The week in film: Ridley Scott’s movies ranked, Best Actress contenders revealed

Every Ridley Scott movie ranked, including Napoleon

It’s been nearly five decades since Ridley Scott’s first feature film, The Duellists, hit theaters, and now, even well into his 80s, the legendary filmmaker shows no signs of slowing. Napoleon, his latest feature, is as grand and intense as anything else in his long career, and it demonstrates just how adept Scott remains at pulling audiences into his world, no matter where that world might be. Read More

15 Best Actress contenders for the 2024 Oscars

We’ve already identified 22 films competing for a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, and 15 actors in the running for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. Now, we’re turning our attention to the actresses whose names could be called when nominations are announced in January. As with the actors list, we’ve narrowed the field to 15 contenders who gave extraordinary performances this year in comedies, dramas, biopics, thrillers, and even a musical. Read More

Maestro review: Bradley Cooper’s passionate, unruly ode to Leonard Bernstein

Bradley Cooper’s Maestro is an inspired ode to the late, great Leonard Bernstein. It’s also a thorny deconstruction of the man-as-tortured-genius trope, replete with a compassionate focus on his put-upon wife and the bond the two shared for close to three decades. Ambitious in scope and featuring two powerhouse performances at its center, the Netflix release makes good on the promise shown in Cooper’s debut, A Star Is Born, another behind-the-scenes musical romance two-hander that explored the promise and price of ambition. Read More

Napoleon review: Ridley Scott delivers a dynamite biopic

Outside of military colleges, where his strategic acumen is still lauded, many present-day folks might only have a loose sense of Napoleon Bonaparte, with a bicorne hat and hand tucked in his jacket, as a man of short stature and shorter temper. Director Ridley Scott’s Napoleon sweeps aside this caricature, craftily sidestepping the pitfalls of many conventional biopics and delivering a highly involving work of psychological portraiture. Read More

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the best Thanksgiving movie

Thanksgiving gets totally bulldozed by Christmas, doesn’t it? There are certainly far fewer shows and movies to watch to get in the spirit of the thing. Sure, we’ve got some Thanksgiving episodes and a handful of films explicitly or tangentially about the holiday, including the beloved-but-dated classic Planes, Trains And Automobiles, as well as a new slasher. But a good seasonal watch, something to be observed annually, can be hard to identify—at least if you plan to view it with the whole family. That’s where the stop-motion masterpiece Fantastic Mr. Fox comes in, a film that never acknowledges Turkey Day by name, but absolutely nails the vibe. If you’re a Common Sense Media checker, you’ll be glad to know that it’s rated 7+ (they even replace all the bad words with “cuss”) and it’s far more enjoyable for the adults among us than, say, Free Birds. With recent Roald Dahl adaptations now streaming, and the arrival of Thanksgiving itself, we need to revisit the first time Wes Anderson brought the author’s work to the screen as well as what makes it the most perfect seasonal centerpiece. Read More

Wish review: This kingdom really needs some magic

It was probably inevitable that Marvel’s world-building virus would infect its Disney host. But it’s still startling to see how urgently the new Disney animated fairy tale Wish attempts to retcon 86 years of disparate animated features into something like a shared universe—one where Peter Pan, Thumper, and Pinocchio exist in semi-related plotlines, just like Black Widow, Moon Knight, and the High Evolutionary do. Read More

The 25 most iconic movie company logos, from A24 to Pixar to TriStar

A good studio logo says something about the movie you’re about to see. Sometimes it’s as literal as “this movie is based on a Marvel comic book,” sometimes it’s a testament to a studio’s place in film history, and sometimes it’s—at the risk of sounding very cool—a total vibe that gives you a sense of what to expect from the movie you’re about to see. There are even extremely rare occasions when the logo is so good at hyping up a movie that it makes you wish the Dark Universe hadn’t been a catastrophic flop. Read More

Where could The Hunger Games go from here?

With the release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, Lionsgate has used up the last of the source material that fed one of its most popular IPs. The Hunger Games book trilogy by Suzanne Collins yielded a series of four successful films, ending in 2015 with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2. The latest installment, a prequel set 64 years before the trilogy begins, gives us the backstory of Coriolanus Snow and some insight into what drives him to commit such cruel acts when he becomes president later in life. Read More

Bill & Ted’s Napoleon reflects on ice cream, water slides, and learning French

Joaquin Phoenix may be the latest actor to play Napoleon Bonaparte, but he certainly isn’t the first (nor will he be the last). Of all the people who’ve played the French emperor, from Marlon Brando to Verne Troyer, one looms large in our collective memories: The water slide-loving, ice cream-hoarding “Ziggy Piggy” Napoleon from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Australian actor Terry Camilleri’s commitment to the role plays beautifully with the 1989 film’s upbeat comedic sensibility, and Camilleri even manages to instill emotional depth in the historical figure. Despite being described as a “dick” by Ted’s younger brother (and many in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars would probably agree), Napoleon is a babe in the wood in San Dimas, thanks to Camilleri’s performance. Read More

Dig in! 20 of the most unforgettable food scenes in movies

It’s time again to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with friends or family and remember what you’re thankful for. Here at The A.V. Club we’re thankful for movies with amazing food scenes that help us work up an appetite. In that spirit, we’ve come up with a list of food-related scenes (in no particular order) that always seem to make our mouths water and our stomachs grumble. Some are from films explicitly about food and cooking, others are isolated scenes that stand out for the way they showcase a special dish or feast. All of them have something to say about the connection between food, family, comfort, and love. Get your taste buds ready for an international tour of dishes and delights from some of our favorite movies. Read More