out of nowhere in the summer of 2023, and was sadly given very shoddy marketing that doomed it to a quick and uneventful theatrical release before it settled into the morass of VOD availability. That’s a shame, as Cobweb is a very skillfully directed horror yarn from the young filmmaker, unraveling a tangle of familiar tropes in a manner that is able to refresh almost all of them. The film has been expertly framed as a perspective we are seeing entirely from child height, featuring a grimy layer of nightmare unreality through which young Peter (Woody Norman) begins experiencing nightly disturbances from within the walls of his bedroom. It all has the feeling of dark fantasy or fairytale rather than the cold light of our own reality, helped along by scenery-chewing sinister performances from Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr as Peter’s not-at-all-suspicious parents. There are moments here still helplessly bound by cliche like a fly caught in a spider’s web, but Cobweb’s genuinely unnerving visuals, oppressive atmosphere, Halloween-rich setting and gonzo third act lift it above so many other superficially similar stories. —Jim Vorel
35. When Evil Lurks
Year: 2023
Director: Demián Rugna
Stars: Ezequiel Rodriguez, Demián Salomon, Luis Ziembrowski, Silvia Sabater, Marcelo Michinaux
Rating: R
When Evil Lurks starts with a bang. Well, two bangs, to be precise. The film opens with brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomon) awoken by a pair of gunshots that pierce through an otherwise quiet night in their sleepy rural town. The two then set off to investigate the noise, only to come across a rotting subhuman bathing in his own fetid fluids and excrement. Directed by Demián Rugna, When Evil Lurks follows Pedro and Jimmy’s desperate attempts to contain the infectious evil at hand. It quickly leaps out from under a boldly original and bone-chilling premise and wastes no time hooking its viewers and setting the scene for a film that is impressively committed to defying horror conventions and being its own beast. Indeed, When Evil Lurks takes place in a uniquely-crafted and novel world where characters are all-too familiar with the disease that has taken root in their village. But When Evil Lurks isn’t just a grim and nightmarish cautionary tale – it’s also insanely fun. The film is filled with a profusion of I-can’t-believe-they-went-there moments, one of which involves the creepiest goat you’ve seen since The Witch, another of which sees a kid getting bitten by a zombie dog, and the rest of which are so delightfully gruesome that you’ll simply have to see them to believe them. These shocking moments shine even brighter when juxtaposed with the understated stylization of the film. Mariano Suárez’s cinematography is refreshingly restrained, and through limited, stagnant camera setups, he positions his characters in a stark and eerily real world. Similarly, When Evil Lurks manages to escape the trap of punctuating every jump scare with a deafening musical cue. Instead, the score simply accompanies the viewer through the film’s emotional beats without being manipulative. When a filmmaker finds a way to talk about fears that have existed for literal centuries, that’s something to celebrate–and that is exactly what Rugna has done.—Aurora Amidon
36. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Year: 2022
Director: Sophie Hyde
Stars: Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack
Rating: R
If you thought the “sex worker with a heart of gold” genre had fully blown its load, then director Sophie Hyde’s latest endeavor will surprise you. Warming hearts and other body parts, she and screenwriter Katy Brand have crafted a delicate, hornt and hilarious two-hander between a widowed retiree (Emma Thompson) and the lean boy-toy of her very modest dreams (Daryl McCormack). Good Luck to You, Leo Grande can bobble the more dramatic elements of the pair’s professional and personal relationship, but its feel-good story satisfies to completion. Nancy plans everything out. The ex-Religious Education teacher never comes unprepared and is prepared to never come. And yet she arrives at her precisely booked hotel room early, prepared with a sexual to-do list. Leo Grande (which, what a great name for a gigolo), in his way, does the same. He arrives with his backpack full of sex toys and mood music, armed with disarming conversational techniques to put his clients at ease. Over the course of their encounters, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande unpacks how this level of intimacy—not inherently sexual, but with sexual availability acting as a gateway to vulnerability—can be therapeutic. In this would-be secret world—confined to fake names, and the blocky furniture and sterile familiarity of a hotel room—you can be more honest than in real life. A painfully cheesy penultimate scene gives way to glorious release, once again highlighting the movie’s best features and boldest choices. Thompson and McCormack’s potent bond elevates the humble film, its talky core giving both the rich foundation of a play. They make the smart film smarter, the sexy film sexier, and the funny film funnier. They even use the word “concupiscence” in a sentence. Multiple times! Even if it takes some negotiation to figure out where its comfort zone lies, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande still finds a hell of a sweet spot. —Jacob Oller
37. All of Us Strangers
Year: 2023
Director: Andrew Haigh
Rating: R
In All of Us Strangers, Haigh makes clear that loneliness need not confine itself to physically desolate landscapes. The solitary, melancholy Adam (Andrew Scott) seems reasonably well-off, though he insists to his neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal) that he’s not a particularly rich or famous type of writer. Still, he can afford a nice apartment in a London high-rise where, still, he feels removed from the world. For the moment, he and Harry appear to be the only tenants in the new building, and Adam’s job does afford him the ability to spend his days at home, alone. He only meets Harry when the younger man knocks on his door in a flirtatious, drunken stupor, assuming (correctly) that Adam is also gay. Adam is working on a screenplay inspired by his childhood years, which has him thinking about one likely reason contributing to his loneliness: His parents both died in a car crash when he was only 12. Seeking to reconnect with his roots, Adam is drawn back to his old neighborhood, a train ride away from London, and is surprised yet somehow not exactly shocked at what he eventually finds: His father (Jamie Bell) and mother (Claire Foy), living in their old house, just as he remembers it. He is aware of the strangeness, and so are his parents; they understand that they have not been with Adam all these years, and that their renewed time with him may be limited, subject to disappear at any moment. The reunited family tries not to focus on this, instead having tea and catching up with Adam’s adult life. Are his parents ghosts? Transposed memories? Hallucinations generated with unusual calm and rationality? Haigh, adapting a 1987 novel just called Strangers, does not commit to one particular explanation – even when it seems like maybe he has. Yet All of Us Strangers doesn’t have the watery, wishy-washy quality of the more precious strains of magical realism. In its way, it is as clear-eyed and upfront as it needs to be. The performances are note perfect, as they must be with such a small cast. For all its open-heartedness, All of Us Strangers doesn’t peddle easy uplift. The movie suggests that loneliness, isolation or ostracization – whether created by circumstance or intolerance – don’t heal like normal physical wounds, and that all the time in the world given over to that process wouldn’t necessarily feel like enough. A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.–Jesse Hassenger
38. Drugstore June
Year: 2024
Director: Nicholaus Goossen
Stars: Esther Povitsky, Bobby Lee, Beverly D’Angelo, Danny Griffin, Haley Joel Osment
Rating: NR
Stand-up comedian and actor Esther Povitsky stars in Drugstore June, a coming-of-age crime story where social media makes for a dangerous weapon, boredom an impetus for a full-scale detective investigation, and youthful delusion an impressive decoy for charm, depth, and dimension. Following a mid-level social media influencer, June (Povitsky), after her place of employment is robbed clean, Drugstore June takes us on more than a quest for the culprit of the crime, but for purpose and meaning in life.
June’s main characteristics are her devotion to her small, but loyal following (shoutout June Squad), her unequivocal—if not unfounded—self-confidence, and her impressive and unending appetite for cheeseburgers, chips and any sort of junk food she can find; June is the quintessential Gen-Zer. Drugstore June leans heavily on stereotypes, helping us access June’s inner world, before cleanly and satisfyingly showing us how much more there is to her than meets the eye. Her relationship with food plays a major role in the plot, and as much as she’s “dedicated” to her “nutrition,” she has a nearly religious reverence for—as many of us do—a little tasty treat, a commitment which often comes in the form of an ungodly amount of tacos and routinely lands her in the doctor’s office. Other typical impulses from the social media generation featured in the film include an infatuation with health and wellness bordering on hypochondria. A diagnosis is like gold to her; on her frequent doctors visits, she strives to land herself on the Autism spectrum, and she refuses gluten within the film’s first few minutes, one of the many allergies she hopes to earn. —Felicia Reich
39. Ferrari
Year: 2023
Director: Michael Mann
Stars: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell, Patrick Dempsey
Rating: R
More casual appreciators of director Michael Mann might have understandably wondered if he was permanently locked into a late-period For Mannheads Only phase of his career. But you don’t need to be a Blackhat apologist to vibe with Ferrari; in fact, some of his most dedicated followers might blanch at the very lack of neon-dotted opportunities for pure cityscape viewing. Structurally, Ferrari is closer to an Aaron Sorkin-style compressed biopic, following the famous Italian carmaker (Adam Driver) during a time of personal and professional crisis. His mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) wants him to claim their son with his famous name; doing so would risk the wrath of his powerful wife Laura (Penelope Cruz), who he needs to keep his company from bankruptcy. In the midst of all this, he can secure his future as a manufacturer of race cars if his team triumphs at a major (and dangerous) cross-country race. Mann, working in a more classical mode than his digital-forward experiments, transcends this year’s crop of brand-name-as-protagonist business-plan cinema by turning Enzo Ferrari into one of his haunted, taciturn control-seekers, juxtaposing the freedom of the road with its technological limitations (and personifying it with the cars’ artist-creator). Driver, steering through soulful reflection and deadpan humor, proves true to his name.–Jesse Hassenger
40. The Damned
Year: 2025
Director: Thordur Palsson
Stars: Odessa Young, Joe Cole, Siobhan Finneran, Rory McCann, Turlough Convery, Lewis Gribben, Francis Magee, Mícheál Óg Lane
Rating: R
You can say this, for The Damned, the feature film debut of Icelandic director Thordur Palsson: It understands the shivery allure of a classic ghost story. And not only that, but it understands the captivating allure of being physically present for a great ghost story, to be able to glance around at your fellows as the storyteller weaves an unbearable web of suspense, everyone lost in a sort of trance, their present circumstances utterly forgotten. Palsson and cinematographer Eli Arenson capture one of these moments early in this story of fishermen at a remote outpost who will eventually tangle with the dual threat of guilt and madness, a brief indication of the spirit of camaraderie that might exist in such a small, tight-knit group in better times. As an old caretaker tells a tale to chill the blood of all the assembled fisherfolk, Arenson captures the wondrous mix of delight and awe in those Spielberg Faces with slow, patient zooms. In doing so, he preserves the characters as they fortify their bonds against the ever-grinding ice, the absence of fish, the oppressiveness of hunger and disease. Tonight, they celebrate their shared connection. Tomorrow? Perhaps they throw it all to the howling winds outside their flimsy fortifications. —Jim Vorel
41. The Order
Year: 2024
Director: Justin Kurzel
Stars: Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, Alison Oliver, Marc Maron
Rating: R
Directed with a cool precision by Justin Kurzel, and based on the non-fiction book The Silent Brotherhood, the film follows a burnt-out agent appropriately named Husk, who in turn is played equally appropriately by a man named Law. We’re treated to a grizzled, cigarette-chomping mustachioed Jude Law looking like he’s been run over by a liquor delivery truck, and the result is fantastic, a composite character reflecting the realities of those that did the actual investigation, heated up to a hard boil, and exactly the kind of cop (too cerebral for his own good) that elevated 1970s cinema.
Moving to Idaho to remove himself from the turmoil of taking down the New York mob, the restless agent soon finds himself part of a more local affair, connecting the dots between bombings of porno houses, bank robberies, and the rise of a reactionary right wing group intent on causing political havoc.
The Order is a fine police thriller in an escapist sense, but it also illustrates the cancer of hate at the heart of an increasing number of those in America. Beyond mere existential cynicism, this is a fruitful reminder of the ideological fault lines that continue to be a source of death and destruction. Rather than being polemical or didactic, The Order simply manages to be truthful, exposing the insidiousness of this type of counter-reaction and how, thanks to charismatic leaders, the weaponization of grievances can lead to grievous actions. With great performances, a taut script, and an execution an order of magnitude better than Kurzel’s previous films, The Order provides a chilling yet compelling look into the past—and the same forces shaping our present. —Jason Gorber
42. Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Year: 2021
Director: Questlove
Rating: PG-13
The 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is the subject of Ahmir Khalib “Questlove” Thompson’s debut documentary feature, Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). More specifically, the documentary examines how this six-week summer festival, which featured many of the most revered Black musicians of all time— including Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone and Gladys Knight—went largely unrecognized in America’s cultural consciousness. Featuring an immense catalogue of footage that sat in a basement virtually untouched for 50 years, Summer of Soul acts as an interrogation of what the absence of these materials has meant for the subsequent generation of Black artists, including Questlove himself. Despite the apparent cultural amnesia that followed the event (at least among non-Black Americans), the Harlem Cultural Festival easily overshadowed a ubiquitous moment in American history: The 1969 moon landing. Archival interviews with several attendees reveal that for many Black Americans, the moon landing was not seen as a boundary-pushing event worth celebrating. Catching Stevie Wonder’s set, on the other hand, was. Considering the undeniable essence of colonialism that space travel entails, who can blame them? 300,000 music lovers descended on Mount Morris Park that summer—hardly a negligible amount, especially when compared to Woodstock’s 500,000 attendees. While Woodstock may have been emblematic of the power of counter-culture, the predominance of white spectators in the crowd cemented the event as an artistic awakening. Meanwhile, the equally hyped Harlem Cultural Festival was relegated to the sidelines of historical preservation due to its predominantly Black audience and centering of Black acts on stage. Summer of Soul was easily one of the most successful films at this year’s Sundance, earning the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the documentary section. But Questlove was never in it for the acclaim, a sentiment made evident in some of the first words the filmmaker uttered during his remote acceptance speech: “I didn’t even know this was a competition, yo!” The documentary was quickly picked up by Searchlight, with a streaming release on Hulu imminent. Whether interested in unraveling an overshadowed cultural event or eager to experience awe-inspiring performances from beloved artists at their best, Summer of Soul surely won’t disappoint.—Natalia Keogan
43. Tropic Thunder
Year: 2008
Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Danny McBride
Rating: R
Ben Stiller’s parody of Hollywood obliviousness maybe hasn’t aged that well–the visual of a white man in black face is so instantly jarring that any comment it might be trying to make about the racism of the entertainment industry can easily get overlooked, as proved by all the times social media has tried to “cancel” Robert Downey Jr. over this role. It’s one of those movies that’s hard to forget, though–I saw it once, in the theater, almost a decade ago, and will often find myself remembering parts of it without at first even remembering what movie those moments are from. The great cast (including Steve Coogan, Danny McBride, Bill Hader and Tom Cruise in what is easily his best comedic role) is a big reason why. —Garrett Martin
44. Crimes of the Future
Year: 2022
Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Scott Speedman
Rating: R
Sharing a title with Cronenberg’s second film, the latest from the body horror auteur is a return to (de)form after two decades of more dialed-back drama. Digging into the art world’s juicy guts and suturing it up as a compelling, ambitious sci-fi noir, Crimes of the Future thrills, even if it leaves a few stray narrative implements sewn into its scarred cavities. The dreamy and experimental Crimes of the Future (1970) sees creative cancers develop in a womanless world ravaged by viruses. New organs are created (and sometimes worshiped) in a broken society now run by fetishists and hurtling towards a dire, damnable biological response. While Cronenberg’s 2022 do-over on the subject of organic novelty in a collapsing society isn’t a remake by any stretch of the new flesh, it addresses the same pet interests that’ve filled his films since the beginning. Thankfully, it does so with new subtextual success and a far more straightforward and accessible text (despite the full-frontal nudity and graphic autopsies). Unlike Cronenberg’s early work, this movie has color, diegetic sound and movie stars. It embraces traditional dramatic pacing and supplements its perversion with cutting-edge effects. And at least now the characters speak to each other—in that detached, psychology-textbook-meets-FM-2030-essay style—while the camera dives deep into the guts that fascinate us. Specifically, the guts of Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen). He and Caprice (Lea Seydoux) are performance artists whose medium is the generation and removal of neo-organs. Saul builds them up, Caprice slices them out. Our destruction of the world, filling its oceans with plastic and its air with pollution, allowed this to happen. Humanity is now literally numb. People slice each other with knives at clubs, or in the street. Recreational surgery is commonplace. Many can only feel real pain while asleep. This unconscious suffering is just one of many sharpened sides of Crimes’ metaphor. Art is evolving to meet this nerve-deadened world on its terms. Humans are too, literally. That’s why Saul’s able to squeeze out nasty new lumps of viscera and why National Organ Registry investigators Wippet (Don McKellar) and Timlin (Kristen Stewart), as well as radical transhumanist Lang (Scott Speedman), find him fascinating. The trio help narratively blend the dystopian bureaucracy and thriving, subversive multimedia generated by Cronenberg’s nihilistic predictions. When we eventually ruin things, there will just as surely be new cogs in old machines as there will be new rebels in old resistances. Erudite and exploitative, gory yet gentle, Crimes of the Future shows the new kids on the chopping block that an old master can still dissect with the best. But Crimes of the Future’s more meaningful impact is in its representation of a trailblazer finally seeing the horizon. Cronenberg’s view of the future understands that the true death of an artist and the death of society at large result from the same tragic failure to evolve—even if that innovation is simply renovation.—Jacob Oller
45. The Monk and the Gun
Year: 2024
Director: Pawo Choyning Dorji
Stars: Tandin Wangchuk, Deki Lhamo, Choeying Jatsho, Tandin Sonam, Harry Einhorn, Pema Zangmo Sherpa
Rating: PG-13
Set against the backdrop of 2006 Bhutan, The Monk and the Gun is a light but well-delivered political satire about the country’s first democratic elections following their king’s abdication. Through Pawo Choyning Dorji’s thoughtful framing of his home country and understated humor that captures the specifics of this place, The Monk and the Gun communicates why those living there may not be as enthused about these changes as Western pundits would assume. Buddhist monk Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) receives a request from his lama: Find a pair of guns. While the lama isn’t exactly forthcoming about why, he ominously states that “things need to be made right again” regarding the upcoming mock elections recently announced over the radio. As Tashi sets out on his quest, a man from the city, Benji (Tandin Sonam), undertakes a parallel endeavor to help an American named Ron (Harry Einhorn) to locate an antique rifle reported in the area. Elsewhere, locals brace for the imminent elections as tensions flare within households, like how Tshomo (Deki Lhamo) and Choephel (Choeying Jatsho) face issues with their marriage due to the latter’s involvement in helping a family member run for office. As these groups approach the next full moon, when the elections will take place and the lama’s plan will be carried out, their paths converge. Although elements of The Monk and the Gun’s premise, like its focus on political machinations and firearms, may imply that it’s a heavy, brooding affair, it’s defined by an undercurrent of levity. Dorji, who also wrote the film, weaves in playful comedy, delighting in the quiet absurdity implied by its title. The Monk and the Gun balances all these inclinations. It’s funny and lighthearted, but delves into political forces and carries a slight undercurrent of danger. It subtly lambasts the overbearing reach of Western influence, particularly American gun culture, but also accepts the possibility for change. Most importantly, it gives director Pawo Choyning Dorji a chance to catalog the landscapes and ideas of his home as he deftly recounts where it was at a specific moment. It may be unhurried, but for a film archiving a particular way of life, that is very much by design.–Elijah Gonzalez
46. Donnie Darko
Year: 2001
Director: Richard Kelly
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle
Rating: R
Apparently, at some point in its burgeoning cult ascendency, director Richard Kelly admitted that even he didn’t totally get what’s going on in Donnie Darko—going so far as to release a “Director’s Cut” in 2005 that supposedly cleared up some of the film’s more unwieldy stuff. Yet another example of a small budget wringed of its every dime, Kelly’s debut crams love, weird science, jet engines, superhero mythology, wormholes, armchair philosophy, giant bunny rabbits and Patrick Swayze (as a child molester, no less) into a film that should be celebrated for its audacity more than its coherency. It also helps that Jake Gyllenhaal leads a stellar cast, all totally game. In Donnie Darko, the only thing that’s clear is Kelly’s attitude: that at its core cinema is the art of manifesting the unbelievable, of doing what one wants to do when one wants to do it. —Christian Becker
47. Triangle of Sadness
Year: 2022
Director: Ruben Östlund
Stars: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Burić, Iris Berben, Vicki Berlin, Henrik Dorsin, Amanda Walker, Oliver Ford Davies, Sunnyi Melles, Woody Harrelson
Rating: R
The title of Ruben Östlund’s film refers to the space between Harris Dickinson’s eyebrows. When his character, fledgling model Carl, appears at an audition, he receives the critique to “relax the triangle of sadness between his eyes.” As the film goes on, however, this little triangle only becomes more dismayed, to the point where the recruiters at Carl’s audition would probably tell him outright he gets Botox rather than simply murmuring the thought to one another where Carl can’t hear them. What begins, seemingly, as a simple critique of the vacuous fashion industry, those who inhabit it and the subtle class differences between them, cascades into an episodic farce in which people ranging from the kind-of-rich like Carl to the super-rich are thrown into an increasingly perilous situation that strips them of their comfortable class privileges. —Brianna Zigler
48. The Worst Person in the World
Year: 2022
Director: Joachim Trier
Stars: Tanya Chowdary, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum
Rating: R
Millennials were born into a world that no longer demands much of young people, yet somehow expects even more of us. Not as long ago as we might think, it was the norm for adults in their 20s and 30s to have it all figured out. A spouse, a career, a gaggle of children—at least one of these things and even better if all three. Young people now are caught in this strange purgatory between child and adult. We are afforded more time to become who we want to be and there is more pressure than ever to do so. Enter Julie (Renate Reinsve, Dakota Johnson’s long-lost twin), a fickle Norwegian who has never stayed committed to one thing in her entire life. A teenaged overachiever, she dabbled in medicine before she discovered that she was more interested in matters of the soul than the body. So, she cuts and dyes her hair, dumps her med school lover and pivots to psychology pursuits before burning that all down too, shifting once again—this time to photography. But unsurprisingly, photography manages to bore Julie as well, and soon enough she’s off to the next new thing, next new hairstyle, next new guy in the adult coming-of-age film that is Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, the director’s follow-up to the 2017 supernatural thriller Thelma and his fifth film overall. Prior to this breakneck, whimsically-scored narrated montage of Julie’s life so far (edited with precision by Olivier Bugge Coutté and scored by Ola Fløttum), the narrator explains what’s going to happen: This is a film in twelve chapters, complete with a prologue and an epilogue. Thus, The Worst Person in the World functions like a fractured collection of moments in one person’s life as they strive for self-actualization. The chapters are never consistently timed, some lasting only a few minutes and others lasting the length of a television episode, creating an atmosphere in which we never know how much time has passed, and yet time is passing all the same—and quickly—for Julie. When we’ve finally caught up to her present, she’s entered into a long-term relationship with a successful, 44-year-old graphic novelist named Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), whose prosperous career has given her the stability to work a day job at a bookstore while she decides what she wants to set her sights on next. Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is as indecisive as its endlessly curious heroine, but it is an invigorating, exceedingly kind portrait conveying that the journey is just as—if not more—crucial as the place we end up.—Brianna Zigler
49. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Year: 2021
Director: Josh Greenbaum
Stars: Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo, Jamie Dornan, Damon Wayans Jr.
Rating: PG-13
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is like some artifact of film comedy from a parallel version of America where everyone’s sense of humor has taken a calculated turn for the demented. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s like a stoner comedy, except there’s never actually any weed involved. Suffice to say, Barb and Star is a strange beast all its own, with characters who feel like they escaped from a sketch in the weirdo final 30 minutes of any given SNL episode, only to have gained self-awareness. Wiig and Mumolo, co-writers of Bridesmaids, are reunited on screen as the titular duo, a parody of a specific type of optimistic and well-meaning Midwestern ladies who see themselves as reasonably cultured despite the fact that they’ve pretty much never set foot outside of their hometowns. Their joy at being together on screen is infectious, even as they don’t miss a single opportunity to exploit the pathetic naivete of their characters. Jamie Dornan, meanwhile, dips in in a surprisingly affable role as the shared love interest, demonstrating far more charm and quick wit than one would ever have expected while slumming it through the likes of Fifty Shades of Grey. Profoundly silly, and with a plot that eventually involves swarms of killer mosquitos, Barb and Star is the closest thing the 2020s have given us to another big-screen distillation of Wet Hot American Summer‘s particular brand of absurdist humor. —Jim Vorel
50. The Promised Land
Year: 2024
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg, Melina Hagberg, Kristine Kujath Thorp, Gustav Lindh
Rating: R
Mads Mikkelsen plays Ludvig Kahlen, a retired military officer living in 18th-century Denmark who’s hellbent on cultivating the Jutland heath, a stretch of land considered impossible to farm. If he can accomplish this seemingly undoable task, he’s been promised a noble title, a goal he chases with obsessive resolve. But beyond taming this infertile landscape, he also must contend with Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a sadistic magistrate willing to spill blood to ensure he retains control over the region. As Kahlen spends every penny of his meager pension to cultivate this space, a stand-off brews between these men, each determined to get his way. While The Promised Land largely takes place on a relatively tiny plot of dirt in the Danish boonies, its filmmaking lends this struggle an expansive, David-versus-Goliath slant. Cinematographer Rasmus Videbæk and director Nikolaj Arcel contrast the breadth of the Jutland countryside against the smallness of our protagonist’s enterprise as he cuts through vast shrubland and tills acidic soil in what initially feels like a futile and hubristic effort. But what makes The Promised Land truly compelling is how it naturally grows into something else, as Kahlen nurtures a seed of doubt about his ultimate aims. Mikkelsen deftly embodies these turns with subtle gestures that bring out internal struggles, and it’s deeply satisfying to watch as his icy demeanor at least marginally melts. The toughness of these surroundings makes it feel all the more precious when he finds his unexpected connections. But, thanks to Mikkelsen’s performance and Kahlen’s characterization, even at the heights of their happiness, there is a genuine uncertainty around how things will break, a relative rarity in a storytelling landscape where the protagonist’s final decision often comes across as perfunctory and obvious. It all comes together to make The Promised Land a stirring historical epic that balances its grandiose framing with something surprisingly grounded and genuine. A bountiful harvest indeed.–Elijah Gonzalez