The 100 Best Movies Streaming on Netflix Right Now

Ross Scarano
Updated

Note: We update this list every week to add the best new releases Netflix has to offer. These picks are fresh as of September 25, 2015. You're welcome.

What did we do before Netflix? Go out and rent videos from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video (RIP)? You actually had to leave the house to go find the media that would keep you glued to your couch. But thankfully, now we have Netflix, the addictive online service inherently designed to make the video rental process ten times quicker and easier than before. Even though, you could get DVDs mailed (lol) still, it's all about the "Watch Instantly" option. Why should you have to wait for the mailman and have to leave your couch? Just "Watch Instant" your next binge watch.

That's why it's often so annoying to sift through the Watch Instantly library and learn that the one flick you've been dying see is only available via hard-copy disc. Such constant disappointment (Where is Notting Hill?) has led many to criticize the website's streaming service as a "slim pickings" letdown, but, truth be told, that reputation isn't fair. Having combed through the site's entire Watch Instantly catalog, we've made wait-less gratification infinitely easier with this list of the 100 Best Movies Streaming on Netflix Right Now. Now go forth, fellow Netflix Bingers, and get ready to never leave your couch cold again. And once you've binge-watched this whole list, check out the best comedy movies, the best romantic movies, and the best TV shows streaming on Netflix right now.

poc25kdTr655-dqv13RlbQjYR-Lmr-VC


  • Pulp Fiction (1994)

    Director: Quentin Tarantino
    Stars: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman

    Has any other film in recent memory spawned more imitators than Quentin Tarantino's breakout smash? And not just crime movies. Everything from Donnie Darko to Juno has borrowed from Pulp Fiction's smart synthesis of pop culture detritus. What separates the originator from the pale imitations though, is the sense of real stakes.

    Ultimately, the movie isn't punch-line after punch-line. You remember the humor, the talk of foot massages and brain matter, but it all serves a serious end. The final scene in Tarantino's most celebrated work, where the hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) explains his philosophy on life resonates in a way that goes beyond references to '70s cult TV.


  • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

    Director: John Hughes
    Stars: Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara

    No '80s film could inspire you to live out your youth to its extreme more than Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It's the perfect amalgam of everything you fantasized about while stuck in homeroom. If a joy ride in a Ferrari with your best friend and beautiful girlfriend wasn't already a mind-blowing idea to you, toss in a downtown parade where you perform "Twist and Shout," a free lunch at a fancy restaurant, and the image of your crusty, pornstached principal getting chewed out by your dog. Heaven was never represented so accurately in the movies.


  • Total Recall (1990)

    Director: Paul Verhoeven
    Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sharon Stone, Michael Ironside, Rachel Ticotin, Ronny Cox

    Maybe it's the presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the perennial mindless action hero, in a role that's conceived as an average Joe, not a body-builder who speaks broken English. Or perhaps it's the outlandish imagery delivered by in-the-zone director Paul Verhoeven, who's more than happy to show a fat baby protruding out of a man's stomach, a human skull opening like cabinets, eyeballs popping out of melting faces.

    Whatever the reason may be, Total Recall has earned a reputation as a cheesy yet incredibly fun sci-fi schlockfest. Schwarzenegger plays a construction worker who signs up for a virtual vacation to Mars, during which he'll get to act out a secret agent's life; naturally, though, he wigs the fuck out once the mad scientists try to implant memories into his brain, punching his way out of the facility and going on the run from sadistic authorities while trying to figure out whether he's still himself or officially the secret Martian agent.

    The script keeps things moving at a brisk pace, maximizing its balls-to-the-wall energy with nasty humor and gross visuals. We're not here to argue that Total Recall isn't grade-A camp. But, in the midst of such a lowbrow compliment, it seems that people have lost sight of the film's biggest strength: its script, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" that goes far beyond the Dick's propensity for violence and dark humor.


  • What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015)

    Director: Liz Garbus

    ​2015 is a big year for music documentaries, and just weeks before the Amy Winehouse doc, Amy, arrives, Netflix put out their own deep-dive of a female legend: the story of Nina Simone. What Happened, Miss Simone? is a hard look at the singer and civil rights activist known as the "High Priestess of Soul" by Liz Garbus (Love, Marilyn, Bobby Fischer Against the World), featuring never-before-heard recordings and rare footage. But the documentary isn't all praise—the film is also an intense look at Simone's often tumultuous career.


  • Goodbye to Language (2014)

    Director: Jean-Luc Godard
    Stars: Héloïse Godey, Kamel Abdelli, Richard Chevallier, Zoé Bruneau

    Jean-Luc Godard is a legend in French New Wave film, and his latest effort is another success for the filmmaker. Goodbye to Language, which Godard calls a “3D essay,” premiered at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and win Best Picture at the 2014 National Society of Film Critics Awards. It’s an experimental film in two parts, each telling a similar story but in a different way. It’s difficult to explain the plot, but basically it follows a married woman who has an affair, and her husband, who finds out and kills her lover. There’s also a dog. (He’s actually really important to the movie.) As the title suggests, the film communicates more than language has the capacity to, so if you want to really understand it, it’s best if you just watch the film.


  • Beyond the Lights (2014)

    Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
    ​Stars: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nate Parker, Minnie Driver, Machine Gun Kelly, Danny Glover

    You like Love & Basketball, right? (If you answered no, get out. Just get out.) Director and writer Gina Prince-Bythewood finally returned to give us Beyond the Lights, an underrated movie about an young, just-turned-superstar singer (Mbatha-Raw) who's completely disillusioned by fame until she meets a cop (Parker) and finds love. I know, it sounds like a bit of a sleepy romance movie, but the commentary on fame and the music industry Prince-Bythewood's able to work into the story and Gugu Mbatha-Raw's performance life it way beyond that. And you get to see Machine Gun Kelly act, so there's that.


  • In Bruges (2008)

    Director: Martin McDonagh
    Stars: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

    In Bruges first hit the festival circuit in 2008 with very little hype surrounding it, but by the time the end credits rolled, it was evident that acclaimed playwright turned filmmaker Martin McDonagh had created a comedy destined to be a cult classic. In the film, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason star as two Irish hitmen forced into hiding in the city of Bruges after Farrell’s character accidentally kills a young boy during a hit gone wrong.

    From there, the two hired guns ruminate on the nature of life and guilt as they plunge into the eccentric underbelly of the quirky city. This thoughtful morality tale offers darkly comedic flourishes, including a drug-addicted dwarf who gets into a brawl with Farrell and a rabid performance by Ralph Fiennes, who plays the boss of our two heroes.

    All of these elements coalesce by the end to form a wholly unique comedy and masterfully written piece of art.


  • Fort Bliss (2014)

    Director: Claudia Myers
    Stars: Michelle Monaghan, Pablo Schrieber, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Ron Livingston

    To uncover the sad ironies outlined by the military drama Fort Bliss, look no further than its title. The film tells the tale of an army medic looking to reconnect with her son following a tour in Afghanistan. Michelle Monaghan is truly excellent in her portrayal of a woman scarred by war, but determined to make up for lost time. Shot largely on location at the actual Fort Bliss, there's a realism and intimacy to the film that few films about recent wars have achieved. Though the scope of the story is small, Claudia Myers' film is a powerful reminder of how the tragedies of war don't end when a soldier's boots are back on American soil.


  • The War of the Worlds (1953)

    Director: Byron Haskin
    Stars: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson

    Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is famous because people actually believed it was real. While that seems insane in retrospect, an alien invasion seemed like a legitimate possibility in the days leading up to World War II. A decade and a half later, the movie adaptation may not have had the same documentary-like realism, but the effect on a society primed for nuclear holocaust was nearly as big. Though the flying saucers and special effects are charmingly hokey, the massive scope of the film is still evident today. Watching The War of the Worlds now may not give you nightmares, but it will make you realize just how long disaster movies have been ripping off this formula. Tom Cruise has nothing on Gene Barry.


  • Miele (2013)

    Director: Valeria Golino
    Stars: Jasmine Trinca, Carlo Cecchi, Libero De Rienzo

    Miele, or Honey as it translates in English, is a small, surprisingly affecting Italian film that grapples with some surprisingly big ethical issues. Its titular character is a young woman who supplies the dying with illegal barbiturates so that they can take their own life. But after the young Kevorkian is tricked by a perfectly healthy man named Grimaldi who wants to take his own life, she must rethink her choices as well as her relationship with her patients. The resulting film is both a vivid portrait of a young idealist and a man who believes he has the right to end his life on his own terms.


  • A Life in Dirty Movies (2014)

    Director: Wiktor Ericsson
    Stars: Joseph W. Sarno, Peggy Steffans, Michael Bowen

    Legendary sexploitation director Joe Sarno has been called “the Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street” for his portrayal of lurid sex on film. But before his death in 2010, the 88-years-old director was trying to make his comeback. A Life in Dirty Movies follows Sarno and his wife Peggy in their twilight years on Sarno's quest to be taken seriously as a filmmaker. Though ostensibly about porn, A Life in Dirty Movies is actually the story of a beautiful, decades-long relationship between two people whose careers society found morally dubious. Don't be surprised if you find yourself tearing up between discussions of soft-core scenes and remembrances of long-forgotten erotic theaters.


  • The Babadook (2014)

    Director: Jennifer Kent
    Stars: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West, Ben Winspear

    The Babadook is a special kind of horror film, in that it doesn’t just try to scare you, it actually tells a moving story about a recently widowed mother, Amelia (Davis), and her son Samuel (Wiseman). After the death of his father, Samuel acts out and has trouble sleeping at night, terrified of his nightmares about the Boogeyman. What Amelia thinks is just a reaction to the loss of his father turns out to be an actual monster called the Babadook. Not only does the movie tell a heartfelt story about a family dealing with a loss, but it’s also quite terrifying, without using the same cheap scare tactics used in almost every other modern horror movie.


  • Nebraska (2013)

    Director: Alexander Payne
    Stars: Bruce Dern, Will Forte, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk, Mary Louise Wilson

    Many have written Nebraska off as a minor work from Alexander Payne, the director who has already visited the titular state in Citizen Ruth, Election, and About Schmidt. The story may be low-key, just like its characters, but Payne's latest road trip fires on all cylinders.

    In a pitch-perfect performance, Bruce Dern stars as Woody, a craggy old man possibly suffering from dementia who believes he won a million dollars because his junk mail says so. As Woody insists upon his middle-aged son (Will Forte) to drive him to Nebraska to collect his imaginary winnings, Payne paints a portrait of the Midwest and its citizens as a faded memory, left to grow old like seniors in a retirement home and find happiness within their own devices.

    Payne strikes the perfect balance between his trademark wry humor and more recent sensitive side (as seen in The Descendants). He may invite us to laugh at these country folk but his fondness and empathy for them has never been so deeply felt.


  • Copenhagen (2014)

    Director: Mark Raso
    Stars: Gethin Anthony, Frederikke Dahl Hansen, Sebastian Armesto, Olivia Grant, Mille Dinesen, Baard Owe, Tamzin Merchant

    Copenhagen is the type of indie coming-of-age story that tends to appear at every movie festival at least once, and it just so happens to be a very good version of that genre. The film, set in, yes, Copenhagen, tells the story of a not-so-young man named William partying through Europe. Once he reaches Denmark, however, he must finally contend with a fraught family history, even as he falls for a local girl named Effy. While the film's tone definitely feels in-line with a '90s Ethan Hawke vehicle, it has a nuanced take on aging and relationships that's all its own. Everyone has to get older whether they like it or not, and Copenhagen is smarter and more mature than it has any right to be.


  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

    Director: Francis Lawrence
    Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jena Malone, Sam Claflin, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones, Jeffrey Wright, Lenny Kravitz

    Catching Fire could've been a real bomb and it still would've raked in the money. With such a loyal fanbase pre-ordering tickets and lining up for midnight showings, Gilbert Gottfried could've played Katniss and it still would've been the highest grossing movie at the box office the weekend of its release. Thankfully, that's not the case.

    In fact, Catching Fire was one of the most fun experiences you could've had at the movies this year. The errors made in the first film are corrected here, like that nauseating shaky cam, leaving viewers enthralled by the emotional journey its pitch perfect cast—Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Woody Harrelson, and Liam Hemsworth—takes them on. With its fidelity to the book, Catching Fire easily won over any of its hard-to-please book fanatics.


  • Legally Blonde (2005)

    Director: Robert Luketic
    Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber, Jennifer Coolidge

    It’s often dismissed as a typical early-2000s chick flick, but if you look past the genre, you’ll realize Legally Blonde is actually a hilarious movie. In her most iconic role, Reese Witherspoon plays Elle Woods, a bubbly sorority girl who’s smarter than she seems. In an effort to be taken more seriously, and win back her ex-boyfriend, she takes the LSATs, gets an almost-perfect score, and enrolls in Harvard Law School. The premise is ridiculous, but that’s part of what makes it so good. This movie about defying stereotypes actually does so itself, as it breaks barriers as a romantic comedy that can be enjoyed by anyone.


  • This Week on Netflix


  • The Piano Teacher (2001)

    Director: Michael Haneke
    Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel

    The tender Michael Haneke of Amour? Don't look for him here. The Piano Teacher, an adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel of the same name, has a set-up that horror fans should find appealing. A tightly wound piano teacher, Erika (Isabelle Huppert), lives with her possessive, abusive mother (Annie Girardot). Because of mom's chokehold on her life, not limited to curfews and dress codes, Erika has an unhealthy relationship with sex. It's not limited to self-mutilation and sniffing semen-filled tissues discarded at the viewing booths of a porno shop. And then Erika finds herself pursued by a young man (also, a pig) who wants to study with her.

    Rough going but rewarding because of Huppert's honest performance and Haneke's devilish dressing down of classical music, usually regarded as one of civilizatin's high points, but here, not so much.


  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

    Director: Tomas Alfredson
    Stars: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds

    The best spy thrillers are all about the ambiance: men smoking in dark rooms; gruff, Eastern-bloc accents making obtuse threats over tapped lines; maybe a gunshot or two for good measure. Originally adapted from a John le Carré novel, Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has all of these things, as well as wonderfully-understated performances from some of Hollywood's best leading men. Oldman's Oscar-nominated turn as the world-weary George Smiley is a particular pleasure to watch, but every actor—from Hardy to Cumberbatch to Firth—is a fascinating show of calculated restraint and multivalent scheming. There's a reason why le Carré's original book cover portrayed the simple visual analogy of stacked matryoshka dolls. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is all about he layers underneath.


  • Get Low (2010)

    Director: Aaron Schneider
    Stars: Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Bill Cobbs

    When Get Low came out a few years ago it garnered Robert Duvall some Oscar buzz before slowly fading from cultural consciousness. As it turns out, Duvall wasn't rewarded with a win (or even a nomination) for his charmingly cantankerous portrayal of hermit Felix Bush, but the film is still worth seeing. The plot revolves around Bush teaming up with undertaker Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) to throw a party for his own funeral. Amidst the strangeness of the event, it becomes clear that Bush's plan is to unearth his relationship with Mattie Darrow (Sissy Spacek) with whom he shared a romantic past that was buried in misunderstandings decades earlier. More than just a collection of great performances, Get Low is a charming, wonderfully realized film that plays like a classic Americana folk tale.


  • You're Next (2013)

    Director: Adam Wingard
    Stars: Sharni Vinson, A.J. Bowen, Joe Swanberg, Wendy Glenn, Nicholas Tucci, Barbara Crampton, Rob Moran, Margaret Laney, Ti West, Amy Seimetz

    The underwhelming box office performance of You're Next isn't all that hard to understand. One, summer 2013's movie audiences had already received their big horror movie fix through The Conjuring, and, two, You're Next's commercials made it look like a familiar hybrid of The Strangers and this summer's surprise home invasion hit The Purge. A better move for Lionsgate would have been to release You're Next in October, not August. No worries—indie filmmaker Adam Wingard's unlikely mainstream film will find its audience on home video. And those late-coming viewers will kick themselves for missing You're Next in theaters, because it's tailor-made to be seen with large, loud, energetic crowds.

    It's also far better than the more successful The Purge, in that You're Next cleverly subverts the home invasion norms, rather than mindlessly submitting to obvious tropes. With a strong, sly sense of humor, screenwriter Simon Barrett, along with help from the film's excellent cast, takes everything you know from movies like the aforementioned The Strangers and toys with those expectations. The masked intruders, for once, aren't unstoppable killing machines. No victims get tied to any chairs to be sadistically tortured. And, finally, one of those victims actually fights back.

    That fighter is played with impressive physicality and gumption by Sharni Vinson, whose performance guarantees she'll be asked to quite a few horror conventions in the years to come. She's the reason why the lucky viewers who've watched You're Next in packed theaters have stood up and cheered. When Vinson's character, Erin, attacks the bad guys with screwdrivers and other home-improvement weaponry, it's a rush, and often played brilliantly for laughs. Other home invasion movies are too maliciously one-note to yield that kind of reaction.


  • Heathers (1988)

    Director: Michael Lehmann
    Stars: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Kim Walker

    On paper, Heathers isn't all that funny. Set in an everyday high school, Winona Ryder's breakout film hinges on a clique of hateful, stuck-up girls, bullies, and teenage suicide. In all, it's one of the darkest high school movies ever made, and a big part of that mystique is credited to screenwriter Daniel Waters' crackerjack of a script, which flip-flops from vicious black comedy to emotionally gruesome moments with unwavering poise.

    Ryder plays the only member of an all-girl crew of social terrorists with a conscience; after watching her cohorts torment her undeserving fellow classmates, Ryder's character and her derelict boyfriend (Christian Slater) plot to dethrone the queens of mean. Soon, one of the girls dies, along with a pair of football stars, whose corpses are positioned in a homosexually suggestive manner, spawning the memorable line, "I love my dead, gay son!"

    Heathers veers into some rather twisted and bleak territories, yet, somehow, it's consistently amusing. In other words, it's the quintessential dark comedy.


  • All Is Lost (2013)

    Director: J.C. Chandor
    Stars: Robert Redford

    A one-man tour de force featuring one of Hollywood's treasures is 106 minutes of intense dread. Our man, played by Robert Redford, wakes up one day in the middle of a voyage in the Indian Ocean to find that his yacht is taking on water. And without navigation equipment or a functioning radio, the movie's title takes a literal meaning.

    All Is Lost is about looking mortality in the face, coming to grips with it, and pushing forward into the void. And though Redford doesn't have anyone to play off of—a fact that has a draining effect—he puts forth some of his best work in years with the heavy subject matter.


  • Pain and Gain (2013)

    Director: Michael Bay
    Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub, Ed Harris

    Deservedly, Michael Bay has earned a not-so-enviable reputation as being a shameless purveyor of hollow, glossy CGI orgies that lack character depth or any other byproducts of good screenwriting. Not that he really gives a shit, though, since he has a fourth Transformers movie on deck. But there's definitely a part of Bay that'd love to silence the naysayers with a smaller, less computer-generated hit.

    Enter Pain and Gain, a dark, violent, and hilarious action-comedy that harkens back to Bay's Bad Boys movies and features Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie hamming it up as three dim-witted and totally ripped bodybuilders on the run from the Miami Police Department. Sure, it didn't win any awards, but tell us that the proposition of watching Wahlberg and The Rock playing bumbling steroid junkies doesn't sound, at the very least, entertaining. (Spoiler: It's incredibly entertaining.)


  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

    Director: Jonathan Demme
    Stars: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine, Scott Glenn, Brooke Smith, Kasi Lemmons

    In a loose way, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs is a sequel to Michael Mann’s 1986 flick Manhunter, their connecting thread being the presence of the world’s classiest cannibal, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played in Lambs by Anthony Hopkins (in Manhunter, the character is portrayed by Brian Cox). And, for extra background, The Silence of The Lambs is based on author Thomas Harris' 1988 novel of the same name, itself the literary sequel to Harris' '81 book Red Dragon (the source material for Manhunter).

    Got all of that? Cool, now that we’ve ironed out the logistics, let’s get right down to it: The Silence Of The Lambs remains the best serial killer movie of all time. Point blank. The only horror movie to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards, Demme's white-knuckler weaves together phenomenal acting (by Hopkins and Jodie Foster, specifically), gruesome visuals, psychological tautness, and one of the creepiest movie villains out there, the lady-killing and skin-suit-making Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). In terms of credibility, horror doesn’t get much more legit than Lambs.


  • A Touch of Sin (2013)

    Director: Jia Zhangke
    Stars: Jiang Wu, Zhao Tao, Wang Baoqiang

    In the war between the haves and the have-nots, don't underestimate the less blessed latter group—put someone's back against the wall, and they're liable to lash out. That's the main theme in Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke's hard-hitting A Touch of Sin, a brutal, in-your-face look at four different lower-class Chinese characters who fight back against various forms of oppression.

    The most startling of the film's four stories comes from Dahai (Jiang Wu), a coal miner enraged over his presumption that his industry's leaders aren't sufficiently compensating him. It results in Dahai going on a rampage with a shotgun. A second character, a sauna receptionist who's treated like a prostitute, chooses a knife to exact her revenge. In all four chapters of A Touch of Sin, though, the outcomes are alternately shocking and profound, with Zhangke intelligently balancing action movie visuals with social analysis. The violence is brutal, and what's more, probably useless.


  • To Be Takei (2014)

    Director: Jennifer M. Kroot
    Stars: George Takei, Brad Takei

    George Takei is more than Lieutenant Sulu from the original Star Trek. He's a Japanese Internment survivor, a politician, an outspoken advocate for gay rights, and a social media icon. He's also one of the funniest, most energetic people on the planet, having fully embraced both his relationship with Star Trek fans and his own media persona. But even though To Be Takei tells the story of George's ups and downs, it’s his decades-long partnership with his husband, Brad, that makes the film work. More than the story of Hollywood icon, To Be Takei shows that you can still have a comfortingly conventional relationship when you're career is anything but.


  • Blue is the Warmest Color (2013)

    Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
    Stars: Adèle Exarchopolous, Léa Seydoux

    First love is a wet, fucked up mess. And the worst part is, it's a wet, fucked up mess you'll never forget. Like the topic it tackles, Blue is the Warmest Color is just as unforgettable. Carried by the harrowing performances from leads Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, the film is a frank and tellingly uncomfortable chronicle of a young woman's (Exarchopoulos) rocky journey of self-discovery. Along the way, she falls for another woman (Seydoux), with whom she begins a long-term relationship. You travel with her from puppy love to the open water of whatever the hell lies beyond the honeymoon phase.

    But don't be fooled by its familiar premise. The winner of the Cannes film festival grand prize, the Palme d'Or, the story (based on the graphic novel by Julie Maroh) isn't wispy young adult fare. It's a naturalistic portrayal of the pain, obsessive attachment, and the passion you feel when you first fall in love—and the shell of yourself you're left with when it's taken away.


  • Frances Ha (2013)

    Director: Noah Baumbach
    Stars: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver, Michael Zegen, Grace Gummer, Patrick Heusinger

    Noah Baumbach begins many of his movies with a line of dialogue that acts as a kind of summary or central thematic statement. The first words spoken in his divorce drama The Squid and the Whale, for instance, are, "Mom and me versus you and Dad."

    Frances Ha, his funny valentine to his girlfriend, Greta Gerwig, opens with a long montage of Frances' life in New York. She's a twenty-something with aspirations to dance, and she lives with her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), who works in publishing. In the montage, Frances reads aloud to Sophie about attacks on sincerity in art. Those of you who simply hate the social milieu of middle-class white Brooklynites who dream of doing something creative, this is your cue to leave.

    Like a great episode of Girls (minus the body art), Frances Ha examines friendship between young women in New York, 2013. Baumbach cares for Gerwig, and it's clear in the film. Though the characters around Frances make comments that skewer themselves and their specific sub-culture (shout out to everyone working on a Gremlins 3 screenplay), her own faults are celebrated. Frances is socially awkward and self-sabotaging, and she is lovely and loved by the film's camera and screenplay (which Gerwig wrote with Baumbach). In the hands of other filmmakers and stars, this could become numbing satire or something equally lifeless. Instead, it's exuberant, a pristine black-and-white snapshot of love and the city.


  • The Double (2014)

    Director: Richard Ayoade
    Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor, Yasmin Paige, James Fox

    A loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1846 novella, Richard Ayoade's sophomore feature—the follow-up to his 2010 debut Submarine—is the best Terry Gilliam movie (i.e., Brazil, 12 Monkeys) the former Monty Python member never made. Funny, surreal, and impressively otherworldly without any sci-fi visual trickery, The Double places viewers into a heightened reality that can be described as an urbanized remodeling of the industrial setting seen in David Lynch's Eraserhead(1977), right down to the constant horns that blare from off-camera, as if Ayoade's film takes place in the town neighboring Eraserhead's location.

    The script, co-written by Ayoade and Avi Korine, is a shrewd comedy of epic fails experienced by Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg, his neurotic drollness utilized perfectly here). He's a cubicle dweller who wouldn't be out of place in Office Space; his co-workers rarely acknowledge his existence, beginning with the security guard who makes him sign in everyday and acts like he's never seen Simon before, even though Simon's worked there for five years. Par for the course, there's a pretty girl in his office (played by Mia Wasikowska) whom Simon adores but can't be bothered by his awkward attempts at conversation. His lack of identity takes a wild turn when new employee James Simon (also Eisenberg) shows up one day looking like Simon's clone, because, well, in a way, he is.

    The British accents of Simon's colleagues imply that The Double takes place somewhere in England, but, really, who cares? Though it resembles our reality, the world in which Simon aimlessly drifts around feels not of this universe, in the best ways. The streets are fog-cloaked and eerily vacant at all times. The commercials and shows Simon watches on his rinky-dink television have the aesthetics of brainwash propaganda made in the 1980s. The office building where he works is part factory and part prison-like nest of long-running bars and corridors. If not for the sharp, purposely mean-spirited comedy, The Double would qualify as an existentialist horror flick.


  • Django Unchained (2012)

    Director: Quentin Tarantino
    Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, Walton Goggins, James Remar, Laura Cayouette

    Any new Quentin Tarantino movie is immediately an event. Who else can make a hardcore genre movie about a freed slave who viciously kills dozens of white slave owners and have it instantly be up for serious Academy Awards consideration?

    The same guy who—with the backing of old friend, and Hollywood capo, Harvey Weinstein—earned multiple nominations and statues for films that included a sliced-off ear (Reservoir Dogs), man-on-man rape scene involving gags and Samurai swords (Pulp Fiction), and Adolf Hitler's face being shot to smithereens (Inglourious Basterds). And Django Unchained—Tarantino's latest dose of reverential, in-your-face throwback cinema—is Tarantino's goriest and most audacious movie yet.

    So, yes, it's one of the best times you'll have in a theater all year. Django Unchained works best as an exciting revenge flick, finding Jamie Foxx's titular ex-slave teaming up with a hilariously deadpan German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from a despicable yet charming plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio). The performances are top-shelf across the board, though Samuel L. Jackson's genius-level turn as Dicaprio's Uncle-Tom-worthy righthand man is by far the film's crowning acting achievement.

    Is Django Unchained Tarantino's best movie? Not quite, due to some pacing issues and a double-ending that's viscerally satisfying but narratively clunky. But guess what? Minor flaws are powerless in a crowd-pleaser that features, amongst other attractions, arguably the funniest KKK scene in movie history, a fiendish DiCaprio delivering a dynamite phrenology monologue, and horse dancing.


  • Amelie (2001)

    Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
    Stars: Andre Dussollier, Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz, Rufus, Serge Merlin

    We’ll be the first to admit that Amélie is not a film suited to everyone’s taste. With its whimsical style and cute-as-a-button leading lady (Audrey Tatou), it’s a Disneyfied version of life in Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood. One where young Amélie works as a waitress on a mission to make life happier for those around her, concocting a number of elaborate schemes in order to manipulate joy from the strangers who surround her. Until she eventually realizes that it is she who is need of a personal pick-me-up.

    Though dismissed by some for being too cutesy (it was famously rejected from screening at Cannes when a programmer described it as being “uninteresting”), the film’s fanciful depiction of The City of Light conjured up more than $30 million at the box office, making it the most successful French film to hit American shores.


  • The Master (2012)

    Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
    Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Ambyr Childers, Jesse Plemons, Laura Dern, Rami Malek

    Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't make easily consumed films. Even at his most accessible (see: Boogie Nights or Punch-Drunk Love), he's an ambitious storyteller who's interested in writing contemplative and complex scripts anchored by multifaceted characters. The Master—the always challenging Anderson's most divisive movie to date—stands as the ultimate example of Anderson's singular sensibilities. It's cold, enigmatic, unconventionally structured, and altogether dreamlike. Fortunately, it's also brilliant, and, sadly, a source of widespread misunderstanding and rejection.

    One can't blame viewers for leaving the film feeling either drained or negatively chilled. Inspired by the origins of Scientology, The Master centers on the combustible Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in 2012's best performance next to Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln), a troubled drifter who difficultly connects on an emotional level with a jovial yet manipulative cult leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman, another marvelous performance).

    Theirs is a strong, somewhat impenetrable bond that Anderson never sugarcoats or trivializes—not all friendships have happy endings or thrive on simple commonalities, and the writer-director commendably presents their complicated union with bewildering ambiguity.


  • The French Connection (1971)

    Director: William Friedkin
    Stars: Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider

    1970s New York City was fertile ground for gritty, violent crime thrillers, and The French Connection is one of the first—and best—of the genre. The film stars Gene Hackman as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Roy Scheider as Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, both detectives trying to uncover a global heroin smuggling operation.

    The film is as much about the mood as it is about the actual plot, with large portions taken up by Popeye and Cloudy's stakeouts. Still, the scheming French gangster Charnier (played by Fernando Rey), is a villain for the ages, and the twists and turns that lead up to the final gunshot are riveting. Of course what most people remember about The French Connection is the car chase, considered one of the best in film history. The mounted camera on the front of Popeye's Pontiac LeMans still provides a rush and realism that's as exhilarating today as it was in '71. It's hard to imagine an action scene that's faster or more furious.


  • Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 & 2 (2014)

    Director: Lars von Trier
    Stars: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Connie Nielsen, Jamie Bell, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Michaël Pas, Jens Albinus, Jean-Marc Barr, Udo Kier

    When Nymphomaniac was released last year it was positioned as all shock value and no substance. There were the ads, with up-close views of human genitalia, there was mid-meltdown Shia LaBeouf hogging the spotlight, and there was Trier himself, fresh off making questionable remarks about Hitler to the press. Forget what you know about Nymphomaniac and there's a surprisingly great film underneath, anchored by one of Charlotte Gainsbourg's bravest performances.

    The most surprisingly thing about Nymphomaniac—especially Part I—is that it's remarkably funny. Though Lars von Trier is famous for his unrelentingly bleak outlook on life, there's an odd joy to his anhedonia. Part of the reason may be that sex, even when it's a compulsive and crippling addiction (as it is with Nymphomaniac's lead character Jo), is almost, by definition, comical. The way Jo navigate her problems as a young woman shows more levity than almost any of von Trier's previous work. Even later, when things take a darker turn and Jo hits rock bottom, von Trier celebrates her character rather than reveling in her agony. Though a twist at the end may leave some wanting, Nymphomaniac may well be remembered as von Trier's most human film.


  • Frank (2014)

    Director: Lenny Abrahamson
    Stars: Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy, Michael Fassbender

    What does a performer like Michael Fassbender do after he’s become a recognizable face across the world? Prove he can act even when his face is covered by a giant plastic cartoon head. Frank is an oddball comedy about an indie rock band with a frontman who refuses to take off his papier-mâché mask. The story follows the band as it tries to integrate a new member, while dealing with Frank's unwavering insistence on wearing his costume. While the trailers and press make Frank look more like a one-note joke than an actual film, there's surprising depth to the story and a great performing cast that includes Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy. Still, this is Fassbender's film, and even though his famously good looks are obscured, his heartfelt performance shines through his oversized headgear.


  • Cast Away (2000)

    Director: Robert Zemeckis
    Stars: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt

    A man, an Island, a volleyball, and that's about it. To say that Robert Zemeckis' modern-day reimagining of Robinson Crusoe was a massive sensation when it came out in 2000 is an understatement. There were Oscar nominations, MTV Movie Award parodies, and DVD sales up the wazoo.

    Today, Cast Away is not quite the edge-of-your-seat adventure it was 15 years ago, but Hanks' near-silent portrayal of a man with nothing but his ball to play with is still a performance for the ages. (Even recent one-man outings like Locke don't quite match Hanks' everyman intensity.) And the movie is still exciting, especially if you haven't seen it in a few years. Jarring sequences like the ice-skate dental surgery scene and coral-induced leg injury scene are cringe-inducing, and Wilson's (spoiler alert!) untimely death is just as tragic today as ever. Wiiiiiiiilson!


  • Sightseers (2013)

    Director: Ben Wheatley
    Stars: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram

    Um, Sightseers is about a new couple, Chris and Tina, (Steve Oram and Alice Oram) who decide to go on a road trip to strengthen their relationship—and along the way Chris turns out to be a sociopath and kills everyone who insults them. So it's not your traditional romance, but it's hilarious. The beauty of Ben Wheatley's film is that you don't even have to be into that sort of dark, messed up thing to enjoy it. When you look past the blood and bludgeoning, it's actually an endearing look into a relationship between a couple of socially awkward messes. All credit goes to careful directing by Ben Wheatley and witty lines crafted by Lowe and Oram.


  • Fantasia (1940)

    Director: Joe Grant, Dick Huemer
    Stars: Leopold Stokowski, The Philadelphia Orchestra

    Watching Fantasia today, it's hard to imagine that the film was first released in 1940. The colors are so vivid, the music so well choreographed, and the animations so beautiful, it stands alongside Disney films that were released 30, 40, even 50 years later. But when Fantasia first came out it was as state-of-the-art as could be.

    Using Disney's already world-famous characters, directors Joe Grant and Dick Huemer created a sumptuous visual world unlike anything before it (and few since), all choreographed to some of the most famous classical music of the time. (Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was only composed 27 years before, making it almost contemporary.) It's wild to think Disney would put out a feature whose greatest moment is a retelling of Goethe's Der Zauberlehrling, but even today it's easy to see why it was bleeding edge for its time.


  • The Quiet Man (1952)

    Director: John Ford
    Stars: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen

    When you think of John Ford and John Wayne, it's probably desert vistas and quick-draw shootouts that come to mind, not a romantic dramedy set amongst the rolling green hills of Ireland. While this may make The Quiet Man something of a curious anomaly for Ford and Wayne, it's fun seeing the Duke flex his remarkably on-point comedic chops alongside the gorgeous Maureen O'Hara. Though the stakes are low and comedy-of-errors scenes involving Ireland often hilariously dated, the cast of classic Hollywood royalty makes this a must watch even today.


  • Gimme the Loot (2013)

    Director: Adam Leon
    Stars: Ty Hickson, Tashiana Washington, Zoe Lescaze, Meeko, Sam Sighor, Joshua Rivera

    There's a moment nearly halfway into writer-director Adam Leon's feature film debut Gimme the Loot where its two leads, teenage NYC graffiti bombers Sophia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcolm (Ty Hickson), debate the efficiency full-member-sized condoms. Malcolm thinks that rubbers should just cover the "head," like a "fitted cap"; Sophia, as in most of their chats, thinks he's full of shit. It's a funny exchange that doesn't feel scripted, mainly because of the actors' naturalistic performances, and that's what lifts Gimme the Loot above the threshold of excellence as a whole: The film always feels in-the-moment and real.

    Living in the Bronx, and, as a result, pledging allegiance to the New York Yankees' pinstripes, Sophia and Malcolm hatch a plan to "tag" the Mets Home Run Ball at the Queens-located Citi Field, an incredibly ambitious scheme that's halted when Sophia gets robbed by members of a rival spray-can-toting gang. The theft inspires Malcolm to hatch a heist of his own, one that involves jacking a case of expensive jewelry from an upper-class floozy (Zoe Lescaze) to whom he recently brought drugs.

    In Leon's vibrant, warm, and consistently amusing film, the characters' sticky-fingered, urban adventure itself ranks secondary to Gimme The Loot fluid direction and breathlessly witty dialogue, spoken by a squad of first-time performers who uniformly come off as real-deal people, not fictional creations. It's every bit as authentic in spirit as Larry Clark's similarly presented Kids (1995), only, with its amiability, it's much more accessible.


  • Adventureland (2009)

    Director: Greg Mottola
    Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds, Kelsey Ford, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader

    It's hard to believe that this star-studded cast wasn't handpicked by a major studio, but Adventureland premiered at Sundance in 2009. Set in 1987 and filmed in Pittsburgh, this comedy follows virginal college graduate James, played by the ever-awkward Eisenberg, as he deals with working at his hometown's theme park. There, he meets Em, played Kristen Stewart to such effect that she earned High Times Magazine's Stonette of the Year award.

    The two twentysomethings drink, smoke, and fight off the monotony of their lives, all while falling in love as they work the game booths.


  • In the Loop (2009)

    Director: Armando Iannucci
    Stars: Tom Hollander, James Gandolfini, David Rasche, Mimi Kennedy, Chris Addison, Peter Capaldi, Steve Coogan, Anna Chlumsky, Gina McKee, Paul Higgins

    If all politicians, military officials, and political reporters were as funny as the men and woman in Armando Iannucci's hilarious satire In The Loop, we'd probably be more willing to root for undesirables like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

    They're not, of course, but who could really expect them to be? Hardly many popular comedy screenwriters themselves are as humorously on-point as Scottish comedian/writer/filmmaker Iannucci, whose spoofing of pre-war turmoil ranks as one of the best laugh-fests of the last decade, although you'd have to be a die-hard cinephile to know as much.


  • Mystic River (2003)

    Director: Clint Eastwood
    Stars: Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden, Laura Linney

    Clint Eastwood's work as director has long met, and possibly surpassed, his work as an actor. But of all the films he's helmed over the years, 2003's Mystic River may be the greatest distillation of Eastwood's power as a filmmaker. Adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel and featuring an all-star cast headed by a never-better Sean Penn, the film tells a sordid story of abuse and murder that eats away at a working-class community. The film was a huge success at the time, inspiring numerous other Boston-based crime sagas in its wake, but the bleak power of Eastwood's original hasn't been matched.


  • The Grandmaster (2013)

    Director: Wong Kar-wai
    Stars: Tony Leung, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen, Zhao Benshan, Song Hye-kyo, Wang Qingxiang

    Hong Kong's Wong Kar-wai has made some of the prettiest movies (In the Mood for Love, 2046) in recent memory. His latest is The Grandmaster, a biopic about legendary martial arts instructor Ip Man (Tony Leung). Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, it's a dreamy, meditative take on the kung fu epic, just as invested in love and character as the work of foot and fist.


  • Drinking Buddies (2013)

    Director: Joe Swanberg
    Stars: Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Jake Johnson, Ron Livingston, Ti West

    Fans of tradition will hate Drinking Buddies. If you go into this expecting a Shop Around the Corner-type story, then sorry 'bout it, you're shit outta luck. Sure, the IMDB synopsis mentions that the film is about a couple of craft brewery co-workers (Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson) who flirt and clearly have more chemistry than the people they're actually dating (Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick, respectively). But given this, know that Drinking Buddies doesn't follow the tried and true beat of a romcom, which is something you'd expect if you're familiar with director Joe Swanberg's work.

    Considering all the lines are entirely improvised by the cast (within a story outline, provided by Swanberg), the nuanced portrayal of modern relationships in the movie comes from a very real place. It's a reminder that what's obvious and what's right in a fairytale land doesn't matter because real life isn't that cut and dry. Real life, as examined in Drinking Buddies, is essentially a compilation of lies and excuses we tell ourselves to make the day easier. Now who's up for a beer?


  • The Ref (1994)

    Director: Ted Demme
    Stars: Denis Leary, Judy Davis, Kevin Spacey

    The Ref is an odd, oft-forgotten dark comedy that's worth revisiting. A pre-Usual Suspects Kevin Spacey stars as Lloyd, an emasculated sad-sack whose wife, Caroline (Judy Davis), has just had an affair. Naturally, they’re now in marriage counseling, but things aren't looking great. Enter Gus (Denis Leary), a jewel thief whose botched robbery attempt winds up with Caroline and Lloyd held kidnapped and tied to a chair. You can probably see where this is going by now. Yes, they must finally confront the real issues of their marriage because they have no other choice. While the couple's counseling combined with crime are well-worn tropes of '90s comedies, it's still fun to see a young Spacey and Davis battle out their emotional issues at gunpoint.


  • The Trip to Italy (2014)

    Director: Michael Winterbottom
    Stars: Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan

    With 2010's The Trip well on its way to becoming a modern cult classic, Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan return for another journey full of delicious meals and dysfunctional friendship. The plot to Michael Winterbottom's The Trip to Italy is just as negligible as it was the first time around. Brydon and Coogan, playing slightly altered (and more unpleasant, one would hope) versions of themselves sent on a press trip to the Amalfi coast. As they eat and drink their way through Italy, old wounds become exposed, and new infidelities arise. The whole thing hinges on the appeal of it stars, who turn two hours of dinner-table conversation into a hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on aging and relationships.


  • Wetlands (2014)

    Director: David Wnendt
    Stars: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Marlen Kruse, Meret Becker

    Wetlands is a gross-out comedy that rivals the crassest and crustiest moments of anything the Farrelly brothers have ever served up. Starring Carla Juri as the troubled 18-year-old Helen, the German film tells the story of the young woman attempting to reunite her divorced parents. Her misadventures along the way, however, largely involve Helen's peculiar views on human sexuality and bodily cleanliness. For some reason, she's convinced she should make herself as dirty as possible to buck social norms. In one scene, this involves rubbing her private parts on the most disgusting toilet seat since Trainspotting. In another, there's an accident that involves Helen shaving her rear end that results in one of the most cringe-inducing comedic scenes ever put to film. But if you can get past all the hemorrhoids and period blood, there's remarkable heart to be found in Wetland's wild story. Like all of us, Helen just wants her family to be happy.


  • A Teacher (2013)

    Director: Hannah Fidell
    Stars: Lindsay Burdge, Will Brittain, Jennifer Prediger, Julie Dell Phillips, Jonny Mars, Chris Doubek

    As the old saying goes—and the prophetic Nasir Jones once turned this into a song title—no idea's original.

    When it comes to storytelling, what matters is how one gets to the heart of a narrative, not the narrative itself. Case in point: Hannah Fidell's taut character study A Teacher. It's centered around a familiar concept, that of an attractive high school instructor conducting a secret love affair with one of her male students. Notes on a Scandal, much?

    Yet, regardless of her script's surface-level familiarities, Fiddell's devastating knockout of a motion picture never feels rudimentary. Creating a pair of believable, honest characters, she's delivered a controlled and intricately volatile moment in time: the phase of the student/teacher relationship in which one person's sexual interest transforms into infatuation.

    Ms. Diana Watts (newcomer Lindsay Burdge in a powerhouse turn) is an Austin, Texas, high school English teacher whose obsession with likable hunk Eric (the equally strong Will Brittain) is leaving her in a perpetual state of on-the-verge internal combustion. Fidell takes full advantage of Burge's dynamite face, keeping the camera fastened on Burge's reaction to news of a freshman female's recently discovered, topless camera phone pic (which brings to mind a photo Watts took for Eric). Burge conveys near eruption without so much as blinking.

    As A Teacher swiftly moves towards its intelligent and downbeat resolution, Fiddell captures a mood that's reminiscent of Michael Haneke's similarly dour The Piano Teacher—and that's one lofty compliment.


  • Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

    Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
    Stars: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson

    It might not seem like it, but this is ultimately a feel-good movie about a loser who saves himself through love. In the beginning, Barry (Adam Sandler) is angry at the world and helpless, partially because his seven abusive, manipulative sisters make his life a living hell. To make matters worse, he gets in trouble with a phone-sex company that tries to extort money from the unstable wimp.

    Amidst his chaos, he pursues Lena (Emily Watson), and she likes him. The weirdness that follows is sweet and unpredictable, just the kind of love story you'd expect from Paul Thomas Anderson, the greatest living American filmmaker.


  • Kids For Cash (2014)

    Director: Robert May
    Stars:

    Kids For Cash has all the hallmarks of a thriller: courtroom drama, ruthless bad guys, and a misunderstood hero. The fact that it's all true just makes it sadder when you realize that, though justice was served, there can be no happy ending for the people involved. The film centers on two Colorado judges who, in the wake of the Columbine shooting, embezzled funds set aside to punish juvenile delinquents. The documentary looks at all aspects of the case in great detail, as well as focusing on the broader implications of having a financial incentive to institutionalize youths. Even now, Kids For Cash is a stark reality that the American prison system is still driven by business.


  • Return to Homs (2013)

    Director: Talal Derki
    Stars: Abdul Basset Saroot

    The Return to Homs is a riveting documentary about how a Syrian soccer star became the face of a rebel insurgency. 19-year-old Abdul Baset Al-Sarout was the Syrian national team goalkeeper until his city of Homs was destroyed. Teaming up with a journalist friend of his, he moves from being a peaceful protester to fighting against Bashar al-Assad. Not only is Al-Sarout's story a tragic reminder of what's happening in Syria, it shows how regular people—even famous people—have been forced to take a side in an ongoing conflict with no end in sight.


  • Tiny Furniture (2010)

    Director: Lena Dunham
    Stars: Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham

    One of the surprise hits of the festival circuit, Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture is a movie about a modern New York that few had thought to portray: the milieu of privilege without the extravagance of manners you encounter in a film like Metropolitan. With HBO's Girls, Dunham cemented her knack for capturing the particular unpleasantness of certain millennials, but that project began with this film. Dunham plays a character much like herself, an artist fresh out of a liberal arts education, living with her photographer mother and precocious sister.

    Much has been said about what Dunham's project doesn't examine, but what she does focus on is too important to be dismissed. In particular, her candid, fearless take on sex and the female body is to be applauded. We need more artists doing this kind of work.


  • Flashdance (1983)

    Director: Adrian Lyne
    Stars: Jennifer Beale, Michael Nouri, Lilia Skala, Sunny Johnson

    Even if you haven’t seen Flashdance, directed by Adrian Lyne, you’ve probably heard about it. It’s responsible for smash hits “Maniac” and “Flashdance…What a Feeling.” Flashdance shows the story of Alex Owens, played by Jennifer Beals, a welder tryna make it as a big time dancer despite being in small-town America a.k.a. Pittsburgh. When she’s not welding she’s an exotic dancer at a neighborhood bar & grill where she gets discovered.

    One of the most memorable scenes in the film is when she Alex has to audition for the fancy schmancy dance school she wants to get into and nails the audition. So watch the movie and get hopeful that you too one day will make it out of your hellish hometown. And if you can’t dance well…Good luck.


  • This Ain't No Mouse Music! (2013)

    Director: Maureen Gosling, Chris Simon
    Stars: Ry Cooder, Michael Doucet, Sam Lightnin' Hopkins

    For those interested in learning more about the history of 20th century Americana music, This Ain't No Mouse Music!(2013) is your movie. The documentary follows Chris Strachwitz, who has been traversing the country trying to record and preserve classic American folk, blues, and R&B for the last half-century. It's both a fascinating character study of a man who cares deeply about a subject matter and a spotlight on musical genres that have long since faded from the limelight.


  • Blue Car (2002)

    Director: Karen Moncrieff
    Stars: David Strathairn, Agnes Bruckner, Margaret Colin

    Blue Car is a coming-of-age drama about a 16-year-old living in Dayton, Ohio. Sometimes beautiful, often painful, the story follows Megan (Agnes Bruckner) as she navigates a crumbling family and social life. Among Megan's problems are her sister's mental health issues and a teacher who may want to be more than just her friend. As the movie progresses, Megan faces brutal setbacks as his uncertain future looms ahead. Though Blue Car offers few moments of levity, it's an affecting portrayal of a young woman doing her best to make sense of world that is often cruel and uncompromising.


  • Mud (2013)

    Director: Jeff Nichols
    Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard, Ray McKinnon, Sarah Paulson, Michael Shannon, Paul Sparks

    If Mud's writer-director were to ever turn his excellent screenplay into a book, it'd be the perfect summer-reading assignment for kids entering high school.

    A modern-day Huckleberry Finn of sorts, Nichols' follow-up to 2011's darker, more psychologically unnerving Take Shelter is the kind of young-adult adventure tale that, frankly, doesn't seem to exist anymore. The film centers on Mississippi youngster Ellis (Tye Sheridan, a fine young actor), who, along with his awesomely named buddy Neckbone, befriends the grizzled yet charismatic Mud (Matthew McConaughey) on a secluded, backwoods island. While helping Mud reunite with main squeeze (Reese Witherspoon) and further hide from the men out to kill him, Ellis learns valuable lessons about trust, love, and what it means to be a man.

    Mud's emotional impact, however, is deeper than its coming-of-age themes. Nichols, quite cleverly, uses the film's genre elements to fashion one hell of an allegory for how kids process weighty, potentially devastating issues like divorce, betrayal, and heartbreak.


  • Memphis (2013)

    Director: Tim Sutton
    Stars: Willis Earl Beal, Constance Brantley, Larry Dodson

    Everything I do is a part of this construct of identity and nothingness that I have formulated in my brain, Willis Earl Beal told Complex in an interview about Memphis last year. It's a sentiment that extends to his character in the film—a drifter musician who wanders the streets of the titular city, occasionally stopping for a drink or to visit a love interest. Tim Sutton's film, like his star, is almost enigmatic to a fault. Memphis is all about atmosphere, eschewing plot for a rich collection of gothic imagery and impressionistic camera work. While that may be a turn off for some (and try the patience of most), there's an elegiac beauty to be found in Sutton's existential vision.


  • The Conspiracy (2013)

    Director: Christopher MacBride
    Stars: Aaron Poole, James Gilbert

    There's nothing better than when adventurous young filmmakers see an excellent yet tricky idea through to a satisfying end. That's one way to describe the viewing experience of watching Christopher MacBride's first-rate The Conspiracy, an engrossing faux documentary about a couple of filmmakers descending deeper and deeper into the world occupied by those who nervously believe in the Illuminati, 9/11 conspiracies, and other New World Order paranoias.

    MacBride and company intriguingly use real-life theories and sources of investigation, namely The Tarsus Club and the Bohemian Grove rituals, to construct an airtight thriller that starts off as an investigative mystery before a third act where first-person horror takes over. In that final section, The Conspiracy pulls off that always complicated trick known as "the ambiguous ending," leaving viewers with plenty to think about and, depending on your tolerance for bizarro horse-face masks, even more to lose sleep over.


  • Zodiac (2007)

    Director: David Fincher
    Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., Chloë Sevigny

    David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network) has yet to top 2007's Zodiac, a granular look at one guy's destructive search for the identity of the notorious Zodiac serial killer, who terrorized San Francisco in the 1960s and '70s. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, who becomes so obsessed with the mystery, he upends his life. And to what end?

    Fincher's film revels in the details of the investigation while capturing the evolution of one of America's most beautiful cities with a digital camera. But the details won't add up, and ultimately the truth proves to be the most slippery thing of all. Along the way, Fincher slowly builds suspense in the best way possible: making the viewer wait. This is particularly true of a brutal scene with the killer and a picnicking couple. There's so much dread packed in every shot, there's barely room to breathe.


  • The Grey (2012)

    Director: Joe Carnahan
    Stars: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale

    The commercials for The Grey promised one thing: Liam Neeson knuckling up against a pack of vicious wolves in freezing cold, snowy conditions. Action movie gold, right? So imagine our surprise when director Joe Carnahan’s remarkable film brought us close to tears. Much like Warrior, it's a pure guy-cry experience, though, in The Grey's case, the spiritual undercurrent lingers long after its bravura final scene.

    Guided by an extraordinary, well-rounded performance from Neeson, The Grey is anything but a man-versus-animal smackdown. Pitting a small group of airplane crash survivors against not only the threat of malicious wolves but also ferocious weather and depleting hope, Carnahan’s uniquely solemn action film challenges feelings of spirituality, masculinity, and emotional fortitude, all with superior deftness. It’s the uncommon “guy movie” with an active brain and a big, beating heart.


  • Carlos (2010)

    Director: Olivier Assayas
    Stars: Édgar Ramírez, Alexander Scheer, Fadi Abi Samra, Ahmad Kaabour

    If only American TV miniseries were as badass as Carlos, the epic three-part chronicle of Carlos the Jackal, the famous terrorist, produced by French and German television in 2010. Yes, HBO and Todd Haynes gave us the fantastic Mildred Pierce, but we're greedy for more, groveling for something bigger in the face of this international production that spans languages, continents, decades.

    Olivier Assayas directs with verve, employing anachronistic post-punk on the soundtrack. You haven't lived 'til you've seen Édgar Ramírez admire himself in the mirror, drunk off booze and his own ego, while New Order's "Dreams Never Fade" plays.

    The set pieces, in particular the 1975 OPEC siege, are assured and tense, but its the quiet moments where Carlos impresses. You won't forget the moment where he teases a woman's lips with a grenade, rubs the bomb against her bare thighs.


  • Man of Tai Chi (2013)

    Director: Keanu Reeves
    Stars: Keanu Reeves, Iko Uwais, Tiger Hu Chen, Simon Yam

    Don’t hold 47 Ronin against Keanu Reeves— he man knows his martial arts. Man of Tai Chi, his first movie as a director, is a bare-bones throwback to old-school kicking and punching in the Bruce Lee model. Set in an underground fight club, it showcases some of the slickest fight choreography in recent years.


  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

    Director: James Cameron
    Stars: Arnold Swarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong

    His holier-than-thou public persona might drive us up a wall, and Avatar is still an unholy mating of Dances With Wolves and FernGully, but we've got to hand it to James Cameron: He's the king of sequels.

    Showing that his extraordinary sequel to Alien, 1986's Aliens was no fluke, Cameron followed up his own sci-fi standout The Terminator with a second round that's much more ostentatious and ultimately superior to its predecessor. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again plays the mostly silent cyborg sent back from the future, though this time he's a good guy; the villain is a 'borg that's able to regenerate its human shell (dressed in a cop uniform and played with imposing menace by Robert Patrick) and hell-bent on killing young John Connor (Edward Furlong).

    Cameron didn't waste a penny of the film's reported $100 million budget (a staggering sum back in '91), packing the visceral T2 with a ridiculous amount of explosions, car wrecks, man-sized robots, and bodily transformations. Just as audiences emitted collective gasps at the sight of Avatar's groundbreaking visual effects, ticket-buyers back then greeted the best sci-fi sequel ever made with similar astonishment. The main difference being that T2 still kicks tremendous amounts of ass 20 years after its release; we're expecting first-time viewers in 2029 to watch Avatar and say, "That generic shit was actually nominated for Best Picture?" Meanwhile, students of American film will be studying T2 forever.


  • Antiviral (2013)

    Director: Brandon Cronenberg
    Stars: Caleb Landry Jones, Sarah Gadon, Malcolm McDowell, Douglas Smith

    Brandon Cronenberg, the son of acclaimed genre filmmaker David Cronenberg, doesn't seem all that interested in people embracing his feature film debut, Antiviral; cold, not-welcoming, and at times emotionally impenetrable, it's a challenging effort from a young director who's clearly inspired by his father's older classics, like Videodrome and The Fly. Fortunately for Cronenberg, Antiviral just so happens to be formidably directed, ripe with sharp wit, and filled with quite a few visually dazzling moments. As tough as it is to crack, the film is impossible to ignore.

    Motivated by our culture's unhealthy obsession with celebrity, Cronenberg' conceives an otherworldly society where doctors, like the intensely creepy Syd March (a marvelous Caleb Landry Jones), treat patients to injections of their favorite famous person's disease of choice; for example, simply by forking over your hard-earned cash, you can feel closer to that desirable Hollywood dream girl by battling through her strand of herpes.

    Naturally, that process has dire consequences in Antiviral, especially when March secretly unknowingly indulges in a starlet's (the radiant Sarah Gadon) fatal illness and has to fight through his deteriorating health to find the cure. And that's when Cronenberg really lets his creative freak flag fly.


  • MASH (1970)

    Director: Robert Altman
    Stars: Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, Rene Auberjonois

    If you were once a teen girl, or teen boy—screw gender norms— MASH was the game you played with your friends to decide what your future would be like. The initials stood for Mansion Apartment Shack and House and decided who you were going to marry, what car you would have. The important things. Anyway, Robert Altman’s 1970 movie of the same name has nothing to do with that. The film, is a satirical take on war, set during the Korean War, but released in the midst of Vietnam.

    The film stars Donald Sutherland, nullTom Skerritt, Elliott Gould and Robert Duvall, among others, as members of a medical unit who get into all sort of shenanigans too funny for the seriousness of war. One of the gags includes a surgery performed while drunk. Like a game of Operation gone horribly horribly wrong.


  • Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

    Director: John Carpenter
    Stars: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, Martin West

    Remember 2009’s Assault on Precinct 13? Yeah, the one co-starring Ja Rule. Forget about your one-time favorite rapper/singer’s flick and check out the 1976 original, directed by the dude behind Halloween and the remake of The Thing, John Carpenter. Made back when Hollywood wasn’t afraid to get nasty, Assault on Precinct 13 is action cinema at its meanest. How mean? Just wait until you see what happens to the little girl with the ice cream cone.


  • At the Devil's Door (2014)

    Director: Nicholas McCarthy
    Stars: Naya Rivera, Ashley Rickards, Catalina Sandino Moreno

    At the Devil’s Door gives Glee's Naya Rivera and MTV’s Awkward’s Ashley Rickards the opportunity to leave their high school antics behind for some old-fashioned Satanism.

    Writer-director Nicholas McCarthy’s three-narrative script is unusual. Rickards plays a young girl who, because she’s sprung off a new boyfriend, haphazardly decides to sell her soul to the devil; Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno is Leigh, a real estate agent tasked whose latest must-sell home has quite a few horrific secrets, one of which reveals itself to her right away; and Rivera, meanwhile, is Moreno’s younger sister, Vera, a free-spirited artist who has no desire to get domesticated, even though Leigh has specific reasons for wanting Vera to start a family.

    Hovering over the three characters is, as the title suggests, Lucifer himself, and McCarthy doesn’t hold anything back. The devil is seen throughout the film, accentuating At the Devil’s Door’s tense and bleak energy. It’s a horror movie for people who don’t like to laugh much. Basically, it’s the anti-Glee. Fans of McKinley High’s New Directions won’t know what hit them.


  • Dredd (2012)

    Director: Pete Travis
    Stars: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Lena Headey, Wood Harris, Domhnall Gleeson

    When adapting a bleak and violent comic book character, there are a few things you shouldn't do, and chief amongst those crimes are the following offenses: Don't cast Rob Schneider in any role whatsoever, and stay as true to the beloved source material as humanly possible. Back in 1995, director Danny Cannon committed both wrongheaded acts when he made Judge Dredd, an abysmally acted, uneven, and cheesy affair starring a confused Sylvester Stallone as the title character, whose origins trace back to the old British comic strip 2000 A.D.; not only did Cannon and company have Dredd walk around without his signature helmet, but, again, they cast Rob Schneider as his (unfunny) comedic sidekick.

    Seventeen years later, though, the judge finally has his day. Dredd 3D, an amazingly violent and to-the-point romp, does everything that the '95 film should have done, giving the character a slick, sardonic sense of humor that never undermines his ability to cave in a person's Adam's apple with a club and blast deviants through their cheeks with bullets. Hats off to screenwriter Alex Garland (who wrote director Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later… and Sunshine), who opens Dredd with a show-stopping chase sequence and never lets the characters stop to catch any breath after that. And Pete Travis, the film's imaginative director, upstages Danny Cannon every step of the way, lending Dredd a striking visual palette of glossy, Blade Runner-esque shine offset by dank, grimy interiors.

    It's clear that, in making Dredd and attempting to restore the character's once-good name, Travis and Garland had a simple plan and saw it all the way through: Give the fans all of the carnage and black comedy they've been wanting and never look back. For that, the second shot at giving comic writer John Wagner's creation an effective big screen presence is a rousing triumph. Memories of Rob Schneider cracking wise alongside Sly Stallone, be damned.


  • Gomorrah (2008)

    Director: Matteo Garrone
    Stars: Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino, Gianfelice Imparato

    Goodfellas and The Godfather are amazing movies—there's no denying that. But that's the catch: Those are unavoidably viewed as just that, "movies," with known actors, showy set-pieces, and omnipresent soundtracks. Gomorrah, on the other hand, could very well pass for a documentary, even though it's just as much a cinematic production as anything shot by Martin Scorsese. Providing a brutally realistic look at organized crime in Naples, Italy, director Matteoo Garrone's pulverizing crime saga is as close to the real thing as we'd ever hope to get without having to pack an Uzi's clip.


  • Berberian Sound Studio (2013)

    Director: Peter Strickland
    Stars: Toby Jones, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Susanna Cappelaro, Cosimo Fusco

    Peter Strickland's wonderfully strange Berberian Sound Studio doesn't have much going on in terms of story—a nebbish British sound technician named Gilderoy (the great Toby Jones) abandons his usual ho-hum movie jobs to work on the sound effects for an Italian giallo film, a.k.a. the latest in Italy's signature brand of gruesome, stylish horror, titled, brilliantly, The Equestrian Vortex. And while surrounded by the production's colorful array of filmmakers and actors, Gilderoy slowly loses his mind.

    And, story wise, it's as simple as that. But, technically speaking, Berberian Sound Studio is anything but simple. Strickland utilizes a large arsenal of visual and sonic trickery so that the film itself mirrors Gilderoy's fever dream reality. It's a horror movie that isn't interested in scaring its viewers, but, rather, hypnotizing them into a state of dark, twisted confusion. Which, thanks to Strickland's talents and Jones' dynamic performance, it accomplishes tenfold.


  • Maniac (2013)

    Director: Franck Khalfoun
    Stars: Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder, Jan Broberg, America Olivo, Liane Balaban, Morgane Slemp, Genevieve Alexandra, Megan Duffy

    Maniac shouldn't be as great as it is—it's a serial killer movie starring the pint-sized dude who plays Frodo Baggins, directed by the filmmaker behind the lame 2007 parking garage thriller P2, and, on top of that, it's yet another horror remake. And yet.

    With its simultaneously retro and haunting score, impressive use of first-person POV camerawork, and Wood's multi-layered performance as a perverse sociopath, Maniac hits on every possible level. Wood's character, Frank, stalks beautiful young women, murders them, scalps them, and then places their severed head-tops on mannequins…and, through it all, he remains impossibly sympathetic. Maniac isn't a slasher movie, or a monster movie, as much as it's an urban tragedy, one that, mind you, is sadistic and voyeuristic.

    For genre fans looking for something special, though, it's also a nasty crowd-pleaser. It's rare to find a new horror film that's an audacious, form-bending exercise in style matched with, not placed over, substance. Maniac is exactly that.


  • Capote (2005)

    Director: Bennett Miller
    Stars:  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr., Bruce Greenwood, Mark Pellegrino, Amy Ryan, Chris Cooper

    In 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the greatest actors in recent memory, won his only Oscar for his performance as legendary writer Truman Capote in Capote, an account of the writer's research for In Cold Blood. It's a big, showy performance, and the Academy loves that kind of stuff. That it's a biopic also explains why Hoffman took home a trophy.

    But it's also a great performance, mannered and lived in.

    Philip Seymour Hoffman has been dead for a little over a month. Likely the void he left will never be filled. —Ross Scarano


  • Room 237 (2013)

    Director: Rodney Ascher

    Oh, you're a big fan of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining? Prepare to see the iconic director's Stephen King adaptation in all new, mind-bending ways, thanks to documentary filmmaker Rodney Ascher's bewildering, deconstructive knockout Room 237. Using the committed, albeit seemingly delirious, voiceovers from five Shining obsessives, Ascher's endlessly fascinating film pulls apart every minute detail within Kubrick's horror masterwork to present a series of crackpot theories that, by the picture's end, actually sound probable.

    As in, The Shining was Kubrick's way to atone for staging the Apollo 11 moon landing; or, Kubrick's masked commentary on both the Holocaust and the genocide of Native Americans in our beloved U.S.A.—sounds batty, right? With Ascher's stellar craftsmanship and slick editing to thank, the strangely hypnotic Room 237 begs to differ.


  • The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

    Director: Martin Scorsese
    Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Jon Favreau, Jon Bernthal, Cristin Milioti, Jean Dujardin, Kenneth Choi, Ethan Suplee, Spike Jonze

    Martin Scorsese's filmography is packed with classic scenes. For example, there's the "You talking to me?" moment in Taxi Driver, and the "You think I'm funny?" exchange in Goodfellas. In The Wolf of Wall Street, there's more than one such scene—in fact, there are three that, years from now, will, or at least should, rank among Scorsese's most memorable movie moments. One involves Matthew McConaughey and the topic of masturbation; another finds Jonah Hill at his most hilariously vulgar; and the third, the film's crowning achievement, is an insane, riotous bit of physical comedy from star Leonardo DiCaprio. It'll forever be known as the "cerebral palsy" sequence, and it needs to be seen to be believed.

    Much like The Wolf of Wall Street as a whole. Scorsese's craziest and funniest movie to date, the real-life story of excess-reveling, criminalistic/hedonistic stock broker Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) has been described by DiCaprio as a more contemporary take on Caligula, a comparison that feels on-point during every kinky sex scene and disastrous drug trip. Written by Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire's showrunner, and a former Wall Street worker himself), the film basks in its deplorable characters' worst impulses, staging their horrible acts as balls-to-the-wall comedy.

    To say that Scorsese, DiCaprio, and everyone else on The Wolf of Wall Street "go for it" wouldn't do the film justice. Both figuratively and literally speaking, they slather "it" with mashed-up qualuudes, surround it with more drugs, and let it run wild. The end result: a new highpoint of cinematic anarchy in the god Martin Scorsese's already superlative career.


  • Short Term 12 (2013)

    Director: Destin Daniel Cretton
    Stars: Brie Larson, John Gallagher, Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Keith Stanfield, Stephanie Beatriz, Kevin Hernandez, Rami Malek

    Short Term 12 flirts with several forms of hokeyness, from the white savior movie to the troubled-teen after school special. And in the hands of an inferior filmmaker, either one of those would have surely happened. But indie writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton is too gifted for that.

    With a remarkable knack for character development and storytelling, Cretton crafts a film that's got more in common with Half Nelson than Hardball. Except that Short Term 12 is better than Half Nelson.

    Carrying most of the emotional weight is breakout actress Brie Larson (21 Jump Street), playing Grace, a supervisor at a California group home who has deep, troubling issues of her own. Through one kid in particular, a female newbie with serious daddy issues (played by Kaitlyn Dever), Grace is forced to confront her inner demons, and, yes, Short Term 12 then heads into some rather dark places, but it's never morose. Cretton loves his characters too much to send them into the abyss—by Short Term 12's beautifully optimistic end, all's not right in their world, but it's certainly hopeful. Just like in real life.


  • The Kid with a Bike (2011)

    Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
    Stars: Thomas Doret, Cécile De France, Jérémie Renier

    Imagine a Disney movie about a compromised nuclear family, but with the sentiment razored away, most of the dialogue removed, the performances dialed down to only the essentials, and with a genuine magic that borders on the religious. That's The Kid With a Bike, the latest from the Dardenne brothers. A boy who's been abandoned by his father is taken in by a single woman who works as a hairdresser. The boy races everywhere, his body acting out the vertiginous loss of his dad. Competing for the boy's attention is a neighborhood thug with cigarettes, schemes, and slick-backed hair.

    By cooking down the story to its fundamental parts, the Dardennes have made a hyper-real fairy tale that takes the viewer low and high on the wings of grace.


  • The Conversation (1974)

    Director: Francis Ford Coppola
    Stars: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield

    When people talk about Francis Ford Coppola's string of '70s classics, The Conversation inevitably receives the least shine. It's a smaller story, and a deeply personal and uncomfortable one, at that. No gangsters, no Vietnam, this modest picture only tackles the loss of security in the modern world.

    Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert hired for a routine case-record a conversation-that seems to have led to a murder. This sends Caul, already a paranoid person, into a downward spiral of disquiet. Along the way, Coppola's explores heavy head-scratchers like responsibilty and privacy. Skip The Social Network and watch The Conversation.


  • The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)

    Director: Peter Greenaway
    Stars: Alan Howard, Michael Gambon, Helen Mirren, Tim Roth

    Peter Greenaway is a singular filmmaker. Like Wes Anderson, his shots are composed in a way that's immediately recognizable. Watch one of his films and it should come as no surprise that he was a painter first. A true aesthete, his films are full of references to classic literature, theater, opera-name something highbrow, and he folds it into his features. What makes The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover such a perfect entry point into Greenaway's rarefied world is the film's obsession with shit, rot, and the most corporeal aspects of sex.

    The story is stylized and removed from reality to the point of allegory. A gangster (Michael Gambon) takes over a restaurant. His wife, Georgina Spica, takes a lover (Alan Howard). From there, the movie becomes a visceral examination of food become feces, passion become penetration, and flesh become meat. Watch it for the cannibalism, or the shots at Margaret Thatcher. Or both. After all, excess is important.


  • Here Comes the Devil (2013)

    Director: Adrián García Bogliano
    Stars: Francisco Barreiro, Laura Caro, Alan Martinez, Michele Garcia

    Argentina's own Adrián García Bogliano can't be put into any one kind of box within the horror genre. With each new film, the young writer-director totally shifts gears and challenges himself to subvert a common scary movie trope; in Here Comes the Devil, Bogliano tries his hand at the supernatural, telling an unsettling and unpredictable tale about two loving, though romantically fragile, parents struggling to figure out where their two young kids have been acting so oddly after returning from a mysterious cave.

    Achieving a steady, overwhelming mood of dread from start to finish, Bogliano's latest twists and turns its way into a lane occupied by the most daring of horror movies, where familiar concepts and images never play out how one might expect and interesting, if not sometimes questionable, behind-the-camera choices show a director who's gamely open to risks.


  • Trainspotting (1996)

    Director: Danny Boyle
    Stars: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Kevin McKidd, Kelly Macdonald

    Giving our readers the benefit of the doubt here, we're going to assume that none of you have tried any narcotics, beyond, perhaps, your mistress named Mary Jane. What's the best way to stay on the straight and narrow, then? Give Danny Boyle's disturbingly comedic Trainspotting a gander.

    The loopy, anything-goes saga of drug users on inexorable downward spirals, it's one of the few movies concerning abuse that genuinely makes the viewer feel as if he or she has snorted, inhaled, or injected. And, based on the reaction Ewan McGregor's character has after diving into a feces-littered toilet to recover his drugs, it's not a fun time.


  • Dead Man (1995)

    Director: Jim Jarmusch
    Stars: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Billy Bob Thornton, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, John Hurt

    Dead Man is an indie movie fan's wet dream. It's got Johnny Depp at his most twitchy (and then badass), a score improvised by Neil Young, and Iggy Pop as a cross-dressing student of the Bible. What the hell else do you want?

    Jarmusch's acid western follows William Blake, an accountant who gets mixed up with the wrong type of people in a town called Machine. He kills a man in self-defense and spends the rest of the movie on the run from bounty hunters. Along the way, Nobody helps him. Really, Nobody is his name; he's a Native American played by Gary Farmer.

    It's got the best poetry-quoting gun fights in the history of the world. Do you know my poetry...


  • Big Bad Wolves (2014)

    Directors: Aharon Keshales, Navot Papsuahdo
    Stars: Lior Ashkenazi, Tzahi Grad, Doval'e Glickman, Rotem Keinan

    Big Bad Wolves opens with a beautifully staged, slow-motion sequence in which two little girls and their boy pal play a game of hide-and-seek in and around a cabin in the woods—ending with one of the girl's disappearance and only a shiny red shoe in her place. It's a clear indicator that Keshales and Papushado have fairy tales on their minds, albeit one incredibly grim tale. A police investigation leads to the discovery of the little girl's body in an empty field, tied to a chair. The lead detective, Miki (Lior Ashkenazi) has his sights on a schoolteacher suspect, Dror (Rotem Keinan), a nebbish, lonely guy who lives in his dead parents' house and only finds companionship in his snippy pet dog.

    Also ready to pin the girl's death on Dror is her father, Gidi (Tzahi Grad), a former member of Lebanon's armed forces who buys an isolated cabin, redecorates the basement into a torture chamber, and, soon enough, sees both Miki and Dror down there with them. Along with a rusty pair of pliers, a hammer, a blow torch, and other weapons of bodily destruction that Gidi's not about to let sit idly by.

    The dark beauty of Big Bad Wolves is that, considering how familiar that plot synopsis no doubt sounds, nothing happens predictably, or even safely. Keshales and Papushado cleverly blur the lines between good and evil, treating the prime suspect as more of a victim than his sadistic, law-breaking abusers, though they don't spell out whether Dror is innocent or if he's indeed a serial child murderer. The closer Big Bad Wolves gets to its downbeat yet fully earned conclusion, the more difficult it is to form an allegiance to any one character.

    Keshales and Papushado pull off a difficult tightrope act here, teetering back and forth tonally from comedy to thriller and psychological horror. Big Bad Wolves is all of those without ever tipping its scale toward any particular style—it's the slickest and most entertaining serial killer film since Kim Jee-woon's 2011 gem I Saw the Devil, and a film that deserves to be seen on wide scale.


  • American Mary (2013)

    Director: Jen and Sylvia Soska
    Stars: Katharine Isabelle, Tristan Risk, Antonio Cupo, John Emmet Tracy, David Lodgren, Twan Holliday, Paula Lindberg

    At around the 40-minute point in American Mary, one thing becomes official: Jen and Sylvia Soska have officially arrived as formidable filmmakers.

    Debuting last year with the cheaply made but enjoyable exploitation flick Dead Hooker in a Trunk, the Canadian sisters, known as the Twisted Twins, showed tons of potential, and the first half of their equally depraved follow-up displays an immense growth as both storytellers and directors. With sexy, in control star Katharine Isabelle holding things down, American Mary opens up as its eponymous character deals with medical school stress, financial troubles, and her introduction into the underground world of body modification.

    Up until Mary gets bloody revenge on a professor who violated her, the Soskas' sophomore effort develops its narrative with prowess; throughout American Mary's second half, though, the story loses focus as the sibling directors opt for unconnected sequences of carnage, black comedy, and graphic sexuality. Which, mind you, all entertain greatly, but it's a shame that American Mary turns into a delightful hodgepodge when it could've been a revelatory achievement.

    Still, there's a lot to be said about a couple of young female directors who, after only two movies, have nailed their own unique style and aren't afraid to get down and dirty. Get familiar with the names Jen and Sylvia Soska, people—they're here to stay. A good thing, indeed.


  • Blue Ruin (2014)

    Director: Jeremy Saulnier
    Stars: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, Eve Plumb

    There's a scene more than halfway into the excellent Blue Ruin that includes my favorite line of dialogue in any 2014 movie so far. The film's main character, Dwight (Macon Blair) has just been saved for a lonely, helpless execution by his old friend, an ex-military grunt named Ben (Devin Ratray, the actor formerly known as "Buzz" from Home Alone—remember him?). Looking at the guy who's just had half of his face blown off, Dwight, both bewildered and morbidly curious, mutters, "His head?" To which Ben, who's killed before and knows too well how it looks and what it feels like, replies, simply, "That's what bullets do."

    It's such a smart, precise, and multi-layered line, courtesy of Blue Ruin's writer and director, Jeremy Saulnier. A lean, mean film that has a classic revenge premise but is decidedly anti-revenge, Blue Ruin presents violence as a destroyer. Dwight, an aimless and grungy drifter coping with his life's fallout following his parents' murders, is out for blood, seeking fatal vengeance against the man who he believes offed his mom and dad. But Dwight is no badass. He's a one-time nice guy driven to despair. Thus, when it's time for him to confront his parents' killer, he doesn't have a plan.

    Much of the credit for the character's impressiveness goes to Blair, for whom Saulnier wrote the part, and it shows. Blue Ruin thrives on their sharp chemistry as actor and director. From start to finish, Blair exudes a tremendous amount of soulfulness and vulnerability, giving Blue Ruin's quieter moments a deep resonance and its many bursts of grisly carnage a devastating truthfulness.

    They say revenge is a dish best served cold. In Blue Ruin, it tastes bittersweet.


  • Something in the Air (2013)

    Director: Olivier Assayas
    Stars: Clement Metayer, Lola Creton, Felix Armand, Carole Combes, India Menuez, Hugo Conzelmann

    Olivier Assayas, one of France's most consistently exciting directors (go stream Carlos on Netflix right now), contemplates his adolescence in his latest, Something in the Air. (The French title is Après mai, which translates toAfter May—it's far more evocative than the blandness we were stuck with.)

    Assayas' gorgeous, meandering movie opens not long after the May '68 student revolt in Paris. His high school-age stars want to keep the fervor burning, and so they vandalize and riot, meet to talk about radical politics and art practices. Gilles (Clement Metayer), a brooding kid with a mop of hair and a blank look-book face, can't decide whether he'd rather paint, protest, or just hump around. When a security guard at his school is seriously injured by Gilles' and his band of bougie rebels, the group scatters across Europe, the better to lay low in the wake of the altercation.

    Something in the Air is part road movie, part reflection on the complex relationship between political action, political art, and artistic innovation, and part coming-of-age tale. The film succeeds because, though everything from the stars to the scenery is very beautiful, Assayas doesn't douse the proceedings in sentiment. These are kids who are probably going to grow up to be the middle-class types they hate, and their aspirations are driven as much by fashion and hormones as anything else. And yet their shifting radical convictions do seem real, too. By refusing to parse the mess, Assayas gets at something like the truth.


  • Fish Tank (2009)

    Director: Andrea Arnold
    Stars: Michael Fassbender, Katie Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Harry Treadaway, Jason Maza

    Most moviegoers know Michael Fassbender as X-Men's young Magneto or Shame's swinging dick. But in the coming-of-age tale Fish Tank, Hollywood's most reluctant leading man plays Connor O'Reilly, the handsome new guy dating 15-year-old Mia's mom. Mia, played by Kate Jarvis, loves rap and wants to become a dancer (sidebar: this movie uses rap better than 90 percent of movies). When O'Reilly initiates an inappropriate relationship with Mia, the film begins taking shocking turns that will leave the viewer breathless.


  • Old Joy (2006)

    Director: Kelly Reichardt
    Stars: Will Oldham, Daniel London, Matt McCormick, Tanya Smith, Autumn Campbell, Keri Moran

    This road movie takes two old friends, played by Daniel London and Will Oldham (otherwise known as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy) trying to catch up via an overnight camping trip in the mountains of Oregon. The tension of the meandering scenes frames the changes the friends have undergone through since last they saw each other. Yo La Tenga provides the atmospheric score, setting the stage for a strange turn you won't see coming.


  • The Loneliest Planet (2011)

    Director: Julia Loktev
    Stars: Hani Furstenberg, Gael García Bernal, Bidzina Gujabidze

    The true test of a couple comes when they're far from home. Living together is one thing, but backpacking in Georgia (the country, not the state) is a far more difficult undertaking, as the couple in The Loneliest Planet soon discover.

    The pair hires a guide to take them through the stunning Caucasus Mountains, but a bizarre encounter with an irate stranger creates a fissure in their relationship that they might not come back from. Sumptuous scenery, meaty performances, and more subtext than a Hemingway short.


  • Oculus (2014)

    Director: Mike Flanagan
    Stars: Karen Gillan, Brenton Thwaites, Rory Cochrane, Katee Sackhoff, James Lafferty

    It's a minor miracle that Oculus received such a big, widespread theatrical release last April. Typically, horror films as thoughtfully made and artistically ambitious as writer-director Mike Flanagan's sophomore feature are relegated to VOD and/or smaller art-house cinemas. But thanks to super-producer Jason Blum (Insidious, Sinister, The Purge), who snatched up the film's distribution rights at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, Oculus defied the odds.

    And, unsurprisingly, audiences were mostly confused. Rather than just another cookie-cutter Hollywood horror film, Flanagan's progressive Oculus—about a haunted mirror that destroys a once-loving family over decades—pushes the genre's boundaries in ways serious horror fans wish more films would. First and foremost, it's character-driven, spending enough time with its emotionally tortured protagonists, brother and sister duo Kaylie (Karen Gillan) and Tim (Brenton Thwaites) to make its wildest conceit all the more impactful. That conceit is Flanagan's intricately executed dueling of realities, with the past repeating itself directly alongside the present—it's a risky supernatural trick that Flanagan tightly maneuvers around.

    Oculus is evidence that the independent horror scene's as vibrant and imaginative as ever—even if films of this kind are ultimately better served outside of multiplex chains.


  • Heartbeats (2010)

    Director: Xavier Dolan
    Stars: Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider, Xavier Dolan, Anne Dorval

    Heartbeats follows the unraveling of a love triangle between three close friends, but don't expect this to play out like Bridget Jones' Diary. Instead, a guy and girl vie for the affection and attention of one man, turning the film into a heartbreaking tale of jealousy, tension, and uncertainty. The cinematrography alone will have you open.


  • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)

    Director: Alfonso Cuarón
    Stars: Maribel Verdú, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal

    Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón's bawdy and beautiful tale puts two young best friends on a road trip with an older woman they're both digging. They convince her to come by telling her outlandish tales of a fantastical beach where they'll live in paradise, only to find that they aren't the only ones keeping secrets. The vibrancy and raw sexual nature make it one of the most successful road films ever made.


  • Mitt (2014)

    Director: Greg Whiteley
    Stars: Mitt Romney

    It’s taken almost a decade, but we finally have proof that Mitt Romney is indeed a human being. The critically acclaimed documentary follows Mr. Binders Full of Women throughout his two failed presidential campaigns. If you're in the mood for a good cry, here you go.


  • The Act of Killing (2012)

    Director: Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous

    What does it feel like to kill a man? To kill a thousand? To be revered for mass murder? These are questions that documentarians Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn ask in the powerful and unsettling doc The Act of Killing, which focuses on old, fat, and white-haired Indonesian gangsters who rose to prominence by leading a North Sumatran death squad in 1965-1966, purging the country of alleged communists in the wake of a failed military coup by the 30th of September Movement. Because the current ruling Pemuda Pancasila regime rose out of the death squads, their genocidal acts are considered heroic.

    In an utterly surreal and stomach-turning twist, the gangsters revisit their killing days in re-enactments, full-on stylized movie scenes where they play themselves and their victims with the eagerness of children toying around with a video camera they got for Christmas. Some of these are comically bad, like Z-grade horror flicks. Others are so terrifying that the women and children who are playing the women and children who the death squads once pulled from their burning homes, are visibly terrified. Scenes like these are delicate, as the Pemuda Pancasila, which supports the filming as propaganda to remind challengers how truly medieval they’re willing to get, doesn’t want to come across as bloodthirsty and savage.

    The most disturbing thing about The Act of Killing is how human the mass murderers are. In many ways, they appear as genial and unremarkable as your next door neighbor. It appears that anyone, given the right circumstances, could become part of a genocidal machine and devise ways to snuff out life more efficiently and with less mess. The documentary and its re-enactments force reflection, and yet it's little solace to see Anwar, one of the most exalted executioners, struggle with portraying his victims, gag violently when he revisits the roof where he strangled many to death with a wire system he invented, and cry about his fears of being haunted. The dead are dead and wishing it were some other way can never change that.


  • Blackfish (2013)

    Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite

    When parents take their children to Sea World, they're hoping for that look of innocent amazement in their kids' eyes. The family watches huge, extraordinary Orca whales jump from the water. Then animals perform tricks, the kids gape, and then the family goes home.

    But what about the Orcas? They're stuck inside those tanks with many other whales, and they're getting angrier by the second. Especially since many of Sea World's workers are abusive, basically prodding the Orcas until they lash out at them, which some have done, particularly a giant male whale named Tilikum. Tilikum has killed three humans and seriously injured several others. Because it's not supposed to be caged like that. Have you never seen Free Willy?

    In the grim, eye-opening documentary Blackfish, filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite presents that reality with an unflinching gaze. You'll never want to visit Sea World again—that or you'll be returning on a mission to free the animals back to their natural ocean habitat. There, they'd be able to function normally and in their own personal spaces, not forced to coexist with other Orcas in one tank, a recipe for angry whales ready to hurt people.

    Through archival footage and candid interviews with people who've worked alongside these confined whales, Cowperthwaite brings previously unrecognized human-on-animal cruelties to light, ones in which little kids and their parents unknowingly participate.


  • Paris Is Burning (1990)

    Director: Jennie Livingston
    Stars: Carmen and Brooke, Andre Christian, Dorian Corey

    Livingston's stunning documentary captures ball culture in the '80s, with gay New Yorkers doing some of the finest stunting the city has ever seen. Before TV shows like RuPaul's Drag Race brought walking into the prime time, there was Paris is Burning, an incredible time capsule of old New York. Your slang and swagger will grow one-thousand fold. And you'll marvel at how much contemporary rap has in common with the incredible houses that populate the film.

    R.I.P. Pepper LaBeija.


  • The Invisible War (2012)

    Director: Kirby Dick
    Stars: Amy Ziering, Kirby Dick, Kori Cioca

    Documentaries most often expand or focus our views on issues that are already topics of conversation. It's uncommon for a doc to break a story. But Kirby Dick's The Invisible War did just that, alerting the nation to the appalling cover-up of sexual assault within the armed services. This is the first film to explore rape in the military, and as such viewers will be horrified and angered. As they should be.


  • The Queen of Versailles (2012)

    Director: Lauren Greenfield
    Stars: Virginia Nebab, David Siegel, Jaqueline Siegel

    Jackie and David Siegel, Americans, are building a home to live in. The cameras are rolling because the house is the most expensive single-family home in the country. They're calling it Versailles, obviously. These are the essential details of Lauren Greenfield's acclaimed documentary, a film that is a better document of the Great Recession than any stuffy best-seller or long-winded op-ed. The wincing comedy has the feel of contemporary reality TV, but the trenchant political points make The Queen of Versailles a profound experience.


  • How to Survive a Plague (2012)

    Director: David France
    Stars: Bob Rafsky, Larry Kramer, Peter Staley

    When Ed Koch died last month, many were quick to point out the former NYC mayor's failure to address the AIDS crisis in his city. David France's powerful doc, How to Survive a Plague, covers the early days of AIDs, when the general public seemed content to paint it as punishment for being gay. The film was nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar at this year's Academy Awards.


  • Man on Wire (2008)

    Director: James Marsh
    Stars: Philippe Petit, Jean Francois Heckel, Jean-Louis Blondeau

    You'd be hard-pressed to find a film with more humanity than James Marsh's Man on Wire, which tells the story of Philippe Petit, who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers in 1974. The generosity of spirit displayed by Petit's beautiful (and illegal) act takes on special significance in light of the destruction of the Towers, making the film even more emotional.

    Really, if you need to find a glimmer of hope in a nasty world, Man on Wire will convince you that being human in the face of oppressive superstructures is possible.


  • Cropsey (2009)

    Director: Joshua Zeman, Barbara Brancaccio

    During the 1980s, Staten Island kids were told the urban legend of "Cropsey," a child-killer said to stalk the remains of the remaining buildings of the abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution. Turns out, though, that Cropsey was real, and thought to be a former Willowbrook employee named Andre Rand, who was pinned to the disappearances of five children. Cropsey details those cases and, in the process, makes Freddy Krueger's track record seem like child's play.

    The boogeyman is real, kids, and this film reminds us of that without flinching. Child abduction and murder is inherently disturbing, of course, but surprisingly the film's unsettling pièce de résistance has nothing to do with homicide. An argument is made that Rand's fractured mental state traces back to his days working inside Willowbrook, a decrepit hellhole where handicapped patients sat in filth and underwent extensive neglect.

    Geraldo Rivera famously documented the institution's poor practices back in 1972 in an exposé titled Willowbrook: The Last Disgrace, shown raw and uncut in Cropsey. It'll make you hate mankind for a good hour or two.


  • The Thin Blue Line (1988)

    Director: Errol Morris

    Private detective turned documentary filmmaker extraordinaire Errol Morris and his film The Thin Blue Line got an innocent man out of prison. How's that for impactful? While investigating a prosecution psychiatrist named Dr. James Grigson, Morris beame interested in the case of Randall Dale Adams, who was sentenced to life in prison for murder.

    In November 1976, a Dallas police officer was shot and killed during a traffic stop. Adams, who was riding in the car with a man named David Ray Harris, was convicted of killing the shooting, but through recreations and new interviews, Morris proves his innocence. Powerful stuff.


  • Hoop Dreams (1994)

    Director: Steve James
    Stars: William Gates, Arthur Agee, Emma Gates

    Hoop Dreams, the gripping story of Chicago high-school basketball players William Gates and Arthur Agee is as much about race, class, and education as it is about sports. Those qualities make this cinematic masterpiece not just the greatest sports doc, but also one of the best documentaries in recent memory. Don't be intimated by the long run time—Steve James' achievement is thoroughly compelling. It'll be the shortest three hours of your life.


  • In a World... (2013)

    Director: Lake Bell
    Stars: Lake Bell, Fred Melamed, Michaela Watkins, Ken Marino, Demetri Martin, Rob Corddry, Alexandra Holden, Nick Offerman, Tig Notaro, Geena Davis

    Directed, written by, and starring Lake Bell, In a World... is a surprise. At first glance, it's easy to assume that the film will be another low-budget indie comedy as forgettable as the rest. But its inventive story—about a woman trying to break into the male-dominated voiceover world— and side-splitting laughs won't just leave you impressed, it'll give you a newfound respect for Lake Bell. She's not just "that girl that was on How to Make It in America" anymore. She's a bona fide multi-talented film star.


  • Into the Abyss (2011)

    Director: Werner Herzog
    Stars: Werner Herzog, Richard Lopez, Michael Perry

    Werner Herzog, the director behind Grizzly Man, sets his sight on prison with Into the Abyss, a chronicle of two men convicted of a triple homicide. Michael Perry received a death sentence; Jason Burkett is serving a life sentence. The Huntsville "Walls" Unit in Texas is America's most efficient death row, and Herzog conducts interviews with Perry up until just eight days before his execution. Into the Abyss is essential viewing if you've ever wondered about the death penalty, if you've ever considered the value of a life.


  • Election (1999)

    Director: Alexander Payne
    Stars: Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Colleen Camp

    Political races are never less than vicious, no matter what level of government. Another commonality amongst all presidential competitions, whether on a global scale or merely small-town, is the popularity contest quotient, the issue-deficient reason why a living, breathing gimmick such as Sarah Palin was able to even stay in the last presidential race—she's a star in those (scary) red states.

    Writer-director Alexander Payne transplanted such ideas directly into the high school movie genre with the 1999 independent hit Election, a callously funny satire on how the hiring of authority figures can quickly descend into name-calling, backstabbing, and sexual scandal. Reese Witherspoon is outstanding as an obsessive running for her school's open position of student body president. Bisexual allegations ensue, a teacher (Matthew Broderick) gets embroiled in the mayhem, and a dimwitted athlete (Chris Klein) becomes a legitimate contender based solely on his popularity. Sort of like Sarah Palin, only she's a beauty pageant contestant, not a jock. Not much of a difference.


  • Undefeated (2011)

    Director: Daniel Lindsay, T.J. Martin
    Stars: Montrail 'Money' Brown, O.C. Brown, Bill Courtney

    Undefeated, the winner of last year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, is proof that resonant characters and honest emotions can trump familiarity-even more so when those characters are real-life people.

    Directed with non-intrusive, observational clarity by first-time documentarians Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, Undefeated follows the Manassas Tigers, a high school football team in Memphis, TN, coached by a great man named Bill Courtney. Over the course of one particularly dramatic season, the Tigers achieve excellence both on the gridiron and off, despite many negative forces.

    Lindsay and Martin focus on Courtney and three specific players, each representing a different facet of the squad's collective resiliency. The directors also benefit from capturing a few spontaneous moments of teary-eyed, unscripted warmth that can only come from the documentary format.


  • Sexy Baby (2012)

    Directors: Jill Bauer, Ronna Gradus

    Watching porn online will never be the same again after you’ve seen Sexy Baby, the timely and subtly powerful new documentary from filmmakers Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus. With open-book realism and nicely placed references to sexually provocative Billboard hits (see: Lil Wayne and Lady Gaga, specifically), Sexy Baby explores the negative effects that our current digital age is having on impressionable young women, as well as the immature fellas who think that all bedroom activities should mirror those of Jenna Jameson.

    Bauer and Gradus, without any interferences, show the everyday lives of three equally engrossing subjects: Winnie, a sassy, quite grown-up 12-year-old who counters her feminist-in-training ideals with the desire to be as sexy as Lady Gaga; Nichole, a.k.a. Nakita Nash, 32, a porn star turned pole dance instructor who knows the chauvinistic and hurtful views cast upon adult film stars all too well; and 22-year-old Laura, a gorgeous amateur model stricken by insecurities that she feels can only be remedied through labiaplasty surgery.

    Sexy Baby accomplishes two important feats: It brings the Internet’s darkest impacts to light in discomforting ways, and, most profound of all, it should give any and all fathers of young girls a harsh reality check about the times in which we’re currently living.


  • Happy Christmas (2014)

    Director: Joe Swanberg
    Stars: Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Joe Swanberg, Mark Webber, Lena Dunham

    Lately, Joe Swanberg's movies have felt like coming home. Similar to his previous effort, Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas is an ensemble dramedy that drops you into situations that feel all too familiar, whether you're ready or not. The film follows Jeff and Kelly (Joe Swanberg and Melanie Lynskey), a young couple struggling to raise their toddler and tending to their demanding creative careers, only to have yet another thing to crash their home: Jeff's basket-case sister Jenny (Anna Kendrick). Irresponsible and unpredictable, Jenny inadvertently forces Jeff and Kelly to reconfigure their lives, while they force Jenny to get her act together.

    Entirely improvised, save for a plot outline, the film feels authentic because everything about it is, down to a cast that truly seems to enjoy bouncing penis euphemisms off each other. It's honest and raw, and engaging because of that. Suffice it to say, it's one of the few movies this year that genuinely isn't bullshitting you.


  • Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

    Director: James Foley
    Stars: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin

    One of the most self-assured plays ever written meets one of the best casts ever assembled, and the results are as expected: fucking stupid good. Glengarry Glen Ross captures the bravado and ruthlessness of American capitalism, personifying its masculine energy and pain. A group of salesmen working off leads struggle to win a contest where the main prize is not being fired. Alec Baldwin's "Always Be Closing" pep talk is just one high point in a film riddled with them.


  • Pi (1998)

    Director: Darren Aronofksy
    Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, Samia Shoaib, Ajay Naidu

    Before the powerfully depressing Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Rourke's comeback vehicle The Wrestler, and Natalie Portman's Oscar-winning psycho-horror flick Black Swan, acclaimed director Darren Aronofsky was a struggling first-time filmmaker with little money and huge ideas. The result of his pre-fame hunger is Pi, a black-and-white mind-fuck about an unstable math whiz (Sean Gullette) whose obsessive work gains unwanted attention from Hasidic extremists, Wall Street players, and his own insanity. For bleak, hypnotic atmosphere, Pi is tough to beat.


  • Melancholia (2011)

    Director: Lars von Trier
    Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keifer Sutherland

    Lars von Trier's latest odyssey assaults the upper class with a crashing planet. Kirsten Dunst plays Justine, the glowing bride who, on her wedding night, can't help but create drama-as if there wasn't enough, what with the planet heading for Earth. Featuring some of the most stunning cinematography of the Danish director's career, including shots that recreate works of fine art, Melancholia is powerful and thought-provoking—and all without having to resort to genital mutilation.


  • Night of the Living Dead (1968)

    Director: George A. Romero
    Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne, Judith Ridley, Kyra Schon, Bill Hinzman, Russell Streiner

    George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is a national treasure; shot on a shoestring budget in and around Evans City, Pennsylvania, the zombie classic stands as a crucial milestone for independent cinema, an untouchable gem amongst horror purists, and an intelligent, thought-provoking time capsule from the Civil Rights era. Not bad for a movie about corpses devouring humans.

    Ask The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman or original series showrunner Frank Darabont—George A. Romero's genre-defining Night of the Living Dead is the most important zombie movie of all time. It's also one of the most important horror movies of all time.

    The set-up is basic: Seven random people barricade themselves inside a nondescript farmhouse as flesh-eating corpses stalk around outside. Independently made back in 1968, Night of the Living Dead pushed horror's boundaries with extraordinarily graphic scenes of cannibalism and the ballsy choice to have a black leading man during the Civil Rights era.

    Above all else, though, it's still scary as hell.



  • Bernie (2012)

    Director: Richard Linklater
    Stars: Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine, Matthew McConaughey

    In Richard Linklater’s dark and wildly funny Bernie, Jack Black plays Bernie Teide, a real-life mortician who kills the wealthy widow that he recently befriended. But Teide isn’t caught right away; instead, he makes excuses to the townsfolk as to why she's no longer around, and uses her large fortune to donate to people in need. When Teide is put on trial, the town comes to his defense, claiming that the old woman was hated by everyone and deserved to die. More than a pitch-black comedy, Bernie is a study in perception, and how people view murder when it’s perpetrated by someone they like against someone they despise. It also contains the performance of Black's career.


  • Upstream Color (2013)

    Director: Shane Carruth
    Stars: Shane Carruth, Amy Seimetz, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins

    Upstream Color—writer-director Shane Carruth's long-awaited follow-up to his bewildering 2004 time-travel knockout Primer—is a textbook example of a movie that's best seen with little to no prior knowledge of its plot machinations. We'll restrict the explanation to this: Two morose strangers (Amy Seimetz and Carruth) meet on a train, slowly begin seeing each other, and have no idea that they share a common past experience that neither one of them truly understands. Somewhere not all that far from their city, meanwhile, resides an eccentric farmer with a giant pen full of pigs.

    How all of those pieces connect is what Carruth challenges audience members to formulate for themselves—the necessary details are there, but laid out in such a way that posits Upstream Color as a slightly less menacing relative of Mulholland Drive. Carruth is working on several artistic levels here. The film's core is the whirlwind romance, but, true to his idiosyncratic form, Carruth surrounds that beating heart with other particular influences, including body horror, bleak drama, and (bizarre) biology. Which, on the whole, could leave viewers cold if not for his ability to capture moments of sublime beauty.

    Even at its most impenetrable, Upstream Color is a superb technical achievement.


  • Moebius (2014)

    Director: Kim Ki-Duk
    Stars: Jo Jae-hyun, Seo Young-joo, Lee Eun-woo

    Just when you think you've seen all that bug-nuts cinema has to offer, along comes a movie like South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk's Moebius, which can best be described as the don't-feel-good castration movie of the year, if not of all-time. Yes, Moebius opens with a woman (Lee Eun-woo) trying to go all Lorena Bobbitt on her cheating husband (Cho Jae-hyun), failing, and then taking that anger out on her self-pleasuring teenage son (Seo Young-ju). Then, she vanishes, leaving her son penis-less and her husband to wallow in depression over what he's caused through his infidelity.

    And that's not even the craziest part of Moebius, the darkest of dark comedies. Did we mention that there's not a single line of dialogue spoken in the film? Ki-Duk—an acclaimed provocateur whose previous movie, Pieta, won the top prize at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival—is boldly working hard to titillate and flex his directorial muscles here, and the final product is equal parts revolting, compelling, and, oddly enough, touching. The tenderest father/son moment of 2014? Jae-hyun's character teaching his son how to orgasm without a penis, by, get this, violent self-abrasion with a stone—no joke.


  • Kill List (2012)

    Director: Ben Wheatley
    Stars: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Michael Smiley, Emma Fryer, Harry Simpson, Ben Crompton, Struan Rodger

    2012's most disturbing genre movie is also one of most lingering mind-fucks to come around in years. With the scarring Kill List, English filmmaker Ben Wheatleyestablishes himself as a fearless storyteller, keeping the mood pitch-black while concealing several jarring twists and maintaining a firm ambiguity that, by the film's end, will leave you bewildered.

    Most importantly, though, Kill List will burrow into your nightmares, which is fitting, since the movie's shocking imagery and brutal ideas come directly from Wheatley's own scary dreams. At its core, Kill List is about an out-of-work, married military vet and former hit-man (Neil Maskell) who reconnects with an old partner-in-crime (Michael Smiley) to off a few unlucky folks for a mysterious new client. And that's all we can say here.

    Though Wheatley himself has been open to discuss the film's crazier elements in the press, like he did with us, we're suggesting that you wait and see Kill List for yourselves before probing its deep, dark enigmas. But just know that you're not likely to see a more psychologically damaging horror flick any time soon.


  • Nosferatu (1922)

    Director: F.W. Murnau
    Stars: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schroder, Alexander Granach, Wolfgang Heinz, Ruth Landshoff

    Yes, that is a real person you see above. Well, at least we think Max Schreck wasn't actually a creature of the night, though the terrifying German silent flick Nosferatu makes quite a case against that notion. A sparse, visually chilling interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula, director F.W. Murnau's nightmare on celluloid benefits endlessly from ultimate method actor Schreck's obsessive dedication to the vampire's look, mannerisms, and overall demeanor. We'd applaud his commitment, but we're afraid that Schreck's ghost will visit us tonight to thank us in person.


  • eXistenZ (1999)

    Director: David Cronenberg
    Stars: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm

    The year 1999 was an exceptional one for challenging and unique science fiction cinema. On the blockbuster front, there was The Matrix, a heady blend of action and otherworldly intrigue that, with its glossiness and wide theatrical release, played well for mainstream audiences. On the other hand, folks looking for an even stranger and less zeitgeist-tapping dose of complicated sci-fi were treated to the celluloid puzzle eXistenZ.

    Fourteen years later, we've grown a closer fondness to the latter, namely because of the man who wrote and directed the picture: David Cronenberg, who's ability to combine his love of body horror and cerebral sci-fi in eXistenZ sets it apart. The plot isn't the easiest to describe, but let's give it a shot: A video game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and one of her trainees (Jude Law) weave in and out of virtual realities while assassins track them down.

    There's much more to it than that, of course, but the bizarreness of Cronenberg's last shot of Videodrome-like weirdness is best left experienced for one's self, spoiler free.


  • All Cheerleaders Die (2014)

    Directors: Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson
    Stars: Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson, Chris Petrovski, Leigh Parker

    All Cheerleaders Die is a mainstream horror-comedy living in the independent horror movie world. With a cast of young actors who believably look and behave like actual high-schoolers, co-directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson's raucous film is a Mean Girls/Heathers/Evil Dead hybrid that's far more deserving of a wide release than, say, Vampire Academy, that early 2014, Hollywood-minded box office catastrophe from earlier this year.

    A revenge movie at its core, All Cheerleaders Die tweaks zombie movie tropes with black magic. A Wiccan teenager (tapping into The Craft's sensibilities as well) resurrects four gorgeous cheerleaders after a bunch of asshole football players run their car off a mountain road following a campfire party gone awry. They come back looking the same but now undead and harboring newfound supernatural abilities, like superhuman strength, misplaced souls, and, because this is one crazy f'n movie, shared orgasms.

    Always aware of their film's camp factor, McKee and Sivertson treat the material with both a charming recklessness and a dedication to never turning All Cheerleaders Die into overly cutesy pap like Jennifer's Body.


  • Crave (2013)

    Director: Charles de Lauzirika
    Stars: Josh Lawson, Emma Lung, Ron Perlman, Edward Furlong

    Have you ever wanted to bash a talkative, obnoxious person's brains in during a lecture? Or wished you could annihilate a pair of young thugs harassing an innocent, cute chick on a subway train? If so, first-time director Charles de Lauzirika's hugely impressive Crave should hit close to home.

    In a magnificent performance, actor Josh Lawson plays a crime scene photographer who daydreams about killing those who irritate him and gets involved with a much younger, and emotionally confused, neighbor (the adorable and charismatic Emma Lung). Through wonderful dialogue and rich characters, Crave mixes several genres—specifically psychological drama, romantic comedy, and violent noir—while also demonstrating that de Lauzirika is a fresh-voiced filmmaker to watch. The kinds of storytelling elegance and deviant imagination shown here aren't to be taken lightly.


  • The Host (2006)

    Director: Joon Ho-bong
    Stars: Kang-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon, Hae-il Park

    The best creature feature since Jaws hails from South Korea. In the terrifying opening, a beast rises from the polluted Han River in Seoul, snatches a young girl, and takes her to its lair under Wonhyo Bridge. The rest of the film is concerned with the rescue of the girl, as her family gathers weapons to defeat the fishy abomination.

    Balancing jokes, scares, and more than a few jabs at the influence of the American government on Korea, The Host is a satisfying, throwback horror flick.


  • Snowpiercer (2014)

    Director: Bong Joon-Ho
    Stars: Chris Evans, Kang-ho Song, Go Ah-sung, Jamie Bell, Alison Pill, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris

    Based on Jacques Lob’s comic book, which ran from 1984 through 2000, Joon-Ho’s film is a 125-minute excursion into madcap dystopia, equal parts supercharged sci-fi/action movie, visually insane director’s showcase, and star-studded oddity. And it’s seriously badass. Set in 2031, after chemical warfare has left the planet frozen and the amount of living humans desperately minimal, Snowpiercer unfolds like one giant set-piece. The apocalypse’s survivors are stuffed into the eponymous train, a massive locomotive that zooms around the icy landscape on a path to nowhere. In its front section, the rich and privileged live luxuriously, eating high-end sushi, partying like drunken Manhattanites on New Year’s Eve, and constantly under the protection of armed guards and soldiers. Why the security? Because the train’s other three sections house its prisoners, its sick inhabitants, and tail's dirty, mistreated have-nots.

    Once Evans and his crew engage in brutal combat, Snowpiercer’s lunacy kicks into full gear, and the ensuing film is less about cohesion and more for those who enjoy loudly saying “Damn!” while watching a movie. The film’s tone dizzyingly shifts to the point of bewilderment, volleying back and forth from gritty realism to hyper-stylized violence and vibrantly staged yet dark comedy, sometimes the latter two happening at the same time.

    Tilda Swinton has some of the film’s best lines: “My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed,” she says in one scene, relishing the wild material she’s been given. Elsewhere, Chris Evans keeps a straight face and his maintains his character’s steeliness as he delivers three sentences you’ll never hear in a Marvel movie: “You know what I hate about myself? I know what people taste like. I know that babies taste best.” That, keep in mind, coming in the same movie where he’s lodging an ax into dudes’ skulls. Chris Evans, much like Tilda Swinton and Bong Joon-Ho, understands that not all movies need to be tidy. In Snowpiercer’s case, the filmmakers’ sense of messy ambition is a badge of honor.


  • In Fear (2014)

    Director: Jeremy Lovering
    Stars: Alice Englert, Ian De Caestecker

    Imagine the worst date you've ever been on, multiply it by infinity, and cap it off with homicide and you'll have a handle on Jeremy Lovering's masterfully suspenseful In Fear. The superb one-two combo of Ian De Caestecker and Alice Englert play Tom and Lucy, a young couple trapped within a maze of backwoods country roads late at night, where someone or something is tormenting them through increasingly mean-spirited and dangerous tricks, from making strange noises in the trees to physical assault.

    The catch, though, is that Tom and Lucy don't know each other very well—it's only their second date, and Lovering uses their mutual unfamiliarity and underdeveloped affections to the film's advantage. The characters' lack of knowledge about their surroundings and travel mate reflects the actors' own ignorance. Giving In Fear an authentic paranoia, Lovering didn't tell his stars what was going to happen before filming, so their reactions are genuine. Experimental in its execution, In Fear is knife-to-the-gut forceful in its impact.


  • Let the Right One In (2008)

    Director: Tomas Alfredson
    Stars: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar

    Say your girl loves vampires, but her measuring sticks for great bloodsucker characters are Edward Cullen and Bill Compton-first off, we feel your pain. Secondly, it sounds like she's ready for the "Let the Right One In Test."

    Antithetical to Twilight and True Blood in every way, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's slow-burning undead drama handles budding love better than Bella/Edward (even though, yes, the suitors are a little boy and an equally little girl vamp) and is scarier in its quietest moments than True Blood's Eric Northman ever is at his most diabolical.

    Show Let The Right One In to wifey and see if she's willing to admit its superiority; if not, try not to hide your disappointment beneath a Taylor Lautner shirt.


  • The Brother From Another Planet (1984)

    Director: John Sayles
    Stars: Joe Morton, Rosanna Carter, Ray Ramirez

    Writer-director Sayles doesn't beat viewers over the head with the racial themes in his quirky and mellow dramedy The Brother From Another Planet; in other words, he's no Spike Lee.

    Joe Morton gives a nicely controlled performance as the titular brother, an alien who climbs out of a cheap-looking spaceship, walks into Harlem and must blend into society despite the fact that he can't talk. Made on a shoestring budget, the indie Brother foregoes elaborate special effects in favor of heavy dialogue and simplistic character development; in that regard, it's about as unconventional a sci-fi film as one could imagine.

    Sayles (who previously co-wrote the 1981 cult horror classic The Howling) finds the perfect balance between social commentary and fish-out-of-water humor, giving The Brother From Another Planet a uniquely unassuming vibe. With all due respect to our dude Meteor Man, Morton's Brother is our favorite African Alien movie character.


  • Joe (2013)

    Director: David Gordon Green
    Stars: Nicolas Cage, Tye Sheridan

    Nicolas Cage’s career has been pretty hit or miss. While he gave his most impressive performance in Leaving Las Vegas, he also starred in the so-bad-it’s-good films Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man. Joe, however, leans more towards the former, and will restore your faith in the actor’s talent. Cage plays the titular character, an ex-con working for a lumber company. When he hires 15-year old Gary (Sheridan), he reluctantly assumes the role of the abused boy’s father figure. This independent drama succeeds with a moving recipe of violence, friendship, and powerful performances from both stars.


  • G.B.F. (2014)

    Director: Darren Stein
    Stars: Sasha Pieterse, Megan Mullally, Natasha Lyonne, Evanna Lynch, Andrea Bowen, Xosha Roquemore, Joanna "JoJo" Levesque, Michael J. Willett, Horatio Sanz, Paul Iacono, Molly Tarlov

    G.B.F. is exactly about what it stands for, "gay best friends." But before you call the morality police, hear this out. More than just the shallow idea of popular girls recruiting homosexual boys to be their arm candy, it's about coming out, being confident in yourself, and standing up for what you believe in.


  • Dumbo (1941)

    Director: Norman Ferguson
    Stars: Edward Brophy, Herman Bing, Margaret Wright, Sterling Holloway, Cliff Edwards

    Dumbo is considered to be one of the saddest movies of all time, so it's perfectly normal that its target audience shoots below 13. The awkward, big-eared baby elephant, whose bullies call him "Dumbo" instead of his real name, "Jumbo Jr.," embodies the outcast in all of us, with all our social anxieties. When Dumbo's mother is captured, he blames himself (this is why a lot of people need therapy). But, of course, this is a Disney movie, and Dumbo comes to terms with himself. He also gets his happiness back thanks to Timothy Q. Mouse and champagne that's spilled into his water. Yeah, champagne is what makes him fly (this is why a lot of people are alcoholics).

    Rather than simply being a kid's movie, this early Disney feature is a great piece of art. Dumbo is a silent character, often portrayed as the unwilling clown, a la Buster Keaton, while the characters move about him and often pick on him. Despite being considered only a "filler" movie for Disney, Dumbo's poignant message about outcasts makes it a must-watch animated flick.


  • The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

    Director: Henry Selick
    Stars: Catherine O'Hara, Danny Elfman

    If you've avoided this film just because every girl at Hot Topic rides for it, we understand-completely. But hear us out. The Nightmare Before Christmas introduced a new generation to some amazing stop-motion animation. Before this, all that was prevalent were the iconic Rankin/Bass Christmas specials (i.e. The Year Without a Santa Claus). In turn, The Nightmare Before Christmas has become a traditional Christmas film of its own. Or, wait-Halloween film? Uh, just watch it on both days.

    Produced by Tim Burton, and directed by Coraline's Henry Selick, the film follows Jack Skellington, a skeleton living in Halloween Town who opens a portal to Christmas Town. The movie follows his adventures in trying to get his spooky town to accept the more joyful holiday, all set to the music of Danny Elfman. It's a haunting twist on the traditional saccharine sweet Christmas fare we usually see, making it an amazing, original film worth checking out.


  • Don't Forget Amazon Prime

    Even if you're a die-hard Netflix subscriber, don't sleep on Amazon Prime. The site is clearly putting their infinite-coffers-of-pre-recession-money where its proverbial mouth is. And it's paying off. Not only does Amazon Prime have fantastic original programming (Transparent is quite possibly the best show of the year), but the movie selection has expanded to the point where you could conceivably find something worth watching—if you know where to look.

    That's where Complex comes in. From Adventureland to Zoolander, check out the 50 best movies available on Amazon Prime here.

    Don't have Amazon? Try Amazon Prime free for 30 days by clicking here.

More from Complex