11 Best Movies To Watch After The Menu (2022)
Mother, Couch!
Watch afterBarbie (2023) Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Inception (2010), Joker (2019),
Oppenheimer (2023) Poor Things (2023), The Menu (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
StarringEwan McGregor, Rhys Ifans,
Mother, Couch doesn’t believe in a gentle leadup or easing viewers into its bizarre premise. Instead, it knocks you out of a plane with a hammer, letting you crash land in a world that only masquerades as the one we’re familiar with. On a grand scale, it’s a movie about familial trauma, loneliness, and the desperation that comes with trying to make your family be what you wish it were. On a more literal level, it’s about a mother who won’t stop sitting on a couch inside a furniture store.
David (Ewan McGregor) and his brother Gruff (Rhys Ifans) have brought their mother (Ellen Burstyn) to a furniture store in search of a dresser when she settles herself on an expensive green couch and refuses to leave. Her children are baffled, and David, in particular, becomes increasingly frantic as hours turn into days of her refusing to budge. He’s doing everything he can to both understand his mother’s insane decision to essentially live inside a furniture store and get her to reconsider while his own family unit cracks and crumbles around him.
The setting for all this turmoil is Oakbed’s Furniture — a shop full of showrooms designed to look like actual living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms with a labyrinthine layout on par with IKEA’s (as the characters repeatedly mention). Only instead of sleek, Swedish design, Oakbed’s feels like the memory of a house you visited in a dream where the layout is full of impossibilities that you accept without question. It’s only when you wake that you realize everything was wrong. Continue Reading →
Fancy Dance
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Antonia's Line (1995), Awakenings (1990),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Blood and Chocolate (2007),
Boys Don't Cry (1999) Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), City of God (2002), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Copying Beethoven (2006), Desert Hearts (1985), Italian for Beginners (2000), Lolita (1997), Lords of Dogtown (2005),
Lost in Translation (2003) Michael (1996), Monsoon Wedding (2001), Monster (2003), My Life Without Me (2003), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Night on Earth (1991), Oldboy (2003), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Stand by Me (1986),
Strange Days (1995) The Straight Story (1999),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) Dune: Part Two (2024), Killers of the Flower Moon (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), The Equalizer 3 (2023), The Menu (2022),
One of Fancy Dance’s most tender moments takes place in a place one wouldn’t normally associate with personal epiphanies. After glancing at a swarm of convenience store bathroom graffiti, teenager Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) sees an opportunity. Taking out a marker, she scribbles “Roki was here” in her native Cayuga language on the wall. It’s one of many instances in Fancy Dance of characters finding little ways to reinforce their presence even when they’re not physically around. Roki clings to trinkets, including a ritzy jacket associated with her missing mother. Performers at a major Powwow event dance to commemorate dead or lost loved ones.
This thematic motif is extra important given that Roki, like nearly all of Fancy Dance’s principal characters, hails from the Seneca–Cayuga Nation Reservation in Oklahoma. The norm in America is to erase Indigenous lives. Their children are stolen. Homes are wiped out. Cultures are suppressed. The figures on screen here find countless ways to refute that erasure. Such rebellion even manifests through something as small as convenience store bathroom graffiti.
Before Roki writes that fateful piece of graffiti, she’s living a quiet life with her aunt Jax (Lily Gladstone). With Roki’s mom missing for weeks now, Jax is the only parent this teenager has. She seems the only one concerned about that vanished lady, given how little effort law enforcement has put into finding her. Unfortunately, Jax’s criminal record from years past leads to the state deeming her unsuitable to be Roki’s guardian. This surrogate mother/daughter duo is now destined to be separated. In the process, this adolescent would also leave behind her reservation's home and culture. Continue Reading →
Ghostlight
Watch afterA Quiet Place (2018), Avatar (2009), Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Joker (2019),
Oppenheimer (2023) Parasite (2019), Poor Things (2023), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Menu (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021),
“I don’t know what normal is,” Dan Muller (Keith Kupferer) says toward the end of Ghostlight. His family might be dramatic, but to him, “they don’t get it from me.” And maybe he’s right. He’s a Chicagoland construction worker whose marriage to Sharon (Tara Mallen) isn’t particularly strong. When they receive a call from their daughter’s (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) school, they learn she’s been expelled for allegedly shoving a teacher. Perhaps it’d be “normal” for 16-year-old Daisy to go through a turbulent phase, but as the movie slowly reveals, the three are reeling from a tragedy.
The movie approaches what happened with a euphemistic ambiguity for almost an hour, even if it’s rather obvious early on. And the stress is accumulating. While preparing for a deposition, Dan berates a pedestrian on the job, resulting in a temporary leave. As chance would have it, though, a stranger named Rita (Dolly De Leon, Triangle of Sadness) witnesses the altercation. And guess what? She’s in a local theater troupe putting on Romeo and Juliet. So, what does this blue-collar, midwestern dad do? Despite not knowing the story, he joins in, which mirrors some stuff he’s still grappling with. It’s funny how that always happens.
It's a contrived bit of plot in the face of character progression, and not the only time Ghostlight forces itself forward despite trying to feel seamless. How on-the-nose the concept is is another issue. And yet it mostly works, thanks in part to the movie’s tonal and technical normalcy. Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson’s direction may not leave the starkest impression, but they know how long to hold on a scene. The result welcomes the viewer to see their characters past the occasional issues with O’Sullivan’s script. Continue Reading →
Stamped from the Beginning
SimilarA Certain Magical Index: The Miracle of Endymion (2013), I've Always Liked You (2016), Meet the Robinsons (2007), Shrek (2001), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988),
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) Barbie (2023) Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Joker (2019),
Oppenheimer (2023) Parasite (2019), Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022), The Menu (2022), The Suicide Squad (2021), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Wonka (2023),
The Netflix documentary uses historical evidence and modern scholarship to demonstrate racism's continued role in US society.
At the start of the new documentary Stamped from the Beginning, filmmaker Roger Ross Williams asks his various interview subjects, “What is wrong with Black people?” Considering that all the interviewees in question are also Black, it is unsurprising that the question’s seeming hostility initially throws many. However, once they recognize the context of that query—Williams is asking for a historical context as to what Blacks have done to deserve centuries of institutionalized racism and violence—they are more than willing and able to discuss the subject at length throughout this strong and often provocative film.
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s book of the same name inspired the Williams’ film, a karmic debt the director pays back by including the doctor among a number of knowledgeable Black female scholars and activists. Together, they discuss how the twin stains of racism and white supremacy permeate American society in ways that continue to fester today. They explain how the concept of deeming people as greater or lesser by the color of their skin was born out of slavery. The aim was to simultaneously remove enslaved people’s distinguishing characteristics to make them seem like one undifferentiated mass and drive a wedge between them and white “indentured servants” to prevent the groups from joining forces against their common enemy, the wealthy landowner. Continue Reading →
The Inventor
SimilarBen-Hur (1959) Edward Scissorhands (1990), Gladiator (2000), Metropolis (1927), Princess Mononoke (1997), Schindler's List (1993), Titanic (1997), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005),
Watch afterA Quiet Place (2018), Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023),
Barbie (2023) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023),
Oppenheimer (2023) Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022), The Menu (2022), Wonka (2023),
StudioHBO Documentary Films,
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 →
White Noise
Watch afterThe Menu (2022),
What makes a novel “unfilmable”? Often, it’s because it’s simply too large in scope and scale, like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which depicts the lives of seven generations of the same family. Or, as with Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, it’s too dense and labyrinthian. The more successful attempts, such as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman, have been filmed in multiple parts, while failures like 2017’s The Dark Tower condense the story down to its most basic components, checking off the most salient points (“there was a tower, it was dark”) and nothing more. Continue Reading →
The Pale Blue Eye
Watch afterThe Menu (2022),
Scott Cooper’s sense of place and his sense of dread go hand in hand. He was born in Abingdon, Virginia, a city with a population under 10,000, and the place’s melancholy struck him like lightning. Every one of his films is concerned with the impossibility of calling somewhere home, and he shows that even places meant to hold promise are forbidding and corrupt. From the dying factory town of Out of the Furnace to the blood-soaked frontier in Hostiles to the addiction-ravaged backwoods of Antlers, nothing can make Cooper’s America feel anything but haunted. And that's the case in his latest, The Pale Blue Eye. Continue Reading →
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Chicago International Film Festival) Continue Reading →
Everything Everywhere All at Once
SimilarBatman Begins (2005), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Zatoichi (2003),
Watch afterThe Menu (2022), The Whale (2022),
StarringKe Huy Quan,
Everything Everywhere All at Once is glorious. Continue Reading →
Mothering Sunday
Eva Husson directs Odessa Young to a stupendous performance of a young woman's birth as a writer in a story about the lingering impact of love.
An adaptation of Graham Swift's 2016 novella of the same name, Mothering Sunday begins as a story about wartime loss and forbidden love. Directed by Eva Husson from a script penned by Alice Birch, it mostly takes place over one spring day in 1924 England, just five years after the end of the first World War. It's Mother's Day and the orphaned Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), who works as a maid in the Nivens (Olivia Colman and Colin Firth) household, is given a day off. Since she doesn't have a mother to celebrate the holiday with, Jane decides to spend the day with the only person in her life, her secret lover Paul Sheringham (Josh O'Connor).
The couple makes plans to meet at Paul's house. But on this very special day, Jane doesn't have to sneak in from the backdoor like usual. Paul's parents are not home—they're lunching with the Nivens and the Hobdays, whose daughter Emma (Emma D'Arcy) will marry Paul in about two weeks. As the three families gather at the lunch table near a beautiful river, Jane and Paul seize the opportunity to express their love for each other. They're aware that this afternoon will most likely be the last time they get to be in each other's company, so they make the most of it. Continue Reading →
Calmos
A look at some of our favorite movie & TV characters who used body & brains to get what they want -- even if it killed someone.
Last year for Valentine’s Day we talked about our favorite horror-romance movies. Now we’re writing a love letter to some of pop culture’s greatest femme fatales, those one of a kind women who use their sharp wits and killer bodies to get what they want from dumb-with-lust (or just dumb) men. Sometimes they have a specific end game in mind, sometimes they just do it for fun. Whatever the case, they do it with style, purpose, and while fully in charge of their own sexuality, and those are all admirable qualities. It’s a shame that sometimes people end up dead because of it.
Alice Morgan, Luther
Because every Holmes needs a Moriarty, it felt right that Idris Elba’s detective John Luther would need a corresponding criminal mastermind. Played with a dangerously cool allure by Ruth Wilson, Alice is brilliant and beautiful as the stars she studies, and just as cold and empty. These two are perfectly matched in every way, attracting where they should repel. In one memorable scene, Alice describes a black hole to John in a way that Hannibal Lecter might describe the curve of someone’s thigh: “It consumes matter, sucks it in and crushes it beyond existence. When I first heard that I thought that’s evil at its most pure. Something that drags you in, crushes you, makes you...nothing.” His greatest enemy and closest confidant, Alice is the only person who truly understands John, and vice versa. The lines get so blurred between hunter and hunted they disappear altogether. The fact that John is still standing at the end proves the old adage that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Continue Reading →