20 Best Movies To Watch After Top Gun: Maverick (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 →
Daddio
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Antonia's Line (1995), Awakenings (1990), Basquiat (1996),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Boys Don't Cry (1999) Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), City of God (2002), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Copying Beethoven (2006), Desert Hearts (1985), Do the Right Thing (1989), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Fame (2009), King Kong (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005),
Lost in Translation (2003) Maria Full of Grace (2004), Michael (1996), Monsoon Wedding (2001), My Life Without Me (2003), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Pi (1998), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Sliver (1993),
Strange Days (1995) Stranger Than Paradise (1984), The Apartment (1960), The Bone Collector (1999), The Godfather Part III (1990), The King of Comedy (1982), The Terminal (2004), The Usual Suspects (1995), The Wanderers (1979), Transamerica (2005), Valley of the Dolls (1967), When Harry Met Sally... (1989),
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) Barbie (2023) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024), Fast X (2023), Five Nights at Freddy's (2023), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Joker (2019),
Oppenheimer (2023) Poor Things (2023), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), The Batman (2022), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021),
From Certified Copy to Mass to the Before trilogy, cinema is replete with examples of great movies that wring transfixing drama out of an intimate scope and a cast of characters you can count on one hand. Christy Hall’s feature-length directorial debut Daddio aims to follow in the footsteps of those features, but stumbles mightily in the process.
Daddio begins at a New York airport, where Girlie (Dakota Johnson) plops into a taxi after a trip to her home state of Oklahoma. Driving this cab is Clark (Sean Penn), a grizzled man in his sixties who loves shooting his mouth off. Initially, the focus of his ramblings is typical old-man material. He gripes about the ubiquity of apps and credit cards in the modern world. Gradually, though, the duo gets trapped in traffic. Stuck on the road, Clark begins asking Girlie increasingly intimate questions. They started this car ride as strangers. But conversations ranging from the raw to the ribald will have Girlie discovering the listener she didn’t know she needed.
Unsurprisingly, Daddio started as a concept for a stage play. What's surprising is how the final film's visual impulses seem determined to avoid comparisons to something you could watch on Broadway. Hall, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael, and editor Lisa Zeno Churgin act furiously to avoid lengthy single-take shots. Nobody will ever compare this to a Chantal Akerman or Chung Mong-Hong movie. Instead, images default to close-ups and medium shots. Hall and company continuously jostle viewers around the cab. Maybe this is out of concern that moviegoers will see a more staid visual style and immediately ask, “Why isn’t this a play?” Continue Reading →
Janet Planet
SimilarA Beautiful Mind (2001), A Real Young Girl (1976), Antonia's Line (1995), Awakenings (1990),
Bend It Like Beckham (2002) 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), Frida (2002), Italian for Beginners (2000), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Lords of Dogtown (2005),
Lost in Translation (2003) Michael (1996), Monsoon Wedding (2001), Monster (2003), My Life Without Me (2003), Mystic River (2003), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), Sleepless in Seattle (1993),
Strange Days (1995) The Party (1980) The Party 2 (1982) The Piano (1993), The Queen (2006), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005),
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) Dune (2021), Five Nights at Freddy's (2023), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), Interstellar (2014),
Oppenheimer (2023) Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
Janet Planet captures a girl caught in her mother’s orbit in the summer of 1991 as she struggles with what to make of the people who enter her mother’s life (friends, boyfriends, strangers) and what to make of herself. It’s also a brutal and empathetic reminder that of all the possible ages to be, 11 might be the worst, and in Janet Planet, 11-year-old Lacy would be the first to agree.
As desperate as adults are to regress to a world before endless Zoom meetings and the monotony of laundry, it’s easy for us to forget how utterly powerless you are at 11. It’s an age where adults still control nearly every facet of your life, and you bear constant witness to their bad decisions with no ability to either help or remove yourself from the situation.
“Every moment of my life is hell,” Lacy tells her mom, Janet, and if you’re honest with yourself about what being 11 actually felt like, you know it’s the most acceptable of hyperboles. But Lacy, observant and thoughtful, shows the kind of understanding I never did at that age when she adds, “But I don’t think it’ll last, though.” Creating moments of clear-sighted vulnerability like that is what playwright and now first-time director Annie Baker does best. 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 →
AGGRO DR1FT
SimilarBangkok Dangerous (2008), Conspiracy Theory (1997), From Russia with Love (1963), Hitman (2007), Léon: The Professional (1994), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Perhaps it’s best to talk about AGGRO DR1FT by specifying something: this isn’t a movie. It sometimes doesn’t even feel like art. Harmony Korine’s latest premiered at the Venice Film Festival to a mixed reception and has gone on to a limited theatrical run, but that doesn’t make it a film.
Stretches of it feature AI-generated visuals, the dialogue is barely present enough to be asinine, and there’s no true emotion behind its infrared photography. Some parts of it even look bad—like utter garbage, really. As for its 80-minute runtime? Well, even that has some boring pockets. And yet, despite all this, it works, perhaps because of it rather than against it. Whether about what’s onscreen or not, it makes the audience think. In that way, it’s incredibly stimulating, particularly given the material involved.
Korine’s work here follows BO (Jordi Mollà), a depressive Miami assassin whose voiceovers wax on about how much he loves his wife and two kids. “I close my eyes. They give me purpose,” he moans. Put this up against an angel-winged baddie who thrusts his pelvis and grunts, “Dance, bitches,” to women locked in go-go cages, and that’s about as deep as anything gets. One is good. One is bad, and maybe a drug lord or whatever. The former is trying to execute the latter. Again, this isn’t a movie. It’s an approximation of one, and any themes that arise during the experience of seeing it are unrelated to what it follows. 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 →
Inspector Sun y la maldición de la viuda negra
SimilarA Bug's Life (1998), Aladdin (1992), Arlington Road (1999), Barton Fink (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), Blue Velvet (1986), Caché (2005), Charlotte's Web (2006), Chicken Little (2005), Chinatown (1974), Gone Baby Gone (2007), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), Memento (2000), Momo (1986), Mulholland Drive (2001), No Good Deed (2002), Oldboy (2003), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), Se7en (1995), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Crow: Salvation (2000), The Long Goodbye (1973),
The Name of the Rose (1986) The Thirteenth Floor (1999), Vertigo (1958), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988),
Watch afterSpider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
I love detective stories. Tales of how, as Sara Gran would say, "truth lives in the ether." Explorations of people and places and how they shape each other. The journey down the streets towards a hidden truth. Dennis Lehane's Darkness, Take My Hand, is my favorite book. Rian Johnson's Brick and Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone are movies I think the world of, never mind all-timers like Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep and Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. And, of course, the immortal Who Framed Roger Rabbit? from Robert Zemeckis. Any time there's a new detective film, whether it be an affably bleak comedy or an action-driven character study, it's a treat. Continue Reading →
Memory
SimilarAmerican Psycho (2000), Annie Hall (1977), Bangkok Dangerous (2008),
Ben-Hur (1959) Cape Fear (1991), Conspiracy Theory (1997), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Do the Right Thing (1989), Donnie Brasco (1997), Enough (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Fame (2009), From Russia with Love (1963), GoodFellas (1990), Hitman (2007), Insomnia (2002), King Kong (2005), Léon: The Professional (1994), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), Man on Fire (2004),
Manhattan (1979) Maria Full of Grace (2004), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Night on Earth (1991), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Party Monster (2003), Pi (1998), Poseidon (2006),
Shaft (2000) Sliver (1993), Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Taxi Driver (1976), The Apartment (1960), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), The Departed (2006), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), The Hustler (1961), The King of Comedy (1982), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Omen (2006), The Silent Partner (1978), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Terminal (2004), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Usual Suspects (1995), Transamerica (2005), Twelve Monkeys (1995), War of the Worlds (2005), We Own the Night (2007), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), You Only Live Twice (1967),
Watch afterDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), Morbius (2022), Parasite (2019), Society of the Snow (2023), The Batman (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
StarringRay Stevenson,
Both the main characters in Michel Franco’s Memory are struggling to deal with the echoes of their past. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a recovering alcoholic and single mother to 13-year-old Anna (Brooke Timber), desperately wants to forget the unspoken traumas of her childhood. Saul (Peter Saarsgard), on the other hand, can’t grab a hold of his past. He’s powerless as early-onset dementia slowly but inevitably steals it from him. After their high school reunion, he wordlessly follows her home and spends the night standing outside her building. In turn, she visits him at the house he shares with his brother (Josh Charles) and niece (Elsie Fisher). Then she takes him for a walk and accuses him of participating in a rape that she endured at the age of 12, a crime that he has no memory of committing. Continue Reading →
Suitable Flesh
Watch afterAvatar: The Way of Water (2022) Evil Dead Rise (2023), Five Nights at Freddy's (2023), Leave the World Behind (2023), Saw X (2023), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
There have been numerous film adaptations of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, featuring everyone from Sandra Dee (The Dunwich Horror) to Nicolas Cage (Color Out of Space). However, it was the late filmmaker Stuart Gordon who best managed to capture the peculiar and often perverse charms of Lovecraft’s work. With their combination of weirdo humor, bizarre imagery, kinky sex, grisly bloodshed and better-than-expected performances, his Re-Animator and From Beyond became instant cult classics and unquestioned high points of the entire horror genre in the 1980s. Continue Reading →
Good Night Oppy
Watch afterBlack Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
Ryan White’s Good Night Oppy is a documentary about one of the technological marvels of our time, but it's less interested in science than its subject matter would suggest. It throws several elements into its mix—archival footage, contemporary talking-head interviews, voiceover narration from a big star (Angela Bassett in this case), and long sections of CGI recreations of moments not caught on camera. But instead of using them to edify viewers about the genuinely amazing accomplishments being achieved (the kind that might encourage younger viewers to get interested in science), White seems more inclined to deploy them in a manner meant to suggest a (mostly) live-action version of a Pixar film. Continue Reading →
Day Shift
SimilarBack to the Future Part III (1990) Barton Fink (1991), Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), Garden State (2004), Terminator Salvation (2009), True Romance (1993),
Watch afterTop Gun: Maverick (2022),
It’s fascinating to watch a movie that could have been made any time within the past 30 years. That’s not the same thing as “timeless,” I’m talking about a movie that just feels like the script lingered in development hell for possibly decades before finally getting made, with only the slightest bit of tweaking to bring it up to date. Netflix’s new horror-comedy Day Shift could have been made in 1996, 2005 or 2012, and the only thing that would need to be changed is the cell phone technology. Like a lot of Netflix’s original content, it’s polished, yet dull, with a budget that doesn’t explain how forgettable it is. Continue Reading →
Luck
SimilarCatwoman (2004), Volver (2006),
Watch afterJurassic World Dominion (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
MPAA RatingG,
As the likes of Doogal and Planes make abundantly clear, there is no secret formula for making a great animated kid’s film. But there are some key things to avoid if you want to make a movie aimed at youngsters that satisfies its target demo. Luck, the first feature from Skydance Animation, trips over several of these shortcomings, particularly overwhelming your young audience with too much expository dialogue. Adolescents want wonder and soaring emotion, not endless chatter about how a fictional world operates. Devoting so much time to lore is just one of the many ways Luck underwhelms compared to its potential. Continue Reading →
Bullet Train
Watch afterThor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
StudioColumbia Pictures,
Five strangers with deadly ambitions sit on a train speeding from Tokyo to Kyoto in the middle of the night, all connected by one mystery yet to be solved. It sounds like the setup for a modern Agatha Christie whodunit, but make those strangers dangerous hitmen, and switch out the intrigue with violent mayhem, and you get Bullet Train. Continue Reading →
Nope
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 →
Elvis
Watch afterThor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
In the opening seconds of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, viewers are blasted with the sight of the Warner Bros. logo – a variant glowing in gold and crimson, practically exploding with flair and moving parts – accompanied on the soundtrack by a remix of “Suspicious Minds.” Within the first few minutes, sweeping shots of Las Vegas clash with Ocean’s 11-style split screens, and the editing juggles between slowmo and cranked-up fast motion, in classic Luhrmann fashion. Continue Reading →
The Black Phone
SimilarMinority Report (2002), Natural Born Killers (1994), Saw II (2005), The Shining (1980),
Watch afterJurassic World Dominion (2022), Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
Gather around, children, and let Auntie Gena tell you a story about days gone by. Long ago, up till around 1984, kids used to run free in the streets from dawn till dusk, with virtually no adult supervision. Was it a better time? Not really, just different, and it all came to an end with the collective belief that bad things happen to children who aren’t carefully watched at all times. Now it’s swung so far in the other direction that allowing your children to walk themselves to school may result in a visit from child protective services. Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone takes place in the time before, when parents didn’t worry about monsters until they were almost under their noses. Continue Reading →
Jurassic World Dominion
Watch afterThor: Love and Thunder (2022), Top Gun: Maverick (2022),
In the video game version of the original Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis, you can choose to play the side scroller as either Dr. Grant or a Velociraptor. Of course, you choose the raptor almost every time because dinosaurs are cooler than humans. It’s a great lesson for making a fun video game, but not for making a successful movie franchise. Continue Reading →
A Nuvem Rosa
Watch afterTop Gun: Maverick (2022),
The Pink Cloud opens with a disclaimer: “This film was written in 2017 and shot in 2019. Any resemblance to actual events is purely coincidental.” It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to realize just how necessary this disclaimer is because its parallels to the pandemic are frighteningly accurate. Only instead of a deadly disease keeping all the globe locked inside their homes, it’s a mysterious pink cloud that kills those that step outside almost instantly. Asking audiences to imagine a world where their lives are upended by a sudden quarantine that seems to stretch on indefinitely doesn’t actually require any imagination in 2022. 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 →