Yasuke sure offers plenty of substance along with entertainment. The title character is a real-life historical figure with a legend that’s ripe for (some) reimagining. He did actually exist as history’s first Black samurai, who wielded a sword in feudal Japan around the mid 1550s. He was an African expatriate (trafficked on a Portuguese ship) with great physical stature, and he drew quite a reaction from the warlord Nobunaga, who was initially convinced that the foreigner’s skin was covered in ink. The two men forged a respect-based bond and attempted to unite a fractured Japan that couldn’t get itself together under opposing lords. In the process, Yasuke ascended to nobleman status and earned the title of samurai. Somewhere along the line, he fell out of the history books, and that’s where this series starts to take the story into legendary territory.
Anime happens to be an ideal vehicle for such creative liberties to happen. We don’t know too much about Yasuke’s life after Nobunaga’s 1582 death (by forced suicide, or seppuku), and this series takes us decades into the future with flashbacks. And anime allows for fantastical touches with any historical figure, so long as their spirit is honored; and seriously, Japanese animation gets pretty free-wheeling on a regular basis. So, it doesn’t feel too far-fetched to see Yasuke facing off with a giant robot or for someone to shape-shift into a werewolf while fighting. There’s magic everywhere while Flying Lotus is doing the scoring honors, and everything looks freaking beautiful while you might wonder exactly what the artists (and writers LeSean Thomas and Nick Jones Jr.) were smoking when they dreamed up those details. One would do well to roll with it.
NetflixNetflix
The best news is that this series is in great hands, overall. That’s more than important because anime has not always been the most representative storytelling realm. Yet creator/director/producer LeSean Thomas arrives with a proven track record (The Boondocks, Cannon Buster, and Black Dynamite) of interweaving anime and Black culture. Thomas helms this reimagining of Yasuke’s post-samurai days and runs with them, infusing layers of understated emotion within the character and (yes, this is speculative) taking leaps to explore the relationship between Nobunaga and the man who he felt was more of a son than his own flesh and blood. We see how Nobunaga also sent a female warrior onto the battlefield, and how both elites and rivals reacted to Yasuke’s elevation, and damn, there’s a lot of baggage that Yasuke ends up carrying around decades later, long after we see him present at his warlord’s death. All of this comes full circle in a relatively closed-off season, although there’s certainly room for a continuation, should the Netflix renewal-gods desire to go there.
Somehow, I’ve yet to mention that Chadwick Boseman signed onto a Yasuke feature film before his death, and Boseman has never steered his audience wrong for selecting worthy subject matter. Likewise, LaKeith Stanfield voices Yasuke here (and he executive produces), which bodes well for this project even if his role-picker isn’t as pristine as that of Boseman. Yes, Stanfield boasts a streak of critically-acclaimed and audience-beloved projects (Sorry To Bother You, Atlanta, Judas and the Black Messiah, Get Out). Yet since we’re talking about a Netflix anime project, I cannot resist noting an exception (however silly it might seem) to this rule. A not-so-great LaKeith project would be Netflix’s Death Note (2017) movie, which is a live-action adaptation of one of my favorite anime series. This is otherwise unrelated fact that I only mention to acknowledge that Stanfield and Netflix have now both made good on their “crimes” against anime, given that the live-action Death Note crushed the source material’s spirit. Yasuke does the opposite. It’s a fine anime selection, and one that celebrates its subject matter’s spirit.
As I’ve already mentioned, the story imagines what Yasuke’s life is like while he’s (unsuccessfully) attempting to forget his ronin past. He’s craving a peaceful life, which is not in the cards, and he’s eventually pushed to pick up the sword again. His past experiences inform his present, and he’s (self-)tasked with protecting a mysterious young girl who finds herself on the run from dark forces. Their relationship is an endearing one that not only fuels the present plot but adds plenty of texture to Yasuke as an ultimately honorable character. Also, this little girl can kick some magical ass.
Netflix
The production falls under the umbrella of Japanese animation studio MAPPA (Attack on Titan: The Final Season, Jujutsu Kaisen), which will spark the interest of any anime fan. However, if you consider yourself a non-anime person, rest assured that Yasuke is fairly accessible with LaKeith and the cast doing their thing in English (although there’s a Japanese dub on the way, too). The show’s also a surprisingly speedy binge and wraps up a season in six 30-minute episodes. It’s far less intimidating (runtime-wise) to sit down and tackle than many other currently running anime series, which can include seasons that span dozens of episodes with a whole lot of filler. Yasuke may not be perfect, but it won’t be accused of wasting any audience’s time.
However, this show should not be mistaken for a quick-and-dirty job. The runtime might be economical, but manages to at-least create the feel of an epic journey on behalf of the title character, and the visuals are absolutely stunning. Yasuke pulls out a lot of stops to paint a gorgeous background for its characters, almost to the point where some of its nature shots look startlingly realistic. It’s a stunningly rendered series, and that’s only one of the attractions, aside from the biggest: a fitting reimagining of a legend’s story.
When it comes to spring spirits, we always like to keep a bottle or two of gin on hand at all times. While high-quality gin can be sipped, it’s a bit of an acquired taste. Truthfully, we prefer to mix with it. And if we’re mixing with gin, there’s no better cocktail than the simple, classic gin and tonic.
Not only is a gin and tonic crisp, refreshing, and a great compliment to both sunny and rainy spring weather, but it’s tremendously easy to prepare. This highball cocktail is made with gin, tonic water, ice, and a twist of lime (or a lime wedge). That’s the whole show; no bells or whistles needed. It can be upgraded to the Spanish gin tonic by adding extra ingredients — cucumbers, peppers, basil leaves, sprigs of rosemary, and even peppercorns or juniper berries — or drop in a capful of Rose’s Lime for a modified Gimlet.
To help you find the best gins for your G & T, we reached out to a handful of our favorite bartenders and asked for their picks. They came back with a mix of classics and upstart brands that are certainly worthy of your attention. Check them out below and click on the prices if you feel inspired to order a bottle.
Roku Gin
Roku
Shaun Traxler, a bartender in Fayetteville, Arkansas
Roku Gin makes one of the best gin and tonics, hands down. It’s a Japanese gin containing six — Roku means “six” in Japanese — unique botanicals, along with other botanicals classically found in gin, that strike an incredible balance between classic citrus-forward gin and unique, standout flavors.
This scores well in the “whimsy” category, too. The concept is a journey across the four seasons in Japan — cherry blossoms and leaves from the Spring, two different green teas from the summer, Sanaho peppers from the Fall, and Yuzu citrus from the Winter. This gin packs a bright, citrusy punch juxtaposed by a gorgeous bitterness that makes it a perfect complement to a dry tonic. The effervescence allows the citrus and complexities of this gin to blossom and shine remarkably.
Monkey 47 Gin. This Gin does not have a high juniper flavor but is smooth and dry and pairs very nicely with tonic. I was never a big fan of gin, but this bottle is very universal for any fun cocktail or even straight sipping.
Dripping Springs makes a really delicate, yet spectacularly floral gin. It’s perfect for spring and summer patio sessions. When making a gin and tonics with Dripping springs, I like to use one part tonic to two parts soda water, so I don’t drown out the lovely floral herbaceous subtlety of the gin.
Nikka Coffey Gin makes my favorite gin and tonic. Japanese distillers are most often associated with whisky, but this is a beautiful citrus-forward gin with bright notes of yuzu and coriander. It really shines when paired with a high quality, not overly sweet tonic such as Fever Tree. Nikka Coffey Gin also makes a phenomenal martini.
I love playing with Empress 1908 gin. The botanical notes are not too overpowering, and the beautiful butterfly pea blossom color infused into the gin makes vibrant and colorful cocktails.
The Botanist Islay Dry Gin
The Botanist
Austin Zimmer, bartender at Le Prive in New York City
I prefer The Botanist gin. It’s an artisanal gin from Islay, an island off the coast of Scotland that is more commonly associated with peated whisky. The 22 hand-foraged Islay botanicals go very well with the tonic.
Barr Hill
Barr Hill
Michael Buonocore, beverage director at Somebody People in Denver
When craving a gin and tonic, I’m reaching for a gin whose profile I want to amplify. The complexity found in Barr Hill gin, produced with Vermont’s native raw honey and juniper, is a perfect fit. It’s my go-to gin for this classic cocktail.
Hendrick’s
Hendrick
Joe Harvey, lead bartender of Thr3 Jack in Minneapolis
I always go Hendrick’s Gin for a good gin and tonic. Distilled in small batches in Scotland, Hendrick’s ventures away from the traditional notes of juniper you find in a classic gin. Instead, it offers subtle notes of rose and cucumber. The light and refreshing flavor profile of Hendrick’s Gin pairs perfectly with the light and refreshing style of a gin and tonic.
Garnish it with a fresh cucumber slice, and you’re set.
Ford’s Gin. A beautiful London dry style gin made by bartenders, it works in so many different cocktails. Juniper is prevalent and subtle at the same time, while citrus and floral fill in the blanks. Blends with tonic amazingly well. This is an incredibly affordable bottle that will cover all your classic gin cocktails.
As a bonus, the bottle is meant to be used again. Use it for batching cocktails for your next get-together.
Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin
Uncle Val
Stephen Sylvester, bar manager at Piccalilli in Culver City, California
Uncle Val’s Botanical Gin is my pick. It’s filled with juniper, cucumber, lemon, sage (unique to a gin), and lavender notes. The ingredients were inspired by the herbs used by “Uncle Val” in his cooking herb garden. They’re chef-inspired botanicals.
Reminder: The tonic you use in a gin and tonic is almost just as important as the gin. A tonic syrup is most practical for bar use, but bottled tonic — I love Fever Tree! — is perfect for at home.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
It was hard finding things to watch in the early days of the pandemic. Actually, let me rephrase that: it was hard finding only one thing to watch in the early days of the pandemic. The options were overwhelming (but can I interest you in our streaming guides?). “I guess I’ll spend the next week not leaving my apartment and finally getting around to The Sopranos. Or should I start Gilmore Girls? I’ve heard good things about Deadwood. Then again, I have been meaning to do a James Bond marathon before No Time to Die comes out, which is definitely going to happen in 2020.” (Oops.)
Instead of wasting an hour every night looking for something to watch on Netflix before settling on a mediocre movie that I was going to half pay attention to anyway, I decided to give myself an assignment: watch every Best Picture winner ever. It’s the only worthwhile thing I accomplished during the pandemic. Sorry, Great American Novel. You’ll have to wait until the next pandemic. Ahead of Sunday’s 93rd Academy Awards (nominees here), here are my picks for the 50 best Best Picture winners.
50. The Last Emperor
Columbia Pictures
When people say “they don’t make movies like this anymore,” they’re not directly referring to The Last Emperor, but movies like The Last Emperor. It’s an audacious, decades-spanning drama that isn’t based on a comic book or board game; it would be an eight-part Netflix series if made today. Or not made at all. That would be a shame.
49. The Shape of Water
As much as I love complaining about the Oscars (it’s therapeutic), the Academy did a decent job picking Best Picture winners during the 2010s. Not great, but decent. Moonlight and Parasite are classics, while The Hurt Locker and 12 Years a Slave have held up well (we’ll get to all four soon enough). On the flip side, Green Book is a nightmare and The King’s Speech winning over The Social Network is a #StopTheSteal that I can get behind. Where does that leave The Shape of Water?
On one hand, it beat Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, and Phantom Thread, all of which are better films; on the other, it’s a romantic-horror movie about Sally Hawkins falling in love with a fish-man, with supporting roles from Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Shannon as the villain. I want to love The Shape of Water for the plot, for the cast, for Guillermo del Toro actually finishing a movie, but I wish he leaned further into B-movie shlock. The fact that he didn’t is probably why it won Best Picture.
48. An American in Paris
Jerry Mulligan, the American painter in Paris, is not a likable guy. He becomes obsessed with a 19-year-old perfume store employee during a date with another woman. After the literal teenager declines his invitation to go on a date with him, he calls her at work the next day, and even though she again tells him to leave her alone, he goes down to the perfume store and won’t leave her alone until she gives in. It’s the kind of problematic 1950s “love story” that wouldn’t fly today, and with good reason: it’s weird!
For those first 95 minutes and change of An American in Paris, there’s no reason why we should want Gene Kelly’s Jerry and Leslie Caron’s Lise to end up together, outside of them both being beautiful and magnificent dancers. But then comes the dialogue-free 17-minute ballet that ends the film, set to George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” and it begins to make sense. It’s a Technicolor tour of Paris that cost nearly $500,000 to film, with Kelly and Caron, along with hundreds of extras, doing more with their silent bodies than words ever could. It’s an emotional journey and an incredible sequence, and the reason An American in Paris won Best Picture. Save the best (picture) for the end.
47. West Side Story
I don’t necessarily agree with all of Pauline Kael’s review of West Side Story, but it’s too good to not share. She compared the musical to Romeo and Juliet, minus “all that cumbersome poetry,” and guessed that “in a few decades,” the choreography will look “like hilariously limited, dated period pieces.” Kael wasn’t done: West Side Story is “frenzied hokum” with “painfully old-fashioned and mawkish” dialogue. She also went after Natalie Wood (Maria), calling her “so perfectly banal she destroys all thoughts of love.” Ouch. At least she didn’t single out Rita Moreno (Anita), who gives the best performance in the movie (Richard Beymer is, let’s face it, a total snooze as Tony).
Kael made a lot of valid criticisms (she usually did), but I also understand why West Side Story is considered a classic. It’s dazzling to look at and the humid energy is palpable. The songs will also be stuck in your head for a week — or in my case, as someone whose last name sounds like “Krupke,” my entire life. Maybe that’s the key to loving West Side Story: watch it once in full; watch it again, but only the musical numbers. It’s a better experience.
46. The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is supremely corny, maybe the corniest movie (even if it’s ostensibly a movie about fleeing from the Nazis). It would be easy to mock if it didn’t all work: the songs (Rodgers and Hammerstein didn’t have to go so hard on “So Long, Farewell,” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” and “My Favorite Things,” but they did that… for us), the cast (Julie Andrews is a treasure and Christopher Plummer is confirmed antifa), the the iconic cinematography, the nuns f*cking up the Nazis’ cars, the kids’ introductions (I’m partial to “I’m Friedrich, I’m 14, I’m impossible”). The Sound of Music is the sixth highest-grossing movie of all-time for a reason: it’s an undeniably charming crowd-pleaser.
45. Gone with the Wind
I’m no coward. I’ll say what others are too scared to: Melanie deserved better.
44. Wings
Wings was the first movie to win Best Picture, back when the category was called “Outstanding Picture” and there were only two other nominees, The Racket and 7th Heaven. The silent film holds up remarkably well. There’s little of the stuffiness that you might expect from a nearly-100-year-old movie. There’s a timeless plot (two men fighting for the affections of the same woman, while a girl-next-door pines for one of the dudes who doesn’t deserve her); brief nudity; and air-combat sequences that boggle the mind if you consider when they were shot. If you ever find yourself saying, “Gee, I want to watch a movie from the 1920s,” for some reason, you could do a whole lot worse than Wings.
43. Unforgiven
If Clint Eastwood isn’t the most successful actor-turned-director ever, he’s at least in consideration. He made his directorial debut in 1971 with Play Misty with Me (starring Jessica Walter!); since then, he’s been behind the camera for numerous Best Picture contenders, beginning with Unforgiven and followed by Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, American Sniper, and Sully, which wasn’t actually nominated for Best Picture but I’m pretending it was (Sully rules). Of those films, Unforgiven, which works as both a deconstruction of and tribute to the heroic myths of the Wild West, feels the most personal to Eastwood.
He rose to fame as the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Western” trilogy and remains the living avatar for the Hollywood cowboy. Eastwood could have kept churning out Westerns following the box office and critical success of Unforgiven, but as he said back in 2017, “When I read the script 25 years ago, I always thought that this would be a good last Western for me to do. And it was the last Western, because I have never read one that worked as well as this one since that.” Thankfully, it wasn’t his last film or even his last Best Picture winner. We’ll get there.
42. Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated movie to win Best Picture. Other movies to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association include A Clockwork Orange, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Hills Have Eyes, Klute (for which Jane Fonda won Best Actress), and The Evil Dead (for which Sam Raimi should have won an Oscar).
Midnight Cowboy — an admirably seedy movie with a bleak ending and strong chemistry between Jon Voight as naive Texan Joe Buck and Dustin Hoffman as slimy New Yorker “Ratso” Rizzo — will also be the last X-rated movie to win Best Picture, as the X rating no longer exists; it was replaced by NC-17. No NC-17 movie has won Best Picture (yet), but Blue Valentine came close: it was initially rated NC-17 before a last-minute appeal to bring it down to R. Michelle Williams was later nominated for Best Actress.
Thus concludes a brief history of X and NC-17 movies being nominated for Oscars (unless we go back in time and give Paul Verhoeven a well-deserved Best Director nomination for Showgirls).
41. Mrs. Miniver
I was, I’ll admit, prepared to not like this movie. I certainly did not like Vin, a would-be lax bro in the 2020s. But I was otherwise wrong: Mrs. Miniver is a moving exploration of a family living (and dying) through World War II. The Dunkirk sequence is a stunner, while the German pilot entering the Miniver’s home made me a Greer Garson fan. She gives a stoic performance (women were rarely given the opportunity to be stoic in the early days of the Oscars) in a touching film about perseverance. The final sermon is a bit much, though.
40. Mutiny on the Bounty
MGM
Clark Gable is one of only three actors, along with Walter Pidgeon and Russell Crowe, to play the lead role in back-to-back Best Picture winners: 1934’s It Happened One Night and 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty. Both films were also box office hits, although not as massive as Gable’s third and final Best Picture winner, Gone with the Wind, which remains the highest-grossing movie ever when adjusted for inflation. He also looked really good as a sailor. Gable seemingly had it all, but he was not “the greatest film actor who came from that period of time.” That, according to Daniel Day-Lewis (a three-time Oscar winner who appeared in one Best Picture winner, Gandhi), was Gable’s Mutiny co-star, Charles Laughton, who played the HMS Bounty’s cruel-but-effective captain with haughty intensity. He’s a villain you love to hate, a character type that Laughton would later explore in the only film he ever directed: the horror classic The Night of the Hunter.
39. From Here to Eternity
The beach kiss in From Here to Eternity frequently pops up on lists like The Most Romantic Movie Scenes Ever (it ranks #20 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Passions, whatever that means), but people tend to forget what comes after the lusty roll in the sand. First off, Warden and Karen (Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr) are having an affair, and following the salty smooch, he gets mad at her for kissing other men. Cool guy. Then comes the Michelle Williams in Manchester by the Sea-level depressing monologue.
Karen tells Warden about how her husband (and his commanding officer in the Army) was out “with the hatcheck girl in one of the nightclubs” the night she went into labor, one month early. “He was only a little drunk when he came in… at five a.m,” she says. “He looked alarmed when he saw me. I guess it was because of my screams. I was lying there on the floor… Of course, the baby was dead. It was a boy. But they worked over me at the hospital and fixed me up fine. They even took my appendix out, too. They threw that in free. It was all fine.” Good lord. Sgt. Fatso Judson torturing Frank Sinatra — hell, even the climatic attack on Pearl Harbor — is comedic relief compared to that. From Here to Eternity is a good Best Picture winner, but it’s a great melodrama.
38. Rebecca
Here’s a tough question for the next time you host a trivia night with friends: “What is the only Alfred Hitchcock movie to win Best Picture?” It’s not Vertigo, or North by Northwest, or Psycho, or Rear Window, or the movie about birds that I can’t remember the title of. It’s Rebecca, Hitchcock’s first American studio movie. Based on Daphne du Maurier’s book of the same name, the gothic film is part romance and part mystery about a young woman, an older man who isn’t over his deceased first wife, and an obsessive housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, one of the more complex characters in any Best Picture winner. If you want to watch Rebecca, which you absolutely should, make sure you watch Rebecca (1940), not the dreadful Rebecca (2020).
37. In the Heat of the Night
The four Best Picture winners before In the Heat of the Night were Tom Jones, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and A Man for All Seasons. Those aren’t all bad movies, but they are four very European movies that said nothing about the counterculture movement of the 1960s. In the Heat of the Night, a sweaty thriller about a Black police officer who they call Mister Tibbs investigating a murder in deeply racist Mississippi that’s more about the relationship between the big-city detective (Sidney Poitier) and small-town police chief (Rod Steiger) than the sluggish case itself, was the beginning of a new era of socially conscious movies in Hollywood.
36. My Fair Lady
Audrey Hepburn was one of Hollywood’s most restrained actresses. But not in My Fair Lady. That’s what makes the pre-intermission portion of the musical so fun. As Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle, she’s all guttural noises (“garn”) and house-rattling howls. Hepburn is clearly having a blast, even if her singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon. But after working with (harassed by) phonetician Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) for six months, Eliza is transformed into a “proper lady,” someone who even Higgins’ rival thinks is royalty. My Fair Lady becomes less interesting when her charming eccentricities are smoothed out, which is a shame. There’s a lot to examine in Eliza returning to her old lifestyle, only to discover that she no longer fits in among the other “common and ignorant” girls. It could be heartbreaking, but it isn’t, because My Fair Lady doesn’t always care about Eliza. It’s too smitten with Higgins, a loathsome buffoon who takes the credit for Eliza’s linguistic transformation. Harrison is fantastic and My Fair Lady is a blast, but wouldn’t it be loverly if it had 80 percent less misogynistic monologues?
35. The Lost Weekend
Don Birnam is a writer, a brother, and a handsome lover, but mostly, he’s a drunk. He stumbles around New York City in constant need of a fill-up to quench his unquenchable thirst. He steals purses, he pawns his typewriter, he chooses a night at the bar with a fed-up bartender over a relaxing weekend away with his brother. At times, Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend is clunky — the theremin-heavy score belongs in a different film, and our understanding of addiction has improved since the 1940s — but it’s an alarmingly grim (and in the scene with the bat and the mouse, horrifying) look at an alcoholic.
The Lost Weekend is one of only three films to win both Best Picture at the Oscars and Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival (the others are Marty and Parasite). To call it the weakest of the three isn’t an insult. The Lost Weekend is “merely” very good, while the other two are masterpieces.
34. Amadeus
Real life can be boring — that’s why we watch movies. Movies (ideally) cut out the tedious stuff and leave only the interesting parts. Amadeus is “laughably” wrong, historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote for the Guardian, with “a deadly rivalry that never was, a dried-up bachelor who was actually a father of eight, and flops that were hits in reality.” Extremely Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive voice: “I don’t care.”
I don’t care if Salieri never spied on Mozart while the composer was devilishly nibbling on a woman’s breast before making her say “eat my sh*t” backwards; or if Mozart never played the piano upside down at a hedonistic party (actually, he probably did this); or if Salieri, seething with jealous admiration at his rival’s prodigal brilliance, never collaborated with Mozart while the latter was on his deathbed. Amadeus is lively and thumbs its nose at stuffy, more traditional biopics. It’s only the interesting parts. Historical accuracy is overrated anyway. I bet they didn’t even have movie cameras in the 1800s.
33. Chicago
If it wasn’t for Cats, Chicago may not have won Best Picture. Let me explain.
Years before making the acclaimed adaptation of the vigorous Jazz Age-set musical, director Rob Marshall was an actor who played Munkustrap in the Broadway production of Cats. “I was more of a dancer than most of the people who played that part,” he told the New Yorker, “so the choreographer actually added all this new dancing for me. I think that might have led to the fact that I got a herniated disk.” After recovering from the injury, Marshall became a full-time choreographer and, later, a director.
Someone was going to turn the intertwined stories of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly into a movie, and I’m glad it was Marshall (even if his other theater adaptations, like Nine and Into the Woods, haven’t been as successful). His Chicago is sexy and sleazy (how it should be) and he has a keen eye for staging. His years in the theater are evident during the electric “Cell Block Tango” sequence (the casting, from Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones to Richard Gere and John C. Reilly to the inimitable Queen Latifah, is impeccable, too). Now imagine if Tom Hooper had made Chicago. It would be flat and passionless, like another musical that he turned into a movie: Cats.
It always comes back to Cats.
32. Million Dollar Baby
Million Dollar Baby is a good movie the first time you see it. It’s even better the second time. As a director, Clint Eastwood subtly foreshadows the shocking moment to come (if you know, you know — but even when you know, it’s still painful to watch). And as an actor, he plays to his strength: contemplative silence with the occasional “old man yells at cloud” grumble. He lets Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) do much of the talking, which proves to be the wise choice. Swank is incredible in Million Dollar Baby. She gives a joyous, kindhearted performance that makes the third act all the more devastating.
31. On the Waterfront
On the Waterfront was the 28th movie to win Best Picture, but with its cold depiction of corruption and organized crime, it’s one of the first that still feels relevant today. Directed impeccably by Elia Kazan (we’ll leave aside his naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee…), Waterfront follows Terry Malloy, a reserved New Jersey dockworker played by Marlon Brando who becomes infatuated with the sister of a “rat” who planned to squeal (squeak?) to the Feds about the crooked Mob-connected union head. You can probably guess what happened to the snitch. Less obvious is the sympathetic performance from Brando, who delivers the famous “I coulda been a contender” speech to his brother, who’s been tasked with making Terry stay quiet… or else. Brando, even in his strikingly handsome, pre-The Godfather glory run, could be hammy and overly self-aware, but not here. He’s not angry that his brother pulled a gun on him — he’s disappointed. It’s a great acting choice in a movie full of them, including a sensational Eva Marie Saint in her feature-film debut (!).
30. The Departed
WARNER BROS.
Apologies for being the 900th person to make this point, but: The Departed is not Martin Scorsese at his best. I wish I had a bolder take, but it’s true. That being said, The Departed is still better than 95 percent of every movie ever made, but it falls below Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Silence, Cape Fear, The Wolf of Wall Street, Casino… you get the idea… in Scorsese’s phenomenal filmography. (A quick aside: I will never forget seeing The Departed in the theater and hearing people laugh with giddy delight at the quick succession of the deaths in the film’s final minutes — and then hearing those same people groan when the indefensible rat scurries across the screen. It’s a good movie theater movie.) The Departed comes close to matching the cocaine-energy excellence of his finest work (there’s not one, but two Rolling Stones songs on the soundtrack), and it’s obvious that everyone (especially Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg) is having a great time, but it never quite gets there. It’s middle-tier Marty.
Four out of five stars!
29. Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a funny and influential (for its story-telling techniques and how thousands of New Yorkers have modeled themselves after Allen’s Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton’s Annie Hall) comedy with sly observations about romance, religion, and killing spiders. But even if you believe in separating the art from the artist, that’s still hard to do here, knowing what we know now. The art (Alvy) is barely different from the artist (Woody). I still think Annie Hall belongs on this list, but if we erase it from human history and pretend Best Picture in 1978 went to Star Wars, I’d be fine with that, too. Nothing toxic about Star Wars!
28. Kramer vs. Kramer
Dustin Hoffman is in a lot of good to great movies, but he’s rarely the reason why I think they’re good to great. He strikes me as an actor who’s always uppercase ACTING, someone who’s unable to fully transform into a character. It frequently takes me out of the movie. So I was pleasantly surprised by Hoffman’s performance in Kramer vs. Kramer. He plays a recognizable human being, not a collection of distracting tics.
Hoffman and co-star Meryl Streep won Oscars for playing a workaholic ad man and a stay-at-home mother, respectively, who get divorced. Both characters have their faults, but you feel sympathy for them. Streep is absent for much of the movie (she returns late and is predictably superb), so it’s on Hoffman and Justin Henry, as the couple’s young son, to carry the emotional weight. They more than meet the challenge — Henry gives one of the best kid performances I’ve ever seen. The only sour note in Kramer vs. Kramer is the final scene. It rings false when the rest of the movie is laudably honest.
27. The Deer Hunter
There are the obvious Hall of Famers in baseball, like Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza. Then there are the guys who linger on the ballot for years: some of whom will receive a plaque in Cooperstown on their seventh attempt, others who will be relegated to “great, but not great enough” status. Let’s call them Outsiders. The Godfather, Alien, and Chinatown, all from the 1970s, are first-ballot Hall of Famers, if not Best Picture winners. 1978’s The Deer Hunter is an Outsider. It has the cast (De Niro! Streep! Walken! Cazale!), the impressive scale (the film takes place in a steel mill town in Pennsylvania and the jungles and back alleys of Vietnam), and the iconic scene (the Russian Roulette showdown) of a Hall of Famer, but there are a few flaws. Among the long stretches of harrowing brilliance, the script occasionally meanders and the sluggish third act (everything after De Niro returns home) is a step down from the first two. The Deer Hunter is still a damn fine film about broken masculinity. But it’s not a Hall of Famer.
26. The Sting
The Sting is a classic of “guys being dudes” cinema. It stars two handsome fellas, Robert Redford (the most handsome fella?) and Paul Newman, who combine their grifting talents to scam a mob boss, played by Robert Shaw. There’s no deeper meaning to The Sting, which makes it one of the least impactful Best Picture winners, but also one of the most fun. It’s got dames! Double crosses! Good hats! Jaunty rags! Is The Sting better than The Exorcist, which was also nominated for Best Picture in the year between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II? No, but I can’t be mad at fake-drunk Paul Newman.
INTERMISSION
We’ll get to the best of the Best soon, but what about the worst of the Best? There are, unfortunately, a lot of options for the worst Best Picture winner: The Broadway Melody (1929) is a whole lot of nothing; Hamlet (1948) is a snooze; Cimarron (1931) is offensively bad, and just plain offensive; A Beautiful Mind (2001) is saccharine mush; and Tom Jones (1963) makes The Benny Hill Show look like a comedy masterpiece. But none of those are my pick for the worst Best Picture winner. If you guessed Green Book, you’re close. It’s the other movie about a person of one race driving for a person of another race.
Driving Miss Daisy wants to be charming with its homespun wisdom about race. But it’s as boring and bland as the potatoes at Old Country Buffet, where someone like Miss Daisy, a vile woman who only learns to stop blaming Black people for all of life’s problems after her synagogue is burned down, is often yelling at “the help.” Crash, another famous Best Picture stinker, might have a clunkier, more ham-fisted take on racism, but at least it’s unintentionally hilarious. I’ll take Sandra Bullock falling down the stairs and not being racist anymore over an old Southern white lady yelling at her Black driver any day.
25. Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur — the most expensive movie ever made at the time — has an awesome intermission break. After being sentenced to slavery in the galleys for a crime he didn’t commit, Judah Ben-Hur (played by Charlton Heston, all gritted teeth and sweat) becomes a renowned chariot driver and returns home years later to Judea, where he discovers something terrible has happened in his absence. The final shot before the break is Ben-Hur seething with rage; he doesn’t say a word, but with a twitch of his face, it’s obvious that he’s already plotting his revenge against another character (I will not spoil the 62-year-old movie based on a 141-year-old book based on the oldest story in the world). It’s maybe not the best scene in Ben-Hur (the chariot race that would inspire the podrace sequence in The Phantom Menace is incredible), but it’s a charge of adrenaline in a nearly four-hour movie and the one that has stuck with me the most. If only we had cell phones back then. I would love to see an Avengers: Endgame-style video of a 1950s audience reacting to the screen fading to black before the 15-minute intermission. Anarchy.
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The “correct” way to experience The Return of the King is to watch The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers before it. I did not do this for this project. I went straight to the third movie in The Lord of the Rings series, partially because I’ve seen the other two many times before, but mostly because I wanted to watch the trilogy-capper as an individual film. I’m sure there was an Academy member who did the same thing. I don’t envy them: The Return of the King is the weakest of the three movies with its 7,000 lethargic endings and lack of Saruman, but it’s still a damn good blockbuster. Peter Jackson (the most unlikely auteur considering his splatter-horror roots?) is a master at finding character moments in massive action scenes, while Elijah Wood and Sean Astin have the kind of heartfelt chemistry you don’t often see in movies of this scale. If you don’t get chills during the beacons of Gondor sequence, I’m sorry, but you’re a robot.
Endings are hard (as we learned from the television show most indebted to J.R.R. Tolkien), but The Return of the King is a rousing conclusion to arguably the best movie trilogy. At least until future Best Picture winner Paddington 3 comes out.
23. All About Eve
A movie is lucky to have one line that people still quote years after it was released. Nearly every acidic line in All About Eve is quotable. “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night” is the most famous, but there’s also, “Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn’t worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be” (a devastating burn) and “So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.” Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s razor-sharp script (MANK) can be too proud of itself at times, but Bette Davis and Anne Baxter sell the heck out of it.
22. Terms of Endearment
You will cry while watching Terms of Endearment.
I can’t predict the scene or the line that will trigger your tears, but I guarantee will happen. It’s just science. For me, it happened when daughter Emma (Debra Winger, who gives a warm and vibrant Oscar-nominated performance) tells mother Aurora (Shirley MacLaine), “That’s the first time I stopped hugging first. I like that.” It was the first of many times I cried while watching Terms of Endearment, but even though it has a reputation as THE weepy cancer movie, the cancer plot doesn’t enter the picture until the final 30 minutes.
The rest of the film is a fine balance between comedy and drama about Emma moving from Texas to Iowa and later Nebraska with her mediocre husband named, ugh, Flap (Jeff Daniels); mother Aurora exploring her sexual identity with a horny astronaut (Jack Nicholson); and their strained-but-committed relationship. Terms of Endearment is a funny tearjerker, and there are simply not enough of those. It also has butterfly-effect significance: Polly Platt, the film’s production designer (and all-around icon), introduced writer and director James L. Brooks to Matt Groening, eventually leading to the creation of The Simpsons. Thank you, Polly. And thank you, horny astronaut Jack Nicholson.
21. All Quiet on the Western Front
Of the 92 movies to win Best Picture, 16 can be classified as “war movies.” This does not include emotional warfare (sorry, Kramer vs. Kramer), but actual combat war, beginning with the first Best Picture winner (Wings) and most recently with The Hurt Locker. Based on the book of the same name that you begrudgingly read in high school, 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front is notable for being an anti-war movie, coming out so soon after the end of World War I. It’s an ugly, harrowing journey following a group of patriotic German schoolboys whose enthusiasm for enlisting vanishes when they see what war is actually like. “I can’t tell you anything you don’t know,” one of the soldiers tells a group of future-recruits upon returning to his old school on furlough. “We live in the trenches out there, we fight, we try not to be killed; and sometimes we are. That’s all.”
20. The Hurt Locker
SUMMIT
It was a big deal at the time that The Hurt Locker was named Best Picture over Avatar. Ex-wife Katheryn Bigelow vs. ex-husband James Cameron. The indie vs. the highest-grossing movie of all-time. The Iraq War vs. whatever the war in Avatar was called (this one may not have been as heated as the other two). But in the decade since, it’s becoming increasingly common for the underdog to triumph over the box office behemoth — look at 12 Years a Slave ($56.7 million in the United States) beating Gravity ($274 million). And in the case of The Hurt Locker, it was well deserved.
I like Avatar, which has become an oddly controversial opinion, but The Hurt Locker is a much better film. There’s a reason Jeremy Renner became a star: he’s fantastic as Sergeant First Class William James, a “wild man” bomb technician whose arrogance is matched only by his talent. Renner was nominated for an Academy Award for his adrenaline junkie performance, while his future-Marvel Cinematic Universe co-star, Anthony Mackie, should have been, too. But the war film’s true MVP is Bigelow, who makes it feel like you’re on the ground with the soldiers (the sniper sequence is an incredible showcase of tension and patience). Bigelow is Hollywood’s most skilled chronicler of fractured male ego and remains the only woman to win the Oscar for Best Director.
19. Platoon
It’s not often I get to talk about Keith David, so I’d like to take this opportunity to do so. Keith David rules. He’s an actor who can do a little bit of everything — comedies, dramas, action movies, voice-over roles, musicals — and I’m never disappointed to see him. He’s a consummate pro who makes everything he’s in better, no matter how big or small the role. Platoon is only his second credited film performance, after John Carpenter’s The Thing, and he plays the war film’s good-hearted, joke-cracking conscience, King. “All you got to do is make it out of here and it’s all gravy. Every day, the rest of your life, gravy,” he tells Charlie Sheen’s Chris Taylor. It’s how Keith David lives his actual life. When asked in 2019 about his 40 years in the industry, including parts in They Live, There’s Something About Mary, Coraline, Community, Rick and Morty, and The Princess and the Frog (the list is endless), David replied, “One thing, which I still hold today: I wanted to work. My goal was to be a working actor.” He’s one of the best.
18. Titanic
Titanic is melodramatic, too long, and riddled with cliches. I love it. It’s the Best Picture winner that I’ve seen the most (although never in the theater) and every time I do, I’m impressed all over again by Leonardo DiCaprio’s world-conquering charm; Kate Winslet’s tenacity; Billy Zane’s wig; the band playing on; the flawless build to the inevitable climax; Celine Dion’s karaoke classic; James Cameron’s unique ability to combine state-of-the-art technology with old-school Hollywood melodrama. (Cameron once said that his Avatar sequels will make you “sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open.” I believe him.) Even the clunky dialogue is effective. It’s two films in one — a teenage romance and a disaster movie — cannily seamed together.
Titanic dominated the box office in a way few films ever have or ever well. It was also a force at the Oscars, with 14 nominations (tied with All About Eve for the most all-time) and 11 wins (also tied with Ben-Hur for the most ever). It’s an enduring triumph. I might watch it again tonight.
17. 12 Years a Slave
I’m of the belief that the criminally underseen Widows is Steve McQueen’s masterpiece, but 12 Years a Slave is a strong runner-up. (Lovers Rock is in third place, even at the risk of resurrecting the Show vs. Movie debate.) Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Solomon Northup, a free Black man living in New York during the 1800s who’s kidnapped by con men and sold into slavery. He spends the next decade-plus of his life on plantations in the south, picking cotton for and getting whipped by the white man, with only the hope that he’ll one day be reunited with his family keeping him going. It’s a harrowing film full of stunning imagery and skillful performances, and McQueen deserves endless credit for his refusal to emotionally manipulate viewers; he prefers brutal truths. 12 Years a Slave is great, and I never want to see it again.
16. Rocky
Rocky is fantastic myth-making. The name “Rocky” floats across the screen as triumphant horns blare before we even see the man himself. But once we do, all sweaty and shirtless and ripped, it’s hard to look away. Sylvester Stallone, as both the star and sole credited screenwriter, knew exactly what he was doing: the iconic score, the mumbled philosophy from a sentimental beefcake, the Italian Stallion robe (branding!) — he quickly established Rocky as one of cinema’s most cherished underdogs, making the conclusion of his climactic showdown against Apollo Creed all the more unexpected. Stallone was building an unlikely franchise before anyone else realized it. Seven sequels of various quality later (Creed rules), Rocky is still going the distance.
15. Marty
Marty (Ernest Borgnine) is a nice guy. Not a “nice guy” in the contemporary pejorative sense, but an actual nice guy. He lives with his mom in the Bronx; he works hard at the butcher shop, and he wants to settle down with a nice lady, but he’s stopped trying after being turned down one too many times. To assuage his mother, however, he gives it another shot at the local dancehall, where he meets Clara (Betsy Blair). She’s also faced her fair share of rejection. Marty and Clara are a good pair, even if his mother doesn’t like her. But Marty doesn’t care. “She’s a dog and I’m a fat, ugly man,” he says in the film’s defining monologue. “Well, all I know is I had a good time last night! I’m gonna have a good time tonight! If we have enough good times together, I’m gonna get down on my knees and I’m gonna beg that girl to marry me!” Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the screenplay, called it the “most ordinary love story in the world,” but there’s nothing ordinary about how good Marty is.
14. It Happened One Night
Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night is one of only three films to sweep the Big Five categories at the Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay. (The other two are One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.) It’s an impressive feat, but It Happened One Night’s influence is an even more impressive achievement. It’s the prototype for every romantic comedy ever, but no romantic comedy has come close to equalling Peter’s monologue about finding a girl who makes him truly happy. It Happened One Night has been making people truly happy for nearly 90 years.
13. The Best Years of Our Lives
The Best Years of Our Lives is the Best Picture winner that most pleasantly surprised me. I watched the movies on this list in chronological order, so by the time I got to the mid-1940s, I was getting sick of movies about war. There are a lot of them! Too many, I would argue. But The Best Years of Our Lives is not your typical war movie. It’s more empathic and human than most, and thoughtful in a way few films in any genre are. It follows a trio of servicemen returning to the United States: an Air Force captain who’s skilled at dropping bombs but little else; an infantryman with a loving and patient family; and a Navy officer who lost his hands during the war. The boozy joy they feel after returning to civilian life is quickly replaced by worry over everyday issues that may seem trivial compared to fighting literal Nazis, but that doesn’t make them any less important. The Best Years of Our Lives is an intimate movie about that struggle, to not let feelings of hopelessness define you. After all, every year could be the best year of your life.
Except last year… and this year.
12. Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence of Arabia was never a movie I wanted to watch. It was a movie I felt like I had to watch. A four-hour assignment, a chore to cross off a list. (I remember seeing the bulging VHS set at the library when I was a pre-teen and being like, “Can we borrow Meatballs again?”) But technically, I was right: I had to watch it for this Best Picture assignment. And I’m glad I did. Turns out this popular and beloved film is very good.
Peter O’Toole (the actor with the most nominations but no wins in Oscar history) plays Lawrence, a blue-eyed anomalous lieutenant in the British army who is sent to the desert to find Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness) and investigate the progress of the Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I. There’s a lot happening there (I didn’t even include the part about Lawrence being a low-key sadist), but Lawrence of Arabia is a uniquely impressive epic in the way it syncs potentially cumbersome politics with crowd-pleasing spectacle. The train attack sequence, the trek across the desert, the well scene (Omar Sharif, as Sherif Ali, is the movie’s secret MVP) are monumental achievements that still look incredible decades later. I don’t know how director David Lean and his cinematographers did it, but I’m glad they did (I also don’t know how Lawrence of Arabia works even with all the white savior tropes).
I had over 30 years to see Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen, but waited until quarantine to watch it for the first time on my TV. Don’t make the same mistake that I did.
11. The French Connection
The day I watched The French Connection, my dad, without knowing what I was about to put on, sent me a tweet calling Gene Hackman the greatest actor of all-time. My instinctive reaction was to counter with someone else, someone more contemporary (Michael Shannon >>> everyone else), but after finishing my French Connection re-watch, I must admit: parents do (occasionally) understand.
Hackman’s character, Popeye Doyle, is a racist, alcoholic police officer who — get this — plays by his own rules. He’s also a cop killer, so maybe he’s the original ACAB? Whatever the case, Doyle is one of the least sympathetic main characters in a Best Picture winner (remember, this was a time before every other cable network series was about a white anti-hero). He’s driven by rage and obsession and will do anything to anyone to get his way. You’re not rooting for him, but thanks to Hackman’s volatile performance, you also can’t look away from the rotten depths he’ll sink to. (The film’s original tagline was: “Doyle is bad news. But he’s a good cop.” I’d argue it’s the other way around. Doyle is a good cop because he’s bad news, which, unfortunately, says more about the oppressive police department than it does about one police officer.)
Popeye is a dirty cop in a relentlessly-paced movie full of beatdowns, car chases, and grim truths about a corrupt system full of broken people. It’s beautiful in an ugly sort of way.
10. The Bridge on the River Kwai
Columbia Pictures
“That ruled” is not my reaction to many Best Picture winners. I did not leave The Artist thinking “that kicked ass.” But The Bridge on the River Kwai rules and kicks ass.
David Lean’s 1957 epic (an overused word that absolutely applies here) is about a group of British POWs who are instructed to build a railway bridge across the river Kwai for their Japanese captors in Burma, but it’s also about loyalty, treason, revenge, and a catchy marching song. Two decades before his most famous role (much to his dismay), Alec Guinness plays a stubborn colonel who refuses no less than excellence from his men, even if it means assisting the enemy. William Holden, as an escaped prisoner who’s forced to return to where he dug graves for his own men, and Sessue Hayakawa, as the Japanese camp commandant who preaches to “be happy in your work,” are equally excellent. Everyone is excellent in The Bridge on the River Kwai, a big, sweaty movie full of explosions and quips (“I suppose if I were you… I’d have to kill myself. Cheers!”) with an ending that puts most action movies to shame. “What have I done?”
9. Parasite
CJ Entertainment
Maybe it’s recency bias. Maybe I’m still coming down from the #BongHive high (#BongHigh?). But I think Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is one for the ages — and I think I’ll still think that in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. The first foreign-language film to win Best Picture hops between genres with ease. It’s a twisty psychological thriller; it’s a horror movie with moments of shocking violence; it’s a family drama; it’s a dark comedy about wealth. It’s all four at once. There’s so much happening in every scene, every line of dialogue, but it’s never overwhelming. It’s wildly entertaining with a message that transcends languages: eat the rich (or at least eat their ram-don).
8. Casablanca
WARNER BROS
It’s annoying when people say “you have to watch [fill-in-the-blank movie].” It’s even more annoying when those people are right. Casablanca is deserving of its masterpiece label. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are impossibly cool (even if Bogart’s Rick being politically and ideologically neutral as the Nazis take over the world isn’t… great). “As Time Goes By” is lovely. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are the most distinctive-looking character actors of the 1940s — and maybe ever. Even the behind-the-scenes story is fascinating. You have to watch Casablanca.
7. Schindler’s List
universal pictures
No director will ever have a better year than Steven Spielberg did in 1993. In June, Jurassic Park began its march towards briefly becoming the highest-grossing movie ever. Six months later, Schindler’s List was released to rapturous reviews and an eventual Best Picture win. Spielberg was already Hollywood’s most commercially successful director, but the black-and-white Holocaust drama assured his status as a “serious cinematic artist,” too, as the New York Timesput it at the time. Schindler’s List is a tough viewing, but it’s not misery porn — Spielberg is too canny to wallow in suffering, and he and screenwriter Steven Zaillian wisely center the story on Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews, instead of attempting to cover the entire Holocaust. Spielberg never topped his 1993 (how could he?), but he had many more triumphs to come, including six more Best Picture nominees.
6. The Silence of the Lambs
ORION
As a kid, I spent countless hours at my local video store, looking at all the new movies I could have watched before renting Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls for the 23rd time. I usually avoided the horror section because I was scared of Pinhead (Butterball and I are good now), but there was one VHS box cover that always grabbed my attention: The Silence of the Lambs. The moth over the ghost-faced woman’s mouth creeped me out; even the title was weird and mysterious. I built a mythology in my mind about what the movie was about before hearing the name “Dr. Hannibal Lecter” and didn’t see it until I was in college. It couldn’t possibly live up to my internalized hype, right? Wrong.
The Silence of the Lambs is great. It’s also crazy that it won Best Picture (the only horror movie to ever do so). It’s an airport thriller about an FBI agent interviewing a notorious cannibal to get details on a serial killer nicknamed “Buffalo Bill” who skins women. And it beat Beauty and the Beast, Bugsy, JFK, and The Prince of Tides, the most Oscar movie to ever Oscar! Anthony Hopkins is captivating as Hannibal (we don’t talk enough about how sassy his zingers are) and Jodie Foster is nearly as good as Clarice Starling. But The Silence of the Lambs works as both a pulpy cable mainstay and an Oscar-winning classic because of Jonathan Demme’s lurid-yet-compassionate filmmaking. That contrast is there on the box cover that haunted me as a kid: it’s horrifying, yet beautiful.
That being said, The Silence of the Lambs is no Ace Ventura 2.
5. No Country for Old Men
MIRAMAX
You know what’s harder than ranking Best Picture winners? Ranking Coen Brothers movies. I know Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers are at the bottom (even if they’re not as bad as their reputation), but first place might as well be a six-way tie between Barton Fink, Inside Llewyn Davis, Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, A Serious Man, and No Country for Old Men.
I would not have ranked No Country so high after my first viewing in 2007, as I was firmly Team There Will Be Blood in one of the most impressive Best Picture classes in recent memory. But upon a rewatch, I realized how much I undersold the neo-Western crime thriller. It’s damn-near perfect.
No Country is everything Joel and Ethan Coen do well — bleak comedy, poetic violence, sublime casting (not only the stars, like Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones, but also the weirdos around the fringes of the story, like the gas station employee and the trailer park clerk) — in a tight and tense two hours. This thing moves. Years of “friendo” memes haven’t minimized Javiar Bardem’s boogeyman performance as Anton Chigurh — he’s still a singularly terrifying character, drained of everything that makes him human other than the urge to kill. But he’s not in the movie’s chilling scene. That would be the one between Sheriff Bell (Lee Jones, sanctioning no buffoonery) and Ellis (Barry Corbin), who tells his nephew, “This country’s hard on people,” adding, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” It’s a haunting reminder that as much as we like to think that we’re the protagonist in our own story, we’re not. We’re merely supporting characters in the much-larger story, which will continue long after we’re dead. Cheery stuff as usual from my favorite directors!
4. The Godfather / 3. The Godfather Part II
PARAMOUNT
There’s a recurring bit on Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott’s U2-turned-REM-turned-Red Hot Chili Peppers (briefly)-turned-Talking Heads podcast where they do a podcast-within-a-podcast called “I Love Films.” Basically, it’s the two of them discussing the films — not movies or popcorn flicks, but films — that they love, “like The Godfather.” That’s the kind of cultural omnipresence that The Godfather has: it’s the definitive movie. And The Godfather Part II is the definitive “sequel that’s better than the original.”
I mean, what’s there even left to say about The Godfather and The Godfather Part II? Everything that could be said, has been said. Al Pacino: good. Diane Keaton: also good. Robert Duvall: my dude. Robert De Niro: hot. On my most recent viewing, I spent half the time matching the Corleones to their Roy counterparts from Succession before realizing Kendall is a Fredo who thinks he’s a Michael but wants to be a Sonny (he wishes he was a Shiv). This really opened up The Godfather and Succession for me.
2. Moonlight
A24
One of the joys of watching every Best Picture winner was seeing how much things have and haven’t changed through 11 decades of filmmaking. Well, the “have” is enjoyable. The “haven’t” is how The King’s Speech and Green Book happened. But imagine telling someone in 1956 that 60 years later, a movie about a gay Black man would win Best Picture. I would not want to hear their response, because, well, it was the 1950s, but I would love to see their reaction. It might look something like this.
Directed by Barry Jenkins, Moonlight follows Chiron through three stages of his life, as played by three different actors: when he’s a shy child (Alex Hibbert); a confused teenager (Ashton Sanders); and a hardened adult (Trevante Rhodes), who still harbors romantic feelings for his only childhood friend, Kevin (André Holland). There’s tragedy throughout, from Chiron’s unseen incarceration to the fate of his drug-dealing father surrogate (Oscar winner Mahershala Ali), but to call Moonlight a “tragedy” is inaccurate. It’s an unimaginably beautiful film (the word “poetic” comes to mind) about empathy and small acts of kindness, like offering to make a long-time friend the chef’s special, shot in warm blues by James Laxton with a ravishing score from Succession’s Nicholas Britell.
Moonlight is not only one of the best Best Picture winners ever — it’s the best movie of the 2010s, period.
1. The Apartment
UNITED ARTISTS
Bud (Jack Lemmon) lives a lonely but hopeful life. He stays late at work so his bosses can take their mistresses to his apartment in the hopes of getting a long-promised promotion. His greatest joy in life is his daily conversation with the office’s elevator operator, Fran (Shirley MacLaine), who he has a crush on. But she’s having an affair with Bud’s boss, Mr. Sheldare (Fred MacMurray). Bud and Fran have undeniable chemistry, but they’re kept apart by self-inflicted circumstances and because they both believe they’re undeserving of love.
Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is the type of movie that the Oscars tend to avoid, especially for Best Picture. It’s not about war, it’s not a musical, it doesn’t take place over multiple decades, and there’s no misunderstood genius or child prodigy. The Apartment is a remarkable movie about unremarkable people, full of delightful laughs and poignant sadness. “I like it that way,” Fran tells Bud about her broken mirror. “Makes me look the way I feel.” We respect a short-haired emo queen; we love a straining-spaghetti-with-a-racket king. As far as I’m concerned, The Apartment is a masterpiece, quality-wise and otherwise-wise.
Ben Barnes has cornered the market when it comes to tragic villains.
He’s not even sure that’s a technical term for the characters he seems to gravitate towards, but if it is, he’s undoubtedly the picture you’d find next to its dictionary entry. Barnes likes the men who are a bit rough around the edges, who are flawed at best, homicidal maniacs at worst. They’re the arrogant playboys of Westworld, the morally gray soldiers of The Punisher. And now, they’re the supernaturally gifted generals in a long-awaited Netflix adaptation of a YA fantasy world known as the Grishaverse.
Barnes is playing the series villain or anti-hero, if he’s done his job right. In Shadow and Bone, General Kirigan is a darkly mysterious figure in Leigh Bardugo’s novels (off which the show is based), and in Shadow And Bone, where his plans to conquer a sea of darkness that splits the country of Ravka in two are made possible when a young woman with the gift of literally summoning the sun appears. The story is a mash-up of greatest hits when it comes to fantasy tropes, set in a steampunk world where the superpowered are called Grisha, where war has torn the land apart, and where Kirigan seems to be at the center of it all.
We chatted with Barnes about perfecting the “bad-guy-but-with-layers” persona on screen, becoming the Steve Jobs of the fantasy world, and if he’d ever want to play a superhero after The Punisher.
I’ve spoken to a lot of creatives who say, “I’ve done this once. If I’m going to do it again, it needs to be different.” What makes this series different for you?
I think I’m just a fan of the genre in general. I studied children’s literature at university and I was writing about Harry Potter in my thesis and just those journeys and the sort of didactic, challenging nature of what that literature can be. And I got really interested in it. So that’s the first part of the answer, but you’re right, I always want to do exactly what I haven’t just done. If I’ve done something dramatic and serious and scarring, then I want to do something sort of light and fluffy and, and joyful. But I’m interested, I think, in stories about hope and identity and where we feel like we belong. And I think that’s what’s particularly special about this series.
It does feel like a mashup of a lot of great genre tropes.
It’s got some nostalgic elements that feel like sort of the warm blanket of fantasy — the “Chosen One” narrative that feels a bit like Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars if Sci-Fi’s more your bag — then it has this sort of Anna Karenina setting. Tsarpunk is what they call it, this sort of steampunk, but with a tsar at the head of the hierarchy and in terms of its aesthetic. Then in the way they ordered the Grisha according to their skillset and how they get the colored keftas, that felt a bit like the sorting hat in Harry Potter to me. Then you have the Crows and those books and those feel like they have hints of Oceans 11, or Peaky Blinders even. So there are things that sort of remind you of fantasy, but as a whole, it feels like something completely fresh and new and not, I think, like anything else that I have watched. And so that was intriguing that it didn’t feel derivative of anything, but whilst maintaining an element of fantastical nostalgia.
It’s also, even though it’s got a period feel, you deal with a lot issues we’re having discussions about right now.
Yes, we chart through themes of racial identity and the politics of power and the idea of abuse of status and faith systems even consent little bit in this first season. But at the end of the day, all the characters, including mine, are wrestling with demons from their past. They’re all trying to sort of get through the fold as it were. They’re all trying to get through the fold, wrestle with their demons, put them at bay and figure out where it is they feel the happiest, the most at peace. With whom do they feel the most at peace and where do they feel like they belong? And I think just navigating the earth as a human being, that is a question that is on one’s mind, but also through the pandemic and everything, I think it’s just something that’s sort of been questioned, highlighted and is at the forefront for everybody.
So… it was the capes. The black capes is what sold you?
Right, your searing, journalistic eye is cutting through my bullshit and you can see that mainly, I want to wear black. I don’t want to have lots of different costumes because that’s a pain. I want to be the Steve Jobs of the fantasy universe.
You have really perfected playing the bad guy that people still root for. How do you do that? Why do you do that?
Why do I do it? I don’t know. A close friend of mine pointed out that I do have this sort of slight niche for myself of villains with psychological damage that are always abused — in the case of Westworld, abused by his father, abused in a boys’ home in The Punisher, and in this case, there’s a sort of a demon in the woods story, which leads to the tragedy he suffered. So these sorts of tragic villains — which, I’m not even sure that’s a category — that then have sort of murky relationships with heroines. I struggled to think of any other examples of this and I’ve done about five in a row.
It’s your calling card on screen.
The reason it comes across like that is because I’m not interested in the singular. I’m interested in the fact that everyone has the capacity to be everything. There are no evil babies. This is all learned. And so I really enjoy finding the opposite of moments.
Are you worried you’ve made this villain too likable or sympathetic? He’s got a following amongst book readers so you could end up being the hero of this thing. Or at least, like a really charismatic cult leader or something.
[Laughs] People on the internet sort of want to reclaim this “problematic man arena,” and they have their right to, as they’re reading, support whomever they want. I can’t pretend to understand it, but I think for me, the difference is we’re not presenting a hero. I’m not the one you’re rooting for, that’s Alina. I think that most people intrinsically are good and they root for the good. That isn’t to say though, that I don’t want people to want more of the character on screen. I want people to want to understand him better and I want people to want to understand why he behaves how he behaves. I think that life exists in the gray. The allegory of dark versus light in this story is very clear, but the most interesting parts of the story are the conflict. It’s interesting to me that these men represent potential paths for Alina’s future and what she could become. The darkness that could be in her, the ambition that might lie in her. The other people don’t understand what it’s like to have this power. Those areas that raise questions and spark debates make shows interesting to watch and then talk about.
Speaking of shows that spark debates: The Punisher. I’m still salty it’s over, though it wouldn’t have mattered so much for your character since he died…
Yeah, but do you think I would’ve if they didn’t know it was [ending]? I don’t know.
Do you wish things had gone differently for that series… that season?
We were halfway through season two filming, and Jon [Bernthal] and I barely had any scenes together and I know we were sitting around a set going, “What, if they manufactured a way to get them both in prison and then they would have to work together in order to get out and then start to kill each other again? What if we could give them three or four episodes of talking? Wouldn’t that be awesome?” I was like, “Yes, I would love that.” There are a few scenes between us where we’re just sitting and talking in flashback and they were so compelling to me. I love doing it. And I obviously, I think, as proven by the last five or six jobs I’ve done, I seem to work best when just in one-on-one talking scenes. I think those are kind of my area.
Well, you’ve technically played a Marvel villain. Would you want to play a superhero next?
What superhero are we talking about?
Which one are you thinking about?
So long as there was an opportunity to find the opposite of whatever he is in the cracks between, absolutely.
So… not Captain America then?
I think I’d be a terrible choice for Captain America. I’d be a better Winter Soldier, or… I liked the ones with a little bit of darkness or confusion. The Batmans, the Moon Knights. I think you can find those things in anyone though. Even in Captain America, he wasn’t just playing one thing. He had internal conflict, I think, which was interesting.
True, and his choice to go back in time and retire with Peggy was pretty crappy too.
Yeah, but I’m just such a full-on romantic. That’s what I’d do.
This Saturday will mark two weeks since DMXdied from a reported drug overdose that occurred the week before and triggered a heart attack that left him on life support until he passed. His death sent ripples through all corners of the world as musicians, athletes, and more took a moment to send condolences and remember the hip-hop legend. They’ll receive another opportunity to honor DMX as his family announced the official memorial services to celebrate the late rapper’s life.
The announcement was made in a post to DMX’s Instagram. There will be two memorial services held for him with the first, a “Celebration Of Life Memorial,” coming on Saturday, April 24 at 4 p.m. EST and the second, a “Home-going Celebration,” on Sunday, April 25 at 2:30 p.m. EST. Both services will be livestreamed for his supporters to see with the former airing on YouTube and the latter on BET. In-person attendance for the Celebration Of Life Memorial and the Home-going Celebration will be “restricted to close friends and family solely due to health and safety guidelines.”
DMX’s manager Steve Rifkind previously confirmed that a memorial for the late rapper would be held at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The report at the time said the April 24 service would be held at the arena while the April 25 service would take place at a church in the New York City area.
You can view the Instagram post will all the information above.
We’ve got some shocking news. Like more shocking than major-character-deaths-in-the-debut-season-of-a-prestige-fantasy-series, shocking. Game of Thrones is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this month.
That’s right. It’s been ten years since we visited this fictitious land filled with dragons and warring houses and a Night King. It’s been ten years since the Starks left Winterfell, since a Targaryen gave birth to flying firedrakes since the battle for the Iron Throne first began. Book readers might still be waiting on George R.R. Martin to finish the damn story, but if all you know of Westeros is what happened on the HBO series, then this recap is for you.
To commemorate the show’s anniversary, we thought we’d check in on the main characters from season one to see how they’re faring after all the unpleasantness of the show’s final season — and by unpleasantness we mean genocide and zombie invasions and the true horror of knowing a kid named Bran was now in charge of your kingdom. Where are the characters from Game Of Thrones now? We’re glad you asked.
Daenerys Targaryen
HBO
Then: Way back on season one of Game of Thrones, Emilia Clarke’s many-named queen was just trying to have a nice, quiet sad girl summer when her twin brother decided to sell her off to a Dothraki warlord. She’s really not responsible for any of the death and carnage that came after.
Now: The Mother of Dragons did not learn her lesson — mainly, that now Targaryen male should ever be trusted — and she met the pointy end of her nephew/lover’s sword. Did she deserve to be painted as a woman gone mad with power and the need for revenge? No, but when the writers have you barbecue an entire city, the happiest possible ending is probably a quick, painless death and one last ride off into the sunset.
Jon Snow / Aegon Targaryen
HBO
Then: When he wasn’t hacking up practice dummies and pining for a life of service in the Night’s Watch (who knew forced celibacy could be so motivating), Kit Harington’s baby-faced bastard spent most of his time sulking about his sullied heritage. He struggled to acclimate to the rigid, unforgiving regimen of life on The Wall but boy did he perfect that whole “historical-fantasy-emo-f*ckboi” vibe.
Now: After convincing his aunt/lover to sacrifice a dragon and her life’s pursuit of the Iron Throne to travel North and defeat The Night King, Jon basked in the glory of victory for a bit too long. Long enough that Daenerys would come to lose yet another dragon, a good portion of her army, and her best friend. Jon seemed shocked when she burnt King’s Landing to the ground, though his brother Bran probably saw it coming. After killing his queen, he needed a fresh start so currently, he’s on a pilgrimage North of the Wall with Tormund and a band of Wildlings. We imagine it’s like Burning Man, but with fewer drugs and more fur. At least Ghost got to go along this time.
Drogon
HBO
Then: When we met Drogon, he was a fire-breathing cinnamon roll too pure for this world. One of the first dragons to be seen in centuries, he’s the reason at least one of your exes got a full back tattoo, learned High Valryian, and started telling people he was bilingual.
Now: Drogon lost his entire family thanks to those Westerosi people, so here’s hoping he found a nice place to settle down and enjoy a burnt shepherd’s boy or two in relative peace. He’s earned it.
Sansa Stark
HBO
Then: There were exactly three things Sophie Turner’s pre-teen princess was good at when we first met her: needlework, complaining about her younger sister, and making a total mess of everything. It’s not Sansa’s fault she was taught that marriage and status were the only things a young girl should aspire to — it’s the patriarchy’s fault.
Now: Sansa survived her fair share of hardship and she’s currently thriving back in Winterfell. She became a Queen, but on her own terms, and she’ll get to live out the rest of her days knowing she really did manage to feed her abuser to a pack of rabid dogs — a story she probably recounts every time she gets a little toasted at the annual “Battle of the Bastards” celebration feast. What an icon.
Arya Stark
HBO
Then: Arya Stark could never be accused of being a “lady,” but man, did she spend an ungodly amount of time convincing people she wasn’t just some kitchen boy in the show’s first season. Most of the trouble came when she was shipped off to King’s Landing and forced to make nice with the Lannisters at the expense of her direwolf, her relationship with her sister, and eventually, her father’s life. Still, she had a good time taking those “dancing” lessons with Syrio Forel.
Now: Arya Stark lived many lives over the course of the show’s run. She was a faceless assassin, a Lady of Winterfell, Littlefinger’s executioner, and eventually, she slayed the Night King himself. She earned whatever ending she wanted so even though she never personally crossed Cersei’s name off her list, we hope she’s having a hell of a time cosplaying as a Pirate Queen somewhere far away from the nonsense of the Seven Realms.
Bran Stark
HBO
Then: Bran Stark was an odd little boy who liked ravens and scaling towers and spying on incestuous hookups between a certain set of Lannister twins and, weirdly enough, we preferred that version of the kid.
Now: Bran’s still odd, but in a more pretentious, all-knowing way, and though logically, he’s one of the better choices to sit on the Iron Throne, a rock has more personality than this guy so we’ll never fully get behind his upcoming reelection campaign. #JusticeForHodor
Cersei and Jamie Lannister
HBO
Then: Remember the good ol’ days of Game of Thrones? When Jamie Lannister still had both his hands? When Cersei just drank wine and threw shade at her useless husband? When the news that they were carrying on a romantic relationship was still fresh and rarely alluded to so as to give added shock value when Jamie pushed little boys from towers (because … love, obviously) and to keep us from throwing up in our mouths a little bit every time the pair featured onscreen?
Now: The upside to having to endure seasons’ worth of this twisted romance is that both of these characters got what they deserved in the end — even though being crushed by the falling ruins of King’s Landing felt completely anti-climactic. We’re pretty sure Jamie’s using his one good hand to serve Cersei wine in the afterlife though if you still need some closure.
Tyrion Lannister
HBO
Then: Speaking of wine, Tyrion Lannister was introduced to fans as the imp who “drank and knew things” in season one. He enjoyed a good welcome at the local brothel, being the cause of embarrassment for his sister and father, and making new friends — as long as those friends were mercenaries with no moral center named Bron. Out of all the Lannisters, he was the most likable… even if he was constantly on the wrong side of the war.
Now: We’re assuming he still drinks a lot of wine — killing your father and lover before betraying your queen and losing every other surviving member of your family in the process will drive anyone to the juice — and he knows some things, but the show’s final season wasn’t kind to Tyrion’s memory. Eventually, the pressures of running the kingdom’s finances will get to be too much and he’ll launch that line of beard care products he’s been harping on about, but it’s best to think of him fondly as the man who once — and with great gusto — slapped Joffrey into a pigpen.
Ned Stark
HBO
Then: A man of honor who lived by a noble code, loved his family, treated his subjects well, and was loyal to his friends. Really, why were any of us surprised that Ned Stark didn’t last on Game of Thrones? He made some poor political calculations, revealing his hand far too soon, and it definitely wasn’t cool of him to keep Jon Snow’s lineage a secret from his wife all those years.
Now: Ned learned a powerful lesson: when your friend tries to rope you into a bros-only vacation after the mysterious death of your shared mentor, just say “no” … unless you want your head to be the centerpiece of your enemy’s medieval remodeling plans.
Robb Stark
HBO
Then: Robb Stark was just a boy, learning to grow a man’s worth of facial hair in the first season of Game of Thrones. He had a great responsibility thrust upon him when his father went South and his mother went rogue. He’d eventually find himself crowned King in the North, but this show only cared about one throne so his survival odds took a real hit after that promotion.
Now: Where’s Robb Stark now? Why don’t you go ask that guy from Coldplay? Depending on who you talk to, Robb Stark is either a cautionary tale for white men hoping to achieve power and marry the hot nurse in medieval fantasy epics or he’s the best excuse an introvert can come up with when someone asks why they’re not attending a family member’s wedding. Either way, he deserved better.
Catelyn Stark
HBO
Then: If everyone had just listened to Catelyn Stark, a lot of bloodshed could’ve been avoided on this show. A matriarch with a strong command over her family and an instinct for political machinations, the reigning Lady of Winterfell was wiser than most — though that whole kidnapping Tyrion plot was an admitted low point for her, intellectually speaking.
Now: In the end, Catelyn paid for her son’s failures. Though she tried to warn him against angering the Freys and constantly fought to rescue Sansa and Arya, by the time the Red Wedding came around, she was just the nagging, overbearing maternal figure whose death felt more impactful than her continued presence on the show. But we’d like to think she’s still out there somewhere, haunting the doorstep of her enemies as Lady Stoneheart.
Petyr Baelish / Littlefinger
HBO
Then: A scheming worm who excelled at manipulating anyone around him who happened to be a decent human being — sorry Ned — Littlefinger had some vague plans that never seemed to come to fruition. Did he want to marry Catelyn? Rule The Vale? Control Sansa? Become King of the Seven Kingdoms? Only he knew for sure, which made him especially dangerous in earlier seasons.
Now: As smart as Petry believed himself to be, he just never really understood women and he died on his knees in the home of the first Stark he ever betrayed. Fairly fitting, immensely satisfying. And, once again, another fun, bloody anecdote Sansa trots out whenever she throws one of those mythic Winterfell ragers.
Khal Drogo
HBO
Then: A beefcake who knew the power of a smokey eye and delighted in the chaotic brutality of a good Dothraki wedding ceremony, Khal Drogo was a warlord with potential. His union with Dany grew into one of the healthier, more romantic relationships on this show, and he still serves as one of the few men who didn’t let the future Mother of Dragons down. He was truly one of the good ones.
Now: Except, you know, he still had those bad Dothraki habits of pillaging and plundering and not taking a damn break from riding his horse so he could receive medical attention because he was also a slave to toxic masculinity. We wish he could’ve had a better death, but it should cheer you to know he was cheering on his wife from beyond the grave — as evidenced by Jason Momoa’s Instagram account.
Viserys Targaryen
HBO
Then: An exiled prince whose obsession with his sister gave Jamie Lannister a run for his money in the “eww, gross” department, Viserys wanted to live that high-flying, fire-wielding life but he just couldn’t take the heat.
Now: He’s probably sitting on a Dothraki’s mantle right now, serving as an interesting conversation starter during intimate dinner parties.
“Say Kovarro, where’d you get this interesting golden bust? It looks so realistic?”
“That’s actually a funny story, you see, there was this guy who crashed a baby shower claiming to be a dragon…”
Ser Jorah Mormont
HBO
Then: Unrequited crushes aside, Ser Jorah Mormont was one of the few true friends Daenerys ever made. He helped her to acclimate to Dothraki life, protected her at the cost of his own, and served at her side even after the death of Khal Drogo. He was a true ride or die.
Now: And die he did. He’s currently enjoying his eternal rest knowing that the boy who cuckolded him ended up murdering his queen and taking an extended vacation North of The Wall. Really hope Jorah decides to haunt Jon Snow at some point.
Robert Baratheon
HBO
Then: This drunkard was a pretty useless king, though he did manage to verbally dress down Cersei Lannister a time or two. He harbored an unhealthy fixation with exterminating an entire family’s line and held a torch for a woman who really gave no f*cks about whether he lived or died.
Now: He’s regretting his choices in the afterlife we guess? How could you not when your reign was ended by an excessive amount of alcohol and a rogue swine?
Theon Greyjoy
HBO
Then: Theon Greyjoy was Ned Stark’s ward, which meant he constantly facilitated between considering Robb and the rest of the Stark children as his extended family and absolutely loathing them. He always felt he was destined for greater things and if betraying the people who raised him got him there, well, so be it.
Now: Sadly, “greater things” for Theon ended up being imprisonment, castration, and years’ worth of trauma that probably carried over. Here’s hoping the afterlife has a damn good therapist.
Joffrey Baratheon
HBO
Then: Joffrey was the by-product of an incestuous love affair that would end up igniting chaos in the fragile hierarchy that ruled Westeros. He was also a mama’s boy. So really, the only thing he could have possibly turned out as was a sh*tty psychopath whose favorite pastime was torturing brothel workers and bullying Sansa Stark.
Now: If you want to make a trip to hell to check in with the guy, we won’t stop you.
The simple tomato-based condiment is clearly versatile. But as someone who reviews a lot of fast food and is often exposed to the same two brands, Heinz and Hunt’s, I began to wonder: What else is out there?
Dane Rivera
As you can see, the answer is “plenty.” The sector seems to have found rejuvenated interest from established brands and industry upstarts in recent years. But with so much sense memory playing on the palate, especially when it comes to the “Big Two,” I knew this ranking would have to be done blind. So I bought a bunch of random ketchup bottles from multiple grocery stores in my area — and took some Heinz and Hunt’s ketchup packets from my sizeable junk drawer collection — and had my girlfriend squeeze out a dollop from each onto a plate, four at a time, in random order.
Using ketchup’s greatest pairing partner, the french fry, I then tasted each dollop, jotted down a few tasting notes and impressions, and gave each one a rating from one to five. To cleanse my palate, I swigged Coke from McDonald’s, where I also got the fries.
Clearly, I’m not messing around.
Dane Rivera
With tons of reps under my belt, I went into this sure that I’d be able to pick out Heinz and Hunt’s by sight and smell. I was absolutely wrong. Honestly, I could hardly tell any of the brands apart before tasting them — they were all just subtly different shades of red and smelled generally the same.
The actual flavors of the 11 different brands were definitely unique, though. Read on to see which tasted best.
11. Traina — Gourmet Classic Sun Dried Tomato Ketchup
Visually the worst, Traina’s Gourmet Classic Sun-Dried Tomato Ketchup featured a dark-almost-brownish color with a noticeably grainy mouthfeel. As I worked my way through this particular dollop, it started to separate on the plate. During the second go-around, I made sure to give the bottle a good shake to see if this would fix the problem. It didn’t.
I was hoping the inclusion of sun-dried tomatoes would lead to a unique experience, but all this convinced me was that maybe ketchup should never be made with sun-dried tomatoes. Though I don’t think the sun-dried tomatoes were to blame for the weird, grainy texture. That’s on the brand itself.
What To Eat It On:
Nothing. It’s actually bad. If you thought ketchup couldn’t possibly be bad, you’re wrong. This one is.
Hunt’s is the Pepsi to Heinz’s Coca-Cola. It’s the other brand you see popping up at fast-food chains and burger joints. It’s also clearly not as good (and unlike Pepsi, I don’t believe Hunt’s has a legion of loyalists), so it doesn’t surprise me to see it ranked low on this list.
This ketchup just comes off as overly sugary. It lacks the deep complexity of an actual tomato — as if the people at Hunt’s packed it with sugar to hide that they’re working with bad produce. Which… they probably are!
What To Eat It On:
It’ll do in a pinch, but it definitely leaves something to be desired. If another sauce is available, we’d suggest reaching for that instead.
With the way this ketchup looked on the plate, I expected it to taste much worse. Sprout’s ketchup had a gross watery appearance (yes, the bottle was shaken), with noticeable separation and a pale red color that made it appear bland. It didn’t suffer from the overly sugary quality found in Hunt’s, but that suspected blandness was very much there.
To be frank (pun!), this ketchup lacked any noticeable flavors, providing more of a pleasing mouthfeel than anything else.
What To Eat It On:
This is ketchup you’re going to want to spice up. Sprinkle some pepper and maybe some MSG in it and you’ve got a decent dipping sauce for french fries or breakfast potatoes. Without some added spice, it’s forgettable at best.
Cucina Antica’s Organic Tomato Ketchup was a rich crimson color and had a bright tomato puree aroma. It featured a rich and balanced flavor with a hint of onion. Never too sweet, tart or tangy, this very natural-tasting and neutral ketchup would serve as a great base for a more complex sauce.
What To Eat It On:
Serve it up on some scrambled eggs or use it as a base for a rich and spicy sauce.
I was surprised to find Heinz’s basic ketchup ranked in the middle, as I was fully expecting this to be my favorite. It’s everything good ketchup should be, with a bright flavor that cuts through whatever you put it on, but it’s also more like baseline ketchup compared to some of its cohorts — leaving it in the “serviceable but unremarkable” range.
My biggest gripe was how it lingered on the palate, leaving you with a ketchup-y after taste that eventually overpowered the aftertaste of the fries themselves. In contrast to other bottles of ketchup on this list, it’s actually too powerful.
What To Eat It On:
Anything! Your Burgers, fries, breakfast burritos, and scrambled eggs will taste better with some Heinz. It’s the industry standard and doesn’t have flavors that make it better or worse for any one type of food.
I’ve never been to Whataburger, but people tell me I need to go there all the time. I can now say I’ve at least tried their ketchup. At first, I didn’t understand why Whataburger even had retail ketchup, but now I’m on board. It’s… slightly better than Heinz (which clearly isn’t an easy task for all brands)!
Compared to Heinz — which is a pretty easy reference point for most of us — this was a tad sweeter but considerably less bright. It doesn’t linger on the palate in an obtrusive way. It’s a much more subtle approach to ketchup, with a richer flavor that tastes just a tad better on french fries than Heinz original.
The Bottom Line:
Use it for what it’s intended for: fries and burgers!
This one was the only entry that was easy to pick out visually, it had noticeable specks of black pepper. I didn’t remember the brand by name, but as soon as I saw it on the plate I said “oh, that’s the black pepper one!” So much for going in blind.
Melinda’s has a noticeable dark and complex quality to it, with subtle pepper notes that ease off the typical brightness of ketchup, plus an even more subtle cinnamon aftertaste. I should note that in terms of smell, Melinda’s had the worst, with a strong vinegar aroma that made me wince.
What To Eat It On:
Bring out those faint cinnamon notes by dipping some sweet potato fries in this one.
I couldn’t figure out if this brand is called “Noble Made By The New Primal” or just “Noble Made” but, annoying branding aside, this ketchup is very interesting. It has a distinct tartness that the other ketchups on this list lack, probably thanks to the inclusion of Apple Cider Vinegar and pineapple juice, which makes it feel like it exists slightly apart from what you might consider “typical tomato ketchup.”
If you served this up to someone on a plate they’d definitely notice that this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill bottle of Heinz or Hunts. And in this case, that’s a good thing.
What To Eat It On:
We like this one as a base for a complex sauce. Mix it up with some molasses for the start of a complex BBQ sauce, or with some soy sauce as part of a stir fry mix. If you pair it with fries, people will comment — which is sure to break some conversation lulls, if nothing else.
It’s strange just how different Heinz Organic tastes compared the original stuff. More than the classic recipe, this has a “freshly crushed tomato” scent that isn’t overly processed. The taste begins with those classic Heinz bright notes, before settling into something more balanced, with mouthwatering hints of umami. Overall the experience is cleaner, with more focused and distinct flavors.
Heinz rules fast food at the moment. We’d all be better off if this version of their ketchup became the new standard.
What To Eat It On:
Like the OG Heinz, this ketchup is balanced enough to work on pretty much anything — from sausage links to chicken nuggets to steak. We’re just kidding about the steak.
When I tasted Annie’s Organic, I swore up and down it was Heinz with full confidence. After enduring my bragging, my girlfriend gleefully rubbed my mistake in my face when it was time for the big reveal. For my palate, this is what ketchup should taste like. It presents itself with an appetizing bright color and features a tangy and tart aroma and flavor with a hint of clove on the finish, which balances the loud tomato paste characteristics nicely.
This was part of the first round of testing and I had a hard time imagining ketchup could get better than this. I was wrong there, too!
What To Eat It On:
My ideal choice for hashbrowns or any variation of fried potatoes. And a must on a backyard hotdog.
Portland Ketchup Company’s Organic Ketchup is something special. It has a thick consistency to it, with a rich, ripened tomato color and carries an initial kick of cayenne pepper tamed by a slight sense of sweetness, that further settles into rich umami flavors mingling with notes of clove and allspice.
It’s a journey of flavors but it’s also concise. Once you swallow, it completely leaves the palate, allowing you to prepare for your next bite.
What To Eat It On
Forget what you should eat it on — have it on anything! Once you have this ketchup it’s going to be the only bottle you ever want. This was far and above the best ketchup on this list. Things weren’t even particularly close.
Calling into a C-SPAN show has never seemed like a competitive sport, but after the mental gymnastics display put on by a guy named Steve from Pennsylvania on Wednesday, the Olympic Committee may want to consider it.
Steve was up bright and early to get on the horn with Washington Journal host John McArdle. The topic? The Derek Chauvin verdict and the state of racism in America. Despite the enormity of the conversation, Steve came ready to share his views — bad takes and all. When asked by McArdle whether he thought racism was “a real problem in this country,” Steve was honest in his response… perhaps a little too honest.
— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) April 21, 2021
After answering that, yes, America is full of racists, Steve went on to say that “As long as we continue to look at people as Black people, white people, yellow people, orange people, whatever the case may be, then there’s gonna be racism.” Fair enough—though that’s when Steve’s argument took an unexpected detour.
After declaring that things are getting better in terms of how America deals with racism (maybe Steve didn’t get a chance to watch the news before calling in), he used his own experience to illustrate his point:
“When I was growing up in the 1960s, I was… racist and I was a victim of racism. I was literally beaten by a gang of older Black girls. I got over it. It’s not the end of the world. I never purposely hurt people in response.”
…Congratulations?!
Unfortunately for Steve, he was calling into Washington Journal, not The Dr. Frasier Crane Show. So while McArdle remained characteristically stone-faced throughout his semi-awkward chat with a self-professed “racist,” the next caller, Joe from Biddeford, Maine, was ready to let Steve know he was listening — in the most unintentionally hilarious way possible. When it was Joe’s turn to talk to McArdle, it took him a moment to recover from Steve’s therapy session comments:
“Yeah… I guess… Wow. I don’t think Steve ever got over being beaten up by them girls, I guess. Sorry, Steve.”
If someone had asked me what NFT stood for last year, I’d probably list off thousands of answers before correctly naming them “non-fungible tokens.” NFTs have become the new buzzword in recent months, and with reports of some artists making millions off them, it seems like everyone is trying to break into the cryptocurrency art market.
NFTs were originally designed as a way to allow artists profit off of their shareable digital content. Once an NFT is purchased, artists can continue to make a percentage from any further sale. If you’re looking for a in-depth description on what exactly an NFT is, revisit Uproxx’s explainer here, but Jack Harlow actually gave a fairly succinct definition of NFTs in a recent SNL sketch. In a rap with Pete Davidson, Harlow detailed how NFTs are unique, built on blockchain technology, and can be sold once they’re “minted.”
Since March, NFTs have been all over the news, with everyone from sports teams to toilet paper brands joining the craze. But the music industry in particular has been seeing an explosion of NFTs, and major artists like Grimes and Steve Aoki have made a head-turning sum of money off of them. All this begs the question: How did NFTs go from an obscure acronym to one of the biggest trends in the music industry in just the matter of a few months? Let’s take a look.
Grimes has always been a pioneer in music and culture, which is why it makes sense that she was one of the first big-name musicians to sell artwork as an NFT. The singer had teamed up with her brother, Mac Boucher, to release her first collection of digital artwork as NFTs. Titled WarNymph Collection Vol 1, Grimes’ art sold out in just one day and ended up raking in $6 million.
March 3, 2021 — Disclosure
UK electronic duo Disclosure were also early to the NFT party. After seeing the success fellow EDM artist 3Lau had with NFTs, Disclosure decided to produce a brand-new song live on Twitch and mint it as an NFT. Ever since, the duo have continued to sell various NFTs, including a token for the original “Disclosure face” seen in their press photos and album art.
Despite the public scrutiny Tory Lanez has faced in the past year after allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion her in the foot, the rapper has continued to debut new music. Days ahead of the release of his recent album Playboy, Lanez paired two of the LP’s songs with digital art and minted them as NFTs. He also gave fans access to an unreleased song off his upcoming ’80’s-themed album, which has yet to be announced.
Kings Of Leon had a similar approach to Lanez when it comes to NFTs. The veteran group minted their entire LP When You See Yourself, which they referred to as NFT Yourself, as an NFT and sold it alongside a collection of other art. Those who purchased the NFT were able to snag a digital download of the album, as well as limited edition physical vinyl.
Steve Aoki‘s addition to the NFT industry was a 11-piece collection of vibrant digital artwork titled Dream Catcher, and he was extremely successful. A part of the collection ended up being purchased by T-Mobil CEO John Legere, who bought just one piece for a whopping $888,888.88. In total, Aoki was able to earn $4.25 million in the 24 hours that the auction took place.
March 12, 2021 — MF Doom
MF Doom was one of the early adopters of NFTs. In fact, he tragically passed last October just one day after his first NFT auction of augmented reality masks closed. With the help of his wife Jasmine and his estate, more of MF Doom’s augmented reality were once again sold as NFTs in March in partnership with the crypto marketplace Illust Space.
In a statement about the second auction, a representative from Illust Space said: “Due to blockchain’s immutable and decentralized ledger technology, all of MF DOOM’s AR NFT collection will be available for future generations of fans and collectors, creating a new model for royalties and posthumous creative control legacies.”
A few weeks after Grimes made a sizeable sum from selling her artwork as an NFT, Elon Musk decided to follow suit. When he’s not working on the future of space travel or tweeting out esoteric memes, the billionaire makes EDM music in his spare time. As the self-professed “technoking of Tesla,” Musk decided to make a song about NFTs, and sell it as an NFT.
March 17, 2021 — Halsey
“People Disappear Here” An Original NFT Collection available March 17th on @niftygateway. A portion of sales will be donated to @MFPLA, as well as @carbon_180, a NGO dedicated to the mission of creating a world that removes more carbon that it emits. pic.twitter.com/0lPlNc7513
While Halsey is known for her music, she’s also an incredibly talented interdisciplinary artist. That’s why she was relatively early to the NFT game. The singer auctioned off a handful of hand-painted characters she created in the collection People Disappear Here. “The characters are all inspired by figures that occurred in a series of sleep paralysis nightmares I had at home during the quarantine,” Halsey said in a statement. “After seven years of bed surfing hotel rooms around the world, adjusting to my own pitch black cave in California had a little bit of a learning curve. From toddler TV programming evil dentists, a child born with massive claws who scratched her way out of the womb, to a woman who stood at the foot of my bed and demanded I watch her masturbate. They were memorable to say the least.”
March 22, 2021 — Rico Nasty
It’s been nearly half a year since Rico Nasty released her anticipated debut studio album Nightmare Vacation, and she decided to commemorate the release with an NFT. The rapper teamed up with her “OHFR?” video creator Don Allen III to sell artwork from the video as an NFT. The highest bidder not only claims ownership of the NFT, but they also received the physical hammer Rico Nasty used the video, signed by the rapper herself. One of the reasons why she decided to join the NFT fad is that it “needs more women entering the space.”
March 23, 2021 — Diplo
When Diplo decided to break into the NFT industry, he did it a little differently. His series of NFT art, titled Cloud10, was made in collaboration with the artistic duo of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III and features several cutesy animated characters. But rather than opening up the artwork to a bidding war, Diplo and his collaborators decided to offer their first NFT for only $1 in order for “for young collectors to grow their own wealth through the ownership of art.”
March 26, 2021 — Gorillaz
When Gorillaz announced they would be hopping onto the NFT game, it didn’t go quite as smoothly. While other musicians were welcomed into the world of NFTs, Gorillaz werechastised by their fanbase. The band announced that they would be celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album by teaming up with the toy company Superplastic for a series of toys, collectibles, and, of course, NFTs. Fans weren’t to happy with the news though, and were quick to point out the devastating environmental impact that the sale of a single NFT has. A petition was even created to get the Gorillaz to stop producing NFTs, and it already has over 3,000 signatures.
April 3, 2021 — The Weeknd
Excited to announce that my first NFT drop is taking place on Saturday at 2:00 pm EST on @niftygateway. The collection will feature new music and limited edition art. I developed the artwork with Strange Loop Studios pic.twitter.com/627BO4JekK
After The Weeknd was snubbed for a Grammy nomination in all categories this year despite the success of the album After Hours, the singer has begun to call for greater transparency in the music industry. He’s since decided to boycott the Grammys all together and made his displeasure about various aspects of the music industry abundantly clear. Seeing all the potential that NFTs have to offer, The Weeknd decided to hold a cryptocurrency auction where he would sell exclusive artwork, including an unreleased song, as an NFT.
About his decision to join the NFT market, The Weeknd laid out his vision for the future of the music industry: “Blockchain is democratizing an industry that has historically been kept shut by the gatekeepers. I’ve always been looking for ways to innovate for fans and shift this archaic music biz and seeing NFT’s allowing creators to be seen and heard more than ever before on their terms is profoundly exciting.”
M.I.A. is no stranger to taking her music to unconventional platforms. Last year, the musician launched a subscription-based Patreon page as a platform to share her new projects. Taking things one step further M.I.A announced a 24-hour NFT auction where she will be selling some of her original art for the first time in 25 years. “It’s only now that the appropriate gallery for my work finally exists,” she said in a statement.
Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl teamed up for the surprise collaboration “Eazy Sleazy” in April, which was meant to bring “some much-needed optimism” about coming out of COVID-19 lockdown. But a few days following the track’s release, Jagger announced that Berlin-based 3D artist Extraweg had turned the track into a digital animation, which he sold as an NFT during a 24-hour auction. All proceeds from the sale were divided up and donated between music-related charities.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
While we still aren’t sure what we will see in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie, we have a feeling we know what we won’t: the game’s most sickening and shocking fatalities. Each one of these would make even seasoned Game of Thrones veterans cringe, and couldn’t possibly grace the silver screen without surpassing garnering an NC-17 rating (which director Simon McQouid told us was a challenge). In celebration of the movie hitting both theaters and HBO Max later this week, here’s a look at five of the most grisly finishing moves in the latest entry of the Mortal Kombat series, Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate.
1. Fujin’s “Twisted Twister”
In Fujin’s “Twisted Twister,” Raiden’s younger brother proves why he is the God of the Wind and a disgustingly brutal character. After disemboweling his enemy, Fujin steps on their intestines — anchoring them down for this next bit — then levitates them upwards with a gust of wind. After their opponent is airborne, he twirls them around, wrapping them in their own entrails before slamming them down into the ground in a gory explosion. While Fujin might be a bit pretty, this fatality sure is not.
2. Geras’ “Peeling Back”
The name of this fatality tells you exactly what to expect, and if the image you conjure up has you squirming, I’d advise you to not Google this one. Geras is a new face in the Mortal Kombat series, serving alongside Kronika’s loyal servant in her evil doing. In this fatality, Geras pins his opponent to a slab of rock before grabbing their arm, ripping off the skin, and, well, peeling it back, exposing all of the character’s innards. It’s gross, gory, and a hell of a way to introduce a new character.
3. Sub-Zero’s “Frozen in Time”
While Sub-Zero’s rival, Scorpion, doesn’t make the cut this time around, the icy icon firmly solidifies himself on this list with “Frozen in Time.” In this move, Sub-Zero takes advantage of his ability to create ice clones and forms one to ram his opponent into. After impaling his enemy on his clone’s spear, Sub-Zero thrusts his hand into his opponent’s chest, grabs ahold of their spine, and tears it out until their head pops off along with it. For good measure, Sub-Zero then uses said spine as a whip, and throws the detached head onto the icy spear as well, causing a splash of gore complete with eyeball. There’s a reason Sub-Zero’s been around so long in the Mortal Kombat series, and it’s not because he’s a chill guy.
4. D’Vorah’s “Can’t Die”
Remember that “Peeling Back” fatality I mentioned a little bit ago? This one is pretty similar and debatably worse, though to be honest it’s really difficult comparing all of these. While both of D’Vorah’s fatalities are pretty rough to watch, this one involves D’Vorah pinning down her opponent with a thick, green ooze before using her ovipositors to split them in half. To add insult to (fatal) injury, green bugs then fly out of the body, which is now flapping with exposed organs. Seeing as she comes from an insectoid race, it’s no surprise D’Vorah comes with plenty of ick, but it still is a lot to take in.
5. Both of Sindel’s
I truly did not know which of Sindel’s fatalities should make this list because both were pretty revolting, which is funny considering she is one of the game’s more benevolent and graceful characters. In Sindel’s fatality “Scream Queen,” she first knocks her opponent backwards before hoisting them up with her long locks. After they’re in position, Sindel shrieks at the character until their skin literally rips off their body, followed quickly by their lower half. In “Hair Today Gone Tomorrow” — a pun that sounds straight from Bob’s Burgers, if we’re being honest — Sindel forces her hair down her enemy’s throat. It then reemerges through the victim’s stomach before gouging out their eyes and digging into various parts of their body. She then uses he hair to pull her opponent apart, reduces them to a shredded mess. Cheery, right?
Only time will tell if any of these fatalities sneak their way into theaters, but given the studio decided not to go with an NC-17 rating for the movie, (though they were extremely close!) we’re thinking there’s no possible way these gore-filled finishers will make an appearance.
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