214 Best Releases From the Genre Mystery (Page 7)
クレイジークルーズ
SimilarThe Apartment (1960),
StudioNetflix,
As much of Hollywood’s current and immediate future output remains dedicated to comic book movies and Disney fare, the need for straightforward adult entertainment remains frustratingly unfulfilled. Hope blossomed anew at the announcement that Adrian Lyne, the king of classy erotic thrillers, was making a comeback with Deep Water, some two decades since the release of 2002’s Unfaithful. Everything that was revealed about the plot of Deep Water suggested that it was dipping from the same well as Unfaithful, in which infidelity in an otherwise stable marriage leads to raging jealousy, and ultimately murder. Upping the stakes is the fact that it stars hot couple for a second Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas, who met on set and presumably exhibited that sizzling chemistry in front of the camera. Surely this would be a triumphant return to form for Lyne, and a much-needed respite from trying to keep up with what phase Marvel is in at the moment. Continue Reading →
Lost Highway
Of all David Lynch’s films, Lost Highway has confounded me since I first saw it 25 years ago. There are movies of Lynch’s that I like less, and movies of his that I’ve shifted my opinions on with time. But in those cases, I always emerged—sometimes dazed—with a grasp on what Lynch was attempting to do with the picture and a good idea of whether he’d successfully done it. Continue Reading →
The Batman
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Morbius (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 →
Severance
SimilarThe Little Drummer Girl,
StudioEndeavor Content,
Do you hate your work life infringing on your home life? Can you not stand having to deal with outside issues while at your desk? The Severance program just might be for you. Continue Reading →
Death on the Nile
Studio20th Century Studios,
Even if you’re not familiar with Agatha Christie’s vast body of works—she wrote sixty-six detective novels alone—you’ve probably heard of Hercule Poirot. He’s the world’s most famous literary detective, next to Sherlock Holmes. Death on the Nile marks Kenneth Branagh’s second outing directing one of Christie’s Poirot stories and starring as the mustachioed detective himself, following 2017’s tepidly received Murder on the Orient Express. Dogged by COVID-19 delays and scandals surrounding star Armie Hammer, Death on the Nile sometimes feels like it’s scrambling to justify its own existence, and only half-succeeds. Continue Reading →
The Girl Before
Some of the best thrillers have to do with the home. Night House, The Invisible Man, and series like Haunting of Bly Manor and American Horror Story tap into that vein of particular terror that comes with having your safety, your shelter violated. It quite literally hits you where you live. Continue Reading →
Resurrection
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Festival) Continue Reading →
The Afterparty
Reunions can be murder. You’ve got to fool yourself into thinking you look as good or better than you did at 18. Then you have to draw to make that delusion reality. Clothes. A new haircut. Makeup. Perhaps a fun new accessory you can pretend has always been your thing. Then you get there. You see exes, people you hated who have the nerve to look great and be successful, and former classmates who remind you that you were kind of terrible as a teenager, too. Continue Reading →
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window
At this point, the wine-soaked citizen detective has become its own genre. Adaptations of boilerplate mysteries like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window give plenty of fodder for Netflix’s newest series: The Woman In The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window starring Kristen Bell as the titular Woman. Of course, spoofs and parodies are all well and good. Considering that Netflix also produced Woman in the Window, though, this newest feels a bit like having your cake and eating it too. Continue Reading →
Astrid & Lilly Save the World
NetworkSyfy,
SimilarAlice, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,
Into every generation, a teen horror drama is born: one series in all the media landscape; a chosen show. It alone will wield the quips and metaphors needed to fight the supernatural villains, social pressures, and other various youthful troubles. To stop the spread of standard high school melodramas and the swell of their number. It is...the newest supernatural young adult T.V. series. Continue Reading →
Yellowjackets
The sleeper hit of 2022 (so far) has undoubtedly been Showtime’s Yellowjackets, a grisly, enthralling tale of a 1990’s all-girls high school soccer team forced to survive the Ontario wilderness after a plane crash, it hit audiences like a bolt of lightning. The simplest way to describe it is “LOST meets Alive meets Lord of the Flies with Riot Grrl energy” - but even that does a disservice to the stunning character development, the devolution into savagery—a particular kind of savagery that only young women are capable of—and the relentless pacing that creates as many questions as it answers. The brilliance of Yellowjackets is that you know these girls will descend into madness, and yet you come to love them knowing the ritualistic cannibalism that awaits them. Yes, there is cannibalism, but funnily it becomes the least interesting part of Yellowjackets as the first season progresses. Continue Reading →
Servant
SimilarEchoes, Night Visions,
Say what you will about Apple TV’s Servant, but give it credit for its audacity. We’re three seasons in, and the series, executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, remains as clear as mud as to both what’s happening, and to where it’s all going to lead. Not since Twin Peaks has a TV show been so dedicated to being completely incomprehensible. Watching it is like being led down one path, only to be violently jerked toward another. “No, it’s not about that, you silly goose,” it says. “It’s about this.” Until it becomes about something else. Season 3 throws less things at the wall to see what sticks, but things remain frustratingly opaque. Continue Reading →
Brazen
With the meteoric popularity of Yellowjackets, a new installment of the Scream franchise, and the revival of shows like Saved by the Bell and The Babysitters Club, 90’s nostalgia is in full swing. It was only a matter of time before the true entertainment staple of the era made a comeback as well. I’m talking of course about the humble made-for-tv movie. The original TV movies of the 80’s and 90’s came in four basic flavors: teen morality play, hardboiled sleaze, young women being kidnapped/stalked/unalived, and Stephen King. The very best made-for-tv movies had overlap between the categories, with classics like Cyber Seduction, A Friend To Die For: Death of a Cheerleader, and No One Would Tell fueling the Monday morning water cooler roundups. Continue Reading →
Scream
SimilarBangkok Dangerous (2008), Cube (1997), Cube Zero (2004), Inside (2007), Klute (1971), Let the Right One In (2008),
Shaft (2000) Watch afterThanksgiving (2023),
StarringJack Quaid,
Say what you will about the Scream movies – while they’re almost as absurd as the movies they’re satirizing, they’re also each trying to say something. While the first movie was about slasher movies in general, Scream 2 explored the nature (and necessity) of sequels, while Scream 3 attempted (to less than successful results) a pre-#MeToo spotlight on sexual harassment, and, as an answer to the rise of Facebook and Twitter, Scream 4 focused on social media culture. Wes Craven set out to not just entertain and scare audiences, but to get them to think about what they were watching, exactly, and why. Continue Reading →
Station Eleven
NetworkHBO Max,
StudioParamount Television Studios,
When Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel hit shelves in 2014, it was a standout in science-fiction. HBO’s adaptation can’t help but hit differently in 2021. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale about what’s left of the world after a deadly flu ravages the populace. The parallels to current events are glaringly obvious. Continue Reading →
The Expanse
SimilarCrusade Golden Years Missions, Stargate Atlantis, Terra Formars: Bugs-2 2599, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
There’s a song that was popular in the aughts with the lyric “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” and it feels like the most fitting description of The Expanse. It’s a show that has changed identities more times than Sidney Bristow and managed to retain a strong, cohesive narrative, with this season bringing its final arc full circle. Not to the proto-molecule, but to the struggle of the Belters to get their fair shake from Earth and Mars, something Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) dreamed of in the very first episode, something Fred Johnson (Chad Coleman) lived and died for. Continue Reading →
Only Murders in the Building
You can listen to the score for Only Murders in the Building on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios. Continue Reading →
Ragdoll
NetworkAMC+,
SimilarBates Motel,
The Ragdoll Killer of the new AMC+ series may be meticulous in making a cadaver assembled from several bodies. They may have been painstaking in their planning, in the series of clues they left behind. Unfortunately, Ragdoll lacks the same level of rigorous attention. Continue Reading →
Dexter
NetworkShowtime,
StudioShowtime Networks,
It is difficult to imagine the people who, after Dexter’s largely despised series finale, felt that more Dexter would solve the problem. When you recall the last season of Dexter was also largely despised, it becomes even more challenging. Add in that, for many, the writing on the wall started even earlier, and it becomes damn near impossible. And yet, here is Dexter: New Blood. Continue Reading →
Last Night in Soho
Similar28 Days Later (2002), Cube (1997), Cube Zero (2004),
Shaft (2000) Watch afterNightmare Alley (2021), tick tick... BOOM! (2021),
Has any other director in recent years had as frustrating a creative decline as Edgar Wright? Discounting his feature debut—the 1995, no-budget A Fistful of Fingers—his streak was white-hot. Two series of Spaced both developed and prefaced his earnest eye for nerd culture, leading up to what would become his Cornetto Trilogy. His work was so loving, so finely tuned, and, especially in the case of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, some of the most pop-culturally keen around. However, Baby Driver couldn’t help but sit in neutral; it was a pet project missing heart. With that out of the way, perhaps there was something more substantial to come next. Continue Reading →
I Know What You Did Last Summer
In 1973, Lois Duncan created the perfect premise for a thriller: a group of teens on a midnight joyride run over a pedestrian and make a pact to keep it a secret. They think they're successful in hiding the crime. Then, a year later, one of them receives an ominous note stating simply, "I Know What You Did Last Summer." While the teens try to solve the mystery of who is harassing them, they soon realize that whoever knows their secret wants them dead. Continue Reading →