The Best Original Movies to Watch
Thanks to technological and artistic innovations, in the past couple of decades inventiveness in film has become truly limitless. From novel formats to unusual scripts and cinematography, here are the most original movies and shows to stream now.
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You’ll have to trust us on this: it’s best to know absolutely nothing about this show before you start watching. There’s a reason all the promos you see on it say near to nothing about it, and it’s a reason you’ll be thankful for at the end of the first episode. What we will say […]
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Subscribe to unlock recommendations above 8.5/10.
Subscribe to unlock recommendations above 8.5/10.
Subscribe to unlock recommendations above 8.5/10.
Subscribe to unlock recommendations above 8.5/10.
In the first twenty minutes, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin seemed to be quite unremarkable, with the usual way a biographical documentary would go, that is, loved ones waxing poetic about how great the dead person was in life. But the documentary takes this to introduce Ibelin the same way his parents discovered the online […]
To plenty of countries around the globe, democracy has become so ubiquitous that we forget it’s relatively new, at least relative to the rest of human history. Bhutan is one of the last countries that became a democracy, and writer-director Pawo Choyning Dorji chose to depict a slice of how they made the shift in […]
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 […]
After the only war the Americans have lost, American post-Vietnam war portrayals tend to lean as patriotic revenge fantasies or romanticized disillusionment, but rarely do they portray the people caught in between. HBO’s The Sympathizer is an adaptation of the Pulitzer winning novel of the same name, and while it’s mainly an American production, Park […]
The journey of transitioning can be tough, but it’s not likely to be as wild as the journey undertaken by the titular rich mob boss of the crime thriller romance musical Emilia Pérez. It’s pretty surprising, with the incredibly stylish and totally unpredictable ways the plot unfolds, all made possible by the ridiculous all-or-nothing methods […]
After you get back home, and you tuck your kids to bed, we search for some easy entertainment in the late-night talk show. Quips about today’s news and intimate conversations with guests are just the thing to wind down, but theoretically, anything can happen at late night. Late Night with the Devil plays as a […]
When people donate to temples, they rarely contemplate the way these donations are used for its upkeep and renovation, and they would never think to imagine the possibility of profit. Netflix Thai drama The Believers centers on three young entrepreneurs, who, due to debt, decide to partner up with an abandoned temple as a money […]
We’re familiar with dick jokes from stand-up comedians, especially male stand-up, but Jacqueline Novak’s 90-minute show about the blow job feels completely new. Get on Your Knees feels like casual storytelling from someone experienced yet distant enough to be a cool authority on it (say, your best friend’s older sister’s best friend), but funnier. It’s […]
At first, Marmalade just seemed like a good ol’ fashioned Bonnie and Clyde story being told by one inmate to another. As Baron tells Otis about his titular Bonnie in Joe Keery’s Southern drawl, there’s a charming bittersweet romance about a man pushed into crime because of healthcare costs and a compelling Camila Marrone as […]
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Some people can get totally desperate when it comes to their love life, but rarely does this desperation end up with summoning an ancient warrior princess spirit. My Undead Yokai Girlfriend plays on this desperation, hilariously juxtaposing modern day love troubles with an ancient demonic revenge plot, and the mix plays out in a fun […]
High school can be an incredibly cruel place, but it’s not as systematically cruel as the Baekyeon Girls’ High School of the Pyramid Game K-drama. It’s a terrifying twist to regular high school bullying, as it doesn’t just allow kids to bully less popular kids, it creates accomplices, encourages bullying and also gives concrete numerical […]
Before she captivated the film world with her performance in Scorcese’s crime drama Killers of the Flower Moon, Lily Gladstone starred in Erica Tremblay’s feature film debut Fancy Dance, earlier in 2023. It’s a tragic drama, wherein Gladstone portrays Jax, a lesbian woman dealing with the government that failed to find her sister, and that […]
When adapting a novel, television showrunners have to transform the text into video, so sometimes, things get cut, lines get shortened, and sometimes what you and the author imagine from the book doesn’t match up on screen. Luckily, for Interior Chinatown, that’s not the case– the novel is already in a screenplay format, and the […]
How far would you go to please the one you love? You might indulge your spouse with a white lie every now and then like the men in Swathi Shetty’s life each time she asks about her cooking, but Killer Soup takes it a whole step further when she asks Umesh to impersonate her similar-looking […]
Some films struggle to balance style with substance, but Problemista isn’t one of them. It’s brandished with Torres’ unique brand of surrealist aesthetic, which is colorful, freakish, and fun, while also accurately relaying the pains of coming to and making it in America as an outsider. We see Alejandro accept increasingly debasing gigs as he […]
From the fantasy-powered folktales to superhero-like depictions, ninjas have captivated the world, but seem to be a relic of the past, with modern day warfare and weaponry turning them obsolete. House of Ninjas imagines a world where ninjas still exist, centering a clan stuck between wanting to abandon the old ways but also having skills […]
For people having difficulty bearing a child, artificial insemination is one way to go for parenthood, but going to sperm banks can be expensive, shrouded with too much anonymity, and have had many incidents of malpractice. Some people would rather take things into their own hands. Spermworld explores the journeys of three different internet sperm […]
A Round of Applause is just so darn weird. We’ve seen stories about people remembering their past lives, but we’ve never seen them able to recall and yearn for their life as pulp in an orange, of all things. We’ve seen fetuses as characters, but we’ve never seen them as a neurotic chainsmoker, tugging at […]
At a certain age, it can feel like starting over again isn’t possible, especially when all signs discourage you from ever trying again. Dr. Yehya of The Last Round knows this better than most– quitting kickboxing wasn’t an option, but a requirement, with his age and near misses and personal issues taking him out of […]
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This is Me…Now is more than just a glorified music video. It’s a personal confessional for one, and a surprisingly effective comedy for another. In parts, Jennifer Lopez speaks to her therapist (Fat Joe) about the dreams she’s been having, which then give way to surreal sequences of Lopez singing songs off her latest album, […]
The key to what makes this apocalyptic thriller from Mr Robot and Homecoming showrunner Sam Esmail so unnerving is how resolute it is about not taking place in an alternate timeline. Making references to memorable events in recent history and namechecking real brands and cultural touchstones (like Tesla and Friends), Leave the World Behind is […]
That The Curse is squirm-inducingly awkward won’t be news to anyone who’s watched a Nathan Fielder show before, but TV’s king of cringe digs his heels in on that approach here. The Curse chronicles the making of another show: HGTV’s inelegantly named “Flipanthropy,” which follows Fielder’s Asher and wife Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone) as they […]
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 […]
Jules’ wacky premise — an extra-terrestrial crash-lands in eccentric widower Milton’s (Ben Kingsley) flowerbeds — is a bit of a misdirection. While the movie is technically a sci-fi (featuring, as it does, some very out-there alien engineering), it’s really a charming, mostly-human drama about the isolation and surreality of aging. Though the mute presence of […]
In what is only his second feature, Greek director Christos Nikou crafts a singular universe that is orderly and enticing. The dystopian premise that you can now scientifically test for love may be bizarre, but it answers to one of the biggest anxieties humans share. That said, this particular world feels so close to ours today, […]
This World Can’t Tear Me Down is a timely release on friendship, punk, and anti-fascism. From the Italian cartoonist Zerocalcare, his second Netflix show shifts his musings over mental health to his experiences with regard to the country’s rising neo-Nazism. As xenophobia tears his friend group, it’s easy to feel the fear and self-doubt Zero’s […]
As the third instalment in Paul Schrader’s “man in a room” trilogy after First Reformed (2017) and The Card Counter (2021), Master Gardner rounds up the issues at stake in a most profound way. For anyone who’s seen a film either scripted by Schrader (such as Taxi Driver) or directed by him, there will be […]
The end of the world isn’t the most optimistic thing to think about, but the scenario leads you to thinking about unrealized dreams, pleasures, and aspirations: the way you want your life to be, if things have gone the way they planned. Dan Guterman, from Community and Rick and Morty, reimagines this idea in Carol […]
While the market for animation is mostly dominated by American 3D and Japanese anime, once in a while, a film outside the two industries comes up with an entirely new style of its own, with the design inspired by their respective countries. European animation has garnered some interest with Loving Vincent, but Chicken with Linda! […]
“World-building” doesn’t quite capture what Scavengers Reign does — the sheer imagination on display in just the first three episodes of this 12-part adult animation sci-fi could fill multiple universes. From the get-go, we’re immersed in a truly strange new world, one in which panda-like creatures with telepathic abilities control humans, fungi merge with motherboards, […]
Frybread Face and Me is a little indie gem: though rough around the edges, it’s full of charm and heart. Drawn from its director’s own childhood experiences, the movie charts a formative moment in the life of Benny, a city boy of Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo heritage who’s carted off to his grandmother’s ranch […]
