From the vast armies bathed in bold colors to the outward representations of an elderly warlord’s descent into madness, this is a spectacle in the best sense of the word. If there were ever a way to measure a movie’s chemistry and charm, it would have to be called the Grant-Russell Test, because no movie has the kind of rapid-fire banter and crackling spark that forms the heart of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell’s His Girl Friday. The story of a newspaper editor who tries to keep his ex-wife (and former ace reporter) from remarrying, Friday is like watching two expert tennis players serve overhand smashes at each other over and over.
Romantic comedies are fewer and further between than they were in the ‘90s, but some are still just as good. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Netflix’s adaptation of Jenny Han’s novel that follows Lara Jean (Lana Condor), a hopeless romantic whose fake relationship with her middle school crush (Noah Centineo) turns into something she never expected, is proof that the genre is still thriving. Rian Johnson’s whodunit Knives Out captured an audience thanks to its all-star cast—Chris Evans!
There are no easy answers proffered by this tender and compassionate film, just an irreconcilable combination of happiness, relief, and frustrated longing for an unachievable happy ending. It’s tempting to call Unforgiven Clint Eastwood’s love letter to the Western genre where he http://moviesnreviews.com/ got his start, but this isn’t exactly a sweet and sentimental movie. The story of an aging gunfighter reluctantly pulled back into his old violent ways is harsh and brutal, but the inevitable slow burn from retired cowboy to shotgun-wielding avenger is deliberate and precise.
- Any family is going to have some dysfunction—especially when trapped in an automobile together—but ultimately their squabbles feel unimportant when the purpose of their journey is revealed.
- After you’ve seen Rocky Balboa fight pro wrestlers and single-handedly end the Cold War, it’s hard to imagine how it all started.
- If you think of jazz music as a soundtrack to a leisurely afternoon sipping pumpkin lattes in a Starbucks, then you need to see Whiplash.
- We invite you to find out how many films from the list you’ve seen on this poll.
- Riots, Boyz in the Hood now seems like a prescient forecast of the tensions bubbling up all over the region at that time.
Orson Welles’ epic masterpiece is a not-so-thinly veiled examination of the life and legacy of publishing giant William Randolph Hearst. It’s bold and mysterious with its use of fractured chronology, an incredibly innovative technique at the time. Some shots are so beautiful you’ll want to pause the movie and have them framed.
No, this is a case where no one’s coming out clean, and Chinatown is a hardboiled mystery with zero soft spots. A research team based in Antarctica unearths an alien vessel frozen in the tundra for thousands of years. Once defrosted, it unleashes a killer organism that hunts down the trapped science team. For one, the “alien” isn’t some rubber monster—it behaves more like a virus, infecting and imitating members of the crew before bursting (in full gory detail) out of them in a spray of tentacles and blood.
Facing racist hostility even from those who are helping him, Det. Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) is nonetheless determined to solve his case—and Poitier is a pillar of poise and strength throughout. ” is the standout line, but Tibb’s slap of racist plantation owner Endicott is the movie’s real mic drop. Like any trend or era, the Blaxploitation period of the 1970s was definitely a mixed bag when it came to quality—some movies were made just to cash in, with little care about production value or story. But if you are interested in checking out movies from that era, few can top Gordon Parks Jr.’s Super Fly. The story of a cocaine dealer named Priest as he attempts one last big score, the movie is carried by an incredibly charismatic Ron O’Neal, Park’s distinctive visual flair, and Curtis Mayfield’s incredible music. Whenever a new ‘best of all time’ list is published, it’s typically not meant as some grand proclamation solidifying that art form’s greatest achievements.
His style and substance comes to the fore with In the Mood For Love, a slow-burn romance about two people who connect over their spouses’ affairs. It pairs acting icons Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung and is set in 1960s Hong Kong. Both leads are fantastic, and every frame is an insanely gorgeous mix of color, shadow, and light. Mirrors, staircases, pulsating colored lights and descents into literal and figurative infernos are all part of Wright’s stylish film, which eventually takes a sharp turn from Repulsion-style psychological freak-out to supernatural fright-fest. The director swings big with every bold aesthetic gesture, aiming to deliver scares and sexiness alongside pointed commentary about inherited female sexual trauma.
That’s the set-up for this adaptation of a Stephen King short story that, despite the author’s reputation, is not really all that interested in the dead body part. The strength of Stand By Me is in the characters, their friendship, and the slow-motion realization that they are losing their innocence the closer they get to the missing boy by the side of the railroad tracks. It’s a moving tribute to being a kid that you can appreciate no matter how far removed from it you are. John Hughes pretty much defined the teen comedy in ’80s movies like Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, but Ferris Bueller stands out for being—much like its lead character—a true original. A high school comedy that barely spends any time in high school (it’s kind of the point of the movie, after all), it’s witty and carefree and incredibly well-structured. The ending race home, for example, is a masterful use of editing, music, and physical comedy.
But we tried to stay true to our love of movies, these movies, and others that didn’t make the cut. (Remember, it’s only 50!) The final list is a reflection of that love, but also of a system that favors certain stories and storytellers at the expense of others. If the list is not a model of representational balance, call us out — we can take it — but also continue to call out an industry that hasn’t given us a more diverse landscape of voices to love, hate and argue over. The Social Network tells a fictional account of how Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard college student, and his friends created the most important social networking site of the early 2000s, and all the drama and millions that followed.
For our purposes, it’s something that defined or changed a genre or had a significant cultural impact. There are a lot of classics on this list, and you might be surprised by how relevant some of them still feel. But if you’re looking for something a bit more recent, there are plenty of contemporary films on here too. We’ve included many Oscar contenders—winners and losers alike—as well as movies that will give you something solid to talk about at a party or around the water cooler. Nothing starts a conversation like, “Have you seen [fill in the blank]?” Who knows? You don’t really know where it’s going, and when it gets there, it blows you away.