55 Best Movies To Watch After Oppenheimer (2023) (Page 2)
The Killer's Game
To talk about The Killer is to strip away pretense. Well, one can try. Cold it may be, but David Fincher's latest is an incredibly open film. The houses are made of glass; the windows are ceiling-high; the voiceovers from the title character (Michael Fassbender) give infallible insight into his worldview. The film is his worldview, simple in its machinations and complex in its philosophy. In most other circumstances, this would unfold over time. And it does here, at least to an extent. Continue Reading →
The Marvels
Most films don’t come with homework. The same cannot be said of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new movie, The Marvels. Unless you’re a devoted MCU fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of both the movies and the Disney+ TV originals, it’s difficult to understand the mechanics of this disastrously convoluted entry in the floundering franchise. It feels like being dropped headfirst into a crossover episode based on three shows you’ve never seen -- mostly because it is. The Marvels kicks off with a bit of genuine visual interest (that never appears again) in the form of hand-drawn comics created by teenage superhero-slash-Captain Marvel fangirl Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), aka Ms. Marvel. Vellani, who previously appeared as Kamala on the little-seen Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, is a spunky, hilarious teenage heroine whose impressive comedic timing buoys the leaden, disjointed script. She so thoroughly steals the show that it’s disappointing this movie wasn’t just about her; instead, it's a confused mix of storylines involving Kamala, Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), and astronaut Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris, Candyman). It feels like the powers that be made a huge mistake in consigning her story to a poorly publicized streaming original, instead of letting her headline a film on her own. Continue Reading →
劇場版ブルーロック -EPISODE 凪-
When I was around thirteen, two classmates, Christina and Taylor (their real names, it’s not like they’re going to read this), played a prank on me that resulted in my eating dog food. In retrospect, it could have been worse: nobody else saw it happen, and for whatever reason they kept it to themselves. But when I think about my teenage years (and I try not to much at this point in my life, other than at a superficial pop culture level), my mind often goes to that moment. Continue Reading →
May December
In such films as Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, filmmaker Todd Haynes has taken the stories of famous people and utilized what we know—or think we know—about them to explore ideas about celebrity and our all-consuming need to render their often-complex stories into straightforward narratives. That strange compulsion to explain, understand, and commodify the lives of real people is at the heart of his latest work, May December, and it certainly seems to have sparked something in him because the end result is the strongest work that he has done in quite some time. Continue Reading →
Five Nights at Freddy's
I have never played Five Nights at Freddy’s. I need to make that abundantly clear before proceeding with this review. Continue Reading →
Once Within a Time
When Godfrey Reggio’s monumental experimental documentary Koyannistqatsi (Life Out of Balance in Hopi) first entered the zeitgeist, its radical nature as a postmodern film, with a thoroughly entrancing score by Phillip Glass, became intertwined with the rise of MTV and a new era of visual aesthetic being born within the music sphere. From the noise rock band Cows to electronic musicians Dr. Atmo and Oliver Leib to superstar pop singer Madonna, the film had an indelible effect on music and the music video. Continue Reading →
Dicks: The Musical
The audaciously titled Dicks: The Musical comes with an equally eye-catching tagline, boasting the honor of being “A24’s first musical.” That’s bound to intrigue cinephiles everywhere. After all, not every movie studio is trendy enough to regularly sell out of logo festooned merchandise. Or even make hipster merch in the first place. Continue Reading →
Silver Dollar Road
Based on Lizzie Presser’s 2019 ProPublica/New Yorker article, Raoul Peck’s Silver Dollar Road starts by barreling headfirst. Its first 15 minutes are a crash course of talking heads, introducing family members with broad, expository precision. The film shows them but doesn’t fully introduce them. Rather, it relies on graphics to fashion a sense of context. What the subjects say to the camera may provide an identity for the story at hand, but Peck’s approach renders such words largely textual. The narrative may be propulsive. The film, however, tends to feel stagnant. Continue Reading →
Killers of the Flower Moon
Having earned just about every accolade there is and long cemented his position as one of the all-time great filmmakers, Martin Scorsese has nothing left to prove. Yet, on the cusp of 81–an age when most directors are either retiring to the Lifetime Achievement Award circuit or making films that are largely variations of their past glories–he is still out there challenging himself and audiences with bold and audacious projects. Continue Reading →
TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR
Make no mistake, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, the highly anticipated film version of the career-spanning spectacle the singer-songwriter-popstar toured stadiums with this summer, is essentially a victory lap for her in the wake of massive critical and commercial success. Despite that, it still works because it never feels like what it could have been—a final cash grab for a show that already pulled in enough money to rival the GNP of several developed nations. Instead, it plays like a summation of Taylor Swift and her ever-expanding artistic ambitions. It makes a definitive case for her as one of the most significant musical artists of these times. And it has a lot of sparkly, sassy fun while doing it. Continue Reading →
Dear David
Outside of Janicza Bravo’s Twitter thread turned feature film Zola, viral social engagements have rarely yielded great art. Nonetheless, Buzzfeed Studios wades into the fray with the horror film Dear David. Based on a series of Twitter threads from their former comic artist Adam Ellis, the story chronicles Ellis’s experiences with a possible supernatural presence in his New York apartment. That may seem like a fresh idea, but the film traffics in standard scary movie tropes, a stunted look, and an overreliance on the concept. Continue Reading →
ほかげ
Shinya Tsukamoto's film attempts to explore hope and sorrow in post-war Japan, with mixed results. To make Shadow of Fire, Shinya Tsukamoto stitched together two films. As a result, it proves both unpredictable and unable to satisfyingly hit the tragic and devastating notes it aims for. Recently, Tsukamoto has turned his attention away from the subversive and pulpy shock-oriented cinema that made him a cult figure among cinephiles. Instead, he’s pursued more soulful lamentations on the state and history of Japan. In particular, he seems preoccupied with stories about those who experience an aching sense of trauma following encounters with crushing violence. Continue Reading →
The Hunted
At the risk of making a "getting a lot of Sorcerer vibes from this" guy out of myself, The Hunted—William Friedkin's 2003 old-master-hunts-rogue-student thriller really does make for a fascinating counterpart to his earlier men-on-a-desperate-mission masterwork. Both delve into the lives of damaged, forlorn, isolated men on perilous quests for deliverance. And both of those quests lead deep into madness. Both pointedly contrast man-made, flame-choked hellscapes (Sorcerer's exploding oil well, The Hunted's secret mission amidst the Kosovo War) with the vast, amoral green of the deep forest (Columbia and Oregon, respectively). Both turn on setpieces that thrill while maintaining a grounded (if not necessarily "realistic") feel and weave surreality in with care. Continue Reading →
Jade
After the aggressively negative critic and audience response to 1980’s Cruising, William Friedkin took a curious “hell with it, I’m going to do whatever I want” approach to projects. None of what he directed over the next decade, save for To Live and Die in L.A., came close to receiving the kind of acclaim his early 70s career did. If anything, it seemed as though he had given up his precise, occasionally unreasonable eye for perfection in favor of churning out the most generic cable-friendly nonsense possible. Continue Reading →
Flora and Son
About 75 minutes into Flora and Son, its script veers toward the self-reflexive. “What movie are you in?” Flora (Eve Hewson) snaps. “One without you in it,” her son, Max (Orén Kinlan), replies. This sort of exchange fits holistically into writer-director John Carney’s latest. It’s self-aware, sure, but it’s not meta. Like most of the film’s writing, it is entirely transparent in its machinations, going so far as to declare them at points. Supporting characters largely function as symbols rather than people. Continue Reading →
Irena's Vow
This year's TIFF featured three tales of lost souls forging their own paths -- some of them bloodier than others. Tales of transformation are the order of the day at this year's TIFF, signposted by a trio of European films acutely concerned with the struggles women and AFAB people undertake to thrive -- or, in many cases, just survive. Take Héléna Klotz's spellbinding second feature, Spirit of Ecstasy, an icy but enthralling coming-of-age story centered around Jeanne Francoeur (Claire Pommet, best known under her French pop star alias Pomme) a non-binary child of a French gendarme who struggles to break through the glass ceiling of the French wealth management firm they work at as a quantitative analyst. Jeanne cuts a mysterious figure, with their black bob, turquoise suit that acts like armor ("the new proletarian uniform"), the bindings that cut into their skin and make them bleed. At all times, Klotz paints Jeanne as a figure constantly struggling to break free of their environment, whose abusive upbringing in the French gendarmerie barracks pushes them inexorably towards a cutthroat, ambitious business environment ready to chew them up and spit them out at a moment's notice. Continue Reading →
A Haunting in Venice
The first two entries in director/actor Kenneth Branagh’s foray into Agatha Christie adaptation lost the magic of the English writer’s mysteries. With his third attempt, A Haunting in Venice, Branagh decides to make considerable changes to the story. Using the bones of Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, writer Michael Green changes the setting from a small town in the English countryside to a palazzo in Venice. Branagh emphasizes the gothic elements of Christie’s story, leaning on the horror of the location, the manic nature of the children’s Halloween party, and the gruesome moments before and after an unexpected death. Continue Reading →
The Inventor
The Inventor is an odd little film. It is a mess throughout, and there are many instances where I got the sense that writer/co-director Jim Capbianco did not know what kind of story he was trying to tell or who his audience was. And yet it possesses an undeniable charm, one that sticks with you. Continue Reading →
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah has a simple premise. Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) wants her bat mitzvah, only a few weeks away, to be perfect. Using that premise, the film takes off, exploring the growing pains of middle school. Continue Reading →
Strays
Talking animals have been an entertainment staple for practically as long as movies have been around. Most classics of the genre, like 1993’s Homeward Bound, aim squarely at children in the audience. Director Josh Greenbaum’s Strays seeks to subvert that approach by weaving dirty jokes and curse words into familiar genre tropes. The result is considerably more grating and unpleasant to watch. Continue Reading →
Jules
In a media landscape with fewer and fewer options actually targeted toward adults (often tied to the death of the mid-budget movie), audiences take the scraps they're given and make the best of them. This is the space that Jules occupies, a sci-fi fairy tale about the specific loneliness of senior citizens who feel isolated, ignored, and afraid. It’s also a thin, often ham-fisted take on a tale that could have had real legs in more capable hands. Continue Reading →