Category: Film

  • The 10 best R-rated comedies

    Let’s just say it: dirty jokes are pretty effing funny. The best R-rated comedies, however, are more than exercises in vulgarity. They’re happily transgressive, pushing past the boundaries of good taste and dragging the audience along with them. Laughter may be the best medicine, but sometimes adults need something stronger than aspirin.  10. The Hangover…

  • The 10 best political films

    Political junkies love movies about politics, but the dirty little secret is that so do a lot of folks who claim to hate politics. The reason is simple. The best examples focus on who acquires power, how they wield it, and whose lives are changed as a result. From the rise of Willie Stark in…

  • The 10 best workplace films

    For most adults, work consumes more waking hours than almost anything except sleep. Admittedly, not all of that time is spent working; some of it likely includes scrolling through TikTok or watching the second hand crawl toward quitting time (or so I’m told). Even so, the workplace occupies an enormous share of modern life—and provides…

  • The 10 best films about infidelity

    As a general rule, any violation of one of the 10 Commandments tends to be great story material. There’s a reason cheating has long been a mainstay of literature, film and television, not to mention about 90% of the lyrics that have come out of Nashville. Infidelity is catnip for storytellers. The stakes are baked…

  • 10 memorable movie mothers

    “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world,” wrote William Ross Wallace in a poem extolling the greatness of moms. Like most things involving mothers, that sentiment feels a bit loaded. Our relationship with mothers is … complicated. We love them, but fear them, too––particularly when they use your full…

  • The 10 best bathroom scenes in film

    Bathrooms: We all use ‘em, but it took a curiously long time for Hollywood to challenge the Production Code’s ban on showing them on screen. Once that changed, however (we have Sir Alfred Hitchcock to thank for that, by the way), bathrooms have gotten their close-up. And why not? It’s where we’re most private and…

  • The 25 best love stories in film

    This just in: Moviegoers love romance. Beginning with The Kiss in 1896, cinema has excavated emotional gold from affairs of the heart. Big-screen love stories are so pervasive, in fact, that most of us know the tropes by heart (pun intended), from the meet-cute to that inevitable climax in which someone, usually male, makes a…

  • The 10 best films about time travel

    Time travel movies aren’t really about time. Yes, the idea of moving through time is fantastical, but such stories are conduits to explore themes as diverse as nostalgia, regret, fate and free will. These are my picks for the 10 best movies about time travel. 10. My Old Ass (2024, dir: Megan Park) “If I…