Tag: writing

  • The 10 best films featuring cannibalism

    While Hannibal Lecter is no doubt cinema’s most infamous cannibal, we don’t see him actually chow down in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Cannibalism is one of the most taboo subjects for movies to explore, but there have been a few gutsy enough to venture into the people-eating side of things. Caveat: these are…

  • 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 10 best gangster films

    Crime doesn’t pay? Try telling that to filmmakers. The gangster movie is among cinema’s most enduring genres, offering audiences the vicarious thrill of being bad. Its golden age came in the 1930s, when hard-edged, Pre-Code pictures such as Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, and Scarface: The Shame of a Nation introduced a rogue’s gallery of…

  • The 10 most memorable movie teachers

    There isn’t typically much middle ground when it comes to teachers in the movies. They tend to be inspirational or tyrannical. There’s one trait, however, they share: influence. The classroom is one of the few places where a single person can shape scores of lives at once, which is why cinema has produced some unforgettable…

  • The 10 best haunted-house films

    Creaking floors, hidden passageways, curious sounds, maybe a ghost or 13… Who doesn’t love a good haunted house story? 10. The Changeling (1980,  dir. Peter Medak) George C. Scott plays John Russell, a composer and university music professor mourning the deaths of his wife and daughter in a car accident. As every widower knows, nothing…

  • The 10 best films about dreams

    “Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams,” mused the great Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini. “Years can pass in a second and you can hop from one place to another. It’s a language made of image.” It only makes sense, then, that a medium with such similarities…

  • The 10 best films based on real-life crimes (that don’t involve serial killers or organized crime)

    From streaming docuseries and podcasts to books and social-media deep dives, true crime is everywhere. Movies recognized the sensational appeal early. One of cinema’s first true-crime reenactments came in 1901 with Execution of Czolgosz with Panorama of Auburn Prison, in which Edison Studios combined actual footage of the prison with a staged depiction of President…

  • The 10 best road-trip films

    “I take the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me,” wrote the poet Walt Whitman, long before anyone in Hollywood even thought about shooting a road-trip movie. The road is a potent metaphor. It symbolizes growth, freedom, reinvention and escape––or just a place to get your kicks (if you’re on Route 66, anyway)––but the…