What is the best movie of all time? To make a film, as a wise French man once said, all it takes is a girl and a gun. But if you add explosions, chases, some direct confrontation with knockdown after a fist fight, a pinch of kung-fu and enough sword fights to the recipe, it doesn’t hurt. The action genre has been on the film scene since the days of the Keyston Kops and the curled mustache villains who tie heroines to train tracks; its birth could even be traced back to the famous short by the Lumière brothers, that of the train that enters the station, which according to what was said had made the audience run away from the hall shouting.
The sacred trinity of cinema – emotions, chills and tears – has been the main attraction of the big screen for decades. And when the Blockbuster era began in the 1980s, there was no multiplex that didn’t have at least one action movie in the pipeline. Read down below see which are the best movies of all time for you to watch right now.
Best movies on Netflix
Don’t Look Up
First, a success for Netflix. The movie has been streamed 152 million hours, a historic record in one week for the streaming platform. When you are at the top of the viewings in 94 countries, it is difficult to say anything other than “the film is a success”. Is this surprising? Not really. With such a cast, it’s normal for the film to make a bit of noise. But that he is in the lead and breaks records all over the world was not a foregone conclusion. Don’t look up is also a very nice caricature of two categories of people who are doing great harm to the fight against the climate. First, climate skeptics. These merchants of doubt who still dare to deny global warming (in the film, they say that the comet doesn’t exist, when all you have to do is look up, to ‘look up’).
The King
Unlike the films directed by Laurence Olivier in 1944 and Kenneth Branagh in 1989, this Henri V 2019, launched at the Venice Film Festival, is not a Shakespearean adaptation strictly speaking. That said, Australian filmmaker David Michôd, who co-signed the screenplay with Joel Edgerton (who also plays Falstaff), nevertheless offers a vision that evokes that of the famous English bard, even if he uses a more contemporary language. The main interest of this feature film produced by Netflix, which is reminiscent of last year’s Outlaw King in terms of style, lies precisely in this more modern approach. Michôd, to whom we owe in particular Animal Kingdom and War Machine (of less happy memory), relies mainly on the charisma of his interpreter, Timothée Chalamet, to orchestrate the story of a man who, unlike his father, s opposes war, while having to lead his troops.
Spiderhead
In the near future, some prisoners, like Jeff (Miles Teller), are sent to the laboratory of Dr. Abnesti (Chris Hemsworth). Thanks to a small console on the back of the back, experimental drugs are tested on these human guinea pigs. Their particularity? Control emotions, whether it’s laughter, sexual desire or even the urge to talk. Adapted from a short story by George Saunders, Spiderhead has an openly Orwellian dimension, which shows from its first minutes that the prisoners consent to these tests which monopolize their body and their mind. Behind the fantasy of a standardized society, the film plays on a form of schizophrenia, that of a humanity that wants to transcend itself, while seeking to resist the mutation of its own nature.
The Wrath of God
The screenplay by Pablo del Teso and director Sebastián Schindel, based on the work of Guillermo Martinez, features a young girl serving as a copyist for a famous novelist. Years after having left him, she asks a journalist to help her prove that it is the latter who is responsible for the death of several members of her family. Sebastián Schindel’s film allows, through a series of flashbacks, to discover the life of the main character. The further the plot progresses, the more the story plays on reality and fiction, madness and chance. Thus, until the striking end, the spectator can wonder if it is a fabrication or a sophisticated revenge.
Against the Ice
Against the Ice delivers all the wacky period drama thrills and survival horror angst you could want from a film with this title. In a very short time, Coster-Waldau and Joe Derrick set up their story – an adaptation of Arctic explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen’s memoir Two Against the Ice – as the genre of macabre adventure story and tonic where the worst can and probably will happen, especially when you expect it. Coster-Waldau plays Mikkelsen, the haunted sea captain who leads poor, naive mechanic Iver Iversen (Joe Cole) on a perilous journey to a cairn (or a “pile of stones that can be seen from afar”, as the helpfully explains one character) away from their ship, the Alabama, and her crew.
Best movies on Amazon Prime
The Tomorrow War
During the football World Cup, soldiers arrive from the future in the middle of a match, explaining to humanity that a war is being lost some 28 years later, against extraterrestrials, and ask to ugly. A year later, humanity has organized itself and sends troops to the future at regular intervals, their members being almost systematically massacred. One day it is the turn of Dan, an unemployed father, whom the 9-year-old daughter watches leave with the uncertainty of his return.
Chemical Hearts
Get out the tissues! If you’re the sensitive and teary-eyed type, Amazon Prime ‘s new comedy-drama starring Riverdale star actress Lili Reinhart is going to break your heart. Indeed, Chemical Hearts, inspired by the best-selling Australian novel Our Hearts in Discord, offers a bittersweet romance of rare intensity.. The pitch? Henry Page, a deeply romantic 17-year-old student and writer at heart, meets a strange new classmate named Grace Town. And for good reason, the latter who cannot move without the help of a crutch maintains the mystery around her past, preferring to stay away from all social life. A suspicious behavior that will quickly attract the attention of the discreet Henry, to the point of falling madly in love with him. This is where the trouble begins.
Beautiful Boy
Recognized journalist, remarried and father of two young children, David Sheff nourishes for his eldest son, Nic, a particular and reciprocal affection. He has custody of it. How could this loving father ignore the slow decline of his favorite offspring? Addicted since the age of 12 to methamphetamine (or “crystal meth”, an over-the-counter nasal decongestant which, consumed in its pure form, is an XXL psychotropic drug), Nic has become an outsider. A pathological liar, a certified mythomaniac, an outstanding manipulator. As transparent and quick to disappear as a ghost, he digs his own grave and makes the lives of his loved ones hell.
Lady Bird
Lady Bird is a personal work, sincere in its eccentricities and its ability to transcribe, without pathos, the complexity of family relationships and the transition to adulthood. Admittedly, Lady Bird does not have thematic originality on her side, but yet her character as a mirror work where the main actress seems to reflect the filmmaker’s earthiness, shines through the sensitivity of her adolescent and adult portraits., while the fears and sufferings of each other, whether adults or younger, are exposed, in a more or less displayed way, with a perspicacity of gaze that never leaves room for cynicism, for the lesson of morality or exaggeration.
Nocturnal Animals
Two stories: that of a woman whose life is turned upside down when she reads the manuscript of a thriller sent by her ex-husband, and that of a man whose family vacation goes wrong. In essence, Nocturnal Animals wants to be the story of two revenges: that of one of the protagonists, then that of its director with regard to the microcosm which made him known, and by extension against the still too stationary ideas of Contemporary America and its politicians.
Best movies of all time
Inception
With Inception, Christopher Nolan restores nobility to the blockbuster. Very addictive from its opening action scene to the end full of tension and suspense, this film is a bombshell. A complex scenario to turn your brain around (you are used to dreaming but it becomes more complicated when you dream than you dream…) where we recognize the imprint of Nolan, decidedly refractory to linear narrative schemes (Memento). Let’s add that the staging is beautiful (joyful when the characters literally play with the Parisian decor), powerful and intelligent.
The Shawshank Redemption
In 1947, Andy Dufresne, a young banker, was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of his wife and her lover. Despite claiming his innocence, he is imprisoned in Shawshank, the most severe penitentiary in the state of Maine. There he meets Red, a disillusioned prisoner who has been here for twenty years. Thus begins a great story of friendship between the two men.
Good Will Hunting
It’s obvious that if Will Hunting is based on anything, it’s its casting and not its screenplay. Even if the initiatory journey of the young Will proves to be successful and accurate on screen, the film is especially worthwhile for the confrontations between actors that it offers. Verbal jousting and irreverence here form an explosive cocktail that has an infinite candor within it. Through a speech full of humanity, Van Sant manages here to erect a fabulous portrait of difference while not falling into any caricature. It is quite prodigious, it must be admitted. Will Hunting nevertheless traces well-known paths, that of the young lost with something extra who will find his straight line of life, his path to follow. Helped by a mentor and friends. The love that arrives without warning, that turns everything upside down and leads to questioning. But finally here all these codes are only a pretext to highlight the actors and their games in superb and strong scenes.
12 Years a Slave
The United States, a few years before the Civil War. Solomon Northup, a young black man from New York State, is kidnapped and sold as a slave. Faced with the cruelty of a cotton plantation owner, Solomon fights to stay alive and keep his dignity. Twelve years later, he will meet a Canadian abolitionist and this meeting will change his life. Slavery in the United States remains a part of American history that is always complicated to approach, and which often resulted in rather mediocre films where sentimentality prevailed. But in barely a year, two filmmakers have tried their hand at it successfully, offering radically different treatments: Django Unchained , where Quentin Tarantino revisits this American story in a joyful way, and today 12 Years A Slave by Steve McQueen.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Sauron’s forces besieged Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor, in a final assault on mankind. The kingdom, once majestic and watched over by an aging steward, desperately needs its king. But will Aragorn have the strength to take on his legacy and face his destiny? To fight the final battle, Gandalf desperately tries to regroup Gondor’s scattered army. He is helped by King Theoden of Rohan, who gathers his warriors for this great fight. Despite unflinching courage and loyalty, the forces of men – with Eowyn and Merry hidden within them – fail to contain the enemy legions that surge upon the kingdom. Each victory comes at the price of painful sacrifices.
Best Christmas movies
The Christmas Chronicles
In this film, we meet a family that is not as enthusiastic about Christmas as it was before. Little Kate decides to resume their tradition of filming videos at Christmas, but her big brother is in the midst of a teenage crisis and their mother is working all the time. But as she carefully watches the videos from previous years, she discovers something very interesting. In exchange for keeping his brother’s secret, he must help him film Santa Claus. From there will follow many adventures as funny as each other.
Klaus
Did you know? Once upon a time, Santa Claus was just a taciturn old woodcutter, hidden deep in his forest, far to the north of the world. For its first animated feature, The Legend of Klaus, Netflix has chosen to trust Spaniard Sergio Pablos, Disney veteran then co-creator, among others, of Despicable Me. The result, all in impertinent humor, angular silhouettes and polar lights, is a story of origins like no other, an eccentric and endearing Christmas tale, very far from the usual confectionery.
The Holiday
Amanda lives in Los Angeles where she is the head of a company that makes movie trailers. Her professional life is booming while the private sphere is a disaster due to her tendency to want to have control over her emotions at all costs. Across the ocean is Iris, an English gossip columnist who always falls in love with the wrong people and ends up being a victim of love because of her romantic nature. The umpteenth sentimental disappointment will push the two women, so different from each other, to feel the need for a clear change. Thanks to an online ad they decide to exchange their vacation home, and 6000 miles away from home they will finally be able to regain possession of their lives. Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet give face, body and nuances to Amanda and Iris making them real and touching.
The Polar Express
A story certainly dedicated to a very young audience, which insists on the importance of believing, because sometimes the things we do not see are the most true, but it is so full of good feelings that it is too dull even for the most lovers of the Christmas tradition. The pace is slow, very little happens and above all the story is rather predictable. The animation (the first made in digital capture) ages a little badly, even if the film is full of ambitious and successful special effects from the rail of a rollercoaster, rather than a train. The only really positive note that really lifts it up and worthily supports the plot is the soundtrack by Alan Silvestri, decorated here and there with some unreleased songs and timeless classics in their most famous versions.
A Christmas Prince
Amber (Rose McIver) is an aspiring American journalist, frustrated by a career that is struggling to take off, relegating her to secondary roles for the newspaper she works for. The opportunity to change her working destiny comes with the call for a service in the principality of Aldovia, in the process of passing the crown after the death of King Richard. Arrived on the spot, Amber manages to enter into the good graces of the imperial family by passing herself off as Princess Emily’s new teacher. This gives her an insight into the true personality of the designated successor to the throne Richard (Ben Lamb), who turns out to be a far cry from the braggart playboy figure he is portrayed with in the media.
Best horror movies
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 2022 film directed by David Blue Garcia and written by Chris Thomas Devlin about a story by Fede Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues. The cast includes Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, Mark Burnham, Jacob Latimore, Moe Dunford, Olwen Fouéré, Alice Krige, Jessica Allain and Nell Hudson. The film, which we were able to preview, was initially supposed to be released in cinemas and instead was distributed directly in streaming by Netflix on February 18, 2022. Melody, Dante and their friends are a group of entrepreneurs who have the dream of bringing the small town of Harlow, Texas, now almost entirely abandoned, back to life. The city, famous for the murders that took place many years earlier at the hands of Leatherface , arouses the interest of the curious and of the banks, ready to invest in the project. Unfortunately for them, the chainsaw killer has been evading the law for many years, and is ready to turn their dream into a blood-soaked nightmare.
The Nun
In the early 1950s, Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), a young novice who is about to take vows, and Father Burke (Demián Bichir) a priest with a dark past, are sent by the Vatican to investigate the mysterious and gruesome suicide of a nun in an isolated convent in Romania (the abbey of S. Carta, actually existing and located in Transylvania) populated by dark and demonic presences. The premise behind The Nun is certainly compelling but unfortunately it remains one of the film’s few strengths: the plot, after a rather intriguing opening, is not developed consistently, making the actions of the characters often unmotivated and ends in themselves (this, as we will see, also applies to Valak).
Annabelle
James Wan ‘s absence behind the camera feels right. It is not enough to dwell on the disturbing expression of the Annabelle doll – a fake smile behind which hides an evil expression – when you do, you also need a solid and disturbing script. Which is not there. This time everything that was present in the previous The Summoning – The Conjuring (yes that was directed by Wan) of which this film is a spinoff is missing. The actors fit the role of the 1970s-style American family all home and church perfectly. The setting is also of exquisite workmanship with accurate period reconstructions. Good editing by Tom Elkins with many interesting ideas.
In the Tall Grass
In the creation of this story, father and son, and then Lorenzo Natali who directs the film, have embarked on a memorable undertaking (miserably failed by M. Night Shyamalan before them): to make weed the protagonist of a horror. Did they really manage to make something that tends to be so harmless terrifying? Only in part, but the final result did not disappoint us anyway. Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and Cal Demuth (Avery Whitted) are a sibling couple on their way to San Diego. She, six months pregnant, does not feel well and is forced to stop the car. The two thus find themselves on the edge of a field of grass more than two meters high, near a church that seems abandoned but in front of which dozens of cars are parked. Very soon a cry catches their attention: a little boy named Tobin says he got lost in the grass with his family several days ago and that none of them can get out. Backy and Cal then decide to enter the field too, unaware that this choice could prove to be lethal for them. Once inside, they will immediately realize that they are no longer able to go back, not even being able to find each other and reunite.
Umma
Sometimes the scariest ideas are even very simple: what if, after actively trying not to do it for years, you ‘become’ your mother? In Umma, Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) plays Amanda, a beekeeper who lives in isolation with her daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart). The woman desperately tries to have a healthy and loving relationship with the girl to compensate for the violent one she had had with her parent. Building on 51-year-old Sandra Oh’s incredible personal involvement, both as a lead and a producer, Umma – at least on paper – should have been an easy hit. Instead, something never clicks throughout the film, which makes it an unpleasant disappointment.
Best movies on HBO Max
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore follows in the footsteps of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald as, just like its 2018 predecessor featured virtually no crime, this third installment of the Harry Potter saga prequel franchise boasts no real secrets. The revelation that Dumbledore is gay is certainly neither sensational in itself (since it was openly implicit in the previous film, however, after years of public statements by JK Rowling herself …), nor the kind of narrative device that could really interest someone which is not merely attributable to the most diehard of potterophiles. Functional but never ‘magical’, this Hollywood product aimed at further squeezing a golden egg property reminds us, if ever needed 21 years after the film debut of the saga, that all good things should have – to a certain point – a well-deserved end, and not kept alive by machinery.
Dune
Dune, a 2021 film presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival and which marks the return behind the camera of the brilliant Denis Villeneuve, is above all a very risky bet. The 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert from which the film is based is in fact a true masterpiece of science fiction, which, however, with its complexity has put a strain on any director who has tried to measure himself against it. A profound and choral literary work set in an incredibly complex universe, which had not yet found a film adaptation to its height. At least not until the Canadian director tried his hand at it with his own vision of authorial spectacle.
Tenet
Tenet, a single palindrome word, is the main resource that accompanies the protagonist of the new film by Christopher Nolan in a battle to save the world, between international espionage intrigues and the surprising implications of a technology capable of upsetting our idea of time. Tenethowever, it is also much more than just a movie. On the one hand, it is the first major Hollywood production to bet on cinemas (without any concessions parallel to streaming) after the harsh restrictions imposed by the still lively epidemic of Covid-19, and with a worldwide release forced to anticipate the domestic market and give up the day-and-date with the USA. On the other hand, it is the demonstration that, even with cinema in a comatose state due to the Coronavirus, there are titles capable of generating exceptional hype. On the other hand, it is the film with the highest budget ever by one of the most popular and polarizing authors of the current directorial scene, always able to generate a vibrant aura of interest and curiosity around his films.
Godzilla vs. Kong
Godzilla Vs. Kong takes place sometime after the events of Godzilla II: King of the Monsters. The lizard, considered a hero for defeating Ghidorah and the other Titans, has temporarily withdrawn, while the Monarch has made Skull Island a sort of reserve in which he keeps Kong isolated: they are in fact the last two remaining alpha Titans and humanity can’t risk them colliding. Surprisingly, however, Godzilla emerges near Pensacola and sows death and destruction around the headquarters of Apex Cybernetics: the president of the latter prepares a mission to bring Kong back to his world of origin, the ghostly Hollow Earth, in the hope that Godzilla will calm down or follow him there, returning the planet to human beings. Obviously things will not go as planned and the inevitable conflict between the two Titans will keep us company for about two hours of film, reaching its climax in the spectacular final act.
Interstellar
Man was born on planet Earth but, if he wants to survive, he is not destined to stay there. At an unspecified moment in the 21st century, a “plague” of global proportions, feeding on nitrogen and consuming oxygen, made corn the only crop still possible, dragging mankind a few decades after extinction. There are no more armies, universities are for very few and a negationist historical revisionism induces the world population to take an interest only in working the land. As the world collapses, strange gravitational phenomena occur in a little girl’s room. Convinced that she has a ghost trying to communicate with her, little Murph and her father Cooper(Matthew McConaughey), former aerospace pilot who converted to farmer, manage to decipher one of those messages: they are coordinated.
Best movies on Hulu
The Social Network
The Social Network tells the creation of Facebook, the largest social network on the planet, outlining the figure of Mark Zuckeberg, its founder. Fincher’s film has excellent pacing and superb editing, making the viewing particularly intriguing. Zuckeberg is described as an undoubtedly brilliant young man, but little inserted in the real world, projected into his own universe where technology is the center of all attention, to the detriment of human relationships, which he seems almost unable to manage. In some ways the film shows a mean and vindictive boy, unable to accept human defeats, as if he did not understand them: it seems that he stole the idea of the social network from the Winklevoss twins, without making them part of the project, only because he was annoyed by their muscular prowess.
Just Go with It
Danny Maccabee is a renowned plastic surgeon who – due to a nasty disappointment in college – pretended to be married for years to avoid having to commit to women. When he starts courting the beautiful Palmer, a much younger teacher who appears to be the right woman, the man hires his faithful assistant Katherine, divorced and single mom, to play the part of the ex-wife and thus cover a a careless lie. But when the lies begin to escalate and the assistant’s children get caught up in the ‘play’, they all set off on a vacation to Hawaii that will change their lives.
Cosmopolis
Capitalism is from behind, has a gun aimed at the back of the head and is now close to death. A few months after the release of ” A Dangerous Method “, David Cronenberg returns to the big screen by adapting one of the most controversial postmodern novels of the last decade, “Cosmopolis” by Don DeLillo, a dark and (sur) real apologue about the new millennium at the gates, which, almost ten years after its publication, was able to anticipate with a great career the lightning-fast process of putrefaction of the capital society which is now overwhelmingly underway. It is an incredibly dense book of Cronenbergian matter, to the point that it is as if DeLillo’s words, thrown up in a rush and in the throes of a Joycian stream of consciousness, had been symbiotically written by the Canadian director himself, in line with his thinking. Reading “Cosmopolis”, it is as if the fetid odor of the bodies reaches the nostrils of the reader without filters.
Cast Away
Cast Away is a 2000 film directed by Robert Zemeckis which stars Tom Hanks (Chuck Noland), Helen Hunt (Kelly Frears) and Nick Searcy (Stan). The film clearly refers to the story of Robinson Crusoe, a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1719, and represents the second collaboration between the director and Hanks after the success of Forrest Gump (1994). Produced with a budget of 90 million dollars, the film debuted at the top of the box office in the US, grossing over 28 million in the first weekend. With a global gross of 429 million, it was the third most successful worldwide of the year, also receiving great acclaim from critics with an average score, out of 154 reviews, of 7.4 / 10 on the Rotten Tomatoes website and 73 out of 32 reviews on the Metacritic website. Awards include two 2001 Oscar nominations (“Best Actor in a Leading Role” to Tom Hanks and “Best Sound”) and the 2001 Golden Globe “Best Actor in a Drama Film” to Tom Hanks.
Pretty Woman
Veteran Garry Marshall has a deep understanding of the subject. Everyone likes Cinderella, a fairy tale that contains all the fundamental elements of the romantic dream par excellence, and the director does nothing but recruit two fascinating protagonists who show off a remarkable alchemy and sex-appeal and apply the rules of that classic. To this mix we must then add the revised and updated fairytale repertoire in a clever and overly alluring way, including luxury, sumptuous clothes and limousines, then the little pre-final trauma that pushes the spectator to cheer for the impossible match anyway, the final textbook statement, Roberts’ smile and Gere’s indisputable charm. What more could you want? Pretty Woman is an excellent entertainment romance, in perfect balance between romanticism, glamor and fairy tale, in short, it could make you turn up your nose for the too conventional, glossy packaging and with predictable and overwhelming contents, but the appeal of this film remains unchanged over time.
