Everything about this movie, directed by Denis Villeneuve, works, from Adams’ performance to the score and cinematography. A veteran detective (Morgan Freeman) teams up with an eager newcomer to the department (Brad Pitt) to track a serial killer who murders people in elaborate ways based on one of the seven deadly sins. Director David Fincher creates a rain-soaked, depressive urban landscape of grays and browns and dots it with visceral scenes of carnage and horror http://nextmovietrailer.com/ that will stay with you long after the movie’s over. It’s not for everyone, but no doubt a masterfully constructed and executed trip to the dark side. It’s no secret Pixar changed the world of animated movies forever, showing that computers could create intricate, elaborate worlds just as well as (if not better than) hand-drawn animation. But Pixar’s real triumph was being able to do that without skimping on those important details like story and character.

This being from director Guillermo Del Toro, the fantasy world is hardly glitter and rainbows. It’s an eerie, sometimes terrifying place, with characters that come out of nightmares. This is a journey that takes you in a lot of unexpected directions.

Less known is Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, a civil rights activist who spent nearly 15 years fighting to get justice for her only child. She is the focus of this heart-wrenching biopic from Chinonye Chukwu, in which Danielle Deadwyler (Station Eleven) delivers a masterclass in playing lived-in grief. We could go on and on about the shortcomings of our work here — not enough animation! Without further ado, here are what we consider the 50 best films of the 21st century so far. We invite you to find out how many films from the list you’ve seen on this poll. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as young conman, Frank Abignale Jr., who manages to live as a Panam pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, all while FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) on his tail.

As if that isn’t enough, she finds herself at the center of a war for the multiverse, sending her on an adventure that could determine the fate of the entire world, and of her family. Detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by a woman named Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband in what Gittes believes will be a routine infidelity case. What follows is a cesspool of corruption, deceit, and murder that pretty much throws any hope for a neat and tidy ending out the window early on.

Night of the Living Dead was also incredibly groundbreaking at the time for having a heroic African-American lead, which makes the absolute gut-punch of an ending even more incredible for the social and political implications behind it. Some movies have to be seen because it’s unlikely anything like them will ever be made again. The making of Apocalypse Now was so bizarre and intense it inspired its own separate documentary (also worth seeing). Director Francis Ford Coppola took Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness and transplanted it to the Vietnam War, creating a strange, unpredictable movie that feels less like a war film and more like the lucid nightmare of someone inside a war film. When a gigantic great white shark begins attacking people off the coast of Long Island, a local sheriff teams up with a marine biologist and a grizzled fisherman to hunt it down and kill it.

  • She is the focus of this heart-wrenching biopic from Chinonye Chukwu, in which Danielle Deadwyler (Station Eleven) delivers a masterclass in playing lived-in grief.
  • Leave it to director Rob Reiner and writer Nora Ephron to create a romantic comedy about two people determined not to be in a romantic comedy.
  • The director swings big with every bold aesthetic gesture, aiming to deliver scares and sexiness alongside pointed commentary about inherited female sexual trauma.
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  • It’s infamous for the “chest burster” scene (which still makes you jump, even when you know it’s coming), and for introducing Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ellen Ripley.
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  • A past-his-prime actor (Bill Murray) in Tokyo to make quick cash doing commercials befriends the lonely girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson) of a photographer who leaves her to fend for herself while he’s off working.
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  • A lonely high school English teacher (Robin Williams) with dashed hopes of becoming a novelist struggles with his job and single-parenting his obnoxious, sleazeball teenage son.
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That they recount their own biographical narratives here only further underlines Jia’s focus on the act of storytelling as a means of understanding, processing, expressing and passing down unique and universal human experiences. Split into chapters and shot with a lyrical focus on contemplative faces and serene, changing landscapes, Jia’s snaking, inquisitive non-fiction work proves a subtle rumination on shifting individual and national Chinese identity. So too is the movie industry, which has been on quite a rollercoaster ride courtesy of COVID-19 and our up-and-down efforts to contain it. In July, I watched one of the most mediocre movies that I’ve seen this year — and it was glorious.

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Keith Thomas’s feature debut has a great sense of its insular milieu as well as the trauma and stress of escaping an extremist religious environment, and the writer/director drums up suspense from set pieces that exploit silence to eerie effect. Davis’s harried countenance is the glue holding this assured thriller together, lending it an empathetic anguish that helps cast its action as a story about confronting the (personal and historical) past as a means of transcending, and escaping, it. Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) brings glamorous style to familiar spy-movie clichés in Cliff Walkers, a knotty 1930s-set espionage saga in which four Chinese communist agents sneak into Japan-occupied Manchuria to smuggle out the sole survivor of a torture camp. This quartet splits up into couples to achieve their covert aim, only to be immediately and constantly beset by encounters with comrades who may be double (or triple?) agents. Be it early shots from the perspective of its parachuting-through-trees protagonists, or a snowy attempt to infiltrate a metropolitan gala, Zhang blends Hitchcockian suspense with Dr. Zhivago beauty, all while shouting out to (among others) Charlie Chaplin and Sergio Leone.

Starring Dev Patel as Sir Gawain, it is an ambitious movie that takes real risks but rewards viewers with stunning visuals and the uneasy tension of a dream that straddles the line between good and bad. A “mockumentary” that purports to follow around “England’s loudest band,” This Is Spinal Tap is one of those movies that is funny the first time, and then gets funnier the second, and then even funnier after that. Mixing the best parts of Hollywood and Bollywood, Monsoon Wedding is an exuberant ensemble comedy about a Punjabi family preparing for a wedding and the influx of relatives from all over the world. Bright and energetic, the movie runs the full gamut from dramatic to touching to hilariously funny. There are almost too many Denzel Washington movies that could and should be on a list like this, but Devil in a Blue Dress is an underrated gem that deserves some time in the spotlight.

The Princess Bride feels like a movie that wants to make fun of sappy fairy tale romances—and does at times—but also can’t help getting caught up in it anyway. A wry and funny (but also genuinely romantic) adventure, it’s the kind of movie that the word “timeless” was made for. It’s also a treasure trove of quotable lines, from “As you wish,” to “Inconceivable! I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Always worth it, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. The story of a family in a working-class suburb of London, Life is Sweet is one of those movies that is more about characters than any kind of overarching plot. Sometimes unbearably sad and other times laugh out loud funny, it’s an underrated movie from a director known for his realistic takes on English life (Mike Leigh).

Each story is a self-contained vignette, and the mix of humor and melancholy wins you over each time. A past-his-prime actor (Bill Murray) in Tokyo to make quick cash doing commercials befriends the lonely girlfriend (Scarlett Johansson) of a photographer who leaves her to fend for herself while he’s off working. That’s the premise of Lost In Translation, a sweet, funny, and romantic movie about meeting your soulmate at the wrong time, and the magic of being completely out of one’s element in every conceivable way. Murray and Johansson are an unlikely but incredible onscreen couple. The late ’70s and early ’80s saw a lot of movies about the nightmare of urban living—New York, in particular, was usually the focal point of how crime-ridden and lawless cities were becoming, which led to movies like Escape from New York and Death Wish.