13 Best Movies To Watch After Bullet Train (2022)

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 →

Sean Durkin’s biopic about the Von Erich wrestling dynasty features stellar performances in a script that can’t quite find its footing. In 2008, Mickey Rourke made a surprise and stunning comeback in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. His once pretty-boy face distorted from years of drugs and plastic surgery suddenly felt tailor-made for the role of Randy “The Ram” Robinson — a wrestler on the outs, clinging to the only thing he knows while the rest of his life crumbles around him. 2023's The Iron Claw offers us a similar story, right down to the comeback for its lead. Zac Efron may be fortunate enough not to have a tawdry past to overcome like Rourke, but he’s never really found his footing since leaving his teen heartthrob days behind. That said, thanks to complications from a broken jawbone, his face is radically different from the one we knew in High School Musical, even sparking gossip of plastic surgery gone wrong (another insult often lobbed at Rourke, though in his case it’s certainly true). But just like Rourke, his new jawline perfectly suits him in The Iron Claw, which may finally prove to be his breakthrough role as an adult, dramatic actor. Continue Reading →

Seven films into her career as a filmmaker and Rebecca Miller is still a perplexing study. From 1995’s Angela, her symbolic unpacking of a lost childhood (presumably her own) to 2015’s Maggie’s Plan, a symbolic study of a desire for independence (presumably her own), she's made female pain and pleasure her subject without ever settling on a formal approach. Miller is an auteur in the sense that the peculiar combination of confrontational sexuality and highly personal discursiveness seem like the province of someone who both knows exactly what kind of things she wants people to think about, even if she’s never decided the way she wants us to think about them, other than “immediately.” Continue Reading →

The original Hocus Pocus has grown to be a cult favorite over the years. The 1993 film followed the Sanderson sisters: Winnie (Bette Midler), Mary (Kathy Najimy), and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) as they terrorized Salem, Massachusetts after rising from the grave—until their apparently eternal banishment the end of the film. Now, in 2022, the Sandersons have been resurrected by the corporate magic of Disney. Luckily, Hocus Pocus 2’s spellweaving will delight both nostalgic fans of the original and draw in a new crowd of young fans. Continue Reading →

“What is Vietnam?” is not a question with an easy answer, but The Greatest Beer Run Ever tackles the challenge anyway. Like the plethora of media featuring the country—in any capacity—Peter Farrelly’s film runs headlong into the notion that what is an S-shaped piece of land in Southeast Asia can also be a dream after the Fall of Saigon. Or that the starry banner that international bodies recognize is not the triple-striped one flying overseas. Or that any example henceforth will possess the same gist: try to ring up nuance when discussing Vietnam. Continue Reading →

Since Lou greets you with the logo of J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot, a question surfaces: Is this a Cloverfield project? Or, like 10 Cloverfield Lane, it isn’t one until it is? Continue Reading →

With the exception of Clint Eastwood, Walter Hill is the contemporary filmmaker most closely associated with what was once the most American of film genres, the Western. They've been in relatively short supply for the last 50-odd years, but with projects like The Long Riders, Geronimo, Wild Bill, Broken Trail, and the pilot episode of Deadwood (not to mention modern-set takes on the form like Extreme Prejudice and Last Man Standing), Hill’s been doing what he can to keep the form and its traditions alive. His latest, Dead for a Dollar (his first film in six years), is unlikely to spur a revival anytime soon and its bypassing of theaters for a VOD release all but ensures that it will be overlooked by all but his most dedicated fans. The good news is that those fans—and any others who should come across it—will be rewarded with a sturdy, entertaining work that overcomes its occasionally apparent budget constraints to serve as a welcome reminder that Hill remains one of the most fascinating genre filmmakers of our time.  Continue Reading →

Social media has normalized behaving as though we know and can even speak for celebrities. Going beyond the concept of the “number one fan,” we address them directly, make demands of them, and attack anyone perceived as meaning them harm, acting as though we’re under personal orders. It peaked during the Amber Heard defamation trial, then that angry energy transferred over to Olivia Wilde, largely for committing the crime of dating Harry Styles. The mere tweeting of Wilde’s name seems to summon antagonistic replies listing her sins, accusing her of everything from being a rape apologist to a pedophile to preventing Styles from being with the person he truly loves, fellow One Direction member Louis Tomlinson. Though Styles and Tomlinson have both denied (many times) that they’re in a secret relationship, their “true” fans insist that they know better, and that it’s all subterfuge to fool the press. So it’s up to the fans to aggressively defend them, even threatening those they perceive as “enemies.” Continue Reading →

A look back at the use of chimpanzees as clowns & sidekicks for humans, & how it relates to a strange & haunting subplot of Jordan Peele's hit sci-fi horror. Note: this article contains spoilers for Nope. Please read Jon Negroni’s spoiler-free review here. If you haven’t seen Nope yet, you might be a little puzzled by references to a character named Gordy, especially once you learn that Gordy is a chimpanzee. It’s understandable: there’s not so much of a glimpse of a chimpanzee in any of the promotional material for Nope, and nothing that happens in its trailers seems to suggest that a chimpanzee will play any part in it. Continue Reading →

The story of Kevin Smith certainly sounds like fodder for an inspirational movie. A film geek from New Jersey cobbled some money together, grabbed a camera, and filmed a movie at his convenience store workplace.  Continue Reading →

Director Alexandre Aja built his career finding as many ways as possible to explore tension and suspense. His tone shifts from project to project, from the gruesome violence of The Hills Have Eyes to the goofiness of Piranha 3D. His most recent success, Crawl, was lauded as a true successor to Jaws—just swap the boat for a creepy house and the shark for a pack of gators. But always at the core of his work is Aja’s interest in finding new ways to thrill his audiences, and Oxygen is no different. Continue Reading →

John Carpenter’s tribute to campfire tales, initially a critical flop, is now a gold standard of tightly paced, bone-chilling horror. I was probably ten or so the first time I heard a genuine, told around a campfire ghost story. As it turned out, I had read the story before, but it sounded more effective being told out loud, with all the appropriate pauses and the comfortable beat of silence before the final jump scare. The story was so simple, told in under ten minutes, and it left a bunch of middle schoolers flinching at every snapped twig and cricket chirp for the rest of the night. John Carpenter’s The Fog, released forty years ago today, perfectly follows the campfire story structure: setup, slow but steady growing sense of dread and menace, misleading moment of all is well again, and then one last BOO! to ensure that the audience leaves the movie with the worst case of goosebumps they’ve ever had. Co-written with Carpenter’s frequent collaborator Debra Hill, while The Fog isn’t quite as effective as its predecessor Halloween, it shares the earlier film’s tight pacing and a villain (or, in this case, multiple villains) that always seems to be right behind you no matter how fast you run. The movie actually opens with a campfire story, told by John Houseman, in a tone that’s perhaps more serious than a movie about vengeful leper ghosts deserves, but works to its benefit. The scene was added in by Carpenter in post-production, after he was dissatisfied with his original cut. Houseman essentially explains the entire plot of the movie in less than three minutes, and the fact that The Fog makes valuable use of every frame of its ninety minute run time is a minor miracle. There’s not an extra ounce of fat on it, and it doesn’t need any. Continue Reading →