Tag: reviews

  • The 20 best opening scenes in film

    An opening scene is a contract with the audience, establishing a movie’s tone, stakes, and rules before the story has fully begun. Screenwriters have long had it drummed into their heads that the first 5 to 10 pages can determine whether a script gets read at all (much less made), while filmmakers know they have…

  • The 10 best films about aging

    Everyone gets old, at least the most fortunate of us do, but Hollywood doesn’t have a robust track record for movies about aging. That’s not particularly surprising for a medium that likes things young and beautiful, but it is disappointing. The forays into aging tend to be cutesy or depressing. There’s not much middle ground.…

  • The 10 best performances by film directors (not typically known for acting)

    Scores of great actors have transitioned to equally successful careers directing—Clint Eastwood, John Cassavetes, Orson Welles, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Greta Gerwig, and Jordan Peele, to name just a few—but the jump from behind the camera to in front of it is much less common. When it does happen, the result can be revelatory. Hence,…

  • The 20 best needle drops in film

    Although “needle drop” initially referred to lowering a phonograph needle onto a vinyl record, the term has since expanded to describe the use of preexisting music in place of an original film score. Because we come to the movie theater with our own cultural baggage regarding certain tunes, a preexisting song can do a lot…

  • The 20 best performances by a child actor

    W.C. Fields famously advised against ever working with children or animals. While any discussion of thespian animals can wait for another day, I come in defense of child actors, many of whom have delivered outstanding performances in the movies. One hopes the gifted young actors listed below weren’t subjected to the sort of head games…

  • The 10 best mindfuck films

    The label of “mindfuck films” didn’t really come around until the late 1990s, but moviemakers were producing mindfucks as far back as 1929, when surrealists like Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí were slicing a calf’s eyeball in Un Chien Andalou. But one doesn’t have to resort to such extremes to make a mindfuck. For purposes…

  • The 10 best films about filmmaking

    It’s hardly surprising that an industry devoted to mythmaking has long been fascinated with its own self-image. Movies about moviemaking are nearly as old as the medium itself, with “behind the scenes” comedies about Hollywood appearing as early as the 1910s. Viewpoints vary widely, however, ranging from valentines like Singin’ in the Rain and Day…

  • The 20 best hangout films

    Sometimes you just want to be with a film. Quentin Tarantino is often credited with popularizing the term “hangout movie” back in a New Yorker profile where he referenced the 1959 western Rio Bravo (see #6 below). What’s a hangout movie, you ask? A movie you can chill with and return to. A movie whose…