The 25 Best Movies On Demand Right Now (November 2024)
The competition for on-demand movies has grown in recent years beyond cable companies like Time-Warner, Charter, Cox Fios and Xfinity to online video-on-demand companies like FandangoNow and internet giants Amazon, Apple and Google. We searched through the offerings of all of the above to bring you the Best Movies On Demand, though no one service offers them all. We limited it to new VOD movies available to rent for less than $10.
Many of the cable companies have branded their Movies on Demand service, so Time-Warner and Charter customers will be looking for Spectrum, Comcast on-demand is branded Xfinity, Verizon goes by Fios and AT&T calls its program U-verse. The selections are up to date, but cable providers change their film on demand offerings regularly.
You can also check out our guides to the best movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Max, Hulu, YouTube, and at Redbox. Or visit all our Paste Movie Guides.
Here are the 25 Best Movies on Demand:
1. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
Year: 2023
Director: Kelly Fremon Craig
Stars: Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, Kathy Bates
Rating: PG-13
If there’s one certainty amidst the chaos of puberty, it’s that you’re going to feel misunderstood. Misunderstood by your friends, your siblings, your sex ed teacher and, above all, by your parents. Indeed, when you start to undergo those pesky physical and emotional changes, it inevitably feels as though no one on this godforsaken planet can empathize with what you’re going through–that is, of course, unless you’re lucky enough to stumble across a Judy Blume book. Given the weight that Blume holds for so many kids and former kids, embarking on a film adaptation of one of her works poses a challenge. I’m happy to report, though, that Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of the iconic 1970 novel Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret delivers nearly flawlessly. Margaret follows the young Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson), whose parents Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Benny Safdie) move her to a new school in New Jersey for her final year of elementary school. Margaret’s journey of self-discovery is a fascinating and satisfying watch. Craig moves Margaret along at a gratifying pace. Its sunny, pastel color palette, whip-smart comedy (a scene where Margaret and her mother discuss training bras deserves a spot in the Comedic Timing Hall of Fame) and ecstatic musical montages make Margaret an exhilarating, ecstatic and thought-provoking watch. While Craig nails Margaret’s storytelling and tone, this film simply wouldn’t achieve such poignancy and empathy without the stellar lead performance from young breakout Fortson. The budding star is effortlessly funny and brings a stunning level of maturity to her voiceover; when she rattles off an astute, “adult” comment, it feels like she really means and understands what she’s saying. While Fortson is the backbone that holds Margaret together, she’s not the only actor that brings something delightful and delectable to the table. Graham shines, playing the well-intentioned mean girl with masterful physical humor and surprising tenderness, while McAdams serves as Margaret’s emotional core in her best major role in a while. McAdams’ magnificent performance makes Craig’s grasp on Blume’s book even more clear: The 1970 novel was never just for young girls. It was, and remains, for generations upon generations of women. That’s the true beauty of it.—Aurora Amidon
2. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
Year: 2024
Director: Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah
Stars: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Joe Pantoliano, Rhea Seehorn
Rating: R
This is the buddy-cop dynamic this franchise has codified thus far: Marcus spends much of his character arc convincing Mike to tone down the bodycount, while Mike slowly comes to realize the consequences of a life beset on all sides by the endless death he’s wrought. If the Bad Boys movies are mostly about the war raging in the soul of America’s ideal psychopath supercop, then Bad Boys: Ride or Die paints that war with big and shameless Fast & Furious ambition, no longer questioning if Mike should kill, but why he does. Is he a Bad Boy, or a Good Boy who is so Good at doing Bad things that he’s cosmically aligned with the nature of the Bad Boy? Is he the monolithic Good-Bad Boy, a true representation of punitive justice in its purest form? Bad Boys: Ride or Die is a genuine crowd-pleaser, just undeniably captivating, funny and raging, neon-pink copaganda. It serves as both a fitting end to the franchise, while leaving room to make one more. And if that happens, I will be seated. —Dom Sinacola
3. Inside Out 2
Release Date: June 14, 2024
Director: Kelsey Mann
Stars: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Liza Lapira, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edebiri, Lilimar, Grace Lu, Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paul Walter Hauser, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ron Funches
Rating: PG
Inside Out 2, the sequel to the Oscar-winning film, revisits Riley (now voiced by Kensington Tallman) in the full-blown throes of adolescence. Thirteen-year-old Riley is about to graduate from eighth grade. In the first movie, Riley was adapting to life in California. Now Riley is adapting to leaving middle school behind for high school. Parents of teens will be charmed (and definitely feel validated) by how accurately the movie captures this period of time.“Family island” is blocked by “friendship island” in Riley’s brain. A construction crew comes through her mind and posts a “Pardon Our Dust. Puberty is Messy.” sign. That’s when all the new emotions descend on Riley. There’s Anxiety (Maya Hawke), Envy (Ayo Edebiri), Embarrassment (Paul Walter Hauser) and my personal favorite, Ennui (Adèle Exarchopoulos). With her head constantly bent over, Ennui, who is obviously French, is too exhausted to even get up off the couch and controls Riley’s console from her phone. Exarchopoulos’ droll delivery is one of the film’s many highlights. The script by Meg LeFauve (who also wrote Inside Out) and Dave Holstein perfectly captures our complex minds. Nostalgia (June Squibb) humorously keeps trying to make an appearance. Suppressed emotions, brainstorms, dark secrets and streams of consciousness are all brought to life. As in the first movie, Inside Out 2 is vibrant and full of color with fun, tongue-in-cheek visuals. (Sarcasm literally causes a chasm). And these new emotions have a darker spin: Anxiety is bright orange, a pulsating bundle of nerves; Envy is green, naturally; and Embarrassment gets more pink with each passing humiliation. Director Kelsey Mann keeps the action zipping along, while Amy Poehler brings that same determined effervescence to Joy. And Hawke, as the increasingly frantic emotion who thinks she’s helping until she realizes too late that she’s not, plays Anxiety just right. I took my very own Riley to the screening. After the movie, which she enjoyed, she told me she felt “called out” by much of what she had seen. “Is that okay?” I asked. “Yes,” she responded. “At least now you know what’s going on in my head.”—Amy Amatangelo
4. Knock at the Cabin
Release Date: February 3, 2023
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Stars: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn, Rupert Grint
Rating: R
Knock at the Cabin has a twist that audiences won’t see coming, if only because it defies what people have come to know about director M. Night Shyamalan. It’s a twist, but it isn’t, but it is, but it also isn’t. But in Knock at the Cabin—adapted from the novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay—it’s less about the destination than the journey. A film preoccupied with the frequent use of intimate, shot/reverse-shot close-up conversations, Knock at the Cabin opens with one between Leonard (Dave Bautista) and Wen (Kristen Cui—no Haley Joel Osment, but she’s mostly fine). Leonard bears Bautista’s imposing figure, but Bautista knows how to handle himself with a gentle touch. He’s soft-spoken and warm, and has a tenderness implicit in his presence akin to a large stuffed animal. Accompanied by two women, Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), and a hot-headed man named Redmond (Rupert Grint, whose first feature role in eight years proves he’s a force of nature), Leonard and his group forcibly enter the Airbnb housing Wen and her adoptive dads, Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff). The groups was united by shared visions of a forthcoming apocalypse that will bring about the end of humanity, and the only way to stop it is if this particular family makes the choice to sacrifice one of themselves willingly. Knock at the Cabin is, perhaps, the quickest 100-minute film ever made. From the quiet and meditative opening sequence—the last moment of normalcy in Wen’s life—the film is propelled forward with a sense of urgency that parallels that of the doomsday group. Even in moments of calm, there is a constant, tense and invigorating momentum forward. If you’re a fan of Shyamalan’s, or just familiar with his style, you’re accustomed to “dialogue real people wouldn’t say” and “actions real people wouldn’t take.” It’s an oft-held complaint about Shyamalan’s films by his naysayers, but it’s not a creative deficiency. It’s just part of Shyamalan’s cinematic language, one that functions in a sort of un-reality that prioritizes story, emotion and theme over pedantic logistics in dialogue. At this point, you’re either with it or you’re not. And if you are, Knock at the Cabin could be seen as career-best work.—Brianna Zigler
5. Oppenheimer
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., David Krumholtz, Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Rami Malek
Rating: R
For a visionary director of big-budget, big-studio, big-idea sci-fi/fantasy movies, Christopher Nolan has often seemed, if not exactly at war with himself, somehow prone to both methodically ascending his big, obvious building blocks and attempting to take wilder, more ambitious leaps. The real test of Nolan’s mettle is something like the great-man biopic – not because he’s insufficiently reverent (or dad-ish in his WWII-era interests), but because of the temptation to give himself fully to that innate squareness. Is the guy who evoked terrorism, the surveillance state, and Occupy Wall Street in service of Batman-movie plot points really up for a nuanced exploration of the legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb? Yes and no. Nolan’s Oppenheimer isn’t so much a great-man biopic as a great-man-but-maybe-not biopic, and at times, the writer-director seems hell-bent on channeling the instinctive, ethereal ambivalence of a Terrence Malick trip. It’s a fascinating spectacle in large part because Nolan isn’t especially Malickian at all (though at least that frame of reference might temporarily ease the overworked, underbaked Kubrick comparisons). Throughout the film, especially as it builds during its first hour, theoretical physicist Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is beset by cutaway visions of stars, waves, and eventually all-consuming fire, fragments of zoomed-in science, blown up to eye-dazzling, seat-rattling IMAX scale. Half the movie feels like a montage and three-quarters of it feels like a thriller; the clandestine elements of the Manhattan Project and the talk of Soviet spies give the movie a feeling of buttoned-up espionage. A showcase piece, of course, is the first atomic bomb test, where bits of nervous comic relief pop up until the blast drops out Nolan’s usually-booming sound mix, leaving only the sound of breathing for a minute or two. It’s an awe-inspiring and discomfiting climax that hurtles Oppenheimer out of his preferred theoretical realm and into a void of reality. As much peripheral stargazing as the movie offers, it’s more interested in wrapping its mind around a 20th century horror that is, for many Americans, both abstract and intensely nightmarish. There is a clenched, impacted sadness to this semi-opaque figure who spearheads the creation of a bomb whose purpose is all too scrutable in the broader historical view. It might seem reductive to relate Oppenheimer’s merging of theoretical physics and practical project management to the way Nolan balances indelible images with practicality, creating an unlikely workmanlike poetry. It does explain, though, where some of that poetry comes from, and why even some of the movie’s more obvious points are able to shake up the audience, not just the premium-large-format multiplex seats. Nolan-via-Oppenheimer offers an explanation for this early in the movie, talking about his chosen field: “It’s paradoxical, and yet it works”—Jesse Hassenger
6. 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
7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Release Date: May 24, 2024
Director: George Miller
Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, Alyla Browne
Rating: R
If you ever took a class on the Greek classics, you might remember that the epics of Homer are defined by their first words. The Odyssey is the story of a “man,” while the Iliad is a story of “μῆνις,” which is often translated as wrath, rage…or fury. The epics of George Miller barely need words at all, yet Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is the Iliad to Fury Road’s stripped-down Odyssey. The latter’s elegant straight-line structure is replaced with lush chapters, documenting the interconnected systems of post-apocalyptic nation-gangs through the years. Through it all, a Dickensian hero clings to this world’s seedy undercarriage. Reducing Furiosa down to a single word does it as little justice as it does the sagas it scraps, welds and reuses like its countless Frankenstein vehicles. But understanding George Miller’s Fury Road prequel as the story of war—of sprawling futility, driven by the same cyclical cruelty that turned its deserts into Wastelands—makes it far more than a satisfying origin story. (Though, it’s that too). Furiosa speaks the language of epics fluently, raging against timeless human failure while carrying a seed of hope. What we learn, we learn through the eyes of Furiosa, from the moment she’s ripped from the Green Place of Many Mothers as a child, to the second before she tears out of Immortan Joe’s Citadel, smuggling Fury Road’s stowaways. As Furiosa grows from traumatized child (Alyla Browne) to damaged adult (Anya Taylor-Joy), she survives the slave-labor bowels of the Citadel, claws her way into a position aboard a trade caravan and waits for the perfect moment to enact revenge upon her initial captor, the chaotic, power-hungry biker warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Pushing back on the various men who hunt them, Browne and Taylor-Joy’s performances work in stunning tandem, steadily heating the steely young girl’s resolve until it turns molten. When you match the most powerful eyes in the business with Miller’s evocative framing (Furiosa is shot a bit like Galadriel’s brush with evil in Lord of the Rings—somewhere between avenging angel and Frank Miller cover), you get all the character you need. Each action scene, whether another amazing chase or a desperate rescue mission deep in enemy territory, is driven just as deeply by visual logic as by spectacle. These stunning visions of neo-medieval torture in Hell’s junkyard only work if we can make sense of it all. Furiosa is a film well-planned and deeply dreamed. Miller’s movies strip folkloric epics down to their basic mechanical parts, functional skeletons that run on raw emotion like the war machines running on piss and guzzolene.–Jacob Oller
8. Longlegs
Release Date: July 12, 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
9. Godzilla Minus One
Release Date: November 24, 2023
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Stars: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki
Rating: PG-13
Big G returns in utterly triumphant fashion in 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, which immediately feels like the most direct corollary to Gojira that the series has ever produced, while thoughtfully modernizing so many of its elements. Wisely, despite the transition to full-on CGI effects to bring Godzilla to life, the creators still capture his stiff, upright movement as it’s always been, the physical remnant of having been played by a man in a suit. Rarely, however, has the sheer mass of the monster been captured so vividly and terrifyingly as it is here, as we watch whole sections of roadway buckle and leap into the air after each of his thunderous footfalls–not to mention the incredible destructive spectacle of his atomic breath. This Godzilla is genuinely terrifying, a rampaging beast without an ounce of mercy or nobility to him. This likewise results in the odd situation where we actually find ourselves genuinely rooting for the human characters to vanquish and defeat Godzilla for once, a rare state of mind for the Godzilla series that is empowered by Minus One‘s sympathetic protagonist Kōichi Shikishima, a man trying desperately to find either a reason to live or the courage to die following the horrors of the second world war. He’s surrounded by salt-of-the-earth Japanese citizens who band together to overcome a truly impossible-seeming obstacle, with an unexpectedly hopeful depiction of human ingenuity and selflessness. An absolutely outstanding kaiju film in general, and one of the few to ever successfully make the human characters an effective center of the action.–Jim Vorel
10. M3GAN
Release Date: January 6, 2023
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Ronny Chieng, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps
Rating: PG-13
Long before M3GAN hit theaters, the film’s titular cyborg, who can best be described as a mashup of Renesmee from Twilight (if she was a raging sadist) and a yassified Baby Annette, became a viral sensation. Somewhat miraculously, M3GAN manages to live up to its spectacular advertising. (Though in retrospect, this new triumph in horror camp shouldn’t be that surprising, as Malignant’s James Wan and Akela Cooper, AKA the people who gave us this scene just last year, co-wrote the film). After losing both of her parents in a tragic car accident, young Cady (Violet McGraw) moves in with her aunt Gemma (Allison Williams), a toy company roboticist partially responsible for PurrpetualPetz: Stuffed animals that have human-like teeth and, among other things, take shits. Realizing she is not equipped to care for a youngster, Gemma makes it her mission to finish building M3GAN—or Model 3 Generative Android—a robot designed specifically to be your child’s most loyal BFF. Soon enough, M3GAN starts to take her “protect Cady at all costs” programming a little too literally (who could’ve seen that coming?), resulting in a string of darkly comical sequences of violence—one of which may or may not involve the talking doll zealously wielding a nail gun. M3GAN is more than just another solid entry into this horror subgenre. I might even be so bold as to say that it is horror’s newest camp classic, and M3GAN one of the greatest horror icons of recent years. M3GAN, somewhat miraculously, perfects the horror-comedy tone, able to consistently toe the line of too silly—from M3GAN’s passive-aggressive, condescending and sickly sweet timbre (nailed by Jenna Davis, the “penny nickel dime” girl from Vine), to her raggedy blonde wig—without ever actually crossing it. M3GAN’s most impressive feat, at the end of the day, is that it gives us cinematic sickos exactly what we want without sacrificing greatness in the process. And yes, what we want is a breakdancing, murderous doll. Is that such a crime?—Aurora Amidon
11. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Release Date: June 2, 2023
Director: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Stars: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae, Jason Schwartzman
Rating: PG
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse webs its way into a far more jaded world, one overstuffed with superhero sequels, and specifically, multiverse storytelling. And yet Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings in and, yet again, wipes the floor with its genre brethren by presenting a sequel that is both kinetic and deeply emotional. The script by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) smartly builds upon the foundation of its already established characters, their relationships and the ongoing consequences from the first film to further explore the lives of secret teen superheroes Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) a year after the first film. The writers do so with a clear agenda to not only best themselves visually, but by upping the game of the now-familiar multiple-timeline tropes. Together with the talents of directing team Joaquim Dos Santos (The Legend of Korra), Kemp Powers (Soul) and Justin K. Thompson (Into the Spider-Verse), Across the Spider-Verse—across the board—swings for the cinematic fences in the rare sequel that feels like every frame has been crafted with the intention of wringing every bit of visual wonder and emotional impact that the animators, the performers and the very medium can achieve. The hybrid computer-animation meets hand-drawn techniques established in the first films returns with a more sleek execution that’s a bit easier on the eyes, which affords the animators to get even more ambitious with their array of techniques and character-centric presentations. The depth and breadth of the animation and illustration styles are jaw-dropping. There are frames you just want to fall into, they’re so beautifully rendered and conceived. If there’s any critique, it’s that the more action-centric sequences are almost too detailed, so that the incredible work of the animators moves off-screen so quickly that you feel like you’re not able to fully appreciate everything coming at you. As a middle film in the trilogy (Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is due in theaters in 2024), it’s a joy to be able to say that Across the Spider-Verse stands well on its own, based on the merits of its story and stakes. There’s also a killer cliffhanger that sets the stage for a third chapter that doesn’t feel like it’s cheating its audience like some other recent films have done (cough Dune cough). In fact, repeat viewings of Across the Spider-Verse to bridge the gap until the final installment next year sounds like a great way to savor this film as it so richly deserves.—Tara Bennett
12. Poor Things
Release Date: December 8, 2023
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Stars: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael
Rating: R
Yorgos Lanthimos’ off-kilter, pastel-drenched Poor Things opens with static shots of silken embroidery. It is hard to ascertain the images themselves, threaded so neatly in a near-identical gray. But the slippery, elusive texture is integral to the film, which weaves together something thick and rich with detail. What follows is narrow in its focus and big and engulfing in its scale: The story of a young woman who must overcome the experiments enacted against her while embracing her changing body and irrepressible urges. As such, this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name is difficult to summarize, loosely following Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) as she grows to embrace adulthood despite the overbearing tutelage of her de facto father God (Willem Dafoe). Once introduced to the dashing and cocky Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella recognizes the pitfalls of her sheltered life and endeavors to travel around the world, experiencing life anew before marrying her father’s sweet and bumbling assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Lying in the genre gulf between science fiction and straightforward drama, Poor Things also finds time to unleash Stone’s ability as a physical comedian, building a sticky, entrancing bodily language that lives somewhere between twitchy, childlike enthusiasm and mystical knowingness. She wanders through their eclectic family home with an unsteady gait, crashing into delicately hung porcelain displays and cackling rather than cowering at the destruction which follows. It is a deliciously amoral journey, the kind that has already secured Lanthimos ample praise over the course of his career. But this is perhaps the filmmaker’s most garish and confident endeavor, using Bella’s naive perspective to design a world so heightened that it exists somewhere between a nightmare and a dream. Somewhat surprisingly, Poor Things feels like it is in conversation with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, right down to Stone’s robotic, doll-like physique. Where Barbie feels shallow and tentative in its understanding of what it means to physically grow up, Poor Things is bold and radically (at times uncomfortably) honest. It will satisfy fans of Lanthimos’ previous work and perhaps win over new viewers who are desperate to engage in the kind of coming-of-age stories that propel the genre forward. —Anna McKibbin
13. Everything Everywhere All At Once
Release Date: March 25, 2022
Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Stars: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr.
Rating: R
Everything Everywhere All At Once follows Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), a jaded, middle-aged laundromat owner who may or may not be involved in some minor tax fraud. Her tedious, repetitive life is thrown into total pandemonium, however, when her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan)—or at least a version of him—alerts her to the existence of the multiverse on the elevator ride to an IRS meeting. He then explains that a powerful villain named Jobu Tupaki is in the process of constructing a universe-destroying force that only Evelyn has the ability to stop. And so Evelyn reluctantly plunges headfirst into the multiverse. The facts: There are an infinite number of universes that exist simultaneously, containing just about anything you could possibly imagine. The rules: To acquire different skills, you must picture a universe in which you inhabit that skill, whether it be inhumanly strong pinky fingers or a mastery of knife-fighting. (If you can think it up, it exists.) What follows, then, are roughly 140 frenetic minutes filled to the brim with dense, complex science, colorful setpieces and scenes that feel like they’ve been pulled straight out of dreams far too abstract to describe. As you can probably gather, Everything is not dissimilar to its title—and a lot to wrap your head around. If all this sounds intimidating (which, let’s be honest, how could it not?), rest assured that Everything is grounded by an effortlessly simple emotional throughline. Indeed, the film contains as much emotional maturity as it does cool concepts and ostentatious images (yes, including a giant butt plug and raccoon chef). At its core, it is a story about love and family, carried by the dazzling Yeoh in a subtle and unsentimental performance. Where Everything’s emotional throughline is Evelyn’s relationship with her family, its visual thread manifests as a series of hypnotic, vertiginous action sequences, choreographed like a ballet by Andy and Brian Le. As a bonus, these sequences recall Yeoh’s iconic role in Ang Lee’s wuxia film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The directors do not shy away from the use of dizzying flashing lights, or rapidly shifting light sources that disorient the viewer. They also aren’t afraid to implement over-the-top images, like a person’s head exploding into confetti or a butt-naked man flying in slow-motion toward the camera. At the same time, movement between ‘verses feels seamless through Paul Rogers’ meticulous editing, as does the effortless fashion in which different aspect ratios melt into one another. If Everything Everywhere All at Once can be boiled down to one, simple question, it would be reflexive of its own title: Can you really have everything everywhere all at once? Whatever the characters’ answers end up being (I’ll let you discover that on your own), I am certain that the Daniels would say yes, of course you can.—Aurora Amidon
14. Downton Abbey: A New Era
Release Date: May 20, 2022
Director: Simon Curtis
Stars: Hugh Bonneville, Laura Carmichael, Jim Carter, Raquel Cassidy, Brendan Coyle, Michelle Dockery, Kevin Doyle, Joanne Froggatt, Michael Fox, Harry Hadden-Paton, Robert James-Collier, Allen Leech, Phyllis Logan, Elizabeth McGovern, Sophie McShera, Tuppence Middleton, Lesley Nicol, Douglas Reith, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton, Penelope Wilton, Hugh Dancy, Laura Haddock, Nathalie Baye, Dominic West, Jonathan Zaccaï
Rating: PG
Will you enjoy a A New Era even if you’ve never seen a single second of Downton Abbey? As the Crawleys themselves might say, “I’d rather think so.” But this is a movie for the fans—almost a gift, really. The last two-plus years have been a lot for everyone, and to escape to late 1920s England and France in all its splendor is a delight. All the things we adore about Downton are still there. The lackadaisical pacing that invites viewers in. The Dowager Countess’ delightful barbs. The Upstairs Downstairs shenanigans. Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Edith’s (Laura Carmichael) rat-a-tat sibling rivalry. (When Edith remarks that going back to work will give her an opportunity to use her brain again, Mary replies, “Let’s hope it’s still there.”) The Crawleys and their staff still make up a well-coiffed, well-dressed and well-executed soap opera. What a treat to get to hang out with them for another two hours. The music and sweeping aerial photography immediately transport you to a different era. But A New Era is smart enough to not unravel well-loved plot points. No romances are undone. Characters aren’t broken up just so the movie would have something to do. Unlike other sequels and movies based on TV series (looking right at you Sex and the City), the true gift is that these characters remain true to the characters we know and love. With the remaining few lingering romances wrapped up and a plot twist I won’t reveal, there’s a sense of closure and finality as A New Era ends. But clearly series creator Julian Fellowes has proven he has more Downton stories to tell. I have to say I would be happy to continue watching for years to come.—Amy Amatangelo
15. John Wick: Chapter 4
Release Date: March 24, 2023
Director: Chad Stahelski
Stars: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Ian McShane, Bill Skarsgård, Shamier Anderson, Clancy Brown, Laurence Fishburne, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rina Sawayama, Lance Reddick, Scott Adkins
Rating: R
Early in John Wick: Chapter 4, our titular Baba Yaga—played by Keanu Reeves after a decade as a near-mute terminator monk, his monastic frock a fine three-piece bulletproof suit and his tonsure a greased-down mane the color of night—is still in hiding following Chapter 3’s cliffhanger. Of course, an ever-increasing bounty on his head hasn’t stopped him from continuing to murder a lot of people, including the Elder (George Georgiou), who’s not the same Elder from Chapter 3, because, as this new Elder explains, he killed the last guy and took over, as the Elder did before that guy, and the Elder before that guy did to the guy before that guy. The convoluted hierarchy of the John Wick Murderverse exists only to multiply and grow more convoluted: In Chapter 2, no one sat above the High Table, except for, as introduced in Chapter 3, the Elder, who sits above and also beside it, but apparently has his share of problems. Just as the membership of the High Table is susceptible to sociopathic sibling rivalry (see Chapter 2), there will always be another Elder to kill, another personal war to wage, another henchman to shoot repeatedly in the face. “No one, not even John Wick, can kill everyone,” we hear said in an awed tone. But no, he must kill everyone. This is what we want and this is how this ends, how John Wick can be free: He kills the whole world. If Chapter 3 began immediately following Chapter 2, rarely letting up from its video game formula as levels grew more difficult and bad guys became more immune to John Wick’s superpower (murder), then Chapter 4 is the franchise’s most deliberate entry yet. With three movies worth of stakes and worldbuilding behind it, Chad Stahelski’s latest hyper-violent opus is a modern masterpiece of myth-making indulgence and archetypal action cinema. Stahelski and Reeves know that their movie must inhale genres, superstars, models, singers, Oscar winners and martial arts icons, DTV and prestige alike; consume them and give them space to be sacrificed gloriously to a franchise that values them. Behold Donnie Yen—who feels absolutely at home in the Murderverse—but also Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina Sawayama and Clancy Brown and Scott Adkins, the latter given a lengthy neck-snapping set piece that’s both scene-chewing madness and an expected physical display from Adkins. It’s all patient and omnivorous and beyond ridiculous. Stahelski wields bodies to push them to god-like ends. Everything on screen is stupendous. This is what we want, to watch John Wick murder the whole world, forever and ever amen.—Dom Sinacola
16. Barbie
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Director: Greta Gerwig
Stars: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Simu Liu, Will Ferrell
Rating: PG-13
Bursting with big ideas on the complexities surrounding womanhood, patriarchy and the legacy of its eponymous subject, Barbie scores a hat trick for its magnificent balance of comedy, emotional intelligence and cultural relevance. The picture begins with a playful homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Dawn of Man sequence. Except, in Gerwig’s prelude, the apes are young girls and the wondrous discovery they make is not a monolith, but a 100-foot tall bathing-suit-wearing Barbie (Margot Robbie), who is there to put an end to Planet Earth’s sexism with her mere aspirationalism. Life is idyllic until Robbie’s Barbie, who refers to herself as Stereotypical Barbie, begins to experience an unprecedented existential crisis. These uncharacteristic anxieties, coupled with the fact that her once-permanently-tippy-toed feet have fallen flat, lead Barbie on a quest to the Real World in hopes of returning back to her normal, carefree self. When her adoring Ken (Ryan Gosling) joins her in her cross-realm voyage, ideologies are swapped, havoc is wreaked and major changes are brought upon Barbie Land. Gerwig is grappling with these heavy ideas of patriarchy and gender, but Barbie always maintains a delightful sense of play and lightheartedness. This is largely due to the pink, campy, absurd and absolutely bewitching set work created by Barbie’s production designer, Sarah Greenwood, and set decorator, Katie Spencer. The incredible sets that we see in the film are real, tangible places whose presence create a nostalgic desire to feel, grab and touch. The believability of the sets—“this is a real Barbie Dream House and Robbie is a real life Barbie doll,” we think—makes for an interesting meta layer for the film. This sense of self-awareness touches almost every aspect of Barbie, from the set design to the campy performances and even its handling of its source material. Writers Gerwig and Noah Baumbach obviously have a soft spot for Robbie’s character, and the beauty of humans in general, but they don’t allow their work with a large corporation like Mattel to prevent them from exploring Barbie’s complicated legacy throughout the film. Like its protagonist, Barbie is all the things all at once. Funny. Sentimental. Entertaining. Confrontational. Celebratory. Heartfelt. Heartbreaking. Kooky. Emotional. And, maybe most interestingly of all, a damn good time capsule for what was exciting and frightening in mainstream culture at this particular societal moment.—Kathy Michelle Chacón
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. The Fall Guy
Release Date: May 3, 2024
Director: David Leitch
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Winston Duke, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Stephanie Hsu
Rating: PG-13
The deceptive difficulty of action movies, comedies, and their intersection is being able to do something completely stupid with total straight-faced commitment. Like so many easily dismissed parts of film production, a punchline delivered with invested emotion is just as hard to pull off as a pratfall performed with total abandon. If either misses its mark by a hair, you fall flat on your face and leave the audience hating your smug performance or hyperactive flailing. It’s all the more impressive, then, that Ryan Gosling does it all in The Fall Guy. He plays stuntman Colt Seavers, living bruise, returning to action One Last Time in order to help his old flame Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) on her first directorial effort, Metalstorm. That’s the simple set-up, designed to showcase the jock rock of filmmaking: A stunt spectacular combining the technical prowess and meathead charm of the dirtbag daredevils behind every awesome car crash and killer fight scene. And, thanks to Gosling—playing his role like his schmuck detective from The Nice Guys accidentally found himself in a Mission: Impossible—the film breezily flits between a savvy behind-the-scenes pastiche and a committed action rom-com. Ok, The Fall Guy owes its success to far more people than its leading man. That’s kind of its point. Directed by longtime stuntman David Leitch (with this film, distancing himself from solely being the less impressive half of the John Wick team) and written by Drew Pearce (one of Leitch’s Hobbs & Shaw scribes), The Fall Guy works best as an anti-blockbuster. It wants to blow shit up and wow us with its ballsy choreography, but it also wants to take the shine off these feats of movie magic. Funnier and more effective than most movies built upon a foundation of car chases and fistfights, The Fall Guy is smart enough to showcase its dumb action in a new and exciting way. Its affection is infectious, whether that’s for the art of filmmaking, the haywire pleasures of being on set, the adrenaline rush of a well-made gamble, or for finding someone special to share your simple corner of the world. The ambitious meta-film overcomes the baggage of trying to be both the movie of the summer and the movie that comments on those kinds of movies, hitting a cinematic sweet spot and singing the praises of stunt performers everywhere.–Jacob Oller
19. Challengers
Release Date: April 26, 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
20. Nope
Release Date: July 22, 2022
Director: Jordan Peele
Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun
Rating: R
Among his most amusing directorial quirks, Jordan Peele appreciates the melodrama of a good biblical citation: 2019’s killer doppelgänger vehicle Us tirelessly invokes Jeremiah 11:11 and his latest effort Nope opens with Nahum 3:6: “I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.” It’s that last clause which perfuses Nope, a shrewd, tactile yarn about a brother-sister rancher duo in pursuit of video evidence of a UFO circling their home. Though Peele routinely prods at the Hollywood machine and its spectacles, here he unlades it all: Image-making as brutality, catharsis, posterity, surveillance, homage, indulgence. Six months after a freak accident killed their father, siblings OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) have taken over “Haywood’s Hollywood Horses,” Agua Dulce’s intergenerational horse-wrangling business which specializes in equine showbiz. Working in beautiful contradistinction, Kaluuya plays OJ as stoic and reticent—the true older brother type—and Palmer’s Emerald is prodigiously magnetic and full of puckish chatter. After a series of strange happenings—blackouts, agitated horses, pained noises emanating from the canyons—OJ observes what appears to be a flying saucer gliding through the inky night sky. The next day he spots a cloud that doesn’t move an inch. Suspecting a connection between the saucer and their father’s death, OJ and Emerald enlist the help of gawky, unstable techie Angel (Brandon Perea) and renowned documentarian Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott, excellent rasp) to obtain proof of the UFO, with intent to profit off of the footage. In a sense, the Haywoods want to make a movie. This is Peele rescripting the American film canon, asking what it means to engage with such an exclusionary medium. Shot in IMAX by Dutch cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema—a Christopher Nolan regular, responsible for the slick, beautified landscapes of Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet—Nope configures a world of sweeping, dusty landscapes and bloodied dwellings. Steven Spielberg is less a point of reference here than he is the emotional roadmap. The Close Encounters of the Third Kind comparisons write themselves, but notionally, Nope is more like Jaws in the sky. Parts neo-Western, family drama, sci-fi and cosmic horror, Nope sees Peele balance more throughlines here than ever before: Aliens, Muybridge revisionism, undigested grief, chimpanzee carnage, a punctilious documentarian chasing the impossible. Nope is indisputably one for Peele—a spectacle in the least derogatory sense; a palimpsest of nostalgic blockbusters and Peele’s deservedly self-assured vision of Hollywood’s future; but mostly, a solution to and an undertaking of modernity.—Saffron Maeve
21. Dune: Part Two
Release Date: March 1, 2024
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Stars: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub, Stellan Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling, Javier Bardem
Rating: PG-13
Set aside the complicated calculus of food, shelter and family needs. It’s time to shell out the big bucks and head to the local IMAX. To borrow from Kidman’s AMC commercial more explicitly, though you might not be “somehow reborn,” there will be “dazzling images,” sound you can feel and you will be taken somewhere you’ve “never been before” (at least, not since Dune). As befits a Part Two, Villeneuve’s film picks up in medias res, with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and the Fremen encountering and dealing with a murderous Harkonnen hunting party while trying to reach the Fremen stronghold. From this encounter, Villaneuve nimbly guides the narrative from one key moment to the next, a veritable dragonfly ornithopter of plot advancement (with a few slower moments to allow the burgeoning relationship with Paul and Zendaya’s Chani to breathe). If the outcome of each narrative stop feels very much fated, that in turn feels appropriate given the messianic prophecy undergirding the entire tale. Dune: Part Two’s production design is as much center stage as its star-studded cast. Villaneuve pummels the viewer with the sheer scale and brutal, industrial efficiency of the Harkonnen operation—well, it would be efficient if not for those pesky Fremen—yet all of it is engulfed in turn by Arrakis itself. Meanwhile, the sound design and throbbing aural cues evoke the weight and oppressiveness of a centuries-spanning empire, the suffocating cunning of “90 generations” of Bene Gesserit schemes and the inescapable gravity Arrakis and its spice-producing leviathans exert on both. For those torn on whether it’s worth venturing forth to the multiplex, consider Dune: Part Two a compelling two-hour-and-forty-six-minute argument in the “for” column. And that “indescribable feeling” you get when “the lights begin to dim?” That’s cinematic escape velocity, instantly achieved. Next stop, Arrakis.–Michael Burgin
22. Cuckoo
Year: 2024
Director: Tilman Singer
Stars: Hunter Schafer, Jan Bluthardt, Marton Csokas, Jessica Henwick, Dan Stevens
Rating: R
Cuckoo is a twisty, giallo-inspired, semi-body horror mystery that double acts as an impressive lead showcase proving that Schafer is more than just an “it girl.” Gretchen, a moody American teen grieving the recent loss of her mother, is forced to move in with her father Luis (Marton Csokas), his much younger English wife Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their mute daughter Alma (Mila Lieu). Luis and Beth have relocated from the States to the Alps, where they had once honeymooned at a lavish resort and subsequently conceived Alma. Both architects, the couple has been solicited by the resort’s owner, the overly pleasant Herr König (Dan Stevens) to build him a new resort. Thus, their project leaves them, and now Gretchen, with an indefinite stay in Germany. This is much to Gretchen’s chagrin, to put it lightly. She resents her stepmother and half-sister in what is customary for this archetypal character dynamic: a new mother has laid eggs in Gretchen’s nest, stealing resources. So, too is Gretchen’s relationship with her father strained. She had previously been under her mother’s welcomed custody, but in the wake of her untimely passing, Gretchen is now required to encroach upon her father’s new, younger family whom he had willingly abandoned her for.
One could argue that Cuckoo’s chief failing is that it doesn’t allow its tone to lean into the pure, visceral absurdity of its narrative. But I’d argue back that the seriousness adds to a certain charm, in a way where it’s clear that Singer isn’t trying to be overly self-serious; certainly, Argento characters are still taking the graveness of their stakes to heart. That König is so dead-set in his absurd goals is delightful, because there’s still a little twinkle in his eye, and Cuckoo manages to imbue this vibe with an earnest terror that makes for an exceedingly entertaining horror film. —Brianna Zigler
23. Asteroid City
Release Date: June 16, 2023
Director: Wes Anderson
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum
Rating: PG-13
While The French Dispatch crammed an impressive amount of narrative into its kinetic structure, Asteroid City’s journey to the intersection between California, Arizona and Nevada feels positively placid. The film is a story within a story, structured as a television show about a playwright trying to put together a production called “Asteroid City.” We bounce back and forth from the TV movie about the creation of the play, to a production of the play itself using the same characters, switching between black-and-white sequences narrated by a Rod Serling-like Bryan Cranston, and the Kodachrome splendor realized in the desert setting on the virtual stage. Thus, we have actors being actors playing actors, the kind of narrative playfulness that’s too often ignored when focusing on Anderson’s iconic visuals and soundtrack choices. The result is a meta-narrative constantly folding back on itself (in one of the film’s more playful moments, Cranston’s character accidentally appears in the color sequence, and quickly sees himself out), an alien invasion adventure story and family drama wrapped within the setting of a classic Western, where offramps literally lead nowhere and the seemingly regular shootout down the main street is the only interruption to what otherwise bucolic setting. From the opening moments, the immaculate production design explodes off the screen, the onscreen filigrees and dynamic color scheme a feast for the eye. There’s a mix between the stagey and the decidedly down to earth, with hand-painted signs advertising milkshakes dwarfed by background rock formations that are as theatrical as any Broadway flat. It’s but one way the film toys with our perception of the characters, both believing in their small and intimate moments, but always made aware of the artifice. There are of course many cinematic references, from the schlock of ‘50s sci-fi to more than a hint of Close Encounters that also fueled last year’s Nope. There are also echoes to many of Anderson’s own films. There’s so much joy on screen, so much playfulness, that it’s perhaps churlish to complain about any missteps. While not as deeply moving as some, or downright thrilling as others in Anderson’s filmography, it’s a journey to the desert well worth taking.—Jason Gorber
24. The Holdovers
Release Date: September 29, 2023
Director: Kevin Greutert
Stars: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojosa
Rating: R
Alexander Payne takes us back to school in order to satirize the larger American political landscape in The Holdovers, but his once-acidic tone has undoubtedly taken a shift toward the sincere since newcomer Reese Witherspoon first hit our screens as know-it-all Tracy Flick in Election nearly 25 years ago. Now, with the early 1970s-set holiday drama The Holdovers, his indictment of the American Dream may burn more slowly, but the gut punch Payne packs is no less severe, so long as you aren’t put off by a healthy dose of nostalgia. Stinky, sweaty, disgruntled Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti with a lazy eye), a hardass Ancient Civilizations professor who makes no attempt to hide how much he despises his “vulgar” students, is put in charge of babysitting the students whose parents don’t want to deal with them over the Christmas holiday break. “And I thought all the Nazis had left for Argentina,” quips the smartass leader of the gang, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), when Paul harshly disciplines the boys for fighting. Angus and Paul are not alone, as they are joined by Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the head of the school cafeteria, who recently lost her beloved son Curtis, himself a Barton alum, in the Vietnam war. If this sounds like the trappings of an “unlikely family of outsiders finds understanding during the holidays” kind of movie, it’s because that’s exactly what The Holdovers is. Neither Payne nor screenwriter David Hemingson are afraid to lean into the romantic notion that three disparate people with vastly different circumstances can briefly come together as a family, especially during Christmastime, for Christ’s sake. All three of the protagonists are hiding deeply held secrets and desires that are slowly revealed over the course of their time together, to the point that they truly come to rely on each other for trustworthy companionship. All of this is only plausible thanks to Hemingson’s well-developed screenplay, strong performances from all three leads and The Holdovers’ refined, cozy vibe. The syrupy soundtrack and softly glowing photography set the snug tone. If Election is a shot of tequila, The Holdovers is a slow succession of sips of bourbon that you don’t realize have affected your spatial awareness until you get out of your armchair.—Katarina Docalovich
25. Hell Hole
Year: 2024
Directors: Toby Poser, John Adams
Stars: John Adams, Toby Poser, Petar Arsić, Aleksandar Trmčić, Marko Filipovic, Anders Hove, Max Portman
Rating: NR
The filmmaking collective known as the Adams Family has spent the last decade or so establishing themselves among the best indie creators in the horror genre, cultivating an ever-expanding fanbase while doing it all Their Way. The minds behind Where the Devil Roams (one of the best horror films of 2023) and Hellbender (one of the best horror films of the last decade, bar none), to name just a couple, have proven remarkably versatile in terms of tone, craft and sheer ingenuity, simultaneously upping their ambition with each project and holding onto the DIY qualities that made them into scrappy fan favorites to begin with. With Hell Hole, their latest feature, the filmmaking family has constructed their biggest horror sandbox yet, packing every frame with as much production value as their small budget can muster and riding a fascinating tonal line between black comedy and sincere character drama. The results are mixed, but while Hell Hole is not the family’s best film, it is proof that they’re still among the most fascinating and consistently entertaining players in the horror game. —Matthew Jackson