Best Adventure Movies to Watch

It’s easy to laugh about an old lady being an unwitting lead in an action film, the joke being that they can’t possibly be that. But June Squibb’s Thelma is. She refuses to be infantilized and undertakes a journey that’s dramatized to great effect. It’s still funny, but without Squibb’s character being the butt of […]

Though wordless and human-less, Flow might be one of the most charming films about humanity you’ll ever see. It follows a group of different-species animals who’ve formed an unlikely bond as they try to survive a massive flood. There’s a quirky lemur, a friendly dog, a majestic bird, a wise capybara, and connecting them all […]

Who would’ve thought a wordless, black-and-white, slapstick comedy would still be hugely entertaining in this day and age? Hundreds of Beavers is created in the same spirit as the Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton comedies of yore, but it’s a tribute that manages to feel fresh, exciting, and unpredictable. The premise is simple: a man […]

Journeying from Africa to Europe without an official permit isn’t just risky, it’s dehumanizing, if not lethal. And though we’ve heard about the many unfortunate ways migrants have suffered, never has the crisis been as intimately and intensely portrayed as in Io Captain. Here, we get to see who Seydou and Moussa were before the […]

Bong Joon-ho’s follow-up to Parasite, Mickey17, lacks the precision and sharp wit of its predecessor. The satire felt too obvious, while the narrations went on for too long, often dampening the film’s momentum. The biggest transgressor, however, is the film’s villain, a Trump-incarnate played by Mark Ruffalo, who seemed more ridiculous than scary. But while […]

La Chimera is often meandering. Scenes flitter about and move at different paces, resembling dreams more than they do reality, but they’re hardly trivial. Just the opposite, they enchant you with their beauty and confront you with deep, existential questions that haunt you long after the film’s run. You won’t find obvious answers here though, […]

Kill Bill meets Bend It Like Beckham in this wild ride about a martial arts-obsessed British-Pakistani teenager who views her older sister’s impending marriage as a catastrophe to be averted at all costs. Aspiring stuntwoman Ria (Priya Kansara) can’t stomach the idea of free-spirited Lena (Ritu Arya) giving up on her creative dreams to marry […]

Stoic, unflinching, and almost near silent, Ballerina takes a fitting approach to enact its protagonist’s revenge. Within its lean 90 minute runtime, ex-bodyguard Ok-ju single-mindedly searches for answers, through following the lead from her friend’s suicide note. The film shares nothing personal, no doubts, worries, or fears from Ok-ju – except for her affection for […]

There have been nearly 30 movie adaptations and countless TV shows of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte-Cristo, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a classic tale of fate, justice, corruption, and love, making it an educational and entertaining watch. You might think, then, that this latest one by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre […]

The Boy and the Heron isn’t Hayao Miyazaki’s best film, nor is it his most accessible, seeing as the director himself has admitted to getting lost in the world he’s built here. But it is his most personal film to date (apparently he’s out of retirement!) and consequently, it’s one of the most complex Ghibli […]

With Marvel and DC monopolizing the superhero landscape with high budgets, big-name actors, and CGI graphics, Shin Kamen Rider feels like a breath of fresh air. Also known as Shin Masked Rider in other territories, the adaptation recalls the campy costumes and over-the-top action of the original 70s tokusatsu series. It’s fun, if a little […]

Pushing an already extreme activity even further beyond its limits, Ueli Steck and Dani Arnold have became the world champions of speed climbing—a variation of the sport that places much greater importance on direct competition over communing with nature. It’s fascinating to hear what drives Steck and Arnold to courting death like this, and to […]

More shooting and spectacle than story, Sisu is a stunningly shot and unapologetically gory action film set at the tail end of World War II in Finland. It follows former commando turned prospector Aatami (nicknamed “Koschei” or immortal by the Russians) as he retrieves his stolen gold from the Nazis who’ve occupied and pillaged the […]

Besides the futuristic tech that pops in and out, there’s not a lot about The Kitchen that signals it as a sci-fi film. Neglected housing projects and violent raids have become too common to count as dystopian, so it often feels like The Kitchen could’ve gone without labeling itself as part of the genre (the […]

While it starts off slow and rocky, River Wild sails smoothly as soon as it hits the waters. The rafting on the rapids, the wild chases, the suspenseful silences—all are effectively shot and believably terrifying, even if they border on predictability at times. Real-life couple Meester and Brody are vulnerable and intense, adding some depth […]

Set in 1920s India, RRR follows two revolutionaries who strike up an unlikely bond and fend off the British regime from their home. In their epic journey to protect their people, they encounter a number of setbacks that prompts them to put their incredible combat skills on full display. Despite its three-hour run, RRR never […]

After Nimona’s long journey to the big screen (involving the shutdown of animation studio Blue Sky, and Disney’s resistance to LGTBQ+ themes), the fact that the movie has been completed and allowed to tell its story at all is something to be celebrated. The film itself is pretty standard fare for American children’s animation, with […]

There are a plethora of father-son road trips in film, but rarely portrayed on the path are fathers with their trans sons. That is because most queer stories often focus on the romance, and if not the romance, the coming out process. Runs in the Family does things differently – it’s the connection between trans […]

Set at a time when humans can travel as far into space as Jupiter, Spaceman looks delightfully retro-futuristic. It’s as if the people and tech of the ‘60s were transported to a faraway future where things like long-haul space flights and nebulous pink clouds exist, and so visually, Spaceman is not tiring to look at. […]

The Kings of the World is a surreal coming-of-age movie that follows Rá, Culebro, Sere, Winny, and Nano, street kids who are on their way to claim land that’s rightfully theirs. Their one goal is to finally make a home after living without one for so long, but they’re hindered by the inevitable tragedies that […]

I think it’s safe to say you’ve never seen a Pinocchio adaptation quite like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. It still largely stays true to the source material, which is to stay it’s still about a father grappling with the loss of his son and a boy figuring out where he figures in the world. But […]

The Sea Beast tells the story of Jacob, a legendary sea monster hunter, and Maisie, a wannabe monster hunter herself. When a dangerous encounter isolates them from the rest of the crew, they’re forced to team up and reconcile their opposing beliefs—Maisie believes there’s good in the beasts, but Jacob has yet to be convinced. […]

From the moment it begins, The Monkey King hardly pauses to take a breath. The characters are always frantically jumping into the next scene, the action is nonstop, and the jokes, though juvenile, arrive one after the other. This is okay if you’re looking for a brisk viewing experience, but not so if you’re prone […]

I’m sure the novel Uglies is based on makes a lot more sense since it has a lot of space to world-build and explore themes like external beauty, class, and identity. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the movie Uglies, which is almost impressively out of date in look and tone. The CGI is […]

The big ideas swirling at the center of The Creator are about human heartlessness versus AI compassion, man’s coldness versus robot warmth. Unfortunately, the movie winds up being an unwitting example of the former: visual effects take precedence over emotion here, meaning you rarely feel any of the intended poignancy of this story about a […]

Operating in a similar style and speed as the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time and Uncut Gems, Freestyle gives us a peek into the seedy underbelly of Poland through the eyes of Diego, a smalltime muscian who slides back into his drug dealing ways when he finds himself short on money. On the sensory front, Freestyle […]

After more than six years in the making, The Little Mermaid should be a spectacle for the ages, but even the magic of Rob Marshall (Chicago) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton) cannot save the live-action remake. The film feels at once too stunted for an actual musical and too expansive to be just another movie. There’s […]

There’s a lot of good to be found in the charming, poignant, and endlessly quotable Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. It follows a documentarian named Dean, who has as his subject the one-inch talking shell that is Marcel. Marcel looks after an empty house along with his grandma Connie, and together they run a […]

It’s a bold move, centering a drama around a creature as docile as a donkey, but EO pulls it off without ever leaning on the crutch of CGI. Instead, the film makes ingenious use of a hundred-year-old film technique: the Kuleshov effect. By splicing the image of the titular donkey’s placid, expressionless face against visual […]

Part fantasy, part road trip, and part coming-of-age, Suzume is a rich and fast-paced tale with no dull moments in between. The energy is relentless and the animation, as expected, is dazzling, so even though there are occasional plot holes and melodramatic reaches, you’d be hard-pressed not to forgive them. Suzume still wins you over. […]

You don’t need to be familiar with the rest of the Rurouni Kenshin live-action movie series—or the original manga and anime, for that matter—to appreciate The Beginning as a powerful period drama in its own right. This is a story that courses its historical context about a tumultuous time in Japan’s past through a stoic, […]

With every new Aardman production, their stop motion animation technique becomes more and more seamless, looking practically indistinguishable from the work being put out by other animation studios that use CG. However, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget also threatens to flatten into the same kind of entertainment churned out by other studios at a […]

Sayen is the kind of film that ultimately feels like it was written by a focus group: ample representation for a worthy cause funneled into the sort of escapism that should theoretically hit the widest demographic possible. But even with its solid production values and a determined performance by Rallen Montenegro, the film lacks the […]

Set in 1650 against the backdrop of the English colonization of Ireland, Wolfwalkers follows the story of Robyn, a young apprentice hunter who arrives in Ireland with her father to wipe out the last wolf pack. Completing the “Irish Folklore Trilogy,” Tomm Moore’s film is a tale of sisterhood, friendship, and acceptance told with phenomenal […]

Sanitized, predictable, and utterly cheesy, Happiness for Beginners feels like one of those TV movies made to fill the time in between the stuff people actually watch. It’s baffling how wasted Kemper is here; the actress’ signature pep, which was fully utilized in shows like The Office and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, is nowhere to be […]

Animated in every sense of the word, The Mitchells vs. the Machines is a fun and lively watch for anyone of any age. On the surface, it’s about a tech company’s AI going haywire as it turns against humans and takes over the world (an obvious and much-deserved dig at Big Tech). It also immediately […]

It’s an incredible story, but it’s one that only really deserves to be told a certain way, which director Arthur Harari gets right. Onoda’s one-man crusade to continue World War II is nothing short of delusional, and Harari spends most of the film following the soldier as his companions die one by one, worsening his […]

There’s little to like in Hidden Strike, a shoddy action thriller riddled with dodgy CGI, melodramatic performances, and ultra-predictable plotlines. You could even play a drinking game spotting all the action cliches present in the film (take a shot every time the patriotic hero dedicates a killing to his countrymen). Mostly, it’s laughable and complex […]

At least you can’t accuse this holiday film of being generic. Combining the incredibly incompatible elements of drug busts and figure skating (and still failing to justify this crazy idea, though not for a lack of trying), Dealing with Christmas eventually begins to feel more like a series of comedy sketches making up the rules […]

It’s not that being similar to another, successful, animated franchise is a bad thing, but The Tiger’s Apprentice hurries to practically every plot point without properly establishing its setting, its characters, or their relationships. It all means well, and once you get used to its lower production values, it becomes clear that the film has […]

More an extended episode of the Polly Pocket TV series that started in 2018 than a self-contained movie, Sparkle Cove Adventure really only exists to showcase various adventure sequences and magical powers possessed by Polly and the other characters. It’s all harmless fun, with a last-minute message about working together that could’ve been much more […]

Less homage to Star Wars than it is a pastiche of that cultural juggernaut, a strong sense of déjà vu hangs over Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon. Unfortunately, in plainly appealing to the memory of its vastly superior inspiration so many times, it inadvertently reminds viewers of how much better its muse is. There are far […]

Narrated by the familiar voice of Jack Black, Apollo 10 ½ is a throwback story told with admirable specificity and imagination. Black plays a grown-up Stan, who looks back on his younger years with a mix of fondness and wonder: how did they get away with the things they did then? American suburbia in the […]

Logan Lerman (The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and John Hawkes (The Sessions) star in this easy road drama about a father who tries to rekindle with his son. After the mother passes away, they try to execute her dying wishes of spreading her ashes in her home country of Ireland. The son, Lerman’s character, […]

In the decades since pioneer pilot Amelia Earhart disappeared from the face of the Earth, countless theories have emerged to fill in the gaps of her still-unknown whereabouts. Historians generally agree she crashed into the ocean, but that’s not dramatic enough, isn’t it? Some people believe she was captured by the Japanese, others believe she […]

This Japanese animated film employs a gorgeous blend of CGI and traditional animation—as well as intricately orchestrated original songs—to present a plausible simulation of virtual reality where people are truly free to do anything. Belle might not be as careful with its characters and the difficult situations they’re put into “off-screen,” but this is still […]

Surreal, strange, yet wondrous, Penguin Highway never takes a straightforward approach to its story. Penguins pop up out of nowhere, leading the nerdy and precocious Aoyama to study them via empirical observation and logical deduction. These studies don’t end up with a feasible explanation– in fact, by the final act, the film abandons all laws […]

This crazy adventure thriller was Colombia’s nomination for the 2020 Oscars. “Monos” translates to monkeys, the nom de guerre of a group of teenagers holding an American hostage in an isolated bunker. Other than the occasional visit from their supervisor, they’re left to their devices, forming relationships, smoking weed, drinking, and eating psychedelic mushrooms. One […]