Promising Young Woman (2020)

Promising Young Woman (2020)

[8] Carey Mulligan (Shame, Never Let Me Go) is equal parts sympathetic and terrifying in writer/director Emerald Fennell's psychological thriller Promising Young Woman. Mulligan stars as Cassandra, a medical school dropout whose life was derailed after the sexual assault of…
One Battle After Another (2025)

One Battle After Another (2025)

[3] It's possible I'll see this movie again in the future and understand it better. I have to assume this is possible, because I love several other Paul Thomas Anderson movies, including Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and…
Sinners (2025)

Sinners (2025)

[7] In this period horror film from writer/director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther), twin Chicago gangsters named Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their Depression-era Mississippi home town to create a more legitimate life…
Tootsie (1982)

Tootsie (1982)

[7] Dustin Hoffman stars as Michael Dorsey, a struggling New York actor so desperate to land a job that he transforms himself into a woman to win a part on a daytime soap opera. As Dorothy Michaels, he challenges the…
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

[7] Writer/director Steven Spielberg follows up his immensely successful Jaws with this tale of extra-terrestrials and government conspiracy. Richard Dreyfuss stars as a family man whose encounter with a UFO brings him into contact with a grieving mother (Melinda Dillon)…
Platoon (1986)

Platoon (1986)

[8] Oliver Stone's Platoon was one of the first major motion pictures to deal with the Vietnam war. Charlie Sheen stars as an infantry volunteer who finds himself in a moral quandry, torn between two sergeants of differing philosophies. Tom…
Shane (1953)

Shane (1953)

[8] George Stevens (A Place in the Sun, Gunga Din) directs this Western morality tale based on the novel by Jack Schaefer. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a drifting cowboy who wanders into a sprawling Wyoming valley in the…
Dead Poets Society (1989)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

[9] Robin Williams headlines this period drama from Australian auteur Peter Weir (Witness, Picnic at Hanging Rock) centered around teen boys coming of age at a late 1950s New England prep school. Williams plays Professor Keating, their inspirational English teacher,…
U-571 (2000)

U-571 (2000)

[8] Matthew McConaughey leads a U.S. submarine crew into hostile waters to board a stranded World War II German sub carrying an Enigma cipher machine, technology that the U.S. could use to decipher German communications. But once the Americans arrive…
Frankenstein (2025)

Frankenstein (2025)

[7] Director Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth) puts his cinematic stamp on Mary Shelley's formative sci-fi novel, casting Oscar Isaac (Dune: Part One, Annihilation) as the obsessed Victor Frankenstein who brings an assembly of dead body…