Epix, the MGM-owned premium channel that also offers its service through digital platforms and the standalone Epix Now, has been rebranded as MGM+ to better reflect its corporate owner’s library of films. While its original offerings are squarely set in the TV realm (though MGM+ also has its fair share of exclusive stand-up specials), the best movies on MGM+ are worth digging into if you find yourself having access—either through the $5.99/month app or as a more traditional cable add-on.
The amount of films are more analogous to Starz or Showtime than a massive streamer like Netflix or even the similarly studio-owned Paramount+. At my last count, MGM+ has a nice round 250 films available and of those films, most are of a higher quality than the high percentage of filler that you’d find on a gigantic streaming service. It has a robust selection of horror, action, and drama—not to mention a slew of Westerns and the Star Trek films. We’ve curated a list of the best of the best, updated every month.
Here are the 20 best movies on MGM+ right now:
1. No Country For Old Men
Year: 2007
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson
Rating: R
Genre: Drama
What is it about the Coen Brothers’ inconsolable No Country for Old Men that still chills the blood, even under the South Texas sun? No doubt its inscrutability plays a role: Is it a Western, a noir or a morality play? And the Academy Award-winning performance by Javier Bardem disturbs because he himself remains a mystery: Is Anton Chigurh a merciless hitman or the Angel of Death? The story of a drug deal gone wrong soon reveals its true theme: the futility of being good and just in the face of abject evil. But the Coens also meditate on the faltering of the physical body. “Age’ll flatten a man,” Tommy Lee Jones’ Sherrif Bell esteems, and for this Texan, the evocation of my childhood landscape—right down to the tiniest detail—means that the specter of Chigurh will haunt not only the end of my life but stomp through its earliest remembrances as well. —Andy Beta
2. Nickel Boys
Year: 2024
Director: RaMell Ross
Stars: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, Jimmie Fails, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Rating: R
The experimental style of Nickel Boys recalls the more adventurous side of NYFF, where international directors will often bring formally rigorous, ambitious, or challenging films to an appreciative audience: For the most part, director and cowriter RaMell Ross constructs his film version of Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed novel entirely in point-of-view shots.
First, we’re only privy to the first-person experiences of Elwood (Ethan Cole Sharp, then Ethan Herisse), a Black high school student in the Jim Crow-era Florida of the early ’60s. We see what Elwood sees, which means not much of his actual face or body, catching a glimpse of him as a faded image in a store window, where he gazes at a row of television sets – or, in one beautiful shot, his reflection in the metallic trim of an iron held by his grandmother Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). Early in the film, Elwood, a strong student who qualifies to take classes at a local college, is wrongly accused of helping to steal a car. (He’s only just accepted a ride from a stranger.) The police send him to Nickel Academy, a reform school that Whitehead based on a real institution, trafficking in segregation and cruelty. Once there, Elwood, who earnestly believes he can work his way out of the system, befriends the more cynical Turner (Brandon Wilson), opening up a second avenue for POV shots. From there, the movie alternates between the two of them. Though they grow close, the two boys rarely get to share the frame – which makes one wonderful overhead-mirror shot, reproduced on the film’s poster, even more memorable.
Shot after shot, in fact, sticks in the mind; even when the movie technically breaks from the point-of-view approach, the effect still lingers. The occasional archival footage, by its nature and through the movie’s context, starts to feel like a POV shot, as if we’re sitting alongside whoever is watching or reading the material in question. Another seeming departure, where a fixed point of view continually shows an adult version of one character from just behind him, affixed to his body but outside of it, distinguishes those flash-forward scenes. Later, it’s revealed to make even more thematic sense than it originally seems. This might all sound very technical, and to some extent it is. But the discipline with which Ross adheres to his own rules belies what an intuitive, unrestrictive film he’s able to craft within and because of those constrictions. —Jesse Hassenger
3. Rango
Year: 2011
Director: Gore Verbinski
Stars: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy
Rating: PG
The most surprising thing about Rango is how much Johnny Depp disappears into the character of a nameless pet chameleon who creates his identity when his terrarium falls out of the back of a car into the desert frontier. Unlike a certain cartoon panda, who was basically an animated version of every Jack Black character ever, Rango is no Keith Richards with an eye-patch or crazy barber/milliner/chocolatier. He’s a cipher who becomes a fraud who becomes a hero. —Josh Jackson
4. Challengers
Year: 2024
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Stars: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist
Rating: R
There’s no need to know, or even enjoy, anything about the sport of tennis to find enjoyment in director Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. Still, tennis is inextricably knotted to its sensuous love triangle, which evolves over the course of 13 tumultuous years, climaxing with a match between two estranged players whose love story eclipses the more overt romance between the pair and Zendaya’s tennis prodigy, Tashi Duncan. But it is a story of desire, love, power and co-dependency between three gifted young athletes who all hold that nagging fear, even in their early 30s, that their best years are behind them. The only thing that can reinvigorate their lost sparks is base, animalistic competition, like that which fueled their chaotic threesome over a decade prior to the lowly Fire Town challenger tournament in New Rochelle, New York. We first meet Tashi and Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), married and with a mostly neglected young daughter, after Tashi’s best tennis-playing days are behind her (due to a consequential leg injury) and Art is all but bereft of his mojo. In an effort to get his head back in the game and out of early retirement, Tashi enrolls him in a challenger: A small, U.S. Open qualifier that should be beneath an athlete whose face adorns ads the size of building facades. The goal is to have Art compete against players who are obviously below him in order to loosen him up and regain his confidence. The only problem is, it’s the same kind of minor sporting event that attracts a hard-up guy like Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor). Thirteen years earlier, Patrick and Art were both just two young tennis studs who once jerked off together (what guys can’t say the same?), in love with the same beautiful woman. Thirteen years later, one of them got the girl, the other is cosplaying as poor, and the former two haven’t spoken to the latter in years. The film is just as dynamic as its stars. Rapid cuts give the film a cohesive, kinetic rhythm that keeps the story in a near-constant state of momentum, and none of the frames the camera cuts to are superfluous compositions. This is matched by the occasionally dizzying camerawork from Gudagnino’s Suspiria cinematographer (also Apichatpong Weerasethkul’s on Memoria) Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. Challengers surprised me. It’s a grandiose, propulsive, erotic follow-up to the dull, Tumblr-core emo of Bones and All, and I found myself enthralled by Guadagnino’s latest, in which three of our hottest young actors convincingly, tantalizingly explore alternating dynamics of power and sexuality. Challengers isn’t really a film for tennis fans—it’s a film for fans of guys being a little gay for each other, and also fans of the kind of explosive yearning that’s even hotter than the sex scenes we all like to complain don’t exist anymore.–Brianna Zigler
5. Licorice Pizza
Year: 2021
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Stars: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper, Benny Safdie
Rating: R
Licorice Pizza is writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson’s second ode to Los Angeles in the early 1970s: A city freshly under the oppressive shadow of the Manson Family murders and the tail end of the Vietnam War. But while in his first tribute, Inherent Vice, the inquisitive counter-culture affiliate Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) earnestly engages with his surroundings and follows the threads of societal paranoia all the way to vampiric drug smuggling operations and FBI conspiracies, Licorice Pizza’s protagonist, 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim), refuses to follow any such thread. A bored, directionless photographer’s assistant, Alana nonchalantly rejects any easy plot-point that might help us get a grasp on her character. What are her ambitions? She doesn’t know, she tells successful 15-year-old actor Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) over dinner at a restaurant called Tail o’ the Cock. What interests and excites her? It’s hard to say. When Gary first approaches Alana while she’s working picture-day at his high school, it’s hard to imagine that Licorice Pizza isn’t going to follow the playful design of a sunny Southern California love story. Alana is instantly strange and striking, and—when Anderson introduces her in a languid dolly-shot with a mini-skirt, kitten-heels, slumped shoulders and a gloriously pissed expression—we are compelled to fall in love with her, just like Gary does, at first sight. Of course, Anderson quickly rejects the notion that Licorice Pizza is going to be a straightforward romance. Anderson knows that this ambling, disjointed structure reflects what it’s like to be young, awkward and in love. Each shot, filled with dreamy pastels, glows with a youthful nostalgia. Anderson and cinematographer Michael Bauman balance out this haziness with a unique control of the camera, implementing long takes, slow dollies, and contemplative pans galore. What is it that Alana gets from being friends with someone ten years younger than her? And why does Gary always return to Alana even when she tries her best to put him down? Like gleefully gliding through the streets of L.A. in the midst of a city-wide crisis, it’s a madness you can only truly understand when you’re living it.—Aurora Amidon
6. 10 Cloverfield Lane
Year: 2016
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Stars: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.
Rating: PG-13
At its core, 10 Cloverfield Lane effectively works as an extended, modern-day riff on a Twilight Zone episode, a program producer J.J. Abrams holds near and dear to his heart. That’s not to say the resulting film feels like a lo-fi TV installment inorganically pumped up for the big screen. Quite the contrary, despite its enclosed setting and limited speaking parts, the film is very much a cinematic experience, with director Dan Trachtenberg (in his feature film debut) milking each interaction and set piece for maximum impact. What’s more, the script—the screenwriting debut from Josh Campbell and Matthew Stuecken alongside Whiplash writer-director Damien Chazelle—understands that sometimes the best way to raise tension is to allow it be deflated by humor (several tense sequences end with a chuckle rather than a gasp) before ramping it back up again. This well-calculated back-and-forth makes the film consistently nail-biting, yet never in a way that feels repetitive. By the time the film reaches its dramatic final stretch, the narrative has successfully escalated to a point wherein the crazier elements fit right in with the more grounded ones. —Mark Rozeman
7. Young Adult
Year: 2011
Director: Jason Reitman
Stars: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser
Rating: R
Four years after Juno Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody reteamed for the smarter, funnier, and all around less annoying Young Adult. Charlize Theron clearly savors the chance to play the kind of disastrous midlife crisis typically reserved only for men, as a formerly successful young adult novelist struggling with alcoholism, depression and writer’s block. Patton Oswalt delivers the kind of tragicomic turn he excels at as the the bullied nerd Theron used to look down at in high school. Young Adult explores how paralyzing life can be when you lose sight of a future and regret everything in your past, in a poignant and darkly hilarious fashion. —Garrett Martin
8. American Fiction
Year: 2023
Director: Cord Jefferson
Stars: Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Leslie Uggams
Rating: R
Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is a wry comedy that reflects the world we live in and the literature and film it produces. Journalist-turned-filmmaker Jefferson recruits a shining cast led by Jeffrey Wright’s Monk, who is possibly outshone (but at least complemented) by Sterling K. Brown as his somewhat estranged brother, Cliff. Monk is a writer of literature, frustrated by the lack of success he is finding in the market for stories true to his artistic vision and worldview. His foil is Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), an author who has found success by crafting the sort of narrative perspective that disgusts and disappoints Monk: A vulgar caricature of the African American experience; a minimizing, reductive, tokenizing idea of Blackness that limits our existence in the minds of reading and watching audiences, in turn helping to squander our potential in the material world. Golden is profiting from the self-congratulatory/self-flagellating promise of commercial white guilt. Monk’s intention to satirize the practice, turning the screws on the people and systems that promote it, leads to a character he creates under a pseudonym being offered riches beyond his wildest dreams, causing him to reflect on his own complicated relationship with himself and the people he loves. American Fiction is a satire about how far up our own asses writers can fit our heads, confronting and interrogating the concepts of genius, self-regard and good taste. It is about individual estrangement from family, about misanthropy and elitism. All of these are drawn through the interpersonal and professional struggles of the hot-tempered and lonely Monk. —Kevin Fox Jr.
9. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Year: 2023
Director: Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears (co-director)
Stars: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Brady Noon, Nicolas Cantu, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube
Rating: PG
A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive. Rowe, Spears and production designer Yashar Kassai have rendered the brothers as if they’re hand-drawn, complete with messy sketch lines, doodle flairs and a graffiti aesthetic. This is the ultimate paint-outside-the-lines take on the Turtles and it works on every level. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is swinging for the fences with its story and voice performances to ambitiously, quantifiably shake up the artistic rut that theatrical computer animation has been stuck in for the last two decades. Another plus is that the brothers are voiced by non-adult voice actors Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Brady Noon (Raph), Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey) and Micah Abbey (Donnie), who recorded together, and were encouraged to excitedly talk over one another like a gaggle of real, tight-knit brothers would do. It translates into rapid-fire, organic quips and seemingly effortless timing that conveys a rapport that is singular to this iteration. It also elevates the script so that it doesn’t sound like it was written by a bunch of 40-year-olds trying to be hip and young. Rowe and Spears have a firm hold on their pacing, especially in how they use comedy to enhance their action beats. They also chart a progression to the brother’s battle prowess that is satisfying and pays off in satisfying full-circle moments. There’s also much to be admired in their choice to frame a lot of sequences with hand-held camera blocking, which leans into the unpredictable youth of the heroes that works so well in the gritty New York environs they’re sparring in. The filmmakers are also delightfully experimental throughout the Mutant Mayhem, using inspired live-action inserts, segueing into different artistic styles (including a homage to Eastman and Laird’s comic art) and embracing the asymmetrical character design that gives the film a fresh and energetic looseness. Rowe and company prove that there’s no strength to the myth of IP fatigue when you have the vision and passion to reinvent with such bold and fun intention.—Tara Bennett
10. The Return of the Living Dead
Year: 1985
Director: Dan O’Bannon
Stars: Clu Gulager, James Karen, Thom Matthews, Don Calfa
Rating: R
John Russo is a huge unknown in terms of important figures in zombie cinema, at least among those who aren’t big horror geeks. Russo is the man who created the original story for Night of the Living Dead alongside George Romero, and thus is essentially one half of the driving force for the most famous zombie film of all time. After the two parted ways post-NOTLD, their settlement dictated that Russo would retain the rights to any future films with the phrase “living dead” in the title. Thus, Romero’s “of the dead” monikers in future films. Russo, meanwhile, wrote his sequel as a novel, which was then finally adapted as a film 17 years after the original NOTLD with extensive rewrites by director Dan O’Bannon. The result is one of the all-time zombie classics, a film that is equal parts gory and hilarious while making a concerted effort to capture the youth movement, art aesthetic and, especially, music of the mid-’80s. It’s influential in so many different ways: the comedic tone; the youth focus; the scapegoating of an American military experiment gone wrong as the genesis of the zombies. The zombies too have been completely redesigned with all-new capabilities–they’re intelligent, they can speak, they can move fast and, for the first time ever, they’re specifically targeting human brains. That last point was so influential and so ubiquitous in the genre after 1985 that it’s incorrectly been assumed by many people for decades that the Romero zombies are brain-eaters. For these reasons, ROTLD is undoubtedly one of the most significant zombie films ever. And by the way–with ROTLD, Day of the Dead, Demons and Re-Animator all being released in 1985, is it safe to say this was the greatest year in the history of zombie cinema? —Jim Vorel
11. Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One
Year: 2023
Director: Christopher McQuarrie
Stars: Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Cary Elwes
Rating: PG-13
A scene in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One defines all Tom Cruise is and will ever be, arguably charting—in the language of death-defying action and in the voice of Hollywood A-lister beatitudes—the whole arc of contemporary blockbuster franchise filmmaking. Recovering with his team of Impossible Mission Force (IMF) agents following one of the worst catastrophes they’ve yet faced, Ethan Hunt (Cruise, asexual and totemic) admits to a new team member that, while he can’t guarantee he will keep them safe, he can guarantee that he’ll care more about their lives than his own. Not expecting such unmitigated humanity in the midst of such potential worldwide cataclysm, the new agent stares through welling tears. “But you don’t know me,” they say. “Does it matter?” Tom Cruise and Ethan Hunt both respond. Whether Cruise is capable of making a film that doesn’t reckon with his legacy? That’s not this one’s job. Helmed by director Christopher McQuarrie on his third go at M:I, Dead Reckoning Part One reaches back 28 years to the first film, not only bringing back Kittridge (Henry Czerny) as the head of the IMF, appointed apparently after Director Hunley’s (Alec Baldwin, ejected from the franchise with impeccable timing) murder in Fallout, but culling reverently from De Palma’s penchant for paranoid close-ups and canted angles, for long-held shots obsessed with the creased faces of defiantly sweaty men, studying their buttery eyes for omens. Dead Reckoning Part One’s plot, as convoluted as the best in the franchise, comes together stupendously. Every facet, from sound and set design to Cruise’s sheer athleticism to how McQuarrie knows exactly where to place the camera to embrace that athleticism, coalesces into a very real, often breathtaking sense of peril that’s mostly absent from every other IP that’s lasted this long. Cruise is showing us what kind of death it takes to achieve the immortality cinema promises.—Dom Sinacola
12. Bottoms
Year: 2023
Director: Emma Seligman
Stars: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Marshawn Lynch, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Ruby Cruz, Dagmara Domińczyk
Rating: R
Every now and then, a comedy rolls around that is delightfully unafraid of utter ridiculousness—of pushing buttons and boundaries until it’s blue in the face. Directed by Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby) in her sophomore feature, Bottoms is such a comedy. The film follows P.J. (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), two wildly unpopular gay high schoolers who found a female fight club to impress their cheerleader crushes: Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), respectively. This is a premise that naturally lends itself to a healthy dosage of humor, but Seligman doesn’t dare rely too heavily on her high-concept conceit. With the help of Sennott, who co-wrote the script, Seligman squeezes every ounce of humor out of each of the film’s thoughtfully-crafted scenarios—for better or worse. More often than not, this yields either shockingly bloody and hilarious visual gags, such as an impeccably-timed explosion or punch to the face, or masterfully-delivered punchlines about I-can’t-believe-she-went-there topics like bombs or abortions. In the rare moments that Bottoms takes a turn into sincerity, the dialogue is subtle yet acutely affecting, and indicates that its writers have a heartfelt understanding of what their characters are going through. If they had just sacrificed a couple of visual gags and attached their film a little more tightly to reality, Bottoms would be both poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. In her defense, it does make sense why Seligman wasn’t interested in giving up any of the film’s punchlines. She did, after all, hit the jackpot with one of the funniest ensemble casts of the past decade. The chemistry between the two leads is exquisite, which shouldn’t come as a surprise; the two previously spearheaded the uproarious Comedy Central web series Ayo and Rachel Are Single. When Seligman’s short film Shiva Baby premiered at South by Southwest back in 2018, audiences widely recognized the budding director as someone with a unique talent for whipping up a tight, sharp comedy in a small space. Now that her budget and scope are bigger, she has once again proven that she has an outstanding command over the genre.—Aurora Amidon
13. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
Year: 2020
Director: Jim Cummings
Stars: Jim Cummings, Robert Forster, Riki Lindhome, Chloe East, Jimmy Tatro, Kevin Changaris, Skyler Bible, Demetrius Daniels
Rating: R
Snow Hollow police officer John Marshall (Cummings) unsteadily balances Alcoholics Anonymous meetings with the travails of raising his teen daughter, Jenna (Chloe East), looking after his ailing father, Hadley (Forster), maintaining diplomatic relations with his ex, and keeping a lid on his volcanic temper. When a woman (Annie Hamilton) is torn to shreds on a weekend visit to John’s ski resort hometown, just moments before her boyfriend (Jimmy Tatro) planned to propose to her, John stretches to his limits and beyond in his pursuit of the killer, who everyone concludes with baffling swiftness is a werewolf rather than a man. His peers’ and subordinates’ stumblebum character and the ass-backwardness of Snow Hollow itself act like gasoline as is. The consensus that the town is under attack from a mythical creature is the straw that makes the vein in John’s neck go taut with anger. The Wolf of Snow Hollow lands in the space where horror and humor meet, mining laughter in mourning and custody battles. Cummings’ laughs are the sort that signal discomfort: His punchlines are razor sharp, which make the movie’s surrounding unpleasantries go down more easily. Watching a policeman get physical with anybody who sufficiently pushes his buttons induces squirms. When fellow officer Bo (Kevin Changaris) accidentally says too much about the murders in front of reporters, John calls him over to a snowbank and starts smacking the poor schmuck around, a moment that would tip over into pure darkness without the aid of a lighthearted soundtrack and the slapstick of their scuffle. Regardless, the point is made: John’s on edge, and his edge is surprisingly amusing. The wry, snappy banter gives The Wolf of Snow Hollow a prickly skin, and the restrained application of FX gives it tension. At just under 80 minutes, that economy is key. It’s not so much that the horror is elevated as controlled. But rather than clang with the innate savagery of the werewolf niche, Cummings’ command over his material gives the film a certain freshness. He tames the monster in the man so that the man is all that’s left, for better and for worse. John isn’t perfect, but an imperfect man need not be a beast.—Andy Crump
14. Serpico
Year: 1973
Director: Sidney Lumet
Stars: Al Pacino, John Randolph, Tony Roberts
Rating: R
You could have a great debate about who had the best acting decade between Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, and while my vote goes to Nicholson (with Hoffman a close second), Pacino has a terrific argument. In Serpico, he plays the complicated figure of a detective who went undercover to rat out corrupt cops. His decision to turn against his own is as fraught as you might imagine, and he faces death at every turn from cops who’d love to shut him up. It’s an exciting street drama with the decrepit-yet-energetic look of urban ’70s films. —Shane Ryan
15. Anomalisa
Year: 2015
Director: Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman
Stars: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan
Rating: R
Preciousness and misanthropy have always been the twin hallmarks of Charlie Kaufman’s work, his characters’ misery heightened and sometimes enlivened by the writer-director’s ability to craft clever sci-fi/fantastical scenarios around them. In Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind (which won him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar) or his 2008 directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, he has managed to make everyday loneliness and the gnawing sense of futility resonate with an almost ineffable sting. In Kaufman’s hands, life looks heartbreaking, and yet it can often be beautiful at the same time. It’s hard to know yet whether Anomalisa is a new peak for Kaufman, or merely another highlight in a distinguished career. But what is clear at this point is that it’s piercingly poignant—perhaps his most succinct expression of the malaise that’s forever haunting his work. Anomalisa doesn’t resolve the issues that have eaten at his characters since his first published screenplay, 1999’s Being John Malkovich, but the honesty with which he depicts those struggles remain startling, even comforting. This movie is life-affirming, not because of any artificial feel-good sentiment, but because it mirrors one’s own mixed feelings about the wonders and horrors of being alive. Plus, it’s really funny. —Tim Grierson
16. Night of the Living Dead
Year: 1968
Director: George A. Romero
Stars: Judith O’Dea, Duane Jones, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Judith Ridley, Keith Wayne
Rating: NR
What more can be said of Night of the Living Dead? It’s pretty obviously the most important zombie film ever made, and hugely influential as an independent film as well. George Romero’s cheap but momentous movie was a quantum leap forward in what the word “zombie” meant in pop culture, despite the fact that the word “zombie” is never actually uttered in it. More importantly, it established all of the genre rules: Zombies are reanimated corpses. Zombies are compelled to eat the flesh of the living. Zombies are unthinking, tireless and impervious to injury. The only way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain. Those rules essentially categorize every single zombie movie from here on out—either the film features “Romero-style zombies,” or it tweaks with the formula and is ultimately noted for how it differs from the Romero standard. It’s essentially the horror equivalent of what Tolkien did for the idea of high fantasy “races.” After The Lord of the Rings, it became nearly impossible to write contrarian concepts of what elves, dwarves or orcs might be like. Romero’s impact on zombies is of that exact same caliber. There hasn’t been a zombie movie made in the last 50-plus years that hasn’t been influenced by it in some way, and you can barely hold a conversation on anything zombie-related if you haven’t seen it—so go out and watch it, if you haven’t. The film still holds up well, especially in its moody cinematography and stark, black-and-white images of zombie arms reaching through the windows of a rural farmhouse. Oh, and by the way—NOTLD is public domain, so don’t get tricked into buying it on a shoddy DVD. —Jim Vorel
17. Everybody Wants Some
Year: 2016
Director: Richard Linklater
Stars: Will Brittain, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, J. Quinton Johnson, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell
Rating: R
Everybody Wants Some!! is intended to play like a spiritual companion piece to Linklater’s ’70s-era Dazed and Confused, with the writer/director reveling in his turn-of-the-decade’s style and swagger. Big lapels, bigger hair, even bigger facial hair and outright enormous egos are the norm throughout this nostalgic saga. Boasting little in the way of plot, Linklater’s film is content to sidle up alongside Jake and his new friends to see where their appetites, whims and libidos will lead. And its laid-back vibe pays dividends as it progresses, given that one-note characters who initially appeared to be smug louts, hyper-gonzo wild cards, dim-bulb doofuses or inane hillbillies slowly develop semi-distinct personalities of their own. Their days devoted to slacking off, their nights spent trimming mustaches and dousing themselves in cologne before hitting the town in search of the next woman to bed, Linklater’s play-hard-and-party-harder characters are the embodiment of cocksure macho vitality, all of them rightly convinced that, at least for the moment, they have the world by the balls. But there’s also some requisite baseball team-based hazing thrown in for good measure, which feels like an authentic representation of what dudes like this would be up to—and, consequently, serves as a buzzkill reminder of their fundamentally dude-bro nature. —Nick Schager
18. Small Soldiers
Year: 1998
Director: Joe Dante
Stars: Gregory Smith, Kirsten Dunst, Jay Mohr, Phil Hartman, Tommy Lee Jones, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Bruce Dern, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean
Rating: PG-13
One of director Joe Dante’s final big-budget hurrahs, Small Soldiers is an eccentric piece of late ‘90s ephemera, recycling some of the same spirit as the director’s own Gremlins while being buoyed by a frankly incredible lineup of vocal performers. Reflecting the era’s burgeoning fascination with the internet and artificial intelligence, Small Soldiers conceives a line of futuristic action figures that are ultimately infused with military technology, and then come to life, taking their combative theming a little bit too seriously. What follows is like a macabre twist on Toy Story, as the villainous Commando Elite are set against the sympathetic clan of monsters known as the Gorgonites, who beseech a teenage boy for protection. Being a Joe Dante film, there are twinges of adult humor and violence to be found here, but revisiting the film today mostly yields an appreciation for the stacked vocal cast, which includes everyone from Tommy Lee Jones, Ernest Borgnine and Frank Langella as antagonists to Christopher Guest, Bruce Dern and Harry Shearer as long-suffering monsters. It’s low-key one of the best casts assembled in the 1990s. —Jim Vorel
19. Dark Harvest
Year: 2023
Director: David Slade
Stars: Caset Lakes, E’myri Crutchfield, Dustin Ceithamer, Elizabeth Reaser, Jeremy Davies
Rating: R
It’s a shame that the two-year-delayed Dark Harvest went from theatrical rollout plans to a limited Alamo Drafthouse (then digital) release. There’s a spooky, festive aroma about David Slade’s adaptation of Norman Partridge’s hayseed horror tale of the same name and some spectacular special effects. Seasonal comforts unfold with a nasty attitude under Slade’s direction, which smacks audiences in the face with graphic mayhem despite most of the characters being underage. Don’t expect Dark Harvest to match the level of Halloween favorites like Trick ‘r Treat or Hell Fest, but give this Unpleasantville fable about a violent tradition the shot it deserved when it was first scheduled a few years ago. —Matt Donato
20. Gretel & Hansel
Year: 2020
Director: Oz Perkins
Starring: Sophia Lillis, Samuel Leakey, Alice Krige
Rating: PG-13
Director Oz Perkins’ first two features, The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, are meticulously constructed examples of slow burn horror, favoring ever-building, chilling atmosphere over quick scares. He begins Gretel & Hansel with a traditional fairy tale structure, only for it to degenerate into an otherworldly, hopeless tone, Perkins liberally playing with space and time. Accordingly, production and costume designs borrow from multiple time periods—slightly resembling medieval Europe—while characters speak in Shakespearean prose, their body language still distinctly modern. Instead of the usual sea of white faces for such a tale, different races that seem to have equal social standing populate this world. Perkins purposefully juxtaposes Galo Olivares’s classically picturesque cinematography, imbued with the illusion of natural light, against Robin Coudert’s synth-heavy score that resembles Wendy Carlos’s work for Stanley Kubrick. The film thrives within a dream-logic vibe, especially in Olivares’ cinematography, with its heavy emphasis on symmetrical framing, stark contrast and lush use of yellows and blues, evoking subliminal terror. Gretel & Hansel continues the director’s streak as a unique voice in modern horror filmmaking. —Oktay Ege Kozak