Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This weekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching. 

This week’s new release slate includes three big Oscar nominees (and one winner), an acclaimed indie that should’ve been up there with them, new Aardman animation on Netflix, a muscular old-school action flick, and two new Blu-rays from Criterion. 

Continue reading The 9 Best Movies To Buy Or Stream This Week: ‘Jojo Rabbit,’ ‘Beautiful Day,’ ’21 Bridges’ & More at The Playlist.

The Writers Guild of America announced the remaining nominees for their 2020 awards and despite a number of key films being ineligible, the screenplays selected turned out to be more than worthy of the honor.  The WGA Awards’ Original Screenplay category was led by “1917,” “Booksmart,” “Knives Out,” “Marriage Story” and “Parasite.”  The Adapted Screenplay field features “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” “The Irishman,” “Jojo Rabbit,” “Joker” and “Little Women.” 

Screenplays that were not eligible because the writers are not members of the WGA included last night’s Golden Globe winner for Best Screenplay, “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” by Quentin Tarantino, “Pain and Glory” by Pedro Almodovar and “The Farewell” by Lulu Wang, among others. 

Continue reading ‘Knives Out,’ ‘Parasite’ & ‘Little Women’ Earn 2020 WGA Awards Nominations at The Playlist.

Happy Holidays to you and yours. This season brings forth time-honored traditions of attempting to take it easy at work to spend time with loved ones, and compiling the year-end “Best Of” list and debate online whether or not it’s been a good year for movies.

READ MORE: The 100 Best Films Of The Decade

I’m speaking generally, of course. There are two firmly-held beliefs I have when it comes to making a “Best Of” list that you could tattoo on my forehead, carve on my tombstone, etc.

Continue reading Ryan Oliver’s Top 25 Films of 2019 [Video] at The Playlist.

The Screen Actors Guild announced the nominess for the 26th SAG Awards and the big winners across both film and television were “The Irishman,” “Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, “Jojo Rabbit,” “The Morning Show, “Bombshell” and, “Jojo Rabbit.”  Oh, and “Parasite” which became just the second film not completely in the English language to earn a SAG Ensemble nomination.  It was quite a morning.

READ MORE: “Marriage Story” and “The Crown” lead all 2020 Golden Globe Awards nominations

This year’s Motion Picture Ensemble honor was one of the most competitive in years.  

Continue reading ‘The Irishman,’ ‘Fleabag’ &, Yes, ‘Parasite’ Top 2020 SAG Awards Nominees at The Playlist.

Everything-is-epic culture has transformed film trailers over the last few years. What used to be a commercial for a movie has now changed into a mini-event. Now, we get the teaser, the teaser for the teaser, the teaser trailer, the full trailer, the NSFW trailer, and the extended trailer. But here, we are paradoxically, hypocritically, contradictorily complaining about marketing, but also celebrating the art that’s sometimes part of it—at least the non-promotional aspect of it, if you can separate that from the product.

Continue reading The Best Movie Trailers Of 2019 at The Playlist.

In an era where female filmmakers are close to getting their due (there’s still a long, long way to go), one director who deserves more accolades and praise is Marielle Heller.  The former actor has helmed three impressive features so far, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (one of the best films of the decade), “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (which landed Melissa McCarthy and Ricard E.

Continue reading Marielle Heller Says British Audiences Kept Waiting For Something Sinister In ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

It’s Disney’s world and we’re just living in it. Honestly, when it was announced that “Frozen II” would be released this weekend, it was a guarantee that the Mouse House would trounce the rest of the box office competition. So, we can’t say we’re surprised that it actually happened. However, it’s the actual totals that were put up that are probably even above Disney’s huge expectations.

Released six years after the original film, “Frozen II” earned a whopping $127 million domestically and a new animated record of $350 million worldwide.

Continue reading ‘Frozen II’ Shatters Record For Biggest Worldwide Animated Debut As Disney Continues Its Box Office Dominance at The Playlist.

Get your tissues ready, because another trailer for the Mister Rogers biopic “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” has dropped. In perhaps what may be a perfectly cast role, America’s dad Tom Hanks will don the iconic red cardigan as he steps into the role of the beloved children’s TV show host Fred Rogers. This story goes beyond the classic TV show to discuss who Fred Rogers was outside of his TV persona and the impact he had on those around him.

Continue reading New ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ Trailer Is Here To Make You Cry Happy Tears at The Playlist.

With award season almost upon us, studios are starting their campaigns and posting featurettes showcasing the craft behind some of the most acclaimed movies of the year. When it comes to actors, featurettes are usually about the heavy makeup or deep research that went into creating the characters we see on screen. But when it comes to “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” and Tom Hanks’ role as Fred Rogers, simplicity is key.

Continue reading New Behind-The-Scenes Featurette Shows Tom Hanks Becoming Mr. Rogers In ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” at The Playlist.

Can you believe it’s November already? This means it’s crunch time for the big releases hoping to cash out before the end of the year. Each week it seems there’s a new form of awards contender and a requisite blockbuster. It’s a great time to be a film fan with a tremendous amount of interesting and critically acclaimed films making official debuts this month, with some of our living greats releasing films being dubbed their best to slowly rising new talents ready to take center stage.

Continue reading 13 Films To Watch In November: ‘The Irishman,’ ‘Marriage Story,’ ‘Knives Out’ & More at The Playlist.

He’s won two Oscars, a Kennedy Center honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, seven Emmy Awards, two SAG Awards, an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, a PGA Lifetime Achievement Award, an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and four Golden Globe Awards, among other honors.  Now, Tom Hanks will be feted by the latter with the HFPA’s Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2020 Golden Globes ceremony in January. A ceremony that may also find him nominated for his role as Fred Rogers in Marielle Heller’s “A Beautiful Day in the Neighbhorhood.”

REVIEW: Tom Hanks is transformative in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” [Review]

In a statement, HFPA President Lorenzo Soria remarked, “The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is proud to bestow the 2020 Cecil B.

Continue reading Tom Hanks Will Take Home Cecil B. DeMille Award At 2020 Golden Globes at The Playlist.

There’s a moment in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” where Lloyd Vogel, the fictional counterpart of one Tom Junod played by Matthew Rhys, addresses an audience of fellow journalists and admits to them that he writes for magazines because doing anything else doesn’t feel like living properly.

READ MORE: 2019 Toronto International Film Festival: 25 Most Anticipated Movies

Writing reviews of movies in the blur of a festival can feel strange.

Continue reading ‘A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood’: This Is No Safe Mister Rogers Biopic & Tom Hanks Is Transformative [TIFF Review] at The Playlist.

You’ve heard the refrain from us a lot lately. The fall film festival season is upon us and life is nuts. The Telluride Film Festival just ended on Monday. The Venice Film Festival is still going strong, though near the end. And now it’s time for the largest festival in North America, arguably the world: the Toronto International Film Festival. Now TIFF can be seen, in some ways, as pretty broad, McDonald’s-like, featuring many, many stars and red-carpet glamor, all the things that make film festivals feel superficial from the outside.

Continue reading 2019 Toronto International Film Festival: 25 Most Anticipated Movies at The Playlist.

It’s sad, but true: summer is coming to an end, school is gearing up (if you’re still of that age), and the fall film festival season is upon us. That means, it’s time to pack away the blockbusters—for the most part, anyhow—put away the superhero toys and get ready for the season of adult-centered dramas and awards-contending movies.

READ MORE: The Best Films Of 2019… So Far

With the advent of the fall, we’re going to get a rush of new films, some of them from the Cannes and Sundance film festivals, that are finally hitting North American shores, but also major waves of new titles from the big five film festivals: Venice, Telluride, the Toronto International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, and the New York Film Festival.

Continue reading 2019 Fall Preview: The 45 Most Anticipated Films at The Playlist.

The Toronto International Film Festival should be riding high. The 2018 festival included world premieres of critically lauded films such as Claire Denis’ “High Life,” Matthew Heineman’s “A Private War,” Steve McQueen’s “Widows,” Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria Bell,” Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Alex Ross Perry’s “Her Smell.” And its audience winner, “Green Book,” became the first TIFF debut to win Best Picture since “The Hurt Locker” in 2010.

Continue reading Nine Things We Learned From TIFF’s 2019 Slate: ‘Judy,’ ‘Marriage Story,’ ‘Hustlers’ & More at The Playlist.

With her last film, the critically-acclaimed “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” Marielle Heller accepted the grueling challenge of painting an odious misanthrope in a positive light. And dang, she pulled it off with aplomb, Melissa McCarthy and screenwriters Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty helping the director make notorious bunco writer Lee Israel not only excusable but utterly endearing (read our review here).

READ MORE: The Best Films Of 2019… So Far

Heller clearly isn’t tempted by an easy life, her upcoming feature “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” entailing molding Tom Hanks into the iconic Mr.

Continue reading ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’ Trailer: Tom Hanks Is Born To Play Mr. Rogers at The Playlist.