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‘five star’: film review.

Keith Miller pairs actors with amateurs in this tale of youth entering gang life.

By THR Staff

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Five Star Film Still - H 2014

NEW YORK – A street-smart film about fatherhood and the lack thereof in a community where gangs provide most of the male role models, Keith Miller ‘s Five Star makes its nonactors look like trained thesps and (in a good way) vice versa. Following up on his lauded debut,  Welcome to Pine Hill , Miller again blends fiction and reality to fine effect. If the result is less sensationalistic than mainstream auds might expect in a film about drug dealers, it remains sure to build critical support for the emerging auteur.

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Real-life member of the Bloods gang James “Primo” Grant plays a Bloods general named Primo here, with the film’s title referring to his rank. “I’m a Five Star, they don’t question me,” he tells the scrawny but self-assured John ( John Diaz ) when explaining how he can make a home for the uninitiated youngster in his organization. John’s father, Melvin, we learn, was the gang leader who gave Primo his start, and with Melvin recently slain by a stray bullet, it’s time to return the favor.

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This conversation, in a park near a Brooklyn housing project, plays not like the Faustian invitation it is but as documentary observation, only slightly more dramatic than sequences to come that find Primo in his modest apartment’s living room, watching his toddlers play and fretting about household repairs with their mother. Primo is an attentive dad and clearly regrets being absent for family milestones in the past because he was “locked the f— up.” He takes a paternal tone with John as well, trying to steer him toward the least dangerous illegal activities available.

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John has doubts about Primo’s motives, and isn’t sure he believes the party line about how his father died. But Diaz shows how easy it can be to accept the inevitability of gang involvement, especially when it enables one’s social life: John is trying to date a sweet girl named Jasmin ( Jasmin Burgos ) and he needs something to back up the confidence he projects with her. The gun he buys himself, as shiny as a toy, is a sadly inevitable confidence-builder.

While John’s trying to make more of himself, we see Primo in contexts that don’t jibe with his elevated gang status. The slab-like, intimidating black man is a bouncer and hired muscle for a white bar owner, existing on the margins of a privileged world. These scenes suggest a genre-friendly direction the film might take, but ultimately they’re just context making the already compelling Primo a more sympathetic figure — just in time for the foreshadowed friction between him and his protege. Miller’s take on this confrontation is fresh and surprisingly credible, perfectly in sync with themes the film has subtly established in almost every scene.

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Production company: Up the Street Films Cast: James “Primo” Grant, John Diaz, Jasmin Burgos, Tamara Robinson, Wanda Colon, Larry Bogad, Tony Yayo Director-Screenwriter-Editor: Keith Miller Producers: Daryl Freimark, Keith Miller, Luisa Conlon Executive producer: Russell Miller Directors of photography: Ed David, Alex Mallis Production designers: Kelley Van Dilla, Jennifer Correa Music: Michael Rosen

No rating, 82 minutes

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Movie Review: Five Star (2014)

• Christopher Justis
• Movie Reviews
• No responses
• --> August 11, 2015

Set in present-day New York, Five Star blends documentary and dramatic fiction as it tells the stories of Primo (James “Primo” Grant, a non-professional actor and former member of the Bloods street gang), a man fighting the tug-of-war battle between the needs of his family and duty to his gang, and John (John Diaz), a young man taken under the mentorship of Primo due to respect for John’s murdered father, Melvin (who once mentored Primo).

With the effort, sophomore writer and director Keith Miller (“Welcome to Pine Hill”) attempts to capture the honest intensity of gang life that — in the spirit of the cinematography, at least — is almost nostalgic of “The Wire.” Some of what Miller is attempting works: From the inquisitive-but-never-intrusive camera, to the close-up single-shot monologues that let the non-professional actors toil, to the shots of the empty street blocks throughout Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, instead of allowing us to follow these interesting characters throughout their story-arcs, Miller — much like an interfering tour-guide — stops us at each development to make sure we understand exactly what it is we are supposed to understand. And inexplicably with others, he leaves them hanging — never fully realizing their impact.

Five Star opens with a bulky, albeit well delivered, monologue from Primo about missing his son’s birth while incarcerated. This essentially sets the tone — for better or worse — of the entire hour and thirty minutes that we follow Primo through the city. We witness the difficult undertaking he has of balancing the duty he has to his gang, his place in his family and what it truly means to become a man in both of those roles; as well as the even more impossible task he has of delivering the inorganic and overly-exploitative dialogue he is given.

This is a demand that the script asks of each of its central characters. In one scene where John is sitting at the dining table with his mother discussing a summer job at the local supermarket, John’s mother (Wanda Nobles Colon, “Stills” TV series) in a cringe-worthy immediate shift of conversation suddenly asks, “Do you know about safe sex?” Unlike many other discourses, however, the proceeding interaction actually manages to work due to the genuine reaction John Diaz has.

In another, Primo and John are discussing the logistics of a drug delivery when Primo’s autistic son interrupts them. Primo switches immediately from the dutiful “five-star general” persona to caring father that could have been discussing a simple business meeting. This touching sentiment is lost, though, as Miller has Primo further explain, “Yes, he is different. He has autism but I don’t care he is different and I love him anyways.” Certainly he does, but why do we need to be explicitly reminded of this as we just saw it unfold in scene?

Nonetheless, the performance by James Grant and new-comer John Diaz are exceptional and genuine. But while Diaz is fitting in his role, it’s Grant who easily steals the film’s spotlight. Playing a dramatic version of himself, he is dexterously nuanced in his representation for a lead that could easily have been flashy and scenery-eating.

This is a movie that wants to be heard, and that is certain. Five Star has the authenticity and fine leads to elevate it above the archetypal gang movie, but instead of offering a thought-provoking, subtle film that asks its audience to invest in the subject matter, Miller sits the viewer down and lectures them every step of the way. This could (although shouldn’t) be excusable in a summer-popcorn movie, but we need to remember who the audience is here and why we are watching this movie at all (hint, it’s not to be handheld).

“It’s not like they show it on the TV,” Primo tells John towards the end of the movie when their story arcs lead them to an inevitable cross in the road. Indeed, ultimately Five Star could have been something special if Miller had heeded this as well.

Tagged: drugs , family , gang , New York City

A Washington D.C. local and published author who has a unique love for Quentin Tarintino movies and Ryan Reynolds (not together).

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These three films were the only 5-star movies of 2023. Here's what made them so great

There is one simple criterion for a 5-star movie.

It has to be great.

Ah, but making that determination is anything but simple. It is, in fact, one of the toughest things about reviewing movies, because of the inordinate amount of attention people pay to the number of stars a critic gives a film.

It shouldn’t be that way — exploring why a movie is good, or isn’t, and expressing that in an informative and entertaining way is far more important. But that’s not the first thing people look at.

“How many stars did you give it?” That’s the first question I hear whenever I say I’ve seen the latest big movie. And the answer is almost never, “Five.”

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In 2023, however, I gave three movies five stars . That’s somewhat unusual for me. I think movies have to really earn a five-star rating. Of course it’s all subjective to begin with. And I don’t carry a handy rubric around with me, checking off boxes for dialogue, cinematography or whatever. All of those things are important, and any really good movie needs to succeed on most elements.

But a 5-star movie has something else. What that something is, I can’t tell you, exactly. It’s more of a feeling — the best way I can describe it is that it feels important. I don’t mean in a big historical epic, “Lawrence of Arabia” kind of way. (“ Napoleon ,” for instance, didn’t feel important at all.)

It’s more of an emotional importance. Did it move me in some way? Succeeding on all of the basic technical levels is a given at the level of movie we’re talking about here. But did the movie give me something more?

These three did.

'Poor Things’

Certainly on the filmmaking front, Yorgos Lanthimos’ freak-out of a film about a woman growing into herself in several ways succeeds wildly. As in, it’s wild, while also being incredibly accomplished. The Victorian steampunk look of London, the black-and-white scenes that echo “Frankenstein,” the fisheye lenses that make you feel like you could be watching creatures in a bizarre zoo — it’s all spot-on. But what gives the film its heart are the performances. Mark Ruffalo brings a touch of sadness to his depiction of an idiot lawyer who tries to take advantage of Bella ( Emma Stone ), but proves not to be up to the task. But it’s Stone who really shines, in a performance that could have gone wrong about 20 different ways. It doesn’t. She’s brilliant.

'Oppenheimer’

We were talking about big historical epics, right? This is Christopher Nolan’s take on the historical biopic , in this case how J. Robert Oppenheimer came to build the atomic bomb, and what it cost him. The filmmaking is superb — anyone who can make physics this interesting deserves all the praise they can get. Take special note of the use of sound, and silence. We know what happens (spoiler alert: the world doesn’t blow up, at least not yet) and it’s still edge-of-your-seat nerve-racking. Robert Downey Jr. is going to win an Oscar for playing the bad guy, and Cillian Murphy probably ought to for managing to make Oppenheimer cold and calculating, but human at the same time.

‘Past Lives’

While my other 5-star movie picks this year were big, bold swings, Celine Strong goes the other direction with an intimate movie about love and loss, yet her film has the same power as the other two. Greta Lee is unforgettable as a woman who must confront her past and her present when an old friend comes to visit. There aren’t any high-volume arguments, nothing blows up and the movie is still absolutely devastating. What do our choices mean? What effect do they have on us — and will they have on us? Heady stuff, expertly portrayed.

If there’s one thing linking all of these films, and I’m not saying there is, it’s probably this: When you leave the theater or hit the off button on your remote, you feel like, man, that was a movie. And these three really were.

Reach Goodykoontz at  [email protected] . Facebook:  facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm . Twitter:  @goodyk .

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An opening credit in “A Five Star Life” informs that the film was made “with the support of the Leading Hotels of the World.” According to Wikipedia, this is the largest collection of luxury hotels in the world, and they are routinely inspected to ensure they maintain the highest standards. Since this is a film about a hotel inspector, I expected a kids-glove treatment of whatever institution was gracious enough to allow filming. Instead, the inspector in question, Irene ( Margherita Buy ), never fails to find something wrong at each of the hotels she visited. Yet the hotels are so drop-dead gorgeous that viewers will want to visit them anyway. This proves that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

The stars in "A Five Star Life" refer to the rating system given to hotels across the world. A “five-star” hotel is the height of luxury, an unparalleled travel experience. To test this, Irene shows up as “the mystery guest,” inspects the hotel and reports any findings to the hotel manager. If there are too many negative answers to the questions Irene clicks in her laptop, the hotel’s rating is in jeopardy.

To guarantee that the best service is provided during the inspection, the hotels try to determine who the inspector is. In an amusing jab at gender expectations, director and co-screenwriter Maria Sole Tognazzi shows a waiter pointing out to Irene the supposed “mystery guest.” It’s a man with a huge cigar being treated like royalty while Irene has to wait extra time for service. You know what rating Irene’s giving this hotel.

“A Five Star Life” shows something not often seen in American cinema, at least in films that aren’t police procedurals: It shows an ordinary citizen doing her job. The screenplay nimbly works in other characters, such as when Irene recruits her two nieces to help her test how a hotel treats families. But a large part of “A Five Star Life” is simply Irene doing her job while dealing with the pitfalls of the career lifestyle she has chosen. The geographical and architectural eye-candy, and the constant flow of information on how the job is done, should keep viewers interested. It’s a blessing when a movie teaches you something.

There was one lesson “A Five Star Life” seemed in jeopardy of teaching, and the fear that it would be taught speaks to how we as viewers are conditioned by Hollywood movies. Irene’s sister Silvia ( Fabrizia Sacchi ) points out that the fortysomething Irene has no husband and no children. This is not unusual for someone who spends 90% of the year traveling to luxury hotels. Irene loves her job—she’s not running from anything nor has she any psychological baggage—but Silvia keeps playing the “no man and no kids” card. As Irene looks at her sister’s somewhat dysfunctional family, it appeared that she would “learn” her life was incomplete without a man and some rugrats.

Irene’s best friend, Andrea ( Stefano Accorsi ), looks like the obvious choice for her walk into the sunset at film’s end. Their relationship is intriguingly vague for the first half of “A Five Star Life,” before it’s revealed that he was a former lover. Andrea seeks Irene’s advice when he accidentally impregnates Fabiana ( Alessia Barela ). Fabiana wants to keep the baby, with or without Andrea’s assistance. While this development should eliminate an ending where he convinces Irene to quit her job for a more fulfilling life with him, stranger things have happened in movies.

Eventually, “A Five Star Life” has to play out the moment where Irene questions whether Silvia is right about her status. Predictably, it comes after a tragic event shakes her. Not so predictable is how the film gets there. The great Lesley Manville , veteran of several Mike Leigh movies, shows up at a Berlin “Leading Hotel of the World” to engage Irene in friendly banter and discussion. Manville’s character, Kate Sherman, has written a book about hypersexuality, gender issues and porn. Sherman’s televised book discussion talks about the loss of intimacy, which starts the windmills in Irene’s mind turning. This entire subplot is completely out of left field, but Manville is so convincing and interesting that it’s less cumbersome than it sounds.

Director Tognazzi gets a great performance out of Buy. She is onscreen for the majority of “A Five Star Life,” constantly doing her job even when she’s not working. Buy adheres to the compulsiveness of one who lives for the work, and it’s fun to watch her notice things that she can’t wait to report. There’s a feeling of viewer satisfaction when she rips a hotel manager for his hotel’s snobbish treatment of a young newlywed couple on their first trip to a luxury hotel. The poor couple’s fear of appearing unrefined is so palpable that Irene feels protective of them, a small note of empathy despite her mechanical commitment to the job.

Buy also fares well with her co-stars. She gives off an aunty vibe around her nieces, a sisterly tension around Silvia and a strong urge to keep things platonic around Andrea. The actors complement her nicely, and the film refreshingly allows the viewer to figure details and relationships out as the plot unfolds.

I’ll not spoil whether “A Five Star Life” surrenders to a Hollywood “you need a man!” ending, but I will say that Irene is in charge of her big decision, and you may or may not be satisfied. It’s a bit cheeky to say “your mileage may vary” in regard to a movie about travel. Your enjoyment will depend on how much you relate to Irene and the job that she does, and whether you like gorgeous hotels and globetrotting from one European city to another. I enjoyed the trip.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film credits.

A Five Star Life (2014)

Margherita Buy as Irene

Stefano Accorsi as Andrea

Fabrizia Sacchi as Silvia

Gianmarco Tognazzi as Tommaso

Lesley Manville as Kate Sherman

• Maria Sole Tognazzi
• Ivan Cotroneo
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Every Film Empire Magazine has Given 5 Stars to

Every film/documentary Empire has given five stars to. The films are listed on the website and the "Empire 500 five star reviews" issue. Some films are listed in the magazine and not on the website, while others are listed on the website but not in the magazine, so I created this list morphing the two. I started watching these three years ago and I have currently seen 505 out of 650 (approx, the number goes up all the time, and the films will be added when they do). There are a few hidden gems (I Served the King of England, Das Experiment, Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors, Zu, Waltz with Bazhir etc), Critically acclaimed cinema (Xala, Tales of Hoffman) and some films you would have never known existed (Yaaba, c'est la vie). I will give reviews for a few of these titles, mainly the films with a below 8.0 rating (to see mini reviews of those films check out my other list "every film with a 8.0 or higher"). I should mention that all the films are definitely the correct version (so Crash is the 1996 version, and The Fly is the 1986 version) Please comment if there is anything incorrect

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

PG-13 | 146 min | Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

A highly advanced robotic boy longs to become "real" so that he can regain the love of his human mother.

Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Haley Joel Osment , Jude Law , Frances O'Connor , Sam Robards

Votes: 321,961 | Gross: $78.62M

2. Play for Today (1970–1984) Episode: Abigail's Party (1977)

102 min | Comedy, Drama

Arguably the most famous edition of Play For Today, and one of the most beloved, as Mike Leigh directs a comedy of manners. Middle-class suburbia gets to reveal its darker side over the course of an increasingly uncomfortable drinks party.

Director: Mike Leigh | Stars: Alison Steadman , Tim Stern , Janine Duvitski , John Salthouse

Votes: 2,325

3. The Accidental Tourist (1988)

PG | 121 min | Drama, Romance

An emotionally distant writer of travel guides must carry on with his life after his son is killed and his marriage crumbles.

Director: Lawrence Kasdan | Stars: William Hurt , Kathleen Turner , Geena Davis , Amy Wright

Votes: 17,204 | Gross: $32.63M

4. The Accused (1988)

R | 111 min | Crime, Drama

After a young woman suffers a brutal gang rape in a bar one night, a prosecutor assists in bringing the perpetrators to justice, including the ones who encouraged and cheered on the attack.

Director: Jonathan Kaplan | Stars: Kelly McGillis , Jodie Foster , Bernie Coulson , Leo Rossi

Votes: 39,785 | Gross: $32.07M

5. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

PG | 102 min | Action, Adventure, Romance

When Prince John and the Norman Lords begin oppressing the Saxon masses in King Richard's absence in 1190s England, a Saxon lord fights back as the outlaw leader of a resistance movement.

Directors: Michael Curtiz , William Keighley | Stars: Errol Flynn , Olivia de Havilland , Basil Rathbone , Claude Rains

Votes: 54,258 | Gross: $3.98M

6. After Hours (I) (1985)

R | 97 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama

An ordinary word processor has the worst night of his life after he agrees to visit a girl in Soho he met that evening at a coffee shop.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Griffin Dunne , Rosanna Arquette , Verna Bloom , Tommy Chong

Votes: 80,201 | Gross: $10.60M

7. The Age of Innocence (1993)

PG | 139 min | Drama, Romance

A tale of nineteenth-century New York high society in which a young lawyer falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman's cousin.

Director: Martin Scorsese | Stars: Daniel Day-Lewis , Michelle Pfeiffer , Winona Ryder , Linda Faye Farkas

Votes: 67,305 | Gross: $32.20M

8. Airplane! (1980)

PG | 88 min | Comedy

After the crew becomes sick with food poisoning, a neurotic ex-fighter pilot must safely land a commercial airplane full of passengers.

Directors: Jim Abrahams , David Zucker , Jerry Zucker | Stars: Robert Hays , Julie Hagerty , Leslie Nielsen , Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Votes: 259,387 | Gross: $83.40M

9. Aladdin (1992)

G | 90 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy

A kind-hearted street urchin and a power-hungry Grand Vizier vie for a magic lamp that has the power to make their deepest wishes come true.

Directors: Ron Clements , John Musker | Stars: Scott Weinger , Robin Williams , Linda Larkin , Jonathan Freeman

Votes: 463,144 | Gross: $217.35M

10. Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Not Rated | 112 min | Action, Biography, Drama

The story of how a great Russian prince led a ragtag army to battle an invading force of Teutonic Knights.

Directors: Sergei Eisenstein , Dmitriy Vasilev | Stars: Nikolay Cherkasov , Nikolai Okhlopkov , Andrei Abrikosov , Dmitriy Orlov

Votes: 12,196

11. Alien (1979)

R | 117 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

The crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform after investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Sigourney Weaver , Tom Skerritt , John Hurt , Veronica Cartwright

Votes: 944,237 | Gross: $78.90M

12. Aliens (1986)

R | 137 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sigourney Weaver , Michael Biehn , Carrie Henn , Paul Reiser

Votes: 758,870 | Gross: $85.16M

13. All About Eve (1950)

Passed | 138 min | Drama

A seemingly timid but secretly ruthless ingénue insinuates herself into the lives of an aging Broadway star and her circle of theater friends.

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz | Stars: Bette Davis , Anne Baxter , George Sanders , Celeste Holm

Votes: 138,251 | Gross: $0.01M

14. All About My Mother (1999)

R | 101 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A comedy-drama about a bereaved mother, and overwrought actress, her jealous lover, and a pregnant nun.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar | Stars: Cecilia Roth , Marisa Paredes , Candela Peña , Antonia San Juan

Votes: 102,475 | Gross: $8.26M

15. All of Me (1984)

PG | 93 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

A dying millionaire has her soul transferred into a younger, willing woman. However, something goes wrong, and she finds herself in her lawyer's body - together with the lawyer.

Director: Carl Reiner | Stars: Steve Martin , Lily Tomlin , Victoria Tennant , Madolyn Smith Osborne

Votes: 19,710 | Gross: $36.40M

16. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Passed | 152 min | Drama, War

A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.

Director: Lewis Milestone | Stars: Lew Ayres , Louis Wolheim , John Wray , Arnold Lucy

Votes: 67,401 | Gross: $3.27M

17. All That Jazz (1979)

R | 123 min | Drama, Music, Musical

Director/choreographer Bob Fosse tells his own life story as he details the sordid career of Joe Gideon, a womanizing, drug-using dancer.

Director: Bob Fosse | Stars: Roy Scheider , Jessica Lange , Ann Reinking , Leland Palmer

Votes: 35,111 | Gross: $37.82M

18. All the President's Men (1976)

PG | 138 min | Drama, History, Thriller

"The Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon 's resignation.

Director: Alan J. Pakula | Stars: Dustin Hoffman , Robert Redford , Jack Warden , Martin Balsam

Votes: 125,434 | Gross: $70.60M

19. Alphaville (1965)

Not Rated | 99 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

A U.S. secret agent is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical ruler.

Director: Jean-Luc Godard | Stars: Eddie Constantine , Anna Karina , Akim Tamiroff , Valérie Boisgel

Votes: 27,444 | Gross: $0.05M

20. Amadeus (1984)

R | 160 min | Biography, Drama, Music

The life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , as told by Antonio Salieri , the contemporaneous composer who was deeply jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him.

Director: Milos Forman | Stars: F. Murray Abraham , Tom Hulce , Elizabeth Berridge , Roy Dotrice

Votes: 425,604 | Gross: $51.97M

21. The Ambulance (1990)

R | 96 min | Action, Comedy, Horror

A comic-book artist meets a woman on the NYC streets, but after a quick flirtation, she suddenly collapses and is picked up by an old ambulance. He checks all the hospitals in the area, but the woman has disappeared.

Director: Larry Cohen | Stars: Eric Roberts , James Earl Jones , Megan Gallagher , Red Buttons

Votes: 4,159

22. Amélie (2001)

R | 122 min | Comedy, Romance

Despite being caught in her imaginative world, Amelie, a young waitress, decides to help people find happiness. Her quest to spread joy leads her on a journey where she finds true love.

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet | Stars: Audrey Tautou , Mathieu Kassovitz , Rufus , Lorella Cravotta

Votes: 791,570 | Gross: $33.23M

23. American Beauty (1999)

R | 122 min | Drama

A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

Director: Sam Mendes | Stars: Kevin Spacey , Annette Bening , Thora Birch , Wes Bentley

Votes: 1,206,289 | Gross: $130.10M

24. Amistad (1997)

R | 155 min | Biography, Drama, History

In 1839, the revolt of Mende captives aboard a Spanish owned ship causes a major controversy in the United States when the ship is captured off the coast of Long Island. The courts must decide whether the Mende are slaves or legally free.

Director: Steven Spielberg | Stars: Djimon Hounsou , Matthew McConaughey , Anthony Hopkins , Morgan Freeman

Votes: 82,443 | Gross: $44.18M

25. Amores Perros (2000)

R | 154 min | Drama, Thriller

A horrific car accident connects three stories, each involving characters dealing with loss, regret, and life's harsh realities, all in the name of love.

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Stars: Emilio Echevarría , Gael García Bernal , Goya Toledo , Álvaro Guerrero

Votes: 252,036 | Gross: $5.38M

26. Amour (2012)

PG-13 | 127 min | Drama

Georges and Anne are an octogenarian couple. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, also a musician, lives in Britain with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

Director: Michael Haneke | Stars: Jean-Louis Trintignant , Emmanuelle Riva , Isabelle Huppert , Alexandre Tharaud

Votes: 105,313 | Gross: $6.74M

27. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

PG | 96 min | Documentary

Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim follows Al Gore on the lecture circuit, as the former presidential candidate campaigns to raise public awareness of the dangers of global warming and calls for immediate action to curb its destructive effects on the environment.

Director: Davis Guggenheim | Stars: Al Gore , Billy West , George Bush , George W. Bush

Votes: 85,084 | Gross: $23.81M

28. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Not Rated | 161 min | Drama, Mystery

An upstate Michigan lawyer defends a soldier who claims he killed an innkeeper due to temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. What is the truth, and will he win his case?

Director: Otto Preminger | Stars: James Stewart , Lee Remick , Ben Gazzara , Arthur O'Connell

Votes: 70,931 | Gross: $11.90M

29. Andrei Rublev (1966)

R | 205 min | Biography, Drama, History

The life, times and afflictions of the fifteenth-century Russian iconographer St. Andrei Rublev.

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Anatoliy Solonitsyn , Ivan Lapikov , Nikolay Grinko , Nikolay Sergeev

Votes: 56,815 | Gross: $0.10M

30. Annie Hall (1977)

PG | 93 min | Comedy, Romance

Alvy Singer, a divorced Jewish comedian, reflects on his relationship with ex-lover Annie Hall, an aspiring nightclub singer, which ended abruptly just like his previous marriages.

Director: Woody Allen | Stars: Woody Allen , Diane Keaton , Tony Roberts , Carol Kane

Votes: 277,323 | Gross: $39.20M

31. Another Year (2010)

PG-13 | 129 min | Comedy, Drama

A look at four seasons in the lives of a happily married couple and their relationships with their family and friends.

Director: Mike Leigh | Stars: Jim Broadbent , Ruth Sheen , Lesley Manville , Oliver Maltman

Votes: 30,808 | Gross: $3.21M

32. Anvil (2008)

Not Rated | 80 min | Documentary, Biography, Drama

Since 1978, Anvil has become one of heavy metal's most influential yet commercially unsuccessful acts. In 2006, after a fledging European tour Anvil sets out to record their thirteenth album and continue to follow their dreams.

Director: Sacha Gervasi | Stars: Robb Reiner , Steve 'Lips' Kudlow , Tiziana Arrigoni , Scott Ian

Votes: 16,801 | Gross: $0.67M

33. Aparajito (1956)

Not Rated | 110 min | Drama

Following his father's death, a boy leaves home to study in Calcutta, while his mother must face a life alone.

Director: Satyajit Ray | Stars: Pinaki Sengupta , Smaran Ghosal , Kamala Adhikari , Rani Bala

Votes: 15,896 | Gross: $0.17M

34. The Apartment (1960)

Approved | 125 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

Director: Billy Wilder | Stars: Jack Lemmon , Shirley MacLaine , Fred MacMurray , Ray Walston

Votes: 195,599 | Gross: $18.60M

35. Apocalypse Now (1979)

R | 147 min | Drama, Mystery, War

A U.S. Army officer serving in Vietnam is tasked with assassinating a renegade Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god.

Director: Francis Ford Coppola | Stars: Martin Sheen , Marlon Brando , Robert Duvall , Frederic Forrest

Votes: 706,307 | Gross: $83.47M

36. Army of Shadows (1969)

Not Rated | 145 min | Drama, War

An account of underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France.

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville | Stars: Lino Ventura , Paul Meurisse , Jean-Pierre Cassel , Simone Signoret

Votes: 25,686 | Gross: $0.74M

37. The Artist (I) (2011)

PG-13 | 100 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

When George, a silent movie superstar, meets Peppy Miller, a dancer, sparks fly between the two. However, after the introduction of talking pictures, their fortunes change, affecting their dynamic.

Director: Michel Hazanavicius | Stars: Jean Dujardin , Bérénice Bejo , John Goodman , James Cromwell

Votes: 248,133 | Gross: $44.67M

38. Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

Not Rated | 103 min | Drama, Romance, War

As World War II and the German occupation ends, the Polish resistance and the Soviet forces turn on each other in an attempt to take over leadership in Communist Poland.

Director: Andrzej Wajda | Stars: Zbigniew Cybulski , Ewa Krzyzewska , Waclaw Zastrzezynski , Adam Pawlikowski

Votes: 13,369

39. The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Passed | 112 min | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

A major heist goes off as planned, but then double crosses, bad luck and solid police work cause everything to unravel.

Director: John Huston | Stars: Sterling Hayden , Louis Calhern , Jean Hagen , James Whitmore

Votes: 29,727

40. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

R | 160 min | Biography, Crime, Drama

Robert Ford, who has idolized Jesse James since childhood, tries hard to join the resurgent gang of the Missouri outlaw, but gradually becomes resentful of the bandit leader.

Director: Andrew Dominik | Stars: Brad Pitt , Casey Affleck , Sam Shepard , Mary-Louise Parker

Votes: 192,179 | Gross: $3.90M

41. Atlantic City (1980)

R | 104 min | Crime, Drama, Romance

In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.

Director: Louis Malle | Stars: Burt Lancaster , Susan Sarandon , Kate Reid , Michel Piccoli

Votes: 18,204

42. Atonement (2007)

R | 123 min | Drama, Mystery, Romance

Thirteen-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.

Director: Joe Wright | Stars: Keira Knightley , James McAvoy , Brenda Blethyn , Saoirse Ronan

Votes: 298,461 | Gross: $50.93M

43. Balthazar (1966)

Not Rated | 95 min | Drama

The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson's Mouchette.

Director: Robert Bresson | Stars: Anne Wiazemsky , Walter Green , François Lafarge , Jean-Claude Guilbert

Votes: 22,673 | Gross: $0.04M

44. Audition (1999)

R | 115 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all.

Director: Takashi Miike | Stars: Ryo Ishibashi , Eihi Shiina , Tetsu Sawaki , Jun Kunimura

Votes: 88,704

45. Avatar (2009)

PG-13 | 162 min | Action, Adventure, Fantasy

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

Director: James Cameron | Stars: Sam Worthington , Zoe Saldana , Sigourney Weaver , Michelle Rodriguez

Votes: 1,380,726 | Gross: $760.51M

46. 21 Grams (2003)

R | 124 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

A freak accident brings together a critically ill mathematician, a grieving mother, and a born-again ex-con.

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Stars: Sean Penn , Benicio Del Toro , Naomi Watts , Danny Huston

Votes: 245,293 | Gross: $16.29M

47. 42nd Street (1933)

Passed | 89 min | Comedy, Drama, Musical

When the leading lady of a Broadway musical breaks her ankle, she is replaced by a young unknown actress, who becomes the star of the show.

Director: Lloyd Bacon | Stars: Warner Baxter , Bebe Daniels , George Brent , Ruby Keeler

Votes: 12,981 | Gross: $2.30M

48. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

R | 108 min | Comedy, Crime

In London, four very different people team up on a jewel heist, then try to double-cross one another for the loot, complicated by their efforts to fool a very proper barrister.

Directors: Charles Crichton , John Cleese | Stars: John Cleese , Jamie Lee Curtis , Kevin Kline , Michael Palin

Votes: 153,241 | Gross: $63.49M

49. À Nous la Liberté (1931)

Not Rated | 83 min | Comedy, Musical

Seeking better life, two convicts escape from prison.

Director: René Clair | Stars: Raymond Cordy , Henri Marchand , Rolla France , Paul Ollivier

Votes: 4,941

50. A Trip to the Moon (1902)

TV-G | 13 min | Short, Action, Adventure

A group of astronomers go on an expedition to the Moon.

Director: Georges Méliès | Stars: Georges Méliès , Victor André , Bleuette Bernon , Brunnet

Votes: 55,336

51. Pather Panchali (1955)

Not Rated | 125 min | Drama

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work.

Director: Satyajit Ray | Stars: Kanu Bannerjee , Karuna Bannerjee , Subir Banerjee , Chunibala Devi

Votes: 38,305 | Gross: $0.54M

52. The World of Apu (1959)

Not Rated | 105 min | Drama

This final installment in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy follows Apu's life as an orphaned adult aspiring to be a writer.

Director: Satyajit Ray | Stars: Soumitra Chatterjee , Sharmila Tagore , Alok Chakravarty , Swapan Mukherjee

Votes: 16,659 | Gross: $0.02M

53. Babe (1995)

G | 91 min | Comedy, Drama, Family

Gentle farmer Arthur Hoggett wins a piglet Babe at a county fair. Narrowly escaping his fate as Christmas dinner, Babe bonds with motherly border collie Fly and discovers that he too can herd sheep. But will the other animals accept him?

Director: Chris Noonan | Stars: James Cromwell , Magda Szubanski , Christine Cavanaugh , Miriam Margolyes

Votes: 133,551 | Gross: $66.60M

54. Babette's Feast (1987)

G | 103 min | Drama

During the late 19th century, a strict religious community in a Danish village takes in a French refugee from the Franco-Prussian War as a servant to the late pastor's daughters.

Director: Gabriel Axel | Stars: Stéphane Audran , Bodil Kjer , Birgitte Federspiel , Jarl Kulle

Votes: 21,868 | Gross: $4.40M

55. Back to the Future (1985)

PG | 116 min | Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

Director: Robert Zemeckis | Stars: Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson , Crispin Glover

Votes: 1,298,800 | Gross: $210.61M

56. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)

R | 122 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery

Terence McDonagh is a drug- and gambling-addled detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating the killing of five Senegalese immigrants.

Director: Werner Herzog | Stars: Nicolas Cage , Eva Mendes , Russell M. Haeuser , Val Kilmer

Votes: 80,673 | Gross: $1.70M

57. Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession (1980)

R | 123 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

A psychiatrist, living in Vienna, enters a torrid relationship with a married woman. When she ends up in the hospital from an overdose, an inspector becomes set on discovering the demise of their affair.

Director: Nicolas Roeg | Stars: Art Garfunkel , Theresa Russell , Harvey Keitel , Denholm Elliott

Votes: 9,582

58. Badlands (1973)

PG | 94 min | Action, Crime, Drama

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town, and her older greaser boyfriend, embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota Badlands.

Director: Terrence Malick | Stars: Martin Sheen , Sissy Spacek , Warren Oates , Ramon Bieri

Votes: 78,024

59. Bambi (1942)

G | 69 min | Animation, Adventure, Drama

The story of a young deer growing up in the forest.

Directors: James Algar , Samuel Armstrong , David Hand , Graham Heid , Bill Roberts , Paul Satterfield , Norman Wright , Arthur Davis , Clyde Geronimi | Stars: Hardie Albright , Stan Alexander , Bobette Audrey , Peter Behn

Votes: 153,334 | Gross: $102.80M

60. The Band's Visit (2007)

PG-13 | 87 min | Comedy, Drama, Music

A band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves lost in the wrong town.

Director: Eran Kolirin | Stars: Sasson Gabay , Ronit Elkabetz , Saleh Bakri , Khalifa Natour

Votes: 14,125 | Gross: $3.05M

61. Batman Begins (2005)

PG-13 | 140 min | Action, Crime, Drama

After witnessing his parents' death, Bruce learns the art of fighting to confront injustice. When he returns to Gotham as Batman, he must stop a secret society that intends to destroy the city.

Director: Christopher Nolan | Stars: Christian Bale , Michael Caine , Ken Watanabe , Liam Neeson

Votes: 1,569,713 | Gross: $206.85M

62. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

PG | 76 min | Animation, Action, Adventure

Batman is wrongly implicated in a series of murders of mob bosses actually committed by a new vigilante assassin.

Directors: Kevin Altieri , Boyd Kirkland , Frank Paur , Dan Riba , Eric Radomski , Bruce Timm | Stars: Kevin Conroy , Dana Delany , Hart Bochner , Stacy Keach

Votes: 56,506 | Gross: $5.62M

63. The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Not Rated | 121 min | Drama, War

In the 1950s, fear and violence escalate as the people of Algiers fight for independence from the French government.

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo | Stars: Brahim Hadjadj , Jean Martin , Yacef Saadi , Samia Kerbash

Votes: 65,280 | Gross: $0.06M

64. Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Not Rated | 66 min | Drama, History, Thriller

In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.

Director: Sergei Eisenstein | Stars: Aleksandr Antonov , Vladimir Barskiy , Grigoriy Aleksandrov , Ivan Bobrov

Votes: 61,203 | Gross: $0.05M

65. C'est la vie (1990)

110 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

The July 1958 vacation, on a beach on the Atlantic coast. Little Sophie, 8 years old, and her big sister Frédérique suffer from the bad understanding between their parents, presenting the drama of divorce which will not fail to occur.

Director: Diane Kurys | Stars: Nathalie Baye , Julie Bataille , Richard Berry , Zabou Breitman

Votes: 908 | Gross: $0.81M

AKA C'est La Vie Also very hard to get a hold of

66. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

PG-13 | 93 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy

Faced with both her hot-tempered father's fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.

Director: Benh Zeitlin | Stars: Quvenzhané Wallis , Dwight Henry , Levy Easterly , Lowell Landes

Votes: 84,934 | Gross: $12.80M

67. Beauty and the Beast (1991)

G | 84 min | Animation, Family, Fantasy

A prince cursed to spend his days as a hideous monster sets out to regain his humanity by earning a young woman's love.

Directors: Gary Trousdale , Kirk Wise | Stars: Paige O'Hara , Robby Benson , Jesse Corti , Rex Everhart

Votes: 477,946 | Gross: $218.97M

68. Behind the Sun (2001)

PG-13 | 105 min | Drama

When ordered by his father to avenge the death of his older brother, a young man questions the tradition of violence between two rival families.

Director: Walter Salles | Stars: José Dumont , Rodrigo Santoro , Rita Assemany , Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos

Votes: 7,385 | Gross: $0.06M

69. Being John Malkovich (1999)

R | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich .

Director: Spike Jonze | Stars: John Cusack , Cameron Diaz , Catherine Keener , John Malkovich

Votes: 352,191 | Gross: $22.86M

70. Beauty and the Beast (1946)

Not Rated | 93 min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance

A beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.

Directors: Jean Cocteau , René Clément | Stars: Jean Marais , Josette Day , Mila Parély , Nane Germon

Votes: 27,974 | Gross: $0.30M

71. The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

Not Rated | 91 min | Comedy, Family, Romance

The schoolgirls of St. Trinian's are more interested in racing forms than books; as they try to get rich quick, they are abetted by the headmistress' brother.

Director: Frank Launder | Stars: Alastair Sim , Joyce Grenfell , George Cole , Hermione Baddeley

Votes: 2,922

72. Ben-Hur (1959)

G | 212 min | Adventure, Drama

After a Jewish prince is betrayed and sent into slavery by a Roman friend in 1st-century Jerusalem, he regains his freedom and comes back for revenge.

Director: William Wyler | Stars: Charlton Heston , Jack Hawkins , Stephen Boyd , Haya Harareet

Votes: 252,241 | Gross: $74.70M

73. Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Not Rated | 89 min | Drama

In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.

Director: Vittorio De Sica | Stars: Lamberto Maggiorani , Enzo Staiola , Lianella Carell , Elena Altieri

Votes: 174,300 | Gross: $0.33M

74. The Big Lebowski (1998)

R | 117 min | Comedy, Crime

Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

Directors: Joel Coen , Ethan Coen | Stars: Jeff Bridges , John Goodman , Julianne Moore , Steve Buscemi

Votes: 856,470 | Gross: $17.50M

75. The Big Red One (1980)

R | 113 min | Drama, War

A hardened sergeant and the four core members of his infantry unit try to survive World War II as they move from battle to battle throughout Europe.

Director: Samuel Fuller | Stars: Lee Marvin , Mark Hamill , Robert Carradine , Bobby Di Cicco

Votes: 21,305

76. The Big Sleep (1946)

Passed | 114 min | Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail and what might be love.

Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Humphrey Bogart , Lauren Bacall , John Ridgely , Martha Vickers

Votes: 90,232 | Gross: $6.54M

77. The Birds (1963)

PG-13 | 119 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people.

Director: Alfred Hitchcock | Stars: Rod Taylor , Tippi Hedren , Jessica Tandy , Suzanne Pleshette

Votes: 203,602 | Gross: $11.40M

78. Billy Elliot (2000)

R | 110 min | Drama, Music

A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

Director: Stephen Daldry | Stars: Jamie Bell , Julie Walters , Jean Heywood , Jamie Draven

Votes: 142,098 | Gross: $22.00M

79. Black Narcissus (1947)

Not Rated | 101 min | Drama

A group of nuns struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad.

Directors: Michael Powell , Emeric Pressburger | Stars: Deborah Kerr , David Farrar , Flora Robson , Jenny Laird

Votes: 27,482

80. The Black Pirate (1926)

Not Rated | 88 min | Adventure, Action

Seeking revenge, an athletic young man joins the pirate band responsible for his father's death.

Director: Albert Parker | Stars: Douglas Fairbanks , Billie Dove , Tempe Pigott , Donald Crisp

Votes: 2,118 | Gross: $0.68M

81. Black Robe (1991)

R | 101 min | Adventure, Drama, War

In the 17th century, a Jesuit missionary nicknamed Black Robe by the natives and his small party of companions try reaching the Huron tribe in Canada all while facing mistrust, Iroquois warring parties and harsh winter conditions.

Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Lothaire Bluteau , Aden Young , Sandrine Holt , August Schellenberg

Votes: 7,636 | Gross: $8.21M

82. Blade Runner (1982)

R | 117 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi

A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.

Director: Ridley Scott | Stars: Harrison Ford , Rutger Hauer , Sean Young , Edward James Olmos

Votes: 818,937 | Gross: $32.87M

83. Blazing Saddles (1974)

R | 93 min | Comedy, Western

In order to ruin a western town, a corrupt politician appoints a black Sheriff, who promptly becomes his most formidable adversary.

Director: Mel Brooks | Stars: Cleavon Little , Gene Wilder , Slim Pickens , Harvey Korman

Votes: 151,545 | Gross: $119.50M

84. Blood Simple (1984)

R | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller

The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies, and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.

Directors: Joel Coen , Ethan Coen | Stars: John Getz , Frances McDormand , Dan Hedaya , M. Emmet Walsh

Votes: 104,480 | Gross: $2.15M

85. Blow-Up (1966)

Not Rated | 111 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

A fashion photographer unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park.

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni | Stars: David Hemmings , Vanessa Redgrave , Sarah Miles , John Castle

Votes: 67,343

86. Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back (1967)

Not Rated | 96 min | Documentary, Music

Documentary covering Bob Dylan 's 1965 tour of England, which includes appearances by Joan Baez and Donovan .

Director: D.A. Pennebaker | Stars: Bob Dylan , Albert Grossman , Bob Neuwirth , Joan Baez

Votes: 9,964

87. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

R | 111 min | Action, Biography, Crime

Bored waitress Bonnie Parker falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, stealing cars and robbing banks.

Director: Arthur Penn | Stars: Warren Beatty , Faye Dunaway , Michael J. Pollard , Gene Hackman

Votes: 120,177

88. Borat (2006)

R | 84 min | Comedy

Kazakh TV talking head Borat is dispatched to the United States to report on the greatest country in the world. With a documentary crew in tow, Borat becomes more interested in locating and marrying Pamela Anderson .

Director: Larry Charles | Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen , Ken Davitian , Luenell , Chester

Votes: 439,762 | Gross: $128.51M

89. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

R | 145 min | Biography, Drama, War

The biography of Ron Kovic . Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country for which he fought.

Director: Oliver Stone | Stars: Tom Cruise , Bryan Larkin , Raymond J. Barry , Caroline Kava

Votes: 115,333 | Gross: $70.00M

90. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

PG-13 | 115 min | Action, Mystery, Thriller

Jason Bourne dodges a ruthless C.I.A. official and his Agents from a new assassination program while searching for the origins of his life as a trained killer.

Director: Paul Greengrass | Stars: Matt Damon , Edgar Ramírez , Joan Allen , Julia Stiles

Votes: 656,613 | Gross: $227.47M

91. Boyz n the Hood (1991)

R | 112 min | Crime, Drama

Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects.

Director: John Singleton | Stars: Cuba Gooding Jr. , Laurence Fishburne , Hudhail Al-Amir , Lloyd Avery II

Votes: 153,646 | Gross: $57.50M

92. Brazil (1985)

R | 132 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.

Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Jonathan Pryce , Kim Greist , Robert De Niro , Katherine Helmond

Votes: 210,564 | Gross: $9.93M

93. Breaker Morant (1980)

PG | 107 min | Drama, History, War

Three Australian lieutenants are court martialed for executing prisoners as a way of deflecting attention from war crimes committed by their superior officers.

Director: Bruce Beresford | Stars: Edward Woodward , Jack Thompson , John Waters , Bryan Brown

Votes: 14,345 | Gross: $7.14M

94. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Not Rated | 75 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate.

Director: James Whale | Stars: Boris Karloff , Elsa Lanchester , Colin Clive , Valerie Hobson

Votes: 52,966 | Gross: $4.36M

95. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

PG | 161 min | Adventure, Drama, War

British POWs are forced to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in occupied Burma, not knowing that the allied forces are planning a daring commando raid through the jungle to destroy it.

Director: David Lean | Stars: William Holden , Alec Guinness , Jack Hawkins , Sessue Hayakawa

Votes: 232,424 | Gross: $44.91M

96. Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Passed | 102 min | Comedy

While trying to secure a $1 million donation for his museum, a befuddled paleontologist is pursued by a flighty and often irritating heiress and her pet leopard, Baby.

Director: Howard Hawks | Stars: Katharine Hepburn , Cary Grant , Charles Ruggles , Walter Catlett

Votes: 65,787

97. Broadcast News (1987)

R | 133 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance

Take two rival television reporters: one handsome, one talented, both male. Add one producer, female. Mix well, and watch the sparks fly.

Director: James L. Brooks | Stars: William Hurt , Albert Brooks , Holly Hunter , Robert Prosky

Votes: 33,912 | Gross: $51.25M

98. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

R | 134 min | Drama, Romance

Ennis and Jack are two shepherds who develop a sexual and emotional relationship. Their relationship becomes complicated when both of them get married to their respective girlfriends.

Director: Ang Lee | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal , Heath Ledger , Michelle Williams , Randy Quaid

Votes: 380,247 | Gross: $83.04M

99. A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Approved | 66 min | Comedy, Crime, Horror

Walter Paisley accidentally kills a cat, covers it in plaster and passes it off as a sculpture. The demand for more art leads him to commit murders.

Director: Roger Corman | Stars: Dick Miller , Barboura Morris , Antony Carbone , Julian Burton

Votes: 7,761

100. Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country (2008)

Unrated | 84 min | Documentary, History, News

Using smuggled footage, this documentary tells the story of the 2007 protests in Burma by thousands of monks.

Director: Anders Østergaard | Stars: George W. Bush , Ko Muang , Aung San Suu Kyi

Votes: 2,512 | Gross: $0.05M

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Are star ratings on movie reviews a good thing?

How do we decide what's a four star movie? Are all five star movies made equal? Simon explains the issues with star ratings

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A pair of reviews went up on this site last week, for films that – for differing reasons – we rated at four stars apiece. Above the four stars, in both cases, were many hundreds of words discussing the films in question. Yet both, in different ways, continued to fuel the ongoing, interesting debate about the star rating system, and its suitability.

Because in the comments below our reviews of both RoboCop (2014) and The LEGO Movie were some pertinent, constructive questions. We’re not going to name the commenters, as the aim isn’t to expose them to flaming or such like. Yet they raise some interesting questions and points – which we’ve quoted directly – that in many ways frame the ongoing star rating debate. Hence, we thought a fuller exploration of the issues might be useful.

“Five stars aren’t really enough for an accurate rating. Either don’t have a star rating or increase to 10”.

Both of those suggestions, oddly enough, we’ve chatted about.

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The main frustration for film reviewers – and we think we can speak for many of them here – is that a review tends to get reduced to a score by star rating at the bottom of it. So, we tend to talk about Empire giving something four stars, Total Film giving something three stars, as opposed to ‘Empire thought the direction was great but the ending was poor’ or ‘Total Film reckoned it was better than the first, but still with room for improvement’.

Because what it overlooks is that, to someone writing a review, the star rating tends to be far from the most important thing. The words that make up the review are the parts that are wrangled over, and the hardest thing to do. How do you frame a viewpoint on a film? How do you get at what you think is wrong with it without ruining a vital plot point? And if you’re going against the tide of critical opinion on a film, how do you get across your problems without it sounding like you’re flamebaiting?

That’s the hardest part. And whilst coming up with a star rating can sometimes be a sod of a job, it’s nothing compared to penning the review itself.

So why have a star rating at all? Well, we’re not snobby about this: it’s helpful. If you’re in the pub, and your friend comes back from seeing a film, you may well ask them if it’s any good. Generally, the first response you get is ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘it was alright’. That’s basically the job that a star rating does. It gives you a very quick overview, and invites you to get more detail if you want it. Also, you might just want the score for now, preferring to read a review once you’ve seen the film in question, for fear of spoilers.

Furthermore, we’re in the era of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which aggregate reviews into a total score. We’re on neither, but there’s no denying that they’re a good source of exposure for review outlets. And for a snapshot overview of a film, their services are useful. It would remiss not to acknowledge that star ratings are heavily demanded by the PR and marketing departments of movie studios too. They like them for posters.

But to go to the question asked: why not abolish star ratings, or more them to a score out of ten? It’s for each review outlet to decide this, but our position is this: we’re aware that star ratings hold some purpose, and while we reserve the right not to score something (as we did with our review of Spring Breakers, here ), their benefits just about outweigh their problems.

Should we, then, extend the score to one of out ten, rather than five? No. Not here, anyway.

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Computer and videogame magazines, more than any other medium, have explored extending the score system. Lots of them still score out of 100, but ask what the difference is between a game that warrants 83% and one that scores 81%, and invariably PowerPoint, or something equally evil, is invoked. Go back into the annals of British computer magazines and one (excellent) title, ACE, used to score games of 1000. You’d need more than a few overpriced Microsoft products to get to the bottom of what merited a 577 score against a 574.

A score out of five, however crude, works. It’s generally accepted that one star means avoid at all costs, and five stars means drop everything. Both scores are rarely used and heavily guarded at this site, as they are at any others, so that it means something when they’re awarded. Two stars equates to not too great, three means something is worth a watch, four means very good. It’s hard to see how dissecting further would help, given that it would, more than ever, make the review more about the score than the text itself. It seems a decent position all round that the star rating gives you the snapshot, and the words give you the detail.

“”Funniest comedy we have seen in years” – 4 stars. Where is the 5 star level set at exactly?”

A great question, which we found in the comments on our review of The LEGO Movie . To which the simple answer is: we couldn’t tell you.

Scoring a film isn’t a mathematical or scientific process. It’s a response to something, a gut feeling backed up by watching lots and lots of other films. In the case of The LEGO Movie , there’s a fair complaint that the review didn’t get across why the film scored four stars rather than five, and there are two answers to that.

Firstly, either way, outside of perhaps costing us a place on the poster, in the scheme of things it doesn’t matter. Either way, we’re heavily recommending the film.

Secondly, there are a few criticisms – however minor – of The LEGO Movie (which we’ve seen twice: once with a five star audience, who lifted the film a lot, and once sat behind a woman texting on a mobile phone, who didn’t). They’re in the review, but we had such a good time watching the film, that we focused far more on the positives than picking too much at it. We very rarely award five stars for reasons outlined earlier – off the top of our head, five films took top marks off us last year ( Gravity , All Is Lost , The Wolf Of Wall Street , Frozen and Before Midnight ). In each of those cases, there was something particular and hugely striking that resonated with us, be it the haunting solitude of All Is Lost , or the deep-threaded themes of loneliness encompassed with Frozen . We don’t expect you to agree with those reviews, but they are honest and true feelings. There was something in each of them that got them over the five star line for us.

On a personal level, the film Labyrinth is never far from my mind when coming up with a star rating. I love Labyrinth . I could watch it on loop forever more, and bore you to death about it. But there’s not one bit of me that would rate it a five star film. That doesn’t mean I love it less, just that I know it has a few problems. The crucial one, as articulated infamously by long-time Jim Henson collaborator Jerry Nelson, was “I didn’t give a fuck whether she got her brother back or not”. Given that was the narrative drive of the film, that’s a fairly substantive issue, and one I agree with.

I can list a long collection of films that I love watching, will happily rewatch, but fall short of five stars for me. The LEGO Movie is one, Back To The Future Part II another, the 1989 Batman … I’ll happily do you a list.

So to go back to the question: where is the level set? It’s not. There is no formal line, and no mathematical equation here. Instead, there’s just a broad criteria that appreciates that if we give something four or five stars, we’re recommending you spend money or time on it. Conversely, if we give something one or two stars, we’re not recommending that you do. Again, you don’t have to agree with us, and you don’t have to go by our word. Hopefully, more often than not, the words above the score will marry up to the star rating.

“Wow, four stars. Dredd only got three. Is this seriously a better film than Dredd?”

Another important question. Does one film getting four stars automatically mean that it’s a better film than one with three stars? Helpfully, the answer is usually yes, but not always.

In the specific case of RoboCop (2014) and Dredd , they were reviewed by two different reviewers, which straight away means that an absolutely direct comparison, score-wise, is impossible. I reviewed Dredd for the site, having devoured Judge Dredd comics as a child. And it falls into the law of Labyrinth for me, as outlined above. The film has problems, but I really like it. It remains – as much as I love it – a three star movie.

RoboCop ? There’s something, again for its flaws, running just a little deeper I’d argue. Which would I rather watch again? Dredd . Which do I think is slightly better? Probably RoboCop . So how do you put a score on that?

Roger Ebert had something interesting to say on star ratings, in his review of Shaolin Soccer . He wrote that “the star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you’re not asking if it’s any good compared to Mystic River , you’re asking if it’s any good compared to The Punisher . And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman (1978) is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two”.

A wise man was Mr Ebert. And we should add that star ratings too are to a large degree contextual to their time. Mark Kermode argues that to best review a film that “ten years would be nice”, to properly digest, react and assess a movie. But that’s not possible.

Infamously, in the case of A Good Day To Die Hard, UK press were predominantly held back from seeing the film until a press screening at 9.30pm the day before release. Given that most outlets would want a review for the day the movie is out, how much time to fully assess a film does that actually offer? Appreciating that A Good Day To Die Hard is a horrible mess, even a horrible mess deserves a proper reaction. Under such time restraints though, how is that possible?

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One further comment under our LEGO review read that “If RoboCop is as good as Lego then they deserve to be equally rated, but if not, then they need to have different scores”. That, too, is impossible. One four star film can be a very different beast to another. Precious is a four star film for me that’s a million miles away from Wreck-It Ralph , another I’d rate at four. One I never want to watch ever again in my life, one I do. Are they equally as good as each other? I’ve got no idea: Barry Norman always used to argue that it was comparing chalk with cheese, and he’s right.

So then…

Predictably, this piece resolves nothing, but then that seems somewhat fitting. Because star ratings aren’t supposed to solve anything. They’re supposed to give guidance, and not a lot more than that. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be challenged: part of the fun of being a film fan is the debate, argument and disagreements. But in an ideal world, the star rating would be the gravy, rather than the proverbial dinner itself. That horse might just have bolted some time ago.

Bottom line recommendation then: if in doubt, go with the words, rather than the stars.

Please feel free to continue the debate in the comments below – we’ll keep going with our replies to constructive posts there too…

Follow our  Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here . And be our  Facebook chum here .

Simon Brew | @SimonBrew

Editor, author, writer, broadcaster, Costner fanatic. Now runs Film Stories Magazine.

Brutally honest reviews of Oscar best song performances, including Ryan Gosling

Just accept that there is no escaping “ Barbie .”

The billion-dollar blockbuster plowed its pink convertible through eight Academy Award nominations , including a pair for best original song, and emerged victorious.

Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, who scooped up trophies for song of the year and best song written for visual media at the Grammy Awards last month, took their introspective ballad "What Was I Made For?" to the Dolby Theatre stage in Los Angeles and scored another major win.

Eilish thanked her dance and chorus teachers during her acceptance speech, joking to one of them, "You didn't like me, but you were good at your job!"

Oscars 2024 winners: See the full list of celebrities who took home Academy Award gold

On the other end of the “Barbie”-verse was “ I’m Just Ken ,” the grandiose pop-opera crafted by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt that was conveyed with '80s-era bombast by the film’s co-star, Ryan Gosling .

The in memoriam segment of this year's Oscars was augmented by a surprise performance by Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo on an updated - and equally stirring - version of Bocelli's 1995 classic, "Time To Say Goodbye," reimagined with the help of composer Hans Zimmer.

Here is a look at each of the show's best original song performances, ranked from worst to best.

Best dressed at the Oscars 2024: Gabrielle Union, America Ferrera, Zendaya, more red carpet standouts

5. Becky G ‘The Fire Inside’

The Latin-American singer behind the hits “Can’t Get Enough” and “Shower” did her theatrical best with an uncharacteristically slight Diane Warren-penned song.

Emerging from a circle of flames, Becky G (born Rebecca Gomez) took the title of the song to heart with her abs-bearing black outfit. An orchestra added swoops of strings and injected the song with its pulse while a chorus of young women in matching red pants and white shirts crooned the repetitive chorus.

4. Scott George and the Osage Singers, ‘Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)’

George was already enjoying a historical night as the first Osage writer to be nominated for an Academy Award and he brought his 40 years of experience singing with the Osage Nation to a rare spotlight.

With a deep orange sunset as the backdrop, George and the Osage Singers engaged in drum pounding and chanting as dancers in traditional clothing circled them and a ring of female singers.

The song, featured in the closing dance scene of Martin Scorsese’s “ Killers of the Flower Moon ,” was an educational moment for Oscars viewers and an appreciated detour from the usual lineup.

3. Jon Batiste ‘It Never Went Away’

The singer-songwriter continued to showcase his stellar musicianship with the heartfelt ballad from his recent documentary, “ American Symphony ,” which detailed the cancer battle of wife Suleika Jaouad.

Clad in an elegant crème suit, Batiste stretched the notes of the song on his Steinway & Sons piano and sang with conviction as love scenes from classic movies, including “Brokeback Mountain” and “Shakespeare in Love” rolled behind him. Batiste appeared to direct the loving lyrics toward Jaouad, who attended the ceremony with her husband. The giant moon that glowed behind Batiste didn’t quite vibe with the spirit of the song, but the luminous orb was at least eye-catching, if puzzling.

2. Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell ‘What Was I Made For?’

The simple song began with an understated backdrop, as if Eilish and brother O’Connell were in a recording studio, before the pastel-lit curtain rose to show the audience behind them, recalling Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s 2019 performance of “Shallow.”

With more than a few nods to the “ Barbie” pink motif in the background, O’Connell sat at an upright piano, and Eilish, clad in an oversized black blazer and pencil skirt, kept her eyes closed and her voice barely above a whisper as she unraveled the emotional ballad. A rising curtain revealed an orchestra as Eilish clasped the mic stand with her left hand and O’Connell dutifully played the song’s melancholy melody.

As she wound down the song to its last pensive note, Eilish smiled toward her brother. The audience’s ovation prompted a hug between the siblings as the camera cut to a teary-eyed Kate McKinnon (aka “Weird Barbie”) and much of the cheering “Barbie” team.

1. Ryan Gosling ‘I’m Just Ken’

Finally, an elaborate burst of fun.

At least that’s how it felt by the time Ryan Gosling closed out the best song performances with a charming and goofy spectacle that began with him seated in the audience behind “Barbie” co-star Margot Robbie in his hot pink sequined suit and gloves.

Gosling milked every second from the melodramatic song as he made his way onstage, gently chin chucking the song’s co-writer Mark Ronson on his way to a pink staircase full of men in black suits and cowboy hats. Surely we weren’t the only ones hit with “Material Girl” vibes.

As the song rolled into its rock section, Gosling karate chopped pink boards to showcase his Ken-liness before being spun around as cutouts of vintage Barbie faces moved in time with him.

The power ballad received a double injection of roaring guitar between special guest Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen , who plays on the recorded version of the song.

It was fitting that fireworks capped Gosling’s performance, because his working the crowd and bringing the mic to Robbie, America Ferrera and Greta Gerwig to shout along the chorus, was as effortless as Bruce Springsteen wading through a sea of fans. 

Talk about a rock star.

Screen Rant

The new road house movie's positive reviews are a miracle after last year's 32-year-old remake failure.

The critical consensus on the 2024 Road House movie is that it's great, which is especially astounding after last year's biggest failed remake.

• Road House's 2024 remake impresses critics with genuine praise, nearing double the Rotten Tomatoes score of the 1989 original.
• The remake stays true to original's cheesiness and emotion, favoring action-packed cheese over storytelling smarts.
• A risky straight-to-streaming release on Prime Video may hinder the Road House remake's potential for winning over audiences.

The critical consensus on the 2024 remake of Road House is that it’s a surprisingly great movie, which is especially astounding after last year’s failed remake of a different cult classic. The original Road House , released in 1989, stars Patrick Swayze as a bouncer at a newly refurbished roadside bar who defends a small Missouri town against a crooked business tycoon. The remake, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, revolves around a former UFC middleweight fighter who winds up taking a similar job as a cooler at a roadside bar in the Florida Keys and running afoul of some local troublemakers.

When a remake of Road House was first announced, it seemed wildly unnecessary, because the original isn’t a particularly great story; its popularity rests entirely on Swayze’s star power, so remaking it seemed like a fool’s errand. However, now that the reviews are in, it seems that 2024’s Road House is actually an awesome movie, and might even surpass the 1989 original. Filmmaking is challenging, so it’s a miracle when any movie turns out good, but the Road House remake’s positive reviews are particularly miraculous, considering the circumstances (and the fate of a similar remake).

Why The Road House Remake's Reviews Are So Great (& How They Compare To The 1989 Movie)

The 2024 remake of Road House has an impressive “fresh” score of 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is nearly double the “rotten” score of the 1989 original, a dismal 41% . The reviews for the original Road House either appreciated the film in a so-bad-it’s-good way or denigrated the film in a so-bad-it’s-bad way. It received some points for Swayze’s typically charismatic performance and the shameless cheesiness of the action scenes, but most critics agreed it was nothing special. The 2024 remake, on the other hand, has received genuine praise from the majority of critics.

This new version of Road House has been lauded for maintaining the original movie’s best qualities. It’s refreshingly heartfelt, leaning into its cheesiness and unembarrassed emotions without any winking self-awareness. Critics have noted that the remake favors action-packed cheese over storytelling smarts, but they’ve also pointed out that that’s faithful to the original film. Doug Liman’s grounded direction has been hailed for his Jonathan Demme-like approach to ludicrous material , and the performances of Gyllenhaal and his co-star, MMA legend and first-time actor Conor McGregor , have been positively received for their commitment.

The Road House remake will drop on Prime Video on March 21.

Road House's Rotten Tomatoes Score Is A Welcome Change After 2023's Cult Classic Movie Remake

When a cult classic like Road House gets remade, it’s par for the course for critics and audiences alike to hate it. Usually, the critics have written half of their review before they’ve even seen the movie, because it’s become so predictable for remakes to be bitter disappointments that pale in comparison to the original. In many ways, it’s even harder to remake a cult classic than a regular classic. Regular classics are just timeless gems with well-told stories, and it’s obvious why they work, but cult classics with a certain so-bad-it’s-good charm are trickier to pin down.

Last year’s White Men Can’t Jump remake is a perfect example. The 1992 original succeeded because of Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson’s unique on-screen chemistry, and because it brought clever storytelling and sharp characterization to the familiar genre of sports comedy. The 2023 remake was panned for smoothing down the edges of the original for a safe, formulaic sports movie. Based on the reviews, it seems that the Road House remake is everything the White Men Can’t Jump remake wasn’t: it’s true to the spirit of the original and it’s a fresh take on a well-known story.

Road House 2024 Still Shares 1 Major Obstacle With White Men Can't Jump's Remake

While Road House has won the battle for positive reviews, the war isn’t over yet. It still needs to win over audiences, which will be tough because it’s being released straight to streaming on Prime Video. Road House had a bit of behind-the-scenes controversy with Liman strongly opposing Amazon’s decision to skip a theatrical release and Gyllenhaal claiming that a straight-to-streaming release was always the plan. Either way, the Road House remake won’t be coming to theaters and will go directly to Prime Video to be watched at home.

This means that the Road House remake could still face the same fate as the White Men Can’t Jump remake. 2023’s White Men Can’t Jump was buried in the streaming library of Hulu, and as a result, it made no splash in the cultural conversation. Sadly, the same could end up happening with 2024’s Road House . Some of Road House ’s reviews have pointed out that it could have been a decent-sized hit if it was released in theaters, but it’s too late for that now.

The Response to Dune: Part 2 Is Less About the Movie and More About Current Hollywood's Problems

Our writer argues that, despite its flaws, denis villeneuve’s sci-fi epic hit at just the right time..

Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Dune: Part 2.

Science-fiction nerds and IMAX enthusiasts rejoice, because Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part 2 (review) has already made big waves on its opening weekend, securing a CinemaScore grade of A, a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and pulling in a global total of $178.5 million – a massive jump over its predecessor’s opening weekend gross. In fact, that’s nearly half of what the first film made in its entire run. With numbers like these and excellent reviews , it looks like Warner Bros. has a breakout sequel on its hands, and the chances of a third film happening in Villeneuve’s proposed trilogy – adapting the second book in Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi series, Dune Messiah – appear to be brighter than ever.

But amidst all the accolades, there’s a gnawing sense that whatever flaws Dune: Part 2 may possess, they’re being completely ignored in favor of many film fans already proclaiming it as one of the greatest science-fiction movies of all time, and potentially as a savior of cinema. Setting aside the irony of the movie receiving this kind of unquestioned adulation when it’s about a genetically engineered and ultimately false prophet who uses a people’s faith in him to wage a holy war on the rest of the universe, I can’t help but feel that the extreme response to Dune is only partly because of the film itself and the people who made it.

At a moment where hostility from filmgoers towards the deluge of corporate, micromanaged tentpoles is at an all-time high, Dune’s arrival as a massive-scale blockbuster project with a genuine directorial vision must have felt like the second coming. How did this happen? Let’s take a look.

We Used to Be a Real Country

It may be hard to remember sometimes, but there was a world before cinematic universes, legacy sequels and live-action remakes were all the rage. Studio blockbusters have been an important part of the movie business for several decades, but the 21st century trends popularized by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and Disney’s insistence on remaking most of their animated classics in live-action really only cemented their dominance of the movie business over the past 10 years and change. During this period, there’s been an increasing sense that many of our biggest movies are no longer under the jurisdiction of their directors, instead being mostly the creation of cadres of studio executives trying to brute force focus-tested, franchise-friendly blockbusters to the top of the box office charts.

Now, this is admittedly an oversimplification that isn’t entirely fair to the many hard-working creatives doing their best in such a taxing industry. Studio interference has existed as long as there’s been movie studios, and there’s nothing wrong with being a director for hire. But the general feeling that the last 10-to-15 years of big-budget filmmaking has pushed further and further into the realm of regurgitated IPs and anonymous direction didn’t come out of a vacuum. Even looking back as recently as the 2000s, blockbusters often had a genuine directorial sensibility that is nowhere near as prevalent in contemporary film. Consider Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the Wachowskis’ Matrix sequels, and even George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy. However you feel about the final products, these were all massive studio productions that are as sincere and idiosyncratic as the directors who helmed them.

Between IPs becoming more important than artists, the COVID-19 pandemic imperiling the theatrical experience , and rising anxiety among creatives about the role generative AI will play in the future of Hollywood , the people who love movies and the people who make them have been in desperate need of a win. The Barbenheimer phenomenon was a shot in the arm for theaters and filmgoers, but there was also a worry that the (at the time) ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes would stifle any momentum the surprise double feature brought to the business. As we slowly head back to normal in 2024, the health of studio filmmaking as once impervious franchises like the MCU and Star Wars suffer serious declines was a major question hanging over the air, and Dune: Part 2 arrived at precisely the right moment to signal to a worried moviegoing public that big-scale blockbusters that feel specific and authored still have a chance to flourish in the theatrical space.

That’s a good thing, but has it also squashed out any acknowledgment of what doesn’t work about the movie from the conversation? Unfortunately, it seems so.

Dune: How the Movies Have Depicted the Iconic Stillsuit Costume

Dissenters of Dune

I was one of the few people who didn’t connect with the first part of Villeneuve’s magnum opus, largely down to that film not having much of anything happen in it. As beautiful as the production design, costumes and cinematography were, the actual plot conveyed felt roughly like the first act of Paul’s journey. So much of the runtime acted as setup for the sequel to come instead of clarifying any meaning that installment had as an individual film. This is why Dune 2 is an improvement, feeling far more focused and eventful because Denis actually adapts the rest of the book and brings this part of the journey to its natural conclusion. However, many of the creative choices beyond mere structure that plagued the first film carry forward into its sequel, leaving a gorgeous adaptation that is massive in scope but lacking in emotional depth.

As incredible as Villeneuve’s Arrakis is as a technical achievement, it’s also as bereft of life as the desert of the film’s title. Because almost every scene has been designed to be an epic moment , there is little to no sense of what normalcy is for any of the people or cultures represented. What status quo for the Fremen is Paul Atreides disrupting by accepting his place as the Lisan al Gaib? What is the functional difference between House Atreides and House Harkonnen when they both share the same brutalist architecture and technology? How exactly do the Bene Gesserit operate and what makes Lady Jessica different enough from the others that she’s seen as a traitor to her own people when she’s acting exactly the same way as them? These and many other dramatic questions are unanswered by the film, and saying there’s clarification in the novel only further illustrates one of the major sticking points.

Are you buying the Dune popcorn bucket?

Even though the two movies put together total around five hours of screen time, they alternately ignore or refuse to explain many of the thornier and more esoteric aspects of the Dune mythology. Fellow IGN contributor Siddhant Adlakha has delved into the ways Dune: Part 2 scrubbed much of the intentional Islamic influence from Herbert’s text, such as never calling Paul’s war a “jihad,” and replacing the Arabic words used by the Fremen in the novel with a new fictional language. This is exactly the sort of cultural specificity that could help the Fremen resonate as a society worth investing in, but it’s been all but excised in the film. If you wanted to know more about what it means for Anya Taylor-Joy’s character Alia to be “pre-born” or how that works, why the weirding way and its associated Prana-bindu training were barely touched on, what an “Abomination” even is , or more details about the political factions or religious themes that make up the very foundation of the Dune universe, these movies can’t really help you.

That’s not even getting into the fuzzy character work, which struggles to make Paul’s internal journey track in any meaningful way. Although the movie makes the (correct) choice to be upfront about how Paul leading the Fremen on a galactic conquest is a tragic development and most definitely not about their liberation, him spending so much time not even being tempted by his dark destiny before the Water of Life scene makes his transformation ring insincere. Paul going from “I must do everything in my power to avoid my visions” to “I will bathe the universe in the blood of my enemies” in only a few minutes of screen time is a mind-boggling decision that saps a lot of the drama from what is the pivotal character turn of the entire story. Add in a romance that doesn’t convince and villains that the movie doesn’t even try to elevate above their flat depictions in the text (Austin Butler’s Feyd-Rautha ’s two traits are “has knives” and “looks mad”), and you have a Dune movie that adapts Herbert’s book to mixed results.

But does that really matter when it’s accomplished a different mission: giving us more hope for the future of movies?

This Is How It’s Supposed to Be

Whatever issues I or anyone else may have with how Villeneuve executed his Dune films (and I still like Part 2 even with its faults), what is abundantly clear is that Dune’s strengths and weaknesses are largely on the director’s shoulders, not the studio’s. Although producers and collaborators undoubtedly had input on the finished product, the films as they exist feel akin to the previously mentioned blockbusters of the early 2000s, ones that breathe and bleed with the quirks and hangups of their directors. At no point during either film did I feel like I was watching anything less than Denis Villeneuve ’s Dune, and that is precisely the paradigm on which movies of all shapes and sizes should be based. Filmmaking is an art form, and what makes art valuable is that it reflects the artists who make it.

In a world where not everyone in the movie business seems to share that sentiment, perhaps it’s okay that Dune provides an imperfect rebuttal to the corporate mindset that’s been strangling Hollywood for far too long. In the past few years, we’ve seen audiences embrace big-budget films that actually feel directed , like Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. If Denis Villeneuve’s Dune continues this trend, perhaps the powers that be will finally start to clue in that they should abandon their attempts at cookie-cutter tentpoles and let visionary artists back at the steering wheel. After all, it’s far more rewarding to evaluate a movie based on the merits of a director’s creative choices than on the unfortunate fact of them having no creativity whatsoever.

Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter .

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Lindsay Lohan’s Irish Wish review: there’s a scandalous lack of begorrah, which may be a good thing

American star’s glossy movie has criminally little irish involvement.

Alexander Vlahos as Paul Kennedy and Lindsay Lohan as Maddie Kelly. Photograph: Patrick Redmond/Netflix Inc

There are a great many accounts of St Brigid . She was born in Faughart, Co Louth; she lived in the time of St Patrick ; her mother was a slave and her father a chieftain; she was an abbess who founded a convent in Kildare; she could still the wind and rain with prayer; and she once threw a Protestant chicken into a river, changing it into a fish suitable for Friday consumption.

None of the stories attached to the national pietist mentions bopping about like a demented leprechaun or granting wishes to Lindsay Lohan . But here we are.

Fans and hate-watchers of such recent blarney as Wild Mountain Thyme and Hallmark’s Christmas at Castle Hart will be crushed to learn that, twinkly, desire-granting Imbolc patroness aside, there is a scandalous lack of begorrah in this glossy Netflix product. There is, more disconcertingly, criminally little Irish involvement. A Welsh man plays the Hibernian love interest. One has to go as far down the cast as local priest, publican and – phew: national scandal averted – St Brigid to find indigenous actors. God be with the days when we could earn a living wage from screen shenanigans.

Lindsay, in her second A Christmas Prince-style outing for the streaming giant, plays the put-upon publishing assistant to a vain Irish writer. She’s inexplicably in love with him until he inconveniently falls for her vacuous best friend. On the eve of his wedding she meets St Brigid, who grants a chaos-making wish. Who will our heroine choose: the preening user who talks about Botox or the dashing nature photographer who bickers with her on the bus from Knock airport?

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Cartoonishly colourful cinematography brings emerald-tinted sparkle to Killruddery House, Lough Tay, the Cliffs of Moher and other tourist traps. What else? It’s professionally assembled? Everyone has nice hair?

Irish Wish is on Netflix from today

Tara Brady, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a writer and film critic

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Irish Wish review – Lindsay Lohan’s luck runs out in charmless romcom

The star’s creep back to mainstream movies needs expediting with another junky Netflix offering that feels beneath her talent

T he curse of auburn-haired American women heading to Ireland for terrible magic-themed romcoms continues, 14 years after Amy Adams took an unfortunate vacation in the detestable Leap Year (a film that even her co-star Matthew Goode generously referred to as “turgid” within weeks of its release). There’s less at stake here – Adams was a two-time Oscar nominee leading her first romantic comedy – but we’re left in a similarly unremarkable place, a persuasive tourism ad masquerading as a real movie.

That might have sounded like a big enough get for star Lindsay Lohan a few years ago, when she was still trying to break her way out of Hollywood jail. A mixture of bad film choices, bad life decisions and bad behaviour left her an uninsurable pariah, even if she had also been the victim of an industry that made it almost impossible for her to emerge from her teenage years unscathed. But 2022 allowed her a foot back in the door, thanks to Netflix’s nostalgia lust with the junky festive romcom Falling for Christmas . It was as disposable as the streamer’s many, many, many other seasonal offerings but it was a major win for Lohan, her first lead in almost a decade and reportedly the most watched new Christmas movie that year.

It should have been enough to level her up, away from dross that she would have turned her nose up at in her prime but instead, she’s back again for a second go in Irish Wish, a film even blander and more boring than the last. The anonymity of her last Netflix romcom was perhaps more forgivable because of the season, when a great number of otherwise unacceptably shoddy films are given a mild pass because of the festive spirit. But without scene after scene drenched in eye-catching reds and greens and without a soundtrack of sub-Kelly Clarkson Christmas covers blaring, we’re forced to focus on the things they really shouldn’t want us to be focusing on.

The release of Irish Wish might be loosely pegged to St Patrick’s Day but apart from the scenery, it’s as Irish as a box of Lucky Charms and just as teeth-rottingly sweet. Lohan, at least scoring a nice holiday out of it all, is Maddie, a book editor madly in love with her big Irish author (Alexander Vlahos) but too afraid to tell him. In a tinny, red-flags-burning-everywhere kinda opener, we find out that she is a) adorkably clumsy, b) living in a cheap approximation of New York, c) the daughter of Jane Seymour’s school principal living in Ohio, d) honest about her feelings to her mum but weirdly not to her friends and e) just introducing her friends to the author. This then allows for a 27 Dresses-style disaster where a friend falls for him instead and we cut to Lohan travelling to Ireland for the wedding. She meets a handsome Englishman along the way (Ed Speleers) whom she hates for no real reason before she makes a wish on some old stone to become the real bride, made true by a magical Irish woman.

If that didn’t clue you into exactly where we’re at with Irish Wish, then maybe you should also know that the film starts with an on-screen definition of what a wish is for those who weren’t sure. The film could perhaps also do with a definition of what Irish is, with Lohan’s main love interest an English guy; her Irish object of affection – played by a Welsh actor – pushed as the UK’s biggest author yet coming from the Republic of Ireland; and the local pub, filled with locals doing the jig, trumpeted as selling “the best fish and chips in Ireland”. Lohan does drink a Guinness, though, and marvel at the local vistas, which are admittedly the best thing the film has to offer.

There is of course more here to remind us of Lohan’s unwavering charm but that’s not quite enough to distract from just how tired and limply written the whole thing is and how depressing it is to watch her still stuck here. Hasn’t she deserved at least one of the streamer’s classier romcoms by now, like last month’s better-than-usual Players ? When the film briefly shows some vague awareness of the psychopathy of the premise and her character, a far more entertaining thought of her embodying a sort of Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding-type antihero crosses the mind, an edge we crave while watching something so aggressively mundane.

Netflix has specialised in the kind of anodyne content that can be popped on in the background while some ironing is done, unlikely to ever distract from the key task at hand. It’s what we expect from them at this stage but it’s not what we wish for Lohan, an actor back on the ladder who deserves to climb a lot higher than this.

Irish Wish is now available on Netflix

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Ariana Grande Spins Heartbreak Into Gold on ‘Eternal Sunshine’

The pop star sets the end of a romance and the start of a new one to a soundtrack awash in lavish atmosphere and adventurous melodies, with help from Max Martin.

By Lindsay Zoladz

In 2019, the altitudinous-voiced pop star Ariana Grande released an exquisitely unbothered breakup song titled “Thank U, Next” — a light, chiming smash that mentioned several of her famous exes by name and then blithely banished them from her heart forever with a wink and a smile.

But the heartache that fuels her seventh album, “Eternal Sunshine,” is of a considerably deeper variety; it even takes its name from Michel Gondry’s 2004 movie about the impossible fantasy of purging a past relationship from memory. “I try to wipe my mind, just so I feel less insane,” Grande, 30, sings on its skittering, mid-tempo title track. The potent melancholy that suffuses the song, and much of the album, tells you about how well that went.

“Eternal Sunshine” is Grande’s first album in over three years, which is a considerable pause after a prolific stretch where she put out a hit LP nearly annually. She followed the poised, polished “Sweetener” in 2018 with two quickly produced albums that felt more off-the-cuff and conversational: the intimate and revelatory “Thank U, Next” and the love-struck but less consistent “Positions.”

Since then, she got divorced from her husband of two years, Dalton Gomez, and started a romance with Ethan Slater, her co-star in the upcoming movie version of the hit musical “Wicked.” An overall narrative arc of heartbreak and new love unfolds on “Eternal Sunshine.” But, in a departure from her last several albums — one of which featured a song named for Pete Davidson, the comedian to whom she was then engaged — Grande stops short of explicit nods to autobiography and lets sweeping, wholehearted emotion tell the story.

“Eternal Sunshine” is Grande’s most sustained collaboration with pop’s own Wizard of Oz, the Swedish hitmaker Max Martin , with whom she wrote or produced 11 of its 13 tracks. (Ilya Salmanzadeh, a longtime collaborator of both Grande and Martin, also helped write and produce much of the album.) Unsurprisingly, this is one of Grande’s most meticulously crafted and texturally consistent releases — it sounds as expensive as the gleaming treasures she sang about on “7 Rings” — though it lacks the whispered asides, rough edges and irreverent humor that made those last two albums so fun. Still, “Eternal Sunshine” is awash in lavish atmosphere, adventurous melodies and an emotional weight that brings a new sophistication to Grande’s songcraft.

On a brief introduction subtitled “End of the World,” Grande expresses doubts about a relationship and pops a burning question in the glowing lower depths of her register: “If it all ended tomorrow, would I be the one on your mind?” The answer lies in the title of the following song: “Bye.”

That track, a disco delicacy as richly layered as a five-tier cake, is one of the album’s finest moments — a showcase for both the belt-it-out power and the stop-on-a-dime agility of Grande’s voice. Martin’s approach to pop structure is famously rigid, but throughout “Eternal Sunshine,” Grande proves that she is a gifted and nimble enough singer to eke out considerable melodic freedom within his bounds. On the title track’s wrenching falsetto chorus, and on the ecstatic bridge of the second single, “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love),” she glides effortlessly across the sorts of notes that many of her peers can only gaze at like distant stars.

“Eternal Sunshine” is strongest when it leans hardest into R&B, a genre Grande impressively embraced on her gorgeously sung if somewhat traditionally arranged 2013 debut, “Yours Truly.” Here, and on a particularly strong stretch in the middle of the album, she and Martin coat the genre’s liquid cadences in a retro-futuristic Y2K-era sheen.

A molten-metal bass line warps its way through “True Story,” a slinky song about the finger-pointing stage of a relationship’s demise (“I’ll play the villain if you need me to, I know how this goes,” Grande sings with a resigned shrug). “The Boy Is Mine,” a lusty song about a forbidden crush, name-checks Brandy and Monica’s 1998 hit and features the sort of stuttering percussion that almost demands some stomping boy-band choreography. When you’re working with Martin, the guy who co-wrote “I Want It That Way” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” — why not?

“Eternal Sunshine” is a pop album so full of imaginative sonic details, there are even interesting moments on the weaker songs, like the celestial vocal ascent at the end of the relatively stiff “Supernatural” or the so-wrong-it’s-right note Grande reaches for in the chorus of “Imperfect for You.” The shimmering track underpinning the thumping “We Can’t Be Friends” skews dangerously close to Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” but Grande’s vocal performance and a few added flourishes — like the way the beat suddenly drops out when Grande mentions “silence” — ultimately give the song its own personality.

The house-inspired hit “Yes, And?” also nods to an immediately recognizable inspiration, Madonna’s eternal “Vogue,” albeit with a dash of vinegar. “Your business is yours and mine is mine,” Grande intones on the spoken-word bridge, a far cry from the transparent disclosures of “Thank U, Next.” Though it fares better in the context of the album, “Yes, And?” and its light tabloid talk-back still feels like an unrepresentative leadoff single — the album’s rare track that is focused outward rather than inward.

For once, there are no cameos from other artists here; even the backing vocals consist of densely layered, harmonizing Grandes. The album’s sole feature comes in its final moments, from Grande’s grandmother, who offers some sage relationship advice at the end of the sweet, hip-hop-inflected ballad “Ordinary Things”: If you don’t want to kiss your partner good night each evening, “you’re in the wrong place — get out.”

As Grande coos this ode to doing nothing with someone you love — “No matter what we do, there’s never going to be an ordinary thing” — a certain buoyancy has returned to her voice. Maybe it wasn’t the end of the world after all.

Ariana Grande ”Eternal Sunshine” (Republic)

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Ariana Grande  spins heartbreak into gold on “Eternal Sunshine.”

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Five Star Christmas

2020, Holiday/Romance, 1h 24m

Where to watch Five Star Christmas

Watch Five Star Christmas with a subscription on Hulu, rent on Apple TV, Vudu, Prime Video, or buy on Apple TV, Vudu, Prime Video.

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Five star christmas   photos.

After moving back to her hometown, a woman plots with her siblings and grandparents to help her father's new bed and breakfast get a five-star review from an incognito travel critic.

Rating: TVG

Genre: Holiday, Romance, Comedy

Original Language: English

Director: Christie Will

Producer: Ron French , Stephen Harmaty

Writer: Alfonso H. Moreno , Michael Elliot , Stephen Witkin

Release Date (Streaming): Oct 19, 2021

Runtime: 1h 24m

Production Co: Brad Krevoy Television

Sound Mix: Stereo

Aspect Ratio: HDTV

Cast & Crew

Bethany Joy Lenz

Lucy Ralston

Victor Webster

Jake Finlay

Robert Wisden

Ted Ralston

Laura Soltis

Beth Thompson

Jay Brazeau

Walter Ralston

Grace Beedie

Amber Ralston

Blair Penner

Will Ralston

Barbara Patrick

Suzanne Ralston

Margo Ralston

Sarah Edmondson

Annie Ralston

Tom Pickett

Mr. Donahue

Andres Collantes

Jesse Miller

Bea Assistant

Daniel Bacon

Rick Bishop

Mirabelle Will Wolf

Little Girl

Alistair Abell

Tisa Banga-Banga

Sweater Contestant

Christie Will

Alfonso H. Moreno

Screenwriter

Michael Elliot

Stephen Witkin

Stephen Harmaty

Vince Balzano

Executive Producer

Doran Chandler

Kevin Goetz

Stephen Hornyak

Eric Jarboe

Brad Krevoy

Amanda Phillips Atkins

Amy Belling

Cinematographer

Karen Porter

Film Editing

Terry Frewer

Original Music

Brad Karsgaard

Production Design

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Porn Star Rocco Siffredi’s Netflix Bio-Series ‘Supersex’ Is More Tedious Than Sexy: TV Review

By Aramide Tinubu

Aramide Tinubu

• Apple TV+’s Lincoln Assassination Drama ‘Manhunt’ Is Informative but Sluggish: TV Review 24 hours ago
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Loosely based on the experiences of real-life porn sensation Rocco Siffredi , known as the “Italian Stallion,” Netflix ’s “ Supersex ” isn’t actually very sexy at all. Instead, the seven-part series, created by Francesca Manieri, is a tale about family, masculinity and toxic bonds. While the show, which stars Alessandro Borghi in the lead role, has some interesting chapters, the surrealist elements — including some hallucinatory moments and the bizarre way some of the sex scenes are filmed — make it more than a biographical account. Instead, it’s an overly complex examination of relationships and the vices people indulge in to escape their emotional turmoil.

Series opener “Superpower” acts mainly as a coming-of-age story. Following Rocco’s retirement news, the show zips back to 1974. Ten-year-old Rocco Tano feels trapped in the impoverished rural town of Ortona and lost in the chaos of his family life. His mother is devoted to his mentally disabled brother Claudio, and Rocco lives in the shadow of his charismatic older half-brother, Tommaso (Adriano Giannini). Tommaso is Rocco’s North Star. He represents a type of freedom and hypermasculinity that appears out of reach for the men of Ortona. Tommaso also has the love of the town’s most stunning woman, Lucia (Jasmine Trinca), which only endears Rocco to him further.

In addition to examining Rocco’s family dynamic, “Supersex” zooms in on his fixation on sex, which begins at a very young age. The series unpacks his crush on Lucia and later his discovery of “Supersex,” a pornography magazine starring Gabriel Pontello. The euphoria from observing and later engaging in sex is a feeling Rocco chases across the next three decades. But his sex work comes at the expense of his mental health. It also destroys the romances and familial bonds he tries to form and maintain.

Despite a lifelong admiration of Tommaso’s machismo, his brother’s treatment of Lucia, who funds their lifestyle through her sex work on the streets of Paris, slowly shifts Rocco’s point of view. An invitation to a sex club awakens previously unknown desires. Becoming a porn star gives him financial security, but his inner turmoil stems from trying to live up to the expectations his family places on him.

“Supersex” dwells far too long on Rocco’s dysfunctional brotherhood with Tommaso, giving the toxic and exhausting connection unneeded exposition. Fewer episodes and less time spent on the self-destructive café manager would have kept the storyline squarely on Rocco’s psyche. Moreover, Manieri positions Lucia’s life as a counternarrative to Rocco’s. As with Rocco’s female co-stars, she isn’t allowed the same agency and status he obtains. Women are sexualized and then vilified for being sexual in the same breath. While Lucia eventually finds herself on a new path, it’s not without suffering and sacrifice, difficulties Rocco never contends with. The pair are an intriguing juxtaposition, but this mirroring gets muddled under their dark pull toward Tommaso. Similarly, Rocco’s enthusiasm for rough sex acts is never fully explored.

Still, “Supersex” makes some smart choices. Intercourse and other types of sex are showcased, of course, but these scenes aren’t gratuitous. Instead, they illustrate Rocco’s emotional state as he deals with loss and yearning or even demonstrate his self-worth.

The penultimate episode, “Resurrection of the Bodies,” is the standout and centers on Rocco’s return to Ortona amid his mother’s illness and one of the biggest highlights of his career, winning best European actor at the Hot d’Or Awards. In 53 minutes, Rocco confronts the effects of shame and how so-called family members react to him when he’s no longer playing by their rules.

Though Rocco’s story is solidly depicted, audiences hoping for a bio-series-type narrative won’t find it here. It’s also worth noting that Netflix offers a dubbed English version, but the show is best viewed in Italian with subtitles. Overall, “Supersex” isn’t just an examination of one man’s life and career but a look at the lives people create, however unconventional, when they dare to move through the world as their most authentic selves.

“Supersex” premieres March 6 on Netflix .

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