Co-stars of Yorgos Lanthimos’ morbid and borderline misanthropic “The Lobster”  Rachel Weisz and Colin Farrell are set to reunite, rather appropriately, in the latest film from Todd Solondz: “Love Child,” recently announced for the upcoming Cannes virtual market. According to a press release on behalf of Cinetic Media and MadRiver International, the film is touted as a “dark and hilarious twist” on the classic Oedipus story, as a precocious child plans to rid himself of his brutish father so he can have his mother all to himself.

Continue reading ‘Love Child’: ‘Lobster’ Pair Rachel Weisz & Colin Farrell Reunite for Todd Solondz’s New Dark Comedy at The Playlist.

The 2010s saw the return of a number of forgotten trends: tiny sunglasses, hating “Star Wars,” and – most importantly – the word “horny.” The once juvenile, decidedly-male word has shifted into something greater: more gender-woke, more surreal. “Horny” still refers, of course, to sex, desirous hunger, thirstiness, and this image (and this one too). But it has also evolved to feature many more implications and describes any number of feelings – excitement, transgression, titillation, and intrigue.

Continue reading The Horniest Movies Of The Decade [2010s] at The Playlist.

Look, making a Best of Decade list is an impossibility. As the 2010s come to a close, we’ve been agonizing over this (long-delayed) list for half a year now and even had to take a break and put it away this summer when things got too contentious and overwhelming. And then there’s the notion of resonance and what really lasts and is released too late (Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” is phenomenal, for example, but it’s not even released yet, and it’s just going to have to sit this one out).

Continue reading The 100 Best Films Of The Decade [2010s] at The Playlist.

In the realm of modern auteurs, Yorgos Lanthimos stands apart. Enigmatic upon first glance, his filmography finds the details in the broadness of existential commentary. It is no wonder, then, that Lanthimos’ pictures focus on human connection, singularity, and societal conditioning.

In a video essay by Tim Nicholas, three of Lanthimos’ films — “Dogtooth,” “Alps,” and “The Lobster” —  are explored for their embrace of dance, movement, freedom, and intimacy.

Continue reading Dance, Movement, Freedom, & Intimacy: NSFW Study Of The Films Of Yorgos Lanthimos at The Playlist.

After a much-needed breather from podcasting after a crazy last few months, Joe von Appen and I have gotten back on mic to continue with Adjust Your Tracking. We talk about our absence and looking for meaning again in cinema. A few new titles out there come up, most notably Jordan Peele‘s wonderful box-office hit “Get Out,” and Macon Blair‘s Sundance-winning, already-streaming-on-Netflix, and perfectly titled, “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore.” Also, why “The Lobster” is the film of our time.

Continue reading Podcast: Adjust Your Tracking Talks Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ & (Trying) To Make Sense Of Things at The Playlist.

If you haven’t noticed from the decorations, shop displays, email reminders, and worried reminder texts from your partner, it’s Valentine’s Day, the annual celebration of love, sex, romance, coupledom and having arguments in the Uber on the way to the second-choice restaurant. As always, we’re looking through the holiday through the cinematic lens, and whether you’re planning on snuggling up together on the sofa, or putting something on for company while you listlessly swipe through Tinder, we figured you could probably use some movie recommendations.

Continue reading The 50 Best Romantic Films Of The 21st Century So Far at The Playlist.

People get excited about Oscar nominations day in part to see how their favorite films or actors do with the Academy. But we also get to see, after months of prognostication, precursors and predictions, what curveballs are thrown by voters, which sure bets end up missing out, and which seeming no-hopers suddenly become Oscar nominees.

The 2017 batch, revealed this morning by some awkward pre-shot interview clips and the voice of a “Westworld” murderbot, delivered on both fronts.

Continue reading The Snubs & Surprises Of The 2017 Oscar Nominations at The Playlist.

Ok, we’re done looking back on 2016, but if you have an appetite for more and or missed it, here’s all our Best Of 2016 coverage.

OK, I know, I know. We’re waaaaaay past the sell by date on Top 10 lists, I’m all too painfully aware. My tombstone will read, “Life got in the way,” and life is, again, the reason I’m woefully (embarrassingly?) behind.

Continue reading The Best Movies Of 2016: Rodrigo Perez’s Picks at The Playlist.

The American Cinema Editors announced the nominees for the 67th Annual Eddie Awards today and cast a light on what the industry’s often-most-overlooked artists feel were the best in film and television over the past year.

There were truly no dramatic snubs in the theatrical field, which covers both dramatic and comedy categories. However, if you were the editors of “Jackie,” “Silence,” “Florence Foster Jenkins,” “Loving,” “20th Century Women,” “Hidden Figures,” “Fences” or “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” you didn’t get good news this morning.

Continue reading ‘Deadpool,’ ‘La La Land,’ ‘Stranger Things’ Earn Key ACE Eddie Awards Nominations at The Playlist.

I will spare everyone by not starting this list with reasons why 2016 sucked. However, one thing that has to be called into question are these “Film is Dead,” “TV is Winning the Culture War,” and “Why 2016 is the Worst Year in Film” clickbait headlines. If film is truly dead, and 2016 is truly the worst year in cinema, I ask you this: why was it so damn difficult to whittle this list down to just ten picks?

Continue reading Ryan Oliver’s Top 10 Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

For a variety of reasons, 2016 marked my personal record for the most new films I’ve seen in any given year, which is simultaneously a triumph and a problem. More movies equals more choice, and I’m nothing if not terrible at making decisions. But the following 10 films (and runners-up, because again, I’m terrible at making decisions) are the ones I loved most this year, edging out the titles I found worthy of respect, but not affection (like the ambitious Martin Scorsese opus “Silence“).

Continue reading Kimber Myers’ Top 10 Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

Howard Hawks once defined a good movie as one with “three good scenes and no bad ones.” Whether or not you think he’s right — and he’s not massively wrong — it’s often the moments that make the movies for us, and there’s no better way to make a moment memorable than with some music.

READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2016

From the chorus lines of Busby Berkeley and “The Sound Of Silence” in “The Graduate” to Chuck Berry in “Pulp Fiction” and “Where Is My Mind” in “Fight Club,” movies and cinema are intrinsically linked together, with songs made indelible by scenes in films, and scenes made by indelible songs.

Continue reading The 25 Best Movie Music Moments Of 2016 at The Playlist.

As we slowly and eagerly await the end of a year that history will squint back on forever, we can take some solace in knowing that it hasn’t been completely devoid of good things. And if you’ve been following our marathon year-end coverage from the beginning of December, which course you have been, you know of what we speak. Today we finally zero in on the element that best illuminates the unassailable power of the silver screen — cinematography.

Continue reading The Best Cinematography Of 2016 at The Playlist.

We compiled an aggregated Playlist Best Films Of 2015 which you can find here. However, regular contributors were also given the chance to submit personal lists.

I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a dumpster fire on top of a pile of burning kittens and puppies kind of a year. We lost some of the greatest artists and immeasurably important pop culture icons, and got rewarded with a last minute kick in the nuts after one of the ugliest and enraging election campaigns the U.S.

Continue reading Oktay Ege Kozak’s Top 10 Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

The year-end love keeps coming for “Toni Erdmann.” Maren Ade‘s breakout film topped best of lists from Cahiers du Cinema and Sight & Sound, and recently swept the European Film Awards, and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Golden Globes. And now the film has another honor as 2016 winds down.

Film Comment has released their Best Of 2016, and yep, “Toni Erdmann” has come out on top. 

Continue reading ‘Toni Erdmann’ Tops Film Comment’s Best Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

Those of us who call it home can kind of take it for granted, but it’s an honor and a pleasure to be part of a collective effort like The Playlist, and that’s never made more abundantly clear than when we compile our official annual Best Films ranking. As in recent years, we’ve collated our rankings of films from a wide sample of individual top ten lists (this year, 20 of our contributors submitted lists for consideration), and once again we could not be prouder of the results, or more convinced of how well they represent the blog’s eclectic, broadminded and passionate cinematic taste.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

It’s too bad that who dismissively write off 2016 as “a bad movie year” couldn’t find more than a few films to treasure across the last twelve months. Sure, blockbuster movies were pretty terrible all around, but even a glimpse of indie cinema and foreign films this year (South Korea alone yielded the excellent likes of “The Handmaiden,” “The Wailing” and “Age Of Shadows“) reveals some tremendous work.

Continue reading Celebrating The Films Of 2016 at The Playlist.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their 2016 year-end awards and “Moonlight” won Best Picture with Barry Jenkins taking Best Director. “La La Land,” which won the top prize from the New York Film Critics Circle earlier this week, was runner-up in both categories. “Moonlight” winning LAFCA now creates an effective three-way split from the most notable critics groups, with “Manchester By The Sea” taking the Best Picture prize from the National Board of Review.

Continue reading ‘Moonlight’ Wins Best Film And Best Director From Los Angeles Film Critics Association at The Playlist.

Over the summer months, the narrative that “cinema is dead” once again began to be bandied about, with Ty Burr among those floating the idea in a thinkpiece. It’s understandable: as we’ve written about before, the summer was one of the worst in recent memory in terms of major releases (and not all that great in terms of minor ones either). It wasn’t just cinephiles getting up in arms either: Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidate and basis for the character Oogie Boogie in “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” told a rally at the start of this month “they don’t make movies like they used to,” causing even members of the political commentariat who otherwise vehemently disagree with him to concur.

Continue reading What If 2016 Is Actually The Year That Saves Cinema? at The Playlist.

Now that the triumvirate of early fall film festivals has come to an end, we can finally sit back and look at the race for Best Picture at the 2017 Academy Awards with a clear perspective. It may be somewhat surprising, but the biggest story isn’t Damien Chazelle’s “La La Land.” Granted, the movie musical is the undisputed and current frontrunner to win it all in February, but we have tons of time to talk about the feel-good movie musical ad nauseam.

Continue reading Contender Countdown: Before ‘La La Land’ Let’s Talk About ‘Sully’ For Best Picture at The Playlist.

September is here, and the fall film festivals have started —check out our Venice coverage so far, and our Telluride coverage starts tomorrow and TIFF next week. Nevertheless, the days are getting shorter and the temperature a little cooler, so it’s time to look back on 2016’s moviegoing summer.

In most respects, it was a bad one. Most tentpoles disappointed, and unusually, it seemed that most underperformed at the box office (though it’s interesting to note that total box office is up about 3% from last year, thanks to a few monster hits).

Continue reading The Winners & Losers Of The 2016 Summer Movie Season at The Playlist.

June is here, and with Sundance, Berlin, SXSW and Cannes over, and the summer blockbuster season well underway, the year in the film world is starting to take shape. And while superhero clashes and fairy-tale remakes have dominated the mainstream talk, there’s been a lot more variety and depth to be found for anyone digging a little deeper, either in the mainstream or the arthouse worlds.

Continue reading The 20 Best Films Of 2016 So Far at The Playlist.

The Playlist Podcast returns for a Cannes episode, in two parts. On the first half, friend of the show and longtime film critic for Ioncinema.com Nicholas Bell, fresh out of the premiere screening of “The Neon Demon,” joined me via Skype to talk about the early reactions to the latest effort from Nicolas Winding Refn. The second half of the podcast is my interview with Yorgos Lanthimos, director of “The Lobster.”

READ MORE: Review: Yorgos Lanthimos’ Moving, Gloriously Weird Love Story ‘The Lobster’

“The Neon Demon,” which our own Jessica Kiang recently reviewed with a B+ grade, is already proving divisive, just like Refn’s previous film to grace The Croisette, “Only God Forgives.” It appears the director’s feminine-centric horror-inspired picture, about models in LA who apparently literally devour the beauty of their competition, is another calculated, gorgeously-lensed and scored provocation from the infamous-but-talented filmmaker.

Continue reading Podcast: The Playlist Talks ‘The Neon Demon’ Reactions From Cannes & Interviews ‘The Lobster’ Director Yorgos Lanthimos at The Playlist.

This episode of Adjust Your Tracking is made up of two reviews, opens with Joe von Appen and myself briefly reminiscing about the podcast’s origins and then quickly spinning off into the films at hand. We split over Ben Wheatley‘s new apocalyptic class war picture “High-Rise” but nothing can stop us both from gushing over Yorgos Lanthimos‘ brilliant “The Lobster,” an dystopian sci-fi film with a hilarious sense of deadpan humor.

Continue reading Podcast: Adjust Your Tracking Discusses The Dystopian Worlds Of ‘High-Rise’ & ‘The Lobster’ at The Playlist.

After a blockbuster debut in North America last weekend, there wasn’t much doubt that “Captain America: Civil War” would once again ride to the top of the box office. The newcomers didn’t pose much of a threat, and the only question, really, was just how big the second weekend for Marvel‘s latest hit would be.

READ MORE: 11 Things ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Did Better Than ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice’

Well, the numbers have rolled in and ‘Civil War’ added $72.5 million to its domestic bank account, another $84.2 million internationally, bringing its total global haul to date to $940 million.

Continue reading Box Office: ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Beats Newcomers To Take Top Spot Again at The Playlist.