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25 Best Movies of the 2020’s You Probably Haven’t Seen

Somehow, we’re already halfway through the 2020s. The world’s still on fire, the algorithms and A.I. have taken over, my readership is down (people love video, and yet, here I remain), and despite the fact that there is continued chatter about the death of cinema… great movies keep slipping through the cracks. While big franchise I.P. garbage continues to dominate the cultural conversation, there’s been a steady stream of bold, bizarre, and beautiful films flying under the radar. Whether they had a tiny theatrical run, got buried on streaming, or just never hit your watchlist, these are 25 films from this chaotic half-decade that you probably haven’t seen — but absolutely should. Read More

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Top Ten Films of 2021

What a year it’s been. In some capacities, post-pandemic life began to creep back to normal with the aid of vaccines. So too did the global box office. But multiple variants spooked people into skipping out of movies in theaters as a fundamental shift to the industry took shape. Day and date releases became more prevalent as the economics of a new movie market unfurled. A misleading rescue beacon, Spider-Man: No Way Home just delivered the best receipts of the entire 2020/2021 but that level of resurgent success seemed reserved exclusively for superhero content. No adult-skewing cinema has fared nearly as well. Read More

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A Ratchet Weekend Goes Viral in A24 Sex Work Drama ‘ZOLA’

If you haven’t read the hysterically unhinged 148-tweet thread that details how the eponymous Aziah “Zola” King (Taylour Paige) and “this white bitch” Stefani (Riley Keough) fell out, fear not: Zola will gladly fill in all the gory deets for you. One of the buzziest breakout splashes from 2020’s Sundance Film Festival, Zola is a kinetic social media-influenced dark comedy that adapts what was deemed “the greatest stripper saga ever tweeted” with visual style and sardonic pizzaz to spare. Exploding with personality and a flair for Gen-Z garishness (with too many tweet-notification audio drops to count), the latest great from A24 traps audience, alongside the titular Zola, in a prison-stay of a weekend as everything goes horribly wrong. Before it all went viral. Read More