7 Best Movies To Watch After The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)

Michael Keaton gives a subtle & empathetic performance as a hitman in his waning days. The minute the mournful saxophone music swells in Knox Goes Away (which is minute one), you think to yourself oh boy, here we go. A car driving in the Los Angeles night, two hitmen, one cool, cultured, and precise, the other seemingly more casual and good-humored about the whole thing, meet in a diner to banter and discuss their next job; none of this fills the viewer with confidence that they’re about to see something they haven’t seen a million times before. And then the first hitman asks the diner waitress for a cup of coffee, seemingly having forgotten he already has one in front of him, and maybe something different is happening here. Continue Reading →

The word for Rose Glass (Saint Maud) and Weronika Tofilska's Love Lies Bleeding is "precise." From the individual and combined performances of leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian (whose turn as a cunning Imperial agent was a bright spot in the often dreary third season of The Mandalorian) to DP Ben Fordesman's chameleonic camera work and hair department lead Megan Daum's wide-ranging design work, everyone on the project knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to get it done. The result is a bracing, clear-eyed noir thriller, and a fraught, swoon-worthy romance. It's my favorite movie of 2024 so far. It's the late 1980s. The reserved and insightful Lou (Stewart) manages a grimy bodybuilding gym in a sunbleached western suburb. She does not talk to her father, the cruel, cunning crime lord Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). She loves her sister, fraying housewife Beth (Jena Malone), and hates that she will not leave her loathsome slimeball husband JJ (Dave Franco). The closest person Lou has to a romantic partner is the aggressively cheerful Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), and their on-off something or other boils down to, in Bart Simpson's words, "geographical convenience, really." Enter Jackie (O'Brian), a drifting bodybuilder aiming for a Las Vegas contest where victory can leap passion into profession. The sparks are immediate. Jackie (Katy O'Brian) strives for bodybuilding stardom. She's doing the work, but the events of Love Lies Bleeding bend the barrier between her reality and her dream. A24. Jackie's drive lights a fire in Lou, and Lou's methodical care grounds Jackie. Simultaneously, Lou's desire to help Jackie achieve her dream and Jackie's desire to make Lou happy lead them to make bad calls—the sort of bad calls that lead to worse calls that lead to blood. And neither JJ's venality nor Lou Sr.'s mercilessness should be discounted. Continue Reading →

There's more than one transition going on in Park Chan-wook's 2013 thriller Stoker. Yes, the film tells the story of how the seemingly carefree India (Mia Wasikowska) goes from worshipping her father to worshipping her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). But the Hitchcockian thriller -- and it is one, beyond the shadow of a doubt -- was also Director Park’s first English-language title. 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 →

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 →

With the release of The Rise of Skywalker and the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the term “fan service” has come to mean going to extremes in order to please fickle audiences of a TV series or film franchise. Though framed as an acknowledgment and appreciation of fan support, it feels forced and phony, an Easter egg hunt where a plot should be. While David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s 2018 reboot of Halloween was far from a perfect film, they were determined to make it their own, rather than continuing the same interminable, by then thoroughly ridiculous storyline. Its sequel, Halloween Kills, however, feels like whatever Green and McBride were originally trying to do was shoved aside in favor of winks and nods at the “true” fans of the series. The body count is much, much bigger, and almost laughably gory, but if you’re looking for any kind of coherent plot and characters not doing anything but the stupidest things imaginable, look elsewhere. Continue Reading →

Built in 1970 and finished in 1973, Chicago's Sears Tower was the epitome of neoliberalism. Whereas the other, more traditionally liberal buildings were humble and for the people, this one was better. It was bigger, taller, providing more room while taking up less space. It even beat out the Empire State Building with its 1,450 feet. Suffice it to say its edifice knew no bounds. But while it already dwarfed its sky like a capitalist Godzilla, it added antennas to grow another 279. The result was an onyx symbol that, with all its simplicity, said, “Come to me. Be my victim.” Continue Reading →