With today’s never-ending sea of content production, we all inevitably miss out on seeing at least a few films on our radar. Catching up the movies somehow passed us by is often how many cinema lovers spend the early months of the new calendar year. Unless you’ve been a-hankering for all the groundbreaking achievements that studios love to drop in January (buy your opening night tickets for “Dr. Dolittle” yet?), most trips to the multiplex will find your average film buff checking out the awards players and festival darlings which friends have been buzzing about for months that passed them by.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2019 You Didn’t See 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.

So here we are suddenly, after all that fuss, in December — the nursing home of the year — looking back with wistfulness, regret and not a little self-mythologizing at the friends we made and betrayed, the tall tales we’ve heard and the, um, houses we’ve painted in the year of our Lord 2019. That’s right, I am comparing the compilation of The Playlist’s Best Films of 2019 list to the mental reckoning of a lonely, aging mob hitman who may or may not have been involved with the death of Jimmy Hoffa.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2019 at The Playlist.

August is one of the more interesting movie months in the calendar year. At once, it’s a dumping ground for major studios to unpack their unwanted, potentially bad, films before kids go back to school. Simultaneously, it’s an opportunity for the smaller distributors to get a jump on awards season to release provocative efforts that would likely be edged out during the fall competition.

On this week’s episode of The Discourse – the show in which we discuss film and television reviews, occasional news, and any other pertinent pop culture items that we feel the need to weigh-in on – we choose to discuss the latter, ignoring the five(!) wide releases that came out this weekend because, well, none of them sounded all that interesting.

Continue reading Sifting Through Provocative Subject Matter In ‘The Nightingale’ & ‘Luce’ [The Discourse Podcast] at The Playlist.

It has already been a bizarre summer for movies, it’s only going to get stranger in August before the upheaval of the festival circuit is further set upon us and awards season kicks into high gear. Until then, while there are certainly interesting films to get us by, we’re going to continue to be hit with a smorgasbord of odd selections, from hard-hitting documentaries to the most ridiculous action flicks the genre could hurtle our way.

Continue reading 11 Movies To Watch In August: ‘Scary Stories,’ ‘Peanut Butter Falcon,’ ‘The Kitchen’ & More at The Playlist.

Is the ‘Fast & Furious’ franchise big enough for spin-off films? Universal was hoping the answer would be yes. That’s why the studio pumped in $200 million into the production of the series’ first spin-off, ‘Hobbs & Shaw.’ And if the opening weekend box office is any indication, the answer to the question is a resounding…sure.

READ MORE: ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ Takes Ridiculousness To A Whole New Nos-Fueled Level But Survives On Pure Chemistry [Review]

Let’s be real, with an opening weekend estimated at $60.8 million, ‘Hobbs & Shaw,’ starring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, didn’t open to ‘Fast’ numbers, but still did really damn great.

Continue reading ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ Muscles Its Way To The Top But Isn’t Quite As Dominant As ‘Fast & Furious’ [Box Office] at The Playlist.

Critics out of Sundance this year have been talking about Julius Onah’s new film, “Luce.” Leads Kelvin Harrison Jr., Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, and Tim Roth bring their A-game in this thrilling drama that is certain to create a conversation surrounding its themes of privilege, and accountability where its characters are concerned.

‘Luce’: Julius Onah’s Powerfully Constructed Psychodrama Of Race & Social Politics Is Brilliantly Tense [Review]

Luce Edgar (Kelvin Williamson Jr.

Continue reading ‘Luce’: Octavia Spencer & Naomi Watts Talk Complex Characters That Don’t Have All The Answers [Interview] at The Playlist.

At the heart of the upcoming thriller “Luce” is a battle between the title character and his high school teacher. Not a physical struggle, but instead, a battle of wits and psychology, as the two people attempt to convince the other characters, as well as the audience, about who is right and who is wrong. It’s a battle that is beautifully acted thanks to Octavia Spencer and her co-star Kelvin Harrison, Jr.

Continue reading ‘Luce’ Exclusive Clip: Octavia Spencer Is Involved In A Tense Debate With A Student In Julius Onah’s Thriller at The Playlist.

If you’re a fan of quality film scores, you probably were amazed by last year’s work by composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow on the sci-fi film “Annihilation.” The score for that film, accompanied by Alex Garland’s visuals, was one of the best of 2018. And now, the duo is back with a new score, this time for the upcoming dramatic thriller “Luce.”

And in honor of the soundtrack’s impending release in August, coinciding with the film, we are thrilled to be able to present our readers with an exclusive first listen to a couple of tracks from Salisbury and Barrow’s score for “Luce.” And as you can hear, the composers have returned with another unique, beautiful score that perfectly accompanies the film.

Continue reading ‘Luce’ Exclusive Music: Listen To 2 Tracks From The Upcoming Soundtrack From Composers Behind ‘Annihilation’ at The Playlist.

“Luce,” a smash-hit at Sundance and a hotly anticipated 2019 release, stars Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Harrison Jr., and Tim Roth in a psychodrama which our critic Jordan Ruimy described as “brilliantly tense.” A psychological thriller with sociopolitical underpinnings, “Luce” is sure to stir up strong feelings about the status quo and may challenge your ideas of how we perceive and judge people. 

Continue reading ‘Luce’ Trailer: Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer & Tim Roth Star In A Brilliant Psychodrama at The Playlist.

Thanks to Marvel and the ‘Avengers’ films, summer blockbuster season starts in April now, so technically, our summer movie preview is late. That’s ok. This summer is stacked, as usual, and that does not even account for the upcoming Cannes Film Festival which will have plenty of arthouse blockbusters premieres and mainstream movies like the new Quentin Tarantino film. Yes, summer 2019 is jam-packed. There are all kinds of blockbusters, indies, arthouse films, horror movies—many of which we’ve already covered here— and more.

Continue reading Summer Movie Preview: 35 Films You Shouldn’t Miss at The Playlist.

To play a broken record: there’s absolutely no rest for the wicked. The film industry rarely takes a break. The SXSW Film Festival dominated March, we’ve had a few cons and festivals in between (CinemaCon, True/False Festival), the Cannes Film Festival is on its way in May and spring in New York is always about the Tribeca Film Festival.

The 18th annual iteration of the Festival, which runs April 24 to May 5, will showcase debut works from emerging talent and new works from notable filmmakers.

Continue reading Tribeca Film Festival: 15 Must-See Movies at The Playlist.

It’s been less than a week since the 2019 Sundance Film Festival projected its final film, but it already feels like a million years ago. That might have been because overall it was strangely quiet in Park City this year.  No uplifting Women’s March like the last two years.  No crazy snowfall.  No massive stars.  Honestly, the biggest controversy was over the Michael Jackson “Leaving Neverland” documentary which saw two grandmothers, er, protesters show up and all they really cared about was getting a TV interview.  

Continue reading Oscar Comes To Sundance & Six Other Takeaways From A Workmanlike Fest at The Playlist.

The 2019 Sundance Film Festival saw a festival in flux.  Amazon Studios dominated the acquisitions front picking up five different films at almost unheard of prices while A24 arrived with five films and left with six. How many will we be talking about a year or two from now?  That remains to be seen on the narrative side given the last two Grand Jury U.S. Dramatic winners, “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” and “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore,” were quickly forgotten.

Continue reading Best & Worst Of The 2019 Sundance Film Festival at The Playlist.

In two short years, Trump’s toxic America, has turned race, privilege, and class into incendiary topics while amplifying intolerance, and Julius Onah‘s powerfully constructed “Luce,” mixes all these socio-political subjects into a provocative Molotov cocktail that shatters, burns and leaves no easy answers.

READ MORE: Sundance 2019 Film Festival Preview: 25 Must-See Films

A dissecting, and even confrontational, look into the American Dream, “Luce” features at its core a married couple going through a series of shocking, ambiguous and difficult-to-describe events involving their adopted African-American son, a straight-A student and all-star athlete.

Continue reading ‘Luce’: Julius Onah’s Powerfully Constructed Psychodrama Of Race & Social Politics Is Brilliantly Tense [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.