“I like high impact movies.” And then some.

Kathryn Bigelow was here all along. She’d directed the ‘90s pop action masterpiece “Point Break,” given us the Western horror hybrid “Near Dark” and dazzled audiences with the dystopian sci-fi film, “Strange Days.” Bigelow was a name, but it really wasn’t until “The Hurt Locker” that Bigelow became a household name with a capital A auteur that all eyes laser-focused on.

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The ‘Game’ is once again afoot. Last night, “Game of Thrones” (read our episode recap here) returned with [mild episode spoilers] a massacre by poison, Jim Broadbent, an undead giant, a proposal of marriage, a bedpan montage, a man-bun/top-knot and Ed Sheeran  — about whom you can avoid all the outrage if, like me, you couldn’t pick him out of a lineup anyway. “Dragonstone,” the first installment of the show’s seven-episode seventh season has immediately plunged us back into the thick of the intrigue with even the Narrow Sea no longer separating Daenerys and her allies, armies and dragons from the warring Houses of Westeros, and the White Walkers.

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Every serious director has his or her distinct storytelling panache: Quentin Tarantino and his jukebox of unapologetic homages, Christopher Nolan and his massive scales, Terrence Malick and his plotless streams-of-consciousness, etc. James Gray is far less flamboyant, perhaps because he’s also enjoyed half the success and fame so many of the better-known directors have had, but that’s a big reason why we’ve been so in love with his work for all these years.

Continue reading The Essentials: The Films of James Gray at The Playlist.

Normally, the first week of September is a quiet one in theaters, but this year, something sort of special is happening. For the first time, two true American icons, among the biggest movie stars we’ve ever had, are brought together, with two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks (who was the first person to win back-to-back awards since Spencer Tracy) uniting with director/screen legend Clint Eastwood for “Sully,” a biopic of the pilot who landed a stricken plane on the Hudson on January 15, 2009.

Continue reading The 10 Best Tom Hanks Performances Ever at The Playlist.

There have been few careers in film history like Clint Eastwood‘s. Strike that: there have been no careers like Clint Eastwood’s. After breaking through in the Western TV series “Rawhide,” the actor stepped into movies with Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western “Dollars trilogy” (1964’s “A Fistful Of Dollars,” 1965’s “For A Few Dollars More” and 1966’s “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly“) and soon became one of Hollywood’s biggest box office draws.

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An awful year got worse yesterday with the announcement that Abbas Kiarostami, the great Iranian filmmaker, had passed away at the age of 76. Emerging as a leading light of the Iranian New Wave in the 1970s, Kiarostami stayed in the country after the Islamic Revolution, and despite the restrictions that came with both the production of his work and getting it out of the country, Kiarostami soon found international acclaim, with “Where Is The Friend’s Home?

Continue reading The Essentials: Abbas Kiarostami’s Best Films at The Playlist.

One of the greatest treats of the summer movie season this year for any serious cinephile is “De Palma,” the documentary by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival last year to rave reviews, it was picked up by A24, giving it a far greater spotlight than most cinema-on-cinema docs, and it will hit theaters this Friday.

Continue reading The Best & The Rest: Ranking The Complete Brian De Palma at The Playlist.

5 Essential Films By Yasujirō Ozu

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The Essentials: Leonardo DiCaprio's 10 Best Performances

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The Essentials: 10 Great Sylvester Stallone Performances

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The 12 Best Shot Films By 'Carol' Cinematographer Ed Lachman

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The 5 Best Performances By Jennifer Lawrence (So Far...)

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Retrospective: The Films Of David Lynch

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10 Essential Political Satires

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The Essentials: The 10 Best Kate Winslet Performances

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Ranked: The Films Of Robert Zemeckis

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The Essentials: The 10 Best Vittorio De Sica Films

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Here’s a fun bit of trivia. What do these eleven films have in common: “Legends of the Fall,” “The English Patient,” “Titanic,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “Inception,” “Life of Pi,” “Gravity” and “Birdman“?

Continue reading The Essentials: The 15 Best-Shot Roger Deakins Films at The Playlist.

The Essentials: The 10 Best Richard Gere Performances

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The Essentials: The 10 Best Wim Wenders Films

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The Essentials: The 8 Greatest Jules Dassin Films

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The Essentials: The 10 Greatest Jean-Pierre Melville Films

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The Essentials: Peter Bogdanovich's 9 Best Films

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The Essentials: 16 Great Robert De Niro Performances

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There are strata of acting talent—there’s the good, the very good, and the great. And somewhere up above all that, there’s Meryl Streep. Mary Louise Streep was born in Summit, New Jersey, broke into film in the late ’70s with a couple of remarkable supporting turns, and has never looked back. In fact, she’s leapfrogged everyone’s wildest expectations, and over the course of the past four decades has amassed a total of 19 Academy Award nominations (the only other actor alive who comes remotely close isJack Nicholson, with 12).

Continue reading The Essentials: Meryl Streep’s 16 Best Performances at The Playlist.