25 Best Movies To Watch After Die Hard 2 (1990)
Immaculate
According to the press tour for Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney first auditioned for the film years ago. Despite not getting the role at the time, the script made a sizable impression on her. Thus, when she had enough clout, she immediately pursued it once again. Alas, for most of the jump scare-heavy but not especially frightening, horror movie, it’s difficult to understand why the script so captured her heart. After a brief prelude that would cost Immaculate little to lose, audiences meet Sister Cecilia (Sweeney) at Italian customs. After surviving a fall through the ice in her childhood, Cecilia felt called to serve God although not sure how. When her Michigan congregation closed, the young nun felt even further adrigt from His will. However, an invitation from Father Sal (Álvaro Morte) feels like it might be her true purpose. Therefore, despite not speaking Italian, she accepts his invitation to a remote convent specializing in hospice for nuns. Mother Superior (Dora Romano) and another novice nun, Sister Gwen (Benedetta Porcaroli), greet her kindly. The fellow Bride of Christ who makes the biggest impression, though, is Sister Isabella (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi). She brings sharp bitterness to her first encounter with Cecilia, softening to warn Cecilia off taking the convent's vows. When the new nun rejects the advice, Isabella doubles down on that initial attitude. The seeming professional rivalry only increases when Cecilia discovers she’s pregnant despite being a virgin. Continue Reading →
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
A decade's worth of superhero movies goes out with a big, stupid grin on its face. One would hope that a film franchise with as much money poured into it as the DC Cinematic Universe would rage, rage against the dying of the light. Yet here we are, limping towards the end of a slate of superhero flicks marred by terrible reviews (Shazam! 2), controversy (The Flash), or sheer too-little-too-late-ness (Blue Beetle). As the superhero genre continues to flag in a year of duds, DC's set for a reinvention, a clean slate courtesy of former Marvel it-boy James Gunn and co-head Peter Safran. Before they can wipe the board and start all over with the label's slate of classic capes, though, there's a few rounds left in the last guy's chamber to fire off. That's what Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom feels like, easily the least objectionable of the DC films to come out in 2023. Problem is, that's not saying much. A sequel to Aquaman should have been a slam dunk: Director James Wan's 2018 take on the King of Atlantis was a welcome breath of neon-soaked pop art in a franchise studded with Snyderesque dourness, leaning into the innate silliness of an underwater take on Flash Gordon. Jason Momoa is as effortless a casting as you could imagine for DC's hardest-to-pin-down superhero, brimming with giddy frat-boy energy. At its best moments, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom leans into its star's goofiness and even lets it infect some of the rest of the cast. But there's no escaping the feeling of weariness, both for a cast and crew who are just repeating the novel beats of the first and an audience that's just plain starved for something new. Continue Reading →
Eileen
Thomasin McKenzie & Anne Hathaway burn up the screen in William Oldroyd’s unsettling thriller. Eileen will likely be lost in the holiday season shuffle among such spectacles as the upcoming Wonka and awards-friendly fare like Ferrari. On the other hand, it’s unclear under what circumstances Eileen would make a big splash. It’s an odd, occasionally off-putting little film that wouldn’t work as well as it does if not for the scorching chemistry between its two leads. Based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s (also odd and occasionally off-putting) novel of the same name, Eileen stars Thomasin McKenzie as the titular character, a lonely young woman stuck in a miserable rut. Living in the most depressing town in Massachusetts circa 1964, Eileen is forced to take care of her alcoholic, mean-spirited father (a chilling Shea Whigham, still somehow not one of Hollywood’s biggest stars), a former cop who’s taken to waving his gun at their neighbors. Working as a secretary at a juvenile detention center, though she’s in her twenties she comes off as someone much younger, a meek and awkward child merely dressing up as an adult. Eileen also has a child’s taste for doing things like ignoring her hygiene, stuffing herself with candy, and compulsively masturbating, while maintaining a rich fantasy life involving rough sex with a detention center guard, or murdering her father. Her boredom has reached pathological levels. Continue Reading →
Killer Joe
Upon the news of the passing of William Friedkin, every headline reporting on the news focused on two films. It’s not surprising that the media spent so much time talking about The French Connection and The Exorcist, two bona fide masterpieces that paved the way for a new era of American filmmaking. What was disappointing was this seeming willingness to reduce a cinematic legend’s legacy to a burst of time in the early 1970s, thus dismissing the five decades that followed as either negligible or outright unworthy of interest. Continue Reading →
To Live and Die in L.A.
It must have been easy to be cynical about William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. in 1985. After a blazing hot early 1970s, his critical and popular reputation bottomed out with four straight disappointments. So, it makes sense that someone might think Friedkin’s return to the cop-on-the-edge genre was a purely commercial decision, a hope to rekindle the fire he lit in 1971 with The French Connection. After all, that movie was both a commercial and critical smash. Continue Reading →
A Haunting in Venice
The first two entries in director/actor Kenneth Branagh’s foray into Agatha Christie adaptation lost the magic of the English writer’s mysteries. With his third attempt, A Haunting in Venice, Branagh decides to make considerable changes to the story. Using the bones of Christie’s Hallowe’en Party, writer Michael Green changes the setting from a small town in the English countryside to a palazzo in Venice. Branagh emphasizes the gothic elements of Christie’s story, leaning on the horror of the location, the manic nature of the children’s Halloween party, and the gruesome moments before and after an unexpected death. Continue Reading →
Stoker
There's more than one transition going on in Park Chan-wook's 2013 thriller Stoker. Yes, the film tells the story of how the seemingly carefree India (Mia Wasikowska) goes from worshipping her father to worshipping her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode). But the Hitchcockian thriller -- and it is one, beyond the shadow of a doubt -- was also Director Park’s first English-language title. Continue Reading →
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
One of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One's earliest pieces of marketing was a trailer-by-way-of-behind-the-scenes featurette. In that clip, Tom Cruise, strapped to a motorcycle, rockets off the edge of a cliff in the Swiss Alps. He lets the bike drop away before popping his parachute and sailing into the horizon. It's one of the most death-defying sequences ever captured on film and, as we now know, it's one Cruise himself did again and again and again. The sequence, even devoid of context, sums up exactly what director Chris McQuarrie and Cruise (the two are also co-producers) hoped to achieve in Dead Reckoning: grade A movie spectacle. Continue Reading →
The Purge: Election Year
When The Purge film series began, it attempted to create a heightened, ultraviolent version of the future that was both laughably over-the-top and an accurate reflection of the current political climes. They created a dystopia that was vaguely familiar but could still leave you rolling your eyes at its implausibility. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, the concept is as follows: On one night each year, the US government legalizes all crime, including murder, in the hopes of providing an outlet for Americans’ rage. It ultimately leads to an overall decrease in crime and an (ostensibly) utopian society. Continue Reading →
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
A lot's happened since we last saw the Guardians of the Galaxy (well, besides their brief cameo in Thor: Love and Thunder). Writer/director James Gunn was fired from Marvel in 2018 after some problematic tweets joking about pedophilia were unearthed, in one of the few instances of a successful cancellation from the right wing. Of course, it didn't last long, considering how thin the ground was for said cancellation in the first place; and in the interim, he swanned off to DC, made the fantastic The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker, and eventually found himself sharing the throne of a newly-revamped DC movie universe. Continue Reading →
John Wick: Chapter 4
The John Wick films are, simply put, the standard-bearer for American action in the 21st century. When the first came out in 2014, it shook the foundations of what we felt was possible in a Hollywood action landscape predominantly concerned with CGI energy blasts: It put stuntwork front and center, crafted labyrinthine mythology as dense and unnecessary as it was innately compelling in its flavor, and -- most importantly -- brought Keanu Reeves back to the public consciousness in a big way. Basically, it's some of the few times American action movies can even hope to compete with what comes out of Eastern Europe and Asia. And now, that saga comes to a close with John Wick: Chapter 4, a film that took two years after completion to come out, and feels like a final exhale of relief after hours of unrelenting, inventive action. Continue Reading →
Creed III
Round three of twelve. Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan)—the fresh-out-of-retirement undisputed heavyweight champion of the world—faces Damian "Diamond Dame" Anderson (Jonathan Majors)—the ruthless-came-from-eighteen-years-in-prison reigning champ. Growing up in a group home, Adonis and Damian were brothers—united by care for one another in a callous system and a shared love of the sweet science. Continue Reading →
The Getaway
When people sit down to analyze the career of maverick filmmaker Sam Peckinpah, his 1972 thriller The Getaway is usually found wanting, and remembered mainly for the scandalous affair that developed between co-stars Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw. Coming smack in the middle of a filmmaking stretch that was preceded by the highly controversial The Wild Bunch (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971), and followed by the wildly idiosyncratic Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), it feels like an exercise in playing it safe from a director not exactly famous for doing such things. Despite that, it still works as a solid crime thriller that demonstrated that Peckinpah could play by Hollywood’s rules if he wanted to do so. Continue Reading →
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
As Puss in Boots: The Last Wish begins, it’s evident that this movie is aiming for a different vibe compared to not only the first Puss in Boots but the greater Shrek series as a whole. A visual aesthetic that evokes hand-drawn animation and rapid-fire editing summons memories of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or fellow 2022 DreamWorks Animation project The Bad Guys rather than Shrek the Third. Even the handful of pop culture references are more specific and idiosyncratic—Nicolas Cage’s take on The Wicker Man, for instance—than the very broad references the original Shrek movies became famous for. Continue Reading →
Violent Night
It’s Christmas time, and a man at the breaking point finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. But he isn’t retired cop John McClane this time. Instead, it’s Saint Nick with a sledgehammer he’d like to swing into your bowl full of jelly. The premise of Violent Night is simple (Die Hard but with Santa), and the filmmakers mostly pull off the kill-fest thanks to some game performers and one inspired sequence. Continue Reading →
Top Gun: Maverick
Navy Captain Peter "Pete" Mitchell, callsign "Maverick" (Tom Cruise) is a living legend. He is the only man to have shot down multiple enemy planes in the modern era of combat aviation. From the F-14 Tomcat to bleeding-edge skunkworks stealth plane prototypes, there is nothing he cannot fly, nothing he cannot (or more accurately will not) push past the fabled Danger Zone. Continue Reading →
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
In practice, most video game movies don’t have to worry about sequels. The likes of Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft failed to make anywhere near enough money to justify follow-ups. But there are still theatrical video game movie sequels here and there, now including Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Continue Reading →
Tirez sur le pianiste
“The voice you hear is not my speaking voice,” Ada (Holly Hunter) explains in The Piano’s opening voiceover. It is her “mind’s voice” explaining that she has been mute since she was six and no one, not even she knows why. There is no medical explanation, so those around her think her silence grows from sheer will, that she is determined and refuses to bend. She can only communicate through sign language, which has to be translated by her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), or through notes written on a small notepad she keeps around her neck. Yet, she doesn’t think of herself as silent; she has her piano. The music she has studied her entire life has become her form of communication, her way of making noise and announcing herself to the world around her. But, as soon as she lands in New Zealand and enters her new life as the bride of a farmer, she is separated from her piano–it is simply too large to carry from the beach to her new home with her husband. She arrives in her new world voiceless, deprived of her primary means of expression. Continue Reading →
Spider-Man: No Way Home
How Marvel's latest cuts through the MCU trappings to deliver one of Spidey's most personal stories yet. Please note that this article contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Spider-Man: No Way Home. If you consume enough Spider-Man stories, you start to notice the malleability of the character. The assorted movies, shows, video games, and comic books all have their different takes on the wall-crawler and can plausibly plop him into different settings and moods. But you’ll also witness the two central aspects of Peter Parker that unite the various versions of the character across eras and mediums: (1) he chooses to do good, even when it’s hard, because he knows it’s the right thing to do, and (2) he suffers mightily for it. Continue Reading →
Le Calendrier
Christmas horror exists for the same reason Christmas lingerie does, to slaughter some sacred cows and try for a little “shock the normies” shenanigans. It works, sometimes: consider Silent Night, Deadly Night, which so offended Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert that they read aloud on their show the names of everyone who worked on it, from director down to the catering team, in an effort to publicly shame them. Most of the time they’re egregiously silly, as attempts to make Santa Claus (too many to count), snowmen (the version of Jack Frost that didn’t star Michael Keaton), elves (Elves), and gingerbread men (The Gingerdead Man) scary have fallen flat. Now advent calendars are given a creepy sheen in Patrick Ridremont’s The Advent Calendar, but this time it mostly works. Continue Reading →