26 Best Pg 13-rated Releases on Max
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
SimilarBack to the Future Part II (1989), Back to the Future Part III (1990), Batman Begins (2005), Batman Forever (1995), Batman Returns (1992), Ben-Hur (1959), Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), Blown Away (1994), Catwoman (2004), Code of Silence (1985), Constantine (2005), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), Die Hard 2 (1990), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Face/Off (1997), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007), Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard (1967), Hitman (2007), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Just Cause (1995), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Léon: The Professional (1994), Live Free or Die Hard (2007), Oldboy (2003),
Shaft (2000) Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), The Fifth Element (1997), The Legend of Zorro (2005), Zatoichi (2003),
Watch afterNapoleon (2023), Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire (2023), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023), The Marvels (2023), Wonka (2023),
StarringTemuera Morrison,
A decade's worth of superhero movies goes out with a big, stupid grin on its face.
One would hope that a film franchise with as much money poured into it as the DC Cinematic Universe would rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet here we are, limping towards the end of a slate of superhero flicks marred by terrible reviews (Shazam! 2), controversy (The Flash), or sheer too-little-too-late-ness (Blue Beetle). As the superhero genre continues to flag in a year of duds, DC's set for a reinvention, a clean slate courtesy of former Marvel it-boy James Gunn and co-head Peter Safran. Before they can wipe the board and start all over with the label's slate of classic capes, though, there's a few rounds left in the last guy's chamber to fire off. That's what Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels like, easily the least objectionable of the DC films to come out in 2023. Problem is, that's not saying much.
A sequel to Aquaman should have been a slam dunk: Director James Wan's 2018 take on the King of Atlantis was a welcome breath of neon-soaked pop art in a franchise studded with Snyderesque dourness, leaning into the innate silliness of an underwater take on Flash Gordon. Jason Momoa is as effortless a casting as you could imagine for DC's hardest-to-pin-down superhero, brimming with giddy frat-boy energy. At its best moments, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom leans into its star's goofiness and even lets it infect some of the rest of the cast. But there's no escaping the feeling of weariness, both for a cast and crew who are just repeating the novel beats of the first and an audience that's just plain starved for something new. Continue Reading →
The Color Purple
SimilarA Christmas Carol (1938), Apocalypse Now (1979), Belle de Jour (1967), Ben-Hur (1959), Billy Elliot (2000),
Blade Runner (1982) Blood and Chocolate (2007), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Chicago (2002), Contact (1997), Contempt (1963), Crash (1996), Dances with Wolves (1990), Desert Hearts (1985), Enough (2002), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Gone Baby Gone (2007), I've Always Liked You (2016),
Jackie Brown (1997) Just Cause (1995), Lost in Translation (2003), Manhattan (1979), Metropolis (1927), Mystic River (2003), Oldboy (2003), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Solaris (1972), The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Cider House Rules (1999), The Elementary Particles (2006), The Fisher King (1991), The Irishman (2019),
The Name of the Rose (1986) The Party (1980), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Tin Drum (1979), Titanic (1997), To Die For (1995), Volver (2006),
Watch afterAquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023), Poor Things (2023), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Whale (2022),
StarringColman Domingo,
Blitz Bazawule's adaptation of the Alice Walker classic (and the Broadway musical) is a more joyful, celebratory film than its predecessor.
The Color Purple has taken on a musicality ever since Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones adapted Alice Walker’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel for the screen. When the first film was released in 1985, Spielberg already referred to it as a “musical.” In a behind-the-scenes interview about the film's musicality included in Warner Bros’ sumptuous new 4K release, Walker, Spielberg, and Jones conduct us through the “diverse places” that music appears in the original film. There are rail work songs, African dance, juke joint blues, and revival gospel; all tonally matched together in a near seamless “immersion” of sound.
In an age where nearly every popular and cult film gets a Broadway adaptation, The Color Purple is a particular no-brainer. Celie’s journey of self-discovery through systematic abuses and struggles at the turn of the twentieth century lends itself to the kind of emotional bigness a musical requires. With music by the legendary Brenda Russell and the late queer songwriting icon Allee Willis, The Color Purple: The Musical also showcases a diverse range of musical styles and modes, especially those well suited for the stage, like swing and Greek chorus. Continue Reading →
The Zone of Interest
SimilarAli: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Almost Famous (2000), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Apocalypse Now (1979), Apollo 13 (1995), Belle de Jour (1967), Ben-Hur (1959),
Blade Runner (1982) Blood and Chocolate (2007),
Boys Don't Cry (1999) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Contact (1997), Contempt (1963), Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), Cruel Intentions (1999), Dances with Wolves (1990), Desert Hearts (1985), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), East of Eden (1955), Enough (2002), Finding Forrester (2000), Forrest Gump (1994), Gandhi (1982), I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016), I've Always Liked You (2016),
Jackie Brown (1997) Just Cause (1995), La Haine (1995), Metropolis (1927), Oldboy (2003), Raging Bull (1980), Random Harvest (1942),
Rebecca (1940) Shall We Dance? (2004), The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Elementary Particles (2006), The Elephant Man (1980), The Good German (2006), The Last Emperor (1987),
The Name of the Rose (1986) The Outsiders (1983), The Pianist (2002), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), The Straight Story (1999), The Tin Drum (1979), To Die For (1995), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Wonder Boys (2000),
Watch afterAmerican Fiction (2023), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Dune: Part Two (2024), Joker (2019), Napoleon (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Poor Things (2023),
StudioA24, Film4 Productions,
Jonathan Glazer's first feature in 10 years is a near-unclassifiable work of patience and intentional distance from its historical horrors.
What am I to say here? What can I say?
I feel as if I’m to say nothing at all. My mind has gone and I feel sick, and while that’s due to the film in question, another degree of it comes from a deeper truth. I feel wrong in my reaction to it; it can’t help but feel inadequate. The Zone of Interest has leveled me like few things ever have, but that’s not the point. That’s not its point. Continue Reading →
Meg 2: The Trench
Ever since James Cameron boldly wrote “S” after ALIEN on a chalkboard and then changed it to a dollar sign, the quickest way to sequel-ize your killer extraterrestrial/reptile/mammal/whatever has been to add more of it. You scored a hit with people fighting one giant mosquito? Great, here’s a sequel with six of them. Continue Reading →
Barbie
SimilarBridget Jones's Diary (2001), Catwoman (2004), Enchanted (2007), Ghost (1990), Ghostbusters (1984), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), The Holiday (2006), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Volver (2006),
Watch afterBlue Beetle (2023), Elemental (2023), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), Meg 2: The Trench (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), The Flash (2023),
The news that director Greta Gerwig’s follow-up project to her celebrated adaptation of Little Women would be a movie about Barbie dolls was met with skepticism and even disappointment when first announced in mid-2019. What did it mean for the future of one of Hollywood’s few high-profile female directors? Would she abandon her apparent passion for telling intimate stories about coming of age? Continue Reading →
The Flash
SimilarAladdin (1992), Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Hellboy (2004),
Live and Let Die (1973) On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Sin City (2005), Superman Returns (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), You Only Live Twice (1967),
StarringTemuera Morrison,
I do not like hating movies. I make a point to try and find something good even in otherwise crummy pictures—Adam Driver's fine leading turn in the otherwise dull 65, for example. Continue Reading →
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
SimilarBring It On (2000), Hellboy (2004), Night at the Museum (2006), Superman Returns (2006), The Legend of Zorro (2005),
Watch afterAnt-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023),
StudioDC Films, New Line Cinema,
If only there were a word I could scream that would turn me into a superhero. I wouldn’t fight crime or fly in the heavens above. Instead, I would run really fast until time went backward. Then I would sprint into the DC Film offices circa 2020 and yell, “Please do not make Shazam! Fury of the Gods. Nobody needs this!” Alas, I have no such power. So, here we are. Continue Reading →
Black Adam
SimilarBack to the Future Part II (1989), From Russia with Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Shrek the Third (2007), Sin City (2005), The Dark Knight (2008),
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022),
StudioDC Films, New Line Cinema,
We’re officially in the third decade of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson being a movie star. The former WWE legend made his cinema debut in the forgettable sequel to The Mummy, where he’s introduced as the dreaded Scorpion King, one of the most infamous early CGI debacles. Special effects have since improved, along with Johnson’s abilities as an actor and charismatic leading man. However, it feels like now we’ve come full circle with DC’s Black Adam. Continue Reading →
Moonage Daydream
SimilarCléo from 5 to 7 (1962),
In the unforgettable Looney Tunes cartoon Duck Amuck, director Chuck Jones posits a question to the viewer. What is Daffy Duck? Are his qualities recognizable even if he was in a different body? Entirely invisible? The various visual manifestations of this fowl, complete with a consistent personality emanating from the character’s voicework and body language, make it clear that Daffy Duck is more than just one physical vessel. He transcends form. Continue Reading →
See How They Run
StudioSearchlight Pictures, TSG Entertainment,
“You’ve seen one you seen them all," says the dastardly movie director from beyond the grave. It’s the recently murdered Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody), telling us early in the film about how stale the murder mystery genre was even by the 1950s, when See How They Run takes place. It’s also a warning to the audience that this movie will not be adding anything new, revelatory, or exciting to whodunnit cinema. Everything here has been done before, and better. Continue Reading →
Elvis
SimilarBrubaker (1980), Freedom Writers (2007), Mississippi Burning (1988), Raging Bull (1980), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006),
Watch afterThor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
In the opening seconds of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, viewers are blasted with the sight of the Warner Bros. logo – a variant glowing in gold and crimson, practically exploding with flair and moving parts – accompanied on the soundtrack by a remix of “Suspicious Minds.” Within the first few minutes, sweeping shots of Las Vegas clash with Ocean’s 11-style split screens, and the editing juggles between slowmo and cranked-up fast motion, in classic Luhrmann fashion. Continue Reading →
The Batman
SimilarDie Hard: With a Vengeance (1995), Hitman (2007), Mississippi Burning (1988),
Primal Fear (1996) Secret Window (2004), The Departed (2006),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021),
The opening shot of Matt Reeves' The Batman evokes, if nothing else, the opening shot of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation: we peer, ominously, through the binoculars of an unseen voyeur, looking at a young boy in a red ninja outfit playing with his father in a Gotham penthouse. While this isn't a flashback to young Bruce Wayne -- rather, we see Gotham's tough-on-crime Mayor Mitchell and his soon-to-be-orphaned boy -- the evocation is undeniable. By the time The Batman's three hours whiz past you, we'll have a similarly probing look into Bruce Wayne himself: what he prioritizes, what drives him, what he thinks he's doing for the city as Batman and what he realizes he should be doing. And it's that texture, that sense of interiority, that makes The Batman one of the best films of the year thus far, and one of the most fascinating cinematic adventures the character has to offer. Continue Reading →
Icahn: The Restless Billionaire
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
One marker of a great documentary is a tangible and infectious passion for its central subject matter—an underlying commitment to a topic or idea that drives the very existence of the project. It’s hard to figure out what’s motivating Icahn: The Restless Billionaire, beyond a not-so-faint sense of people wanting to defend why they like an ultra-wealthy capitalist. Though the word restless creeps into the title, the lack of vibrancy in this documentary’s filmmaking indicates that lifeless should’ve been used instead. Continue Reading →
Wayne's World
When we talk about what movies “couldn’t be made today,” it’s less about what tweaks would need to be employed to make them for a contemporary audience, and more about whining that P.C. culture has killed comedy and it’s never coming back. It also doesn’t take into account that pre-2000s comedy wasn’t entirely a lawless land of misogyny and casual homophobia. There are quite a few films from that era that could easily be made today, just as they were then, with virtually no tweaking or updating for an audience of “snowflakes” that doesn’t actually exist. One of those was Penelope Spheeris’s Wayne’s World, released thirty years ago today. Continue Reading →
Rocky IV
People think the Cold War officially ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. That may technically be the right answer, but the actual end of the Cold War happened in Moscow on Christmas Day, 1985. That’s when American boxing champ Rocky Balboa knocked out Russian behemoth Ivan Drago in such a humiliating fashion that even his own countrymen were Team Rocky by the end of the slugfest. It was such a blow to morale that the USSR never recovered. Continue Reading →
Dune
SimilarResident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Stalker (1979),
Watch afterDon't Look Up (2021), Eternals (2021), Free Guy (2021), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), The Batman (2022),
StarringBabs Olusanmokun, Stellan Skarsgård,
When I first heard the announcement of a new adaptation of Frank Herbert’s magnum opus Dune, I think I might have groaned and said, “God, not again.” Even with the cult followings that Lynch’s now-disowned 1984 version and SyFy’s plodding 2000 miniseries have amassed, there has yet to be a version that had the kind of mass appeal that gets butts in seats. Continue Reading →
Cry Macho
The country soundtrack kicks in. The plain, honey-coated lens flairs coat the screen. A truck parks and out steps Mike Milo (Clint Eastwood), met with the distance of his once-good friend Howard (Dwight Yoakam) who, like a soda machine someone’s kicked loose, dispenses copious exposition about Mike’s past. The man was a great rodeo rider before dabbling in pills and drink, and, according to his old pal, his rising age doesn’t help either. Howard wants fresh blood, but it seems the movie doesn’t. The delivery, the detachment, Yoakam’s thoroughly disinterested performance—the film borders on worrying at first. Continue Reading →
Reminiscence
SimilarEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Memento (2000), Secret Window (2004), Twelve Monkeys (1995),
Watch afterThe Suicide Squad (2021),
Hugh Jackman chases down the ghost of Rebecca Ferguson through futuristic memory tech in Lisa Joy's ponderous, limp tech-noir pastiche.
It would only be frustrating to recount exactly how many opportunities writer-director Lisa Joy (Westworld) throws away in her desperate effort to please in Warner Bros.’ latest, Reminiscence.
It’s not just that Joy fails to follow through on the noir tropes she so clearly wants to pay homage to while attempting to subvert, or a cast that features Thandiwe Newton and Hugh Jackman as jaded private gumshoes in a dystopian Miami, not to mention the near-perfect timing of this movie’s release. Noirs didn’t just come into their own in the years around WWII: some of the best examples of the genre came in the wreckage after, as people still flailing in the trauma of the Great Depression and genocide wondered what the hell was next in a new era of peace and prosperity that some found just as terrifying as what preceded it. Continue Reading →
In the Heights
SimilarDriving Miss Daisy (1989),
Watch aftertick tick... BOOM! (2021), West Side Story (2021),
StudioEndeavor Content,
During his sophomore year at Wesleyan University in 1999, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a draft of his debut play. At first, he “had one song and a title: In the Heights.” Soon after, the musical would premiere at the school’s student-run theater. John Buffalo Miller and Quiara Alegría Hudes helped revise it in the following years, and then it snowballed. It premiered off-Broadway in 2005, went to Broadway in 2008, and had international tours throughout the 2010s. A film adaptation felt like the natural next step, and over two decades after its inception, it arrives with a screenplay from Hudes and Jon M. Chu directing. Continue Reading →
Pearl Harbor
80 minutes into Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, the titular surprise attack finally arrives. It is, without a doubt, one of the most virtuosic action set pieces ever committed to the screen, a flawlessly orchestrated symphony of carnage that burns for close to 40 minutes. Everything that you could possibly hope for from a maximalist, hyperkinetic blockbuster spectacle is here. There’s fire cascading, plumes of black smoke rising, bullets and bombs raining down, planes tumbling from the skies, boats being torn asunder, and bodies being flung about like ragdolls. Annihilation and national tragedy have never looked so stunning or—and it feels gross saying this—felt so exhilarating. Continue Reading →