Category: Film

  • The 15 best coming-of-age movies

    From Pip to Holden Caulfield and everything in between (as well as before and after, for that matter), the coming-of-age story has been indispensable. There are a multitude of variations, of course: a first love or heartbreak, that first encounter with mortality, learning a momentous truth about a parent or friend, discovering right and wrong.…

  • The 15 best school-centric films

    For good or ill––or, more accurately, for good and ill––school is where we learn our socialization skills (or lack thereof). Oh, it’s also where we just plain learn, of course: reading, writing, arithmetic and whatnot. But there are also crucial lessons to be had out of the classroom, whether that be in the cafeteria, the…

  • The 10 best movie dystopias

    It can always be worse. At least, that’s what moviegoers have long told themselves, and so there is a weird comfort that comes from losing yourself in big-screen dystopias. Fritz Lang likely jumpstarted the genre in 1927 with Metropolis’ tale of haves and have-nots, but speculative pessimism quickly caught on in cinema. Like the best…

  • The 10 best journalism movies

    Long before the profession of journalism fell prey to culture wars, movies about reporters tended to depict them as the-people-have-a-right-to-know crusaders or, more often, as doughy guys in ill-fitting suits who chainsmoke, drink from flasks hidden in their desks, and crack wise to each other. Speaking as someone who has worked in the news media…

  • The 10 best black comedies

    You have to laugh to keep from crying, the saying goes, but black comedies give us the luxury of doing both. Gallows humor isn’t solely a coping mechanism. Laughter can be empowering. Moreover, by nudging the comic possibilities of the tragic and the taboo, purveyors of dark comedy don’t conceal uncomfortable truths––they expose them. Below…

  • The 10 most memorable movie marriages

    Cinema has been terrifically successful at depicting dysfunctional marriages, but much less so at portraying the other kind. Make of that what you will. Of course, the warts-and-all approach might be preferable to the days back when the Production Code governed onscreen social norms. According to the Hollywood of yesteryear, happily married couples slept in…

  • The 10 best male buddy movies

    Friendship is, as Cole Porter succinctly put it, the perfect blendship. Maybe so, although margaritas and Reese’s peanut butter cups are definitely in the race. At minimum, the buddy film has long been a mainstay of cinema. Here are my picks for the all-time best male buddy pictures (my take on the best female buddy…

  • The best movies of 2025!

    For cinephiles, 2025—much as with nearly every other facet of society—was not for the faint of heart. Netflix’s intended purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery has ominous implications for the long-term future of movie theaters. The introduction last September of a fully AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood flipped out Hollywood for a period. New ideas continued…