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The 15 best film noir
Film noir didn’t know it was film noir. French critics coined the term after World War II to describe a cycle of American crime pictures steeped in shadow and cynicism, but the filmmakers themselves were simply reflecting a changed world. Drawing on the starkness of German Expressionism, the films traded in hard contrasts: light and…
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The 15 best revenge movies
Revenge is one of the oldest, most durable engines in storytelling. From The Lion King to John Wick, movie audiences have made it clear they like that eye-for-an-eye business. At least they do on that giant screen in the darkened theater, where moviegoers find complicit satisfaction in vengeance being served. Maybe part of the draw…
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The 10 best female buddy films
Big-screen portrayals of female friendship are far less common than those of their male counterparts—unless, that is, the female buddy movie revolves around romance. When not focused on menfolk and how to snag one, the movies of classic Hollywood were often flat-out ambivalent about friendships among women. Even some of the best of classic Hollywood,…
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The 10 best movies 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…
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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…