The 50 Best Movies on Peaco*ck, Updated for February 2024 (2024)

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DIRECTOR: Judd Apatow
STARS: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd
RATING: R

The 40-Year-Old Virgin might be Judd Apatow’s first movie, yet it still ranks among his best. As the affable but awkward Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) resolves to lose his V-card, raucous hijinks ensue. But Apatow has never really been just about the gross-out gags; his focus remains resolutely on how ensembles work together to absorb someone who feels outside of a community back inside the group.

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DIRECTOR: Gareth Edwards
STARS: Scoot McNairy, Whitney Able
RATING: R

You might recognize the name Gareth Edwards from his gigs in the director’s chair for the Star Wars and Godzilla franchises. If you’re ever curious about the audition, so to speak, that lands someone these jobs, check out Edwards’ scrappy triumph Monsters from 2010. This creature feature has little to do with flashy visual effects and everything to do with the power that mysterious organisms can exert over a journalist and tourist traversing the U.S.-Mexico border. Even in Edwards’ humble beginnings, the seeds of big things to come were already blossoming.

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DIRECTOR: Jill Sprecher
STARS: Toni Colette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach
RATING: PG-13

Move over, Office Space. There’s a new cult classic comedy from the late ‘90s about the drudgery of officework, and it’s Jill Sprecher’s Clockwatchers. Don’t believe us? Talk to our friend, John Early, about it.

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DIRECTOR: Joey Soloway
STARS: Kathryn Hahn, Juno Temple, Josh Radnor
RATING: R

Who’s the comedic dynamo you need more of in your life? It’s been Kathryn Hahn all along! Joey Soloway’s Afternoon Delight is one of the rare opportunities she gets to be at the center of a narrative, and she of course knocks it out of the park. As a sexually frustrated carpool mom dealing with feelings of inadequacy, Hahn’s Rachel makes the questionable move to “rescue” a young stripper and hire her as the family nanny … and life around the house gets a lot more interesting.

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DIRECTOR: Kelly Reichardt
STARS: John Magaro, Orion Lee
RATING: PG-13

Director Kelly Reichardt’s tender, patient tales of quiet valor fly in the face of everything we come to expect from a story set in the West. First Cow is both her most accessible and radical tale yet as it rewrites myths of American success and ambition. Two scrappy outsiders – a scrawny cook and a Chinese immigrant – rise to prominence in the frontier-era Pacific Northwest by selling delicious biscuits to voracious customers. The catch? They must steal the milk from a prize cow on the land of the richest man in town.

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DIRECTOR: Robert Downey Sr.
STARS: Arnold Johnson, Stan Gottlieb, Allen Garfield
RATING: R

Sure, you know Jr. – but what about his father? Robert Downey Sr. was a trailblazing artist at the forefront of culture in his own way. Granted, it was the counterculture. If you want to get a sense of his radical work that embodied the anarchic energy of the ‘60s, start with Putney Swope. This blistering satire spirals outward from a simple concept: the only Black member of an advertising firm’s board becomes its chairman. Half a century later, the film’s unwillingness to pull punches makes it feel as relevant as ever.

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DIRECTOR: Lee Chang-dong
STARS: Steven Yeun, Yoo Ah-in, Jong-seo Jun
RATING: Not Rated

If you loved the sincerity of Steven Yeun’s Oscar-nominated turn in Minari, broaden your knowledge of his formidable skills by watching him smolder in Korean drama Burning. This slow-burn of a film features the actor as the mysterious, magnetic Ben, a Gatsby-like nouveau riche South Korean with an unconventional hobby. Ben emerges out of nowhere as a romantic rival to the sheepish Jong-su, and his presence sparks a small flame that will soon engulf their lives. Give it time – the patience of director Lee Chang-dong really pays off.

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DIRECTOR: David Mackenzie
STARS: Jack O’Connell, Ben Mendelsohn, Rupert Friend
RATING: Not Rated

In 2014, the media told us that Jack O’Connell was the next big star rising in Hollywood. Unfortunately, they all lined up behind the wrong movie (Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken) and missed the movie that best harnesses his talents. In the prison drama Starred Up, the incorrigible O’Connell channels all the energy of a caged bull as he moves from juvenile detention to an adult prison. Though the youngest person locked within the walls, his arrival unsettles and overturns the established order in fascinating and unexpected ways.

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DIRECTOR: Ti West
STARS: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Mary Woronov
RATING: R

Many people try to vibrate on the wavelength that filmmaker Ti West occupies – that is to say, they want to harken back to retro style while maintaining a distinctly contemporary edge. But few can manage what he does in The House of the Devil, which is to recapture the feeling of ‘80s horror without winking too much at his audience. This story of a babysitting job gone wrong intersects with the slasher film and the haunted house flick without making you feel like you’ve seen this story a dozen times before.

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DIRECTOR: Ryan Fleck
STARS: Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Shareeka Epps
RATING: R

We’ve all seen too many white savior dramas where a teacher plops into an under-resourced school and helps inspire a classroom of students. But Half Nelson flips that formula on its head with a story showing that it’s a teacher in need of rescue … and only his student can deliver him from the depths of his addiction. As Dan, the unconventional and radical history teacher with a drug habit, Ryan Gosling has scarcely ever been more electrifying a force on screen.

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DIRECTOR: Dito Montiel
STARS: Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Channing Tatum
RATING: R

Adapting your own memoir for your directorial debut might sound like a recipe for navel-gazing, but Dito Montiel manages to pull it off with A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints. The film captures with affection and anguish his time growing up on the mean streets of Astoria in 1986. He acknowledges the way the neighborhood simultaneously shaped his life and drove him to look for a new one elsewhere. Phenomenal performances abound, but the real standout is a young Channing Tatum, who gives a ferociously physical performance as Dito’s volatile friend Antonio.

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DIRECTOR: Kris Rey
STARS: Cobie Smulders, Anders Holm, Gail Bean
RATING: R

The concept of Kris Rey’s Unexpected seems like it would be a bad idea: an inner-city Chicago high school teacher (Cobie Smulders) and her bright student (Gail Bean) both have unplanned pregnancies at the same time. But it’s all in the execution here. Beyond the compassion bursting out of the frame, Rey’s film keeps an incisive edge throughout as the influence of class and racial dynamics exert themselves subtly but powerfully throughout.

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DIRECTOR: Adam McKay
STARS: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen
RATING: R

The cinematic archetype of the man-child has never received a more affectionate and amusing incarnation than in Adam McKay’s Step Brothers. This blisteringly funny comedy about Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s pathetic boomerang children first wins you over with its outrageous, outlandish humor. But with time, we can see the sly ways McKay sends up their behavior and the larger cultural immaturity that enables them rather than simply celebrating or indulging their ridiculousness.

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DIRECTOR: Clio Barnard
STARS: Ruth Wilson, Sean Bean, Mark Stanley
RATING: Not Rated

British director Clio Barnard channels a grounded earthiness in her work like few other filmmakers can, and her 2018 feature Dark River is no exception. This psychological and pastoral drama features a powerful Ruth Wilson as a sheep shearer who must deal with the unresolved pain of her past upon inheriting her father’s farm. Barnard plunges us into piercing flashbacks that underscore the trauma triggered by Wilson’s Alice fighting her brother tooth-and-nail for tenancy of the property. These 89 minutes feel like they contain the full lifetime of a character.

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DIRECTOR: Ramin Bahrani
STARS: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern
RATING: R

Where do you go when you hit rock bottom? At the height of the housing crisis that precipitated the Great Recession, Andrew Garfield’s Dennis Nash has to answer that question FAST when he’s evicted from his family home. 99 Homes follows his dance with the devil as he begins to scrounge together the funds to get it back by working with the real estate maven who kicked him out of his own place. In Ramin Bahrani’s brilliantly wrought morality play, Dennis the evictee becomes the evictor – a reversal of fortune that illustrates the brokenness of American capitalism.

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DIRECTOR: Robert D. Siegel
STARS: Patton Oswalt, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Rapaport
RATING: R

How far does your fandom extend? That’s the question Patton Oswalt’s Paul Aufiero, a parking garage attendant and talk radio enthusiast, has to answer in Big Fan after his favorite Giants player beats him up to the point of hospitalization. If Paul stands up for himself, he runs the risk of imperiling the chances of his beloved team by taking a star player off the field. Oswalt fully leans into the twisted mental logic of his character and keeps us guessing about how he’ll respond to the bitter end.

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DIRECTOR: Bob Clark
STARS: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder
RATING: R

Who says all Christmas movies need to be cheerful? Black Christmas will have you seeing red for the holiday season – red for blood, that is. This slasher film following a sorority house stalked by a crazy killer during the Christmas season is exactly the kind of holiday counterprogramming you’re looking for. But ho ho ho-ld up before you unwrap this gift: the kills from this ‘70s horror flick are gruesome and disturbing even by today’s standards.

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DIRECTOR: Andrew Bujalski
STARS: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Dylan Gelula
RATING: R

As the so-called #girlboss era slips from powerful to parodic, there’s never been a better time to visit (or revisit) Andrew Bujalski’s incisive workplace comedy Support the Girls. Regina Hall shines as a woman just trying to get through the workday despite all the distractions and disruptions caused by the people she serves. Without getting on any kind of polemical soapbox, he effortlessly conveys the kind of emotional labor that so often falls on the female managerial class. And what better vantage point into the wide range of humanity than a Southern “breastaurant” modeled on Hooters?

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DIRECTOR: Ben Stiller
STARS: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller
RATING: PG-13

If one could bottle up the disaffected energy of Gen X, the container would look a whole lot like Reality Bites. This generational touchstone captures all the growing pains of that transitional moment from college to the workplace. Ben Stiller’s film expertly distills the perils of navigating this duality filtered through the romantic dilemma faced by Leilana (Winona Ryder) as she weighs the merits of buttoned-up businessman Michael (Stiller) against the brash burnout Troy (Ethan Hawke). Though highly specific to one cohort of college graduates, the film’s earnest portrayal of youthful disaffection still rings authentic decades later.

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DIRECTOR: Chris Peckover
STARS: Olivia De Jonge, Levi Miller, Ed Oxenbould
RATING: R

‘Tis always the season for scares. Better Watch Out starts out like a typical holiday-themed home invasion flick, but let’s just say what Santa’s bringing this year isn’t the only surprise ahead. Chris Peckover’s clever, modest thriller turns many an expectation on its head to wildly entertaining effect.

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DIRECTOR: Alex Ross Perry
STARS: Jason Schwartzman, Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce
RATING: Not Rated

If you’re unfamiliar with filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, Listen Up Philip is a great place to begin acquainting yourself with one of the major talents to emerge from the American independent cinema scene over the last decade. Here, he fuses the frankness of the naturalistic “mumblecore” style with the more witty, urbane trappings of a New York intelligentsia comedy. His character study of the self-obsessed novelist Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) in the wake of his professional successes and personal foibles has a bite so sharp and venomous it could draw blood.

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DIRECTOR: Tom Shadyac
STARS: Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett Smith, James Coburn
RATING: PG-13

What’s better than one Eddie Murphy performance in a movie? How about 7 Eddie Murphy performances in a movie. In The Nutty Professor we get the legendary comedian as the jolly and giant scientist Sherman Klump, a good-natured man who’s self-conscious about his weight as he courts Jada Pinkett Smith’s lovely Carla. He takes an experimental potion that transforms him into the much skinnier – yet also haughtier – Buddy Love, and chaos ensues. Murphy also memorably appears as Sherman’s animated family members, the Klumps, in some of the film’s most memorable scenes.

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DIRECTORS: Ravi Patel, Geeta Patel
STARS: Ravi Patel, Geeta Patel
RATING: PG

The idea of arranged marriage might sound like something that only exists in a fictional movie, but it’s very much a part of documentary Meet the Patels. Ravi Patel, with the help of his sister Geeta, films the romantic journey that ensues when he indulges his traditional Indian parents’ request to consider the idea. It’s a moving, provocative and ultimately sweet investigation of the relationship between love and marriage.

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DIRECTOR: George A. Romero
STARS: Duane Jones, Judith O’Dea, Karl Hardman
RATING: Not Rated

Were you a fan of the “social thriller” as configured by Jordan Peele in Get Out? Thank George A. Romero, a pioneer of the subgenre in Night of the Living Dead. What this lo-fi zombie film might lack in scares after 50 years of advances in technology, it more than makes up for in subversive social commentary. It’s living proof that sometimes the most enduring political messages are smuggled through genre films, not blared out from a soapbox in self-important dramas.

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DIRECTORS: Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
STARS: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz-Plasse
RATING: PG

How many animated films can claim they have Academy Award-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins (frequent DP for Denis Villeneuve and the Coen Brothers) as visual consultant? It’s clear to spot his influence in How to Train Your Dragon, which features soaring aerials that still dazzle even on the small screen. This story of a young Viking who seeks to help the very creatures his village seeks to hunt has a keen eye for action and a big, beating heart of compassion.

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DIRECTOR: Daniel Patrick Carbone
STARS: Ryan Jones, Nathan Varnson
RATING: Not Rated

There’s little nostalgia for childhood in Hide Your Smiling Faces, but the film is all the better for its clear-eyed take on the coming-of-age story. After two young Jersey boys spot a body alongside a river, they begin to process the nature of death. Filmmaker Daniel Patrick Carbone observes their understanding of mortality from an abstract concept to something concrete with remarkable sensitivity. He renders with grace the parts of growing up that we try to elide, even though they shape us irrevocably.

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DIRECTOR: John Hillcoat
STARS: Guy Pearce, Ray Winstone, Emily Watson
RATING: R

If you think there’s no new ground to trod in the Western, turn your eyes even further west: to Australia. The Proposition takes us back to the 1880s where Guy Pearce’s outlaw Charlie Burns faces a brutal mandate to kill one brother in order to save another sibling. Perhaps the only thing more unsparing than his mission is the land itself of the arid Australian outback.

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DIRECTOR: Chad Stahelski
STARS: Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane
RATING: R

The recent renaissance of Keanu Reeves begins with 2014’s John Wick. This shoot-‘em-up actioner begins with an almost parodic premise: Reeves’ titular hero kicks into full assassin mode after some Russian gangsters kill his dog. What results is his quest for revenge is a no-holds-barred affair that features some of the best action choreography in years, much of it executed with balletic grace by Reeves that harkens back to his days as Neo in The Matrix.

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DIRECTOR: Ariel Kleiman
STARS: Vincent Cassel, Jeremy Chabriel, Florence Mezzara
RATING: Not Rated

If you only know Vincent Cassel as a menacing baddie looming in the background of films like Ocean’s Twelve or Black Swan, it’s time you see him command the lead. As cult leader Gregori in Partisan, Cassel demands fear and obedience from his pupils as he trains a generation of child assassins to wage all-out ideological warfare. Ariel Kleinman’s film is not about that violence, nor is it about the motivating tenets of Gregori’s philosophy. It’s about the logic of control, something only an actor as forceful as Cassel can build a whole movie around.

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DIRECTOR: Oren Moverman
STARS: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton
RATING: R

As messengers delivering the news of a soldier’s passing to their loved ones at home, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) and Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) are used to getting a wide range of emotional responses to their arrival. But The Messenger examines one interaction in their line of duty that cuts through to something deep within their core – a widow (Samantha Morton) whose calmness in the face of tragedy startles them. Such a reaction inspires such curiosity with Montgomery that he can’t help but investigate and understand her better.

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DIRECTOR: Eliza Hittman
STARS: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin
RATING: PG-13

The debate over female bodily autonomy gets ripped from its hot-button political context (insofar as such a thing is possible) by Eliza Hittman in her extraordinary film Never Rarely Sometimes Always. With poetry and proceduralism alike, the director methodically walks an audience through the steps of a teenage girl forced to make a clandestine trip into New York City to terminate an unanticipated pregnancy. Each step along the way reveals a process designed to stigmatize and shame women trying to make the decision – and only strengthens the bond tying together two cousins who will support each other through anything.

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DIRECTOR: Shira Piven
STARS: Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Linda Cardellini
RATING: R

There’s always a hint of melancholy and aloofness in Kristen Wiig’s comedy, even dating back to her earliest sketches on SNL, but her turn in Welcome to Me is peak Wiig weird. Here, she stars as Alice, a woman for whom the boundary between garden-variety narcissism and mental illness ranges from thin to non-existent. After winning the lottery, she devotes her earnings to producing a cringeworthy vanity project talk show to feature herself to the world. It’s bonkers, bizarre … and also kind of brilliant as a piece of biting social commentary.

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DIRECTOR: Destin Daniel Cretton
STARS: Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Lakeith Stanfield
RATING: R

If you know this movie for anything, it’s probably as an incubator of great actors. Short Term 12 features early standout turns from Oscar-winners Brie Larson and Rami Malek along with Lakeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever, Stefanie Beatriz, and more. But Destin Daniel Cretton’s film is worth a watch for the story as well. The story of Larson’s Grace, a supervisor at a home for troubled teens with family issues of her own, is full of raw, vulnerable, and poignant emotion.

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DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón
STARS: Daniel Radcliffe, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson
RATING: PG

You can make an argument for just about any Harry Potter movie as the best, but it’s pretty hard to dispute that Prisoner of Azkaban is the most important of them all. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s infusion of dark ambiance and devilish humor helped the series graduate from kiddie literature into the stuff of serious adult drama. Rather than relegate it forever to the dustbin of fantasy, he grounded it in the realities of teenage anxieties and growing pangs. It’s got a wicked sense of style and fun that set the tone for all that was to come from the franchise on-screen.

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DIRECTOR: Gia Coppola
STARS: Emma Roberts, Jack Kilmer, Nat Wolff
RATING: R

Let’s just go ahead and say it: the “ick” factor looms large over James Franco’s role in Palo Alto as a high school soccer coach who hits on one of his players. But his involvement should not invalidate all the other people who make the film such a riveting look at teenage boredom and ennui from director Gia Coppola to star Emma Roberts. This is such a singular, striking, and stylish coming-of-age story where the journey is not toward maturity so much as it is to getting accustomed to disappointment and dissatisfaction.

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DIRECTOR: Gary Ross
STARS: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth
RATING: PG-13

The Hunger Games author Jennifer Collins claims she originated the idea for her series while toggling between reality TV shows and footage of the Iraq War on cable news. Her unique understanding of the fusion between spectacle and violence gives the film’s relevance beyond merely being another fad YA adaptation or the vessel that officially launched Jennifer Lawrence into superstardom. This is a blockbuster with surprising brain and brawn.

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DIRECTORS: Dave LaMattina, Chad N. Walker
STARS: Carroll Spinney
RATING: Not Rated

It’s hard to imagine anyone else other than the late Carroll Spinney as Big Bird after watching this documentary, frankly. I Am Big Bird takes us behind the scenes of Sesame Street to understand how the creation of the series’ most beloved character was so intimately connected to its puppeteer. This is sure to delight Sesame fans old and new.

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DIRECTOR: Michel Gondry
STARS: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst
RATING: R

Is it possible that the greatest modern love story is actually about a couple determined to erase the memory of their relationship after an acrimonious breakup? Writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry’s magical (sur)realist anti-romance captures the pains and pleasures of love in all its complex contradictions. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an eternal bright spot in the cinematic canon.

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DIRECTOR: Bart Layton
STARS: Adam O’Brian, Anna Ruben, Cathy Dresbach
RATING:

Saying “truth is stranger than fiction” is one of the most hackneyed clichés, but it holds eerily true with Bart Layton’s documentary The Imposter. Fans of true crime simply must check out this riveting story of how a “missing child” from Texas returns home as someone … seemingly a bit off. You won’t see some of the twists coming, so just make sure the ground is clear for when you jaw inevitably hits the floor.

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DIRECTOR: Joel Coen
STARS: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi
RATING: R

How many movies can say they inspired their own religion? One need not convert to “Dudeism” to enjoy all the charms of The Big Lebowski, though! This Coen Brothers classic is an open book to engage with across any number of levels, be it as a stoner flick, a modern gumshoe mystery, or notes on the existential nature of being. Like Jeff Bridges’ iconic The Dude, the film contains many multitudes.

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DIRECTOR: Josh Mond
STARS: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Kid Cudi
RATING: R

The struggles of addiction rarely feel so searingly real as it does in James White, the story of how Christopher Abbott’s titular twentysomething must summon all his strength and composure to care for his ailing mother. Filmmaker Josh Mond offers no easy platitudes or narrative contrivances to make the character’s struggles more palatable for our consumption. Yet in the absence of comfort, what we have is a different kind of reassurance. We may not always be perfect, but sometimes we just have to be there for each other.

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DIRECTOR: Lynne Ramsay
STARS: Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly
RATING: R

A decade out, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin only grows in relevance. Our society continues to struggle in reckoning with the “mother of a monster” figure given the plague of disaffected young men committing acts of unspeakable violence. Ramsay never gets preachy or didactic in her exploration of the nature vs. nurture debate, instead letting her propulsive visuals pull us deep into the tortured psyche of Tilda Swinton’s Eva Khatchadourian. Don’t expect easy answers from the film, but Ramsay’s challenges and provocations will undoubtedly deepen your emotional understanding of this new cultural archetype.

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DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
STARS: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Peter Coyote
RATING: PG

Picking a favorite film from Steven Spielberg’s vast filmography has to be akin to choosing a favorite child. But as an emblematic work for the director, nothing compares to E.T. As a marriage of his trademark sentimentality and spectacle, this adventure of a young boy helping a lost alien return to his home remains unrivaled by any. Nearly four decades after its release, it’s all but a guaranteed reversion to a state of childlike wonder when that iconic John Williams score reaches a crescendo.

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DIRECTOR: Adam McKay
STARS: Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Sasha Baron Cohen
RATING: PG-13

If you haven’t seen Talladega Nights in a while – or have only digested it in quotables and YouTube clips – give it another watch. Before Adam McKay disappeared up his own self-importance, he was crafting brilliant satires of American masculinity which were so poker-faced that the targets of his mockery took the films as edifying works. This NASCAR-set tale of winning at all costs and chest-thumping anti-intellectualism is quite the indictment of Bush-era masculinity … and served up piping hot by the actor who rose to prominence in large part from imitating Dubya on SNL.

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DIRECTORS: Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson
STARS: Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow
RATING: PG

Nearly two decades after its release, Shrek remains as relevant and vital as ever – and if you need proof, scroll any social media service long enough to eventually see a meme featuring everyone’s favorite ogre. This family-friendly adventure works as both a witty send-up of fairy tale lore and a moving journey of self-acceptance. It’s got clever jokes for adults and juvenile ones for the kids, ensuring that everyone’s happy with this movie night pick.

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DIRECTORS: Peter Lord, Nick Park
STARS: Mel Gibson, Julia Sawalha, Miranda Richardson
RATING: G

Is it possible that the best prison escape movie is a stop-motion film about chickens fleeing a poultry farm? I don’t make the rules, but Chicken Run is both a fantastic parody of the genre’s classics and an entertaining adventure in its own right. The ingenuity of these chickens trying to quite literally fly the coop very nearly matches that of the claymation animators who made every painstaking frame of the film possible.

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DIRECTOR: Richard Linklater
STARS: Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Shirley MacLaine
RATING: PG-13

If there was ever any doubt that Richard Linklater is Texas’ cinematic poet laureate, that’s dispelled in Bernie. This ripped-from-the-headlines story of small-town undertaker Bernie Tiede (Jack Black) and the shocking turns in his relationship with crabby benefactor Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) is as gripping as any true-crime tale. But the movie really belongs to his Greek chorus of the real-life residents of Carthage, TX, all of whom provide undeniable local color and flair to the story in their talking-head interviews.

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DIRECTOR: John Hamburg
STARS: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman
RATING: PG-13

Along Came Polly is deeply underrated as the ur text of Ben Stiller’s stardom. As the neurotic Ruben Pfeffer, he’s torn between his desire for romance with Jennifer Aniston’s flighty and free-wheeling Polly and his need for complete risk-averse control. It’s great fun watching him squirming between his two alternatives, especially when egged on by a no-holds-barred Phillip Seymour Hoffman as his self-aggrandizing best friend.

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DIRECTOR: Paul Feig
STARS: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne
RATING: R

If you have time to read more than a blurb on why Bridesmaids is so great, I argued that its GIF-ability made it the definitive comedy of the 2010s in my Decider column “Smells Like ‘10s Spirit.” Those outsized reactions to everyday absurdity, particularly from leading lady Kristen Wiig, made it the perfect movie to capture the imagination of a culture moving further towards visual rather than text-based communication. But the movie also endures because it’s more than just a collection of outrageous moments – it’s an honest, heartfelt look at female friendships.

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DIRECTOR: Robert Zemeckis
STARS: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson
RATING: PG

The end-all, be-all of time travel movies, full stop. Robert Zemeckis never gets bogged down in the technicalities of his sci-fi concept in Back to the Future as he guns his DeLorean back to 1955. Instead, he makes the stakes simple and human: Marty McFly must ensure several key events take place around the time his parents fell in love. The cost of interfering with the timeline is that he will cease to exist in the present. It’s equal parts thrilling and fun to watch him try to keep time … and fend off advances from his own mother in her younger days.

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