2 Best Releases Like The Departed 2006 on Netflix

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 →

It’s common to think about each of us having a “role” in society, with costumes, positions, stages, and actions to be performed. Mexican director Alonso Ruizopalacios (Gueros, Museo) deputizes this idea in A Cop Movie, which investigates policing and the line between fiction and documentary with political precision. Continue Reading →