It’s March again and arguably it’s never stopped being March. Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich. Ever since the global COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. and then basically forced most of the country to shut down and self-isolate in March 2020, the idea of existential despair has been on our brains both consciously and unconsciously. First, of course, it was panic—see stores running out of food and toilet paper—and some were able to channel that anxious energy into a kind of manic hypercreativity or hysterical productivity in the first few months of uncertainty (Steven Soderbergh famously wrote three full screenplays in about the first two months of the pandemic, challenging the nervous energy of not knowing what to do with himself with so much “downtime”).

Continue reading Existential Despair: Essential Movies For When March Never Ends at The Playlist.

Since her evocative “Ratcatcher” in 1999, director Lynne Ramsay has delivered nothing short of oblique masterpieces each time up at bat. Ramsay’s recent film, the visceral and gripping, “You Were Never Really Here” with Joaquin Phoenix, continues the tradition of crafting sensory experiences that leave an audience bowled over.  The film also points to the constant preoccupations of Ramsay’s stories. Often fusing trauma and death, Ramsay’s films are quiet and melancholy, involving the impermanence of mortality in various ways.

Continue reading In Lynne Ramsay’s Films, Death Is Never The End at The Playlist.

Here lies another of our director-centric episodes… The incomparable Lynne Ramsay.

On this episode of Adjust Your Tracking, Joe and I gush about a longtime podcast favorite. Back in our early days, even before the podcast started, we bonded fast over Ramsay’s work, having a shared affection for this still underappreciated filmmaker. And so today we dive into all four of her features, with a heavy focus on her latest, the Joaquin Phoenix-led arthouse thriller “You Were Never Really Here,” rolling out to cinemas the next few weeks.

Continue reading We Adore Lynne Ramsay & Her New Film ‘You Were Never Really Here’ And You Should Too [Adjust Your Tracking Podcast] at The Playlist.

Many moons ago, when The Playlist first began, we had a special interest in the place where movies and music met. We’ve long since expanded our interests to all manner of movies, and more recently TV, but it’s an area that we’ve always kept tabs on, from reporting the latest news as such to our annual Best Soundtracks Of The Year post.

The 50 Best Film Scores Of The 21st Century So Far

We’re no longer in the golden days of the soundtrack of the 1980s and 1990s.

Continue reading The 25 Best Movie Soundtracks Of The 21st Century So Far at The Playlist.