When they are inevitably killed, it feels like the end of more than just a film, even if it’s meant to capture the desperation of the Great Depression. A film by an obsessive about obsession, Jake Gyllenhaal is perfectly cast as the fastidious crossword writer determined to crack the case at the cost of his marriage. The director is known for his meticulous and tiring amount of takes, which are designed to break the actors of their quirks and get them to show us their raw selves on screen. In some of his other films, this can seem like auteur nonsense, but here, it only enhances the depths of despair and darkness that await these characters in the glittering lights of the city.
October 13, 2023 • A writer stands accused of killing her husband in this film, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. October 13, 2023 • Writers, directors and other Hollywood union members demand the studios and streamers come back to the bargaining table with performers. Across theaters, streaming, and on-demand, these are the movies Rotten Tomatoes users are checking out at this very moment, including Killers of the Flower Moon (see Martin Scorsese movies ranked), Old Dads, and The Burial. Henry Winkler says he was afraid of being typecast when he decided not to take the lead role as Danny Zucko in the 1978 musical “Grease” because of his “Happy Days” fame. Social media users reacted to news that Disney pushed back the premiere of its live-action “Snow White” reboot until 2025, speculating it was due to conservative backlash.
It stars Lily Gladstone as an Osage woman and Leonardo DiCaprio as the low-level white thug who professes to love her. But he continues to do the bidding of his uncle (Robert De Niro), who’s stealing from and murdering her people. John Cho is absolutely magnetic as a father trying to find his missing daughter in a film designed to hold your attention. Director Aneesh Chaganty contains the action to Cho interacting with the world through a computer the way a child would. As he moves from app to app uncovering more leads, you’re increasingly hooked on the tension and convinced by the story’s authenticity. Everything, from the way the clues are parsed out to typing on a cell phone, lights up a reward center in the viewer’s brain that craves more.
Here, F. Gary Gray manages to help her and the ensemble shine as women who turn to crime after getting fed up with racist work environments. Jada Pinkett Smith, Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, and the always-winning Kimberly Elise absolutely run circles around a very good Blair Underwood playing a loverboy and John C. McGinley as a detective trying to take them down. It’s been nearly 30 years since Set It Off’s release, and there’s arguably no group of actors in a crime movie locked so fully into the same vibe before or since. Delroy Lindo and Gene Hackman show their younger castmates how it’s done in David Mamet’s elegant story about two aging best friends and career criminals going in for one last burglary. Mamet is known for theater, but he’s had an equally weird and interesting experience in Hollywood, where he essays distinct moments like the wild plane scene in Heist and its ending, which is so perfectly stupid in its logic that it’s almost genius. Hackman and Lindo are more than believable as shifty men who are always fidgeting with energy, thinking about the next move while trying to seem present and calm.
Here, Elliott Gould brings a deft touch to his hang-dog detective Philip Marlowe, moving with a lightness that’s hard to pin down but is undeniably comic. The first 10 minutes are an incredible swirl of paranoia, alcoholism, and sluggish dumbness when Gould just needs to feed his cat. With a narrative split between Marlowe’s mania and the world of Hollywood crime, Altman’s sense of film language and impeccably composed shots tie the two together cohesively. If you don’t mind hanging out, this is as good as it gets for messy, bumbling detectives and their cases — and the harmonica playing at the end justifies the runtime alone.
The best-composed film of Francis Ford Coppola’s career, The Conversation seems to always be in motion, with the camera floating through different iterations of cinematic reality. Unsurprisingly by this point in the list, Gene Hackman plays a surveillance expert named Harry Caul, who captures a conversation he obsesses over to mesmerizing effect, with the film functioning as a character study and thriller in equal measure. Paranoid and living his life in as much privacy as possible, the film’s ending is an incredible feat of powerful acting — and a generous reminder that Hackman never lost a step in his effusive career. It’s easy to recognize how great Queen Latifah is now, but in the 1990s, she was still fighting for recognition, be it for her musical talent, her impeccable comedy chops on the legendary Living Single, or as an actor in more dramatic fare.
Taylor Swift has been welcomed like “family” into Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs crew, according to a body language expert who analyzed the pop star’s moves with her new friends. John Cena, Alison Brie and Juan Pablo Raba costar in a strenuously zany hot-spot free movies online action comedy that comes too soon after ‘The Lost City’ to feel original. The film’s themes of city corruption and inexplicable injustice ripple across countless lesser projects, but the way Chinatown lands is so nihilistic that it’s downright soul-crushing.
A damn fun product of its time, Goodfellas is a perfect film to start a decade following 10 years of excess, power suits, and explosions. By telling a relatively straightforward story that blends real people from the era of the Gotti mafia family with imagined characters, Martin Scorsese’s dramedy biopic about a kid who falls in love with the gangster life is as even-keeled as anything the director has made. Prior to this film, he often had big ideas that felt hampered by a frenetic energy and less-than-clear direction.
Retired Gary Dove (Ray Winstone) just wants to live a good life in Spain, but British underworld recruiter Don Logan (Ben Kingsley) won’t let him rest. If you’ve ever wondered how Kingsley landed his role as Trevor Slattery in the MCU, look no further. Here, he torments Winstone with a profane version of his character in the Marvel films. There’s also an incredible underwater vault sequence that makes full use of Glazer’s music video know-how. The underrated Widows was Steve McQueen’s follow-up to the incredible 12 Years a Slave, pivoting to tell a fluid and complex story that weaves meditations on marriage and betrayal.
October 19, 2023 • Martin Scorsese’s film, based on David Grann’s book, tells the true story of white men in the 1920s who married into and systematically murdered Osage families to gain claims to their oil-rich land. October 26, 2023 • Paul Giamatti plays a boarding school teacher charged with watching over the students who have no where to go during winter break in a throwback film that doesn’t quite live up to its potential. September 19, 2023 • With Hollywood on strike for most of the summer, we check in on the new releases for the fall. Our critics share their recommendations for more than 25 films coming out between now and Thanksgiving. The spinoff of American Horror Story, this episodic anthology series returns with four new stories.
George Clooney (in the midst of his ER run) and a dedicated Jennifer Lopez have more than enough room to heat up the screen in this sexy heist film about a charming thief, a formidable tender officer, and all the mischief within a mansion. Lopez is at the top of her acting game here, and the film catches Steven Soderbergh at a time when he wants to flex a bit, resulting in an unforgettable opener involving a body in a trunk and a finale shoot-out that’s an impressive sequence for a director drowning in them. Bill Duke, hot off 1991’s A Rage in Harlem, directs this compelling story about identity, obsession, and the murkiness of police task forces.
With venom and shrewd determination, Nicholson paints his character as a swaggering monster who milks every syllable of his dialogue with vitriolic relish. Here, he manages to have his fingerprints all over the film without it feeling too wishy-washy or grandiose, an arguably new skillset for the director that came into sharp focus with The Aviator (2006), which also stars DiCaprio. The final sequence of The Departed features what might be the most surprising and stunning death in a Scorsese movie, to the point that it makes shoes wrapped in bagged booties a genuinely terrifying sight. Michael Mann wanted audiences to take the journey with James Caan’s career criminal, Frank, from getting out of jail to setting up shop, stealing, being double-crossed, and everything else that goes into the makings of fugative.
Here — with generous assistance from Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and an excellent Ray Liotta as players in a propulsive story about the romance and horror of being a knockaround guy — Scorsese finds momentum. The film not only clicked into place something for the director, but for culture as a whole, as the oft-imitated use of voiceover, classic rock, and a breezy approach to intense characters has been used to make television and movies pop ever since Goodfellas hit the scene. After a long and illustrious career, no one expected any more surprises from Jack Nicholson, yet here he is, giving the complex Irish mafia boss Frank Costello the best he has to offer.