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 twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

One of the year’s true indie success stories arrives on disc this week, alongside a slew of new Criterion titles, a Tom Cruise vehicle that’s worth another look, an all-time classic of kung fu cinema, and much more. 

Continue reading The Best Movies to Buy or Stream This Week: ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘The Beatles: Get Back,’ ‘Everything Everywhere,’ and More at The Playlist.

Someone on Film Twitter was recently asking, what’s all the fuss about the upcoming Criterion Collection July announcement, and why are they building it up to be such a thing? Well, it’s because we’re all going broke in July and the Criterion Collection is going to make it rain with cinephile classics this summer, both modern masterpieces, and good ol’ legendary goats.  The Collection is really going for it in July. The crown jewel in their new releases is, of course, Martin Scorsese’s searing 1980 black and white boxing drama, “Raging Bull” which is as much a look at toxic male self-destruction and spiritual immolation as it is boxing.

Continue reading Criterion’s July Releases Include ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘Okja,’ ‘Drive My Car,’ & More at The Playlist.

John Mulaney is a funny guy, there’s no denying that. And through his stand-up and his long tenure as one of the head writers at ‘SNL,’ it’s clear that he’s one hell of a creative force. So, on that merit alone, the upcoming Netflix special “John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch” is probably worth watching. However, if you still need convincing, how about the idea that this might be a sneaky sequel to “Okja?”

According to a new interview with Vulture, Mulaney talks about his new Netflix children’s show and, specifically, about the various guest stars that show up, including none other than Jake Gyllenhaal.

Continue reading John Mulaney’s Upcoming Netflix Special Featuring Jake Gyllenhaal Might Be The ‘Okja’ Sequel You’ve Been Waiting For at The Playlist.

Without a doubt, Bong Joon-ho is a master filmmaker and one of the very best working today. And that can be seen in his latest film, the Palme d’Or-winning “Parasite.” Thankfully, even though the film is in Korean, the family dramedy has been welcomed with open arms by American audiences over its theatrical run. And according to a new interview with the LA Times, Bong has some ideas as to why “Parasite” has been such a crossover hit.

Continue reading Bong Joon-Ho Compares ‘Parasite’ To ‘Joker’ & Talks His “Obsession” With The Theatrical Experience at The Playlist.

The biggest takeaway from this year’s Oscar nominations was a trend that began since the Academy began to diversify and expand its membership even before the #OscarsSoWhite controversy a few years ago.  More films with cinephile and diverse subject matter are making the cut.  There will always be room for a “Dunkirk,” “Darkest Hour” or “The Post” to get in, but that’s based on their prestige credentials more than anything else. 

Continue reading Best And Worst Of The 2018 Oscar Nominations at The Playlist.

[Updated Feb. 4]

Winner prediction:
1. “War for the Planet of the Apes”
2. “Blade Runner 2049”
3. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”
4. “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2“
5. “Kong: Skull Island”

Current predictions:

Best Picture
Best Actor
Best Actress
Best Supporting Actor
Best Supporting Actress
Director
Original Screenplay
Adapted Screenplay
Editing
Cinematography
Production Design
Original Score
Best Song
Costumes
Sound Mixing
Sound Editing
Documentary
Foreign Language Film
Animated Feature Film
Makeup and Hairstyling
Visual Effects

Continue reading 2018 Best Visual Effects Oscars Predictions at The Playlist.

It seemed improbable that anything could top the dramatic ups and downs of 2016, but 2017 found a way. And for Hollywood, it was a year where it often felt like the entire town was on fire (and we’re not just referring to the annual wild fires that smolder in the hills).  Especially in the second half, where it seemed like a day didn’t go by when the facade of a favorite actor, director or television personality was justifiably shattered into a million pieces.

Continue reading The Biggest Entertainment News Stories Of 2017 at The Playlist.

How do you judge a year in movies? Is it based on the number of masterpieces you think you saw? Is it based on a wide range of films that fall in the “good” to “very good” category? Or, is it based on the difficulty of formulating a year-end top 10 list?  If only it was that easy.

The best performances of 2017 [Year-end review]

Dan Fienberg, a former colleague and currently TV critic at THR, and I were recently discussing how difficult it was to formulate our year-end lists. 

Continue reading Gregory Ellwood’s Top 10 Movies of 2017 at The Playlist.

As much as we evidently love you, our glorious readers (why else would we toil so hard over such a breathtaking array of year-end features, for one thing), there is perhaps a group of people we love even more. And that is our contributors, who throughout the year give The Playlist its inimitable, sometimes cacophonous but always lively voice, and who help us to deliver the goods to you every day in the manner of a vigilant cat laying the eviscerated mouse of the day’s hot movie topics at your feet.

Continue reading The Most Underrated & Overrated Films Of 2017 at The Playlist.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the 10 films that remain in contention for the 2018 Visual Effects Oscar. Not surprisingly, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Blade Runner: 2049” and “The Shape of Water” made the cut.

The 10 films that are no longer in the mix include “Beauty and the Beast,” “Ghost in the Shell,” “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “Justice League,” “Life,” “Logan,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Wonder Woman.”

The 10 finalists are as follows:

“Alien: Covenant”
“Blade Runner 2049”
“Dunkirk”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

Continue reading ‘Last Jedi’ And ‘Okja’ Make Oscar’s Visual Effects 10 As Favorites Shut Out And Bake Off Awaits at The Playlist.

Cinema is, quite literally, action, and while some of the snootier critics might look down on the action movie, there are few purer cinematic pleasures than looking at a great set-piece sequence, from “The General” to “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Technology might have made jaw-dropping spectacle easier than ever to pull off, but a summer where CGI behemoths were outshone by more modest, old-fashioned movies reminded us that thrills come from craft more than they come from blowing up a bajillion robots (though, when done right, the latter can be fun too).

Continue reading The Best Action Sequences Of 2017 at The Playlist.

As we drag ourselves, bloodied and limping across the finish line of 2017, there’s little to celebrate at year’s end in the world outside the movie theater, except for Fyre Festival which is still the greatest and funniest thing ever. But inside the popcorny passageways of our local multiplexes and the hallowed halls of our local arthouses, it’s been a different story — one that may not have led to the kind of clear consensus winners of previous years (even awards season seems unusually open) but that points to a general breadth of quality that is, we believe, reflected here in our Best Films of the Year poll.

Continue reading The Best Films Of 2017 at The Playlist.

So we’re off and running, galumphing through our end-of-year coverage like a giant hippo-pig destroying an underground mall. But with all of you doubtless still working your way through our immense 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2018 (which is basically our massive trailer for the year to come) we thought we’d take it pretty easy on you today, and take a look at the teasers, advance clips and promos that have whetted our appetites this past 12 months.

Continue reading The Best Movie Trailers Of 2017 at The Playlist.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the 20 films that will be officially considered for this year’s Best Visual Effects Academy Award.  Many of the expected contenders made the cut including “Dunkirk,” “The Shape of Water,” “Okja,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Blade Runner: 2049,” “War for the Planet of the Apes” and “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.”

The only notable omissions were “It” (although horror rarely plays with this branch), “Downsizing” and “Mother!”

The Academy’s Visual Effects Branch Executive Committee determined the preliminary shortlist.

Continue reading ‘Dunkirk,’ ‘Okja,’ ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Make First Cut In Oscar’s 2018 Visual Effects Race at The Playlist.

Each year, David Erlich, senior film critic at Indiewire gets out his computer and spends hours cutting together a video tribute to his favorite films of previous twelve months. You might not agree with the pics, but the celebration of the year in cinema is always a lot of fun, and once again, he delivers the goods.

“The 25 Best Films Of 2017: A Video Countdown” is powered by the tunes of Fleetwood Mac, The Psychedelic Furs, Sufjan Stevens, and more (jams you will have heard in “Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.

Continue reading Celebrating The Films Of 2017: A Video Countdown at The Playlist.

VANCOUVER – Three months after it was released all over the globe on Netflix, a fairly full theater of moviegoers sat down to watch a screening of Bong Joon-ho‘s imaginative and political drama “Okja.” Granted, many on hand knew there was a chance the famed Korean director would appear in some aspect, but that’s still impressive for a film available instantly in a nation where 5.2 million plus residents have the streaming service (about 15% of the population).

Continue reading Bong Joon-Ho Revisits The Visual Effects Of ‘Okja’ And Those Beagle Inspired Eyes at The Playlist.

We’re right on top of things calendar-wise, right?…

A little late to the party, but, it’s become a recurrent trend every summer for journalists to look back at the movies that were released and, well, complain. The gist of some articles would be “don’t you remember the days when they used to release great movies in the summer”? 1982 and/or 1984 are usually mentioned and, in all honesty, those were pretty great years.

Continue reading The Best Movies Of Summer 2017 at The Playlist.

The last thing I probably want to do is admit how long I’ve been filing this particular column and while I’ve missed a few years here and there this is actually the third outlet I’ve done it for. Making predictions for the Oscars in August can be very dumb in some respects, but sometimes truths are revealed months ahead of time. Predicting “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” were going to be Best Picture nominees in August were spot on (cough, most other pundits didn’t).

Continue reading Oscars In August: ‘Dunkirk,’ Pasek & Paul, Denzel Washington And Eight Other Early Predictions at The Playlist.

One of the most gloriously unhinged, and in my opinion, wildly entertaining performances of the year belongs to Jake Gyllenhaal‘s turn in “Okja.” Playing a wildly unhinged animal lover and television celebrity, Gyllenhaal’s Johnny Wilcox is like watching Steve Irwin after he’s consumed a couple of six-packs of Red Bull. Squeaky voiced and bug eyed, there is nothing small about the performance, and it has proven somewhat divisive.

Continue reading Jake Gyllenhaal Talks Reactions To ‘Okja’ Performance: “Some People Just Think It’s Genuinely Bad” at The Playlist.

On this episode of Adjust Your Tracking, Joe and I reflect on the summer movie season so far, catching up on some of the big and small films — “Baby Driver” & “Okja” most prominently—we’ve seen. Our main review comes in the second half of the show where we discuss director David Lowery‘s “A Ghost Story.”

LISTEN TO: AYT talks “The Beguiled” & “The Bad Batch“

All episodes of Adjust Your Tracking are part of The Playlist Podcast Network and can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud and Stitcher.  

Continue reading Adjust Your Tracking Talks ‘Baby Driver,’ ‘Okja’ & ‘A Ghost Story’ [Podcast] at The Playlist.

“Okja” arrived globally last week, though you were probably hard pressed to find it in cinemas. Nonetheless interest was strong around the film. Even in South Korea, where the film was boycotted by three of the country’s major cinema chains due to its simultaneous release on Netflix, “Okja” managed a fourth place finish at the box office. However, the conversation around the film finally appears to be shifting from its release strategy to the message found within.

Continue reading Making ‘Okja’ Turned Bong Joon-Ho Pescatarian at The Playlist.

As Bong Joon-Ho‘s “Okja” gears up to hit Netflix, the debate around the company’s impact on theatrical releases and cinema chains refusing to book their movies if they’re going day-and-date on the streaming service continues to unfold. Even in the director’s native South Korea, cinemas are gearing up to block the movie, but Bong Joon-Ho believes this is short sighted thinking.

“I fully understand the multiplexes asking for a minimum three-week hold back,” the filmmaker said about the demands being made by cinema owners.

Continue reading Believe In ‘Okja’ In New Trailer For Bong Joon-Ho’s Netflix Movie at The Playlist.

In Bong Joon-ho’s “Okja” Tilda Swinton plays Lucy Miranda, a first-time CEO who wants to bring her family’s disgraced company into the 21st Century by solving the world’s food shortage problems. She appears at the beginning of the film during a press conference announcing a contest to raise the best “super pig” with different farmers around the country. When this writer saw “Okja” in Cannes Swinton seemed to be channeling a combination of Stepford Wife, Paris Hilton and, in voice and diction, none other than Katy Perry.

Continue reading Tilda Swinton Clarifies: She Never Said Her ‘Okja’ Character Was Based On Ivanka Trump at The Playlist.

We’re firmly into June now, and fast bearing down on the midpoint of 2017, a year that’s shaping up to be the longest goddamn year in history (fun fact: at the start of 2017, Barack Obama was President of the United States!). Fortunately, in between the insanity of the news, it’s been a pretty strong film year on the whole.

Sure, not all of the blockbusters have been great (*side eye to “The Mummy”*), but some have been terrific, and we’ve also seen several great and unexpected movies get their due at the box office.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2017 So Far at The Playlist.

While Netflix may have calculated how lucrative it is to fill the worldwide need for instant movie and TV gratification, the streaming service has yet to figure out how to get their movies into cinemas without controversy. The company’s ironclad day-and-date approach has seen almost every major movie chain in the United States refuse to work with them, as they believe having a movie stream at the same time it’s in theaters, doesn’t make economic sense.

Continue reading Cinema Chains In South Korea May Block Theatrical Release Of Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Okja’ at The Playlist.