David Fear

Sports are the apex of genuine human drama. Sure, for non-fans, professional athletics can seem like frivolous games, and in the broad view, that’s perhaps what they are. But sports are also a framework to tell great stories – of winners and losers, triumph and tragedy, conquering behemoths and inspiring underdogs.  No wonder, then, that filmmakers frequently draw upon sports for inspiration. Yes, sports movies can be filled with clichés, but there are many that manage to either subvert them or deliver them with so much emotion it’s like experiencing them for the first time. In this ranking of the 50 greatest sports movies, we’ve stuck to traditional athletic competition – apologies to The Color of Money and Searching for Bobby Fischer.  RECOMMENDED: 💣 The best action movies of all-time🌊 The 15 most epic surf movies🔎 The best biopics of all-time, ranked📹 The 66 best documentaries of all-time

Despite being the home of Hollywood, ‘LA movies’ seem less exalted as a subgenre than ‘New York movies’, or London movies, or Paris movies, or Rome movies. Maybe it just seems a bit too meta, or perhaps it’s because the city occupies such a polarising spot in the collective consciousness. (To love Los Angeles is to hate it, and to hate it is to really, really hate it.) In any case, the list of truly great LA movies is a bit tighter than those taking place in other large metropolises. But those films cover a lot of ground, from dramas set in the showbiz world to gritty thrillers depicting the inner city, fizzy-headed musical comedies to shadowy noirs that make the most of that twinkling, imposing skyline. Here’s our ranking of the 57 best Los Angeles movies of all-time. Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies ever made.📽️ The best LA movie theaters to visit.🌕 LA’s best outdoor movies to see this summer.

Genius South Korean director Bong Joon-ho said it best, while collecting his Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2019 for his future historic Oscar winner, Parasite: ‘Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films’. He was teasing, but it’s true: far too many filmgoers are scared off by the notion of international cinema. In cultural shorthand, ‘foreign films’ has long been a euphemism for snootiness, a stereotype that has indeed kept American audiences from experiencing some of the greatest movies ever made. Once you open yourself up to them, though, you’ll quickly find there’s nothing to be intimidated by, because the world of global cinema contains something for everyone, from eye-popping action flicks to goofy comedies, charming musicals to stylish thrillers to philosophical dramas. That’s why, in compiling this list of the best foreign films of all-time, we had to set some guidelines. We omitted silent films and determined that the movies had to be in a language that wasn’t English: so goodbye Britain and Australia. Other than those caveats, consider this your travel guide to the wide, wonderful world of international film.  Written by David Fear, Keith Uhlich, Andy Kryza, Joshua Rothkopf & Matthew Singer  Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all-time🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies of all-time, ranked🇰🇷 The best Korean movies of all-time🥋 The 25 best martial arts movies of all-time 

To the victor goes the spoils – and to the losers goes the social media outrage. That’s effectively how the Oscars operate. As the actual telecast honours the year’s standout cinematic performances, viewers jump on Twitter to express righteous anger over just how wrong the voters got it. It makes sense: the Academy has screwed up often enough that you almost expect it to happen half the time. Every once in a while, though, the Academy gets it spot-on – and those instances deserve recognition. Here are 50 times when they nailed the bullseye. Recommended: 👎 The 20 worst Oscar winners in history👍 The best films of 2022🙌 The most anticipated movies coming out in 2023🔥 The 100 best movies of all time

To mark the much-anticipated return of Mad Men to the small screen (its sixth-season premiere airs Sunday, April 7 at 9pm on AMC), we’ve compiled the most quintessentially Gotham series of all time. What makes one of NYC’s best television shows, you ask? It could be a number of things—characters with particularly New York attitudes, nontouristy shooting locations, authentic period details—but we should note that we’ve excluded any locally shot news and chat shows. (Sorry, The Daily Show and vintage Conan.) If any omissions rub you the wrong way, like our decision to leave off Sex and the City (we’re kidding!), let us know in the comments.

You're used to things beginning with an audible bang when you schlep into Utah's Park City, parka-clad and pleasantly buzzed from the oxygen-thin altitude, to celebrate the ten days of marathon filmgoing and blitz-marketing known as the Sundance Film Festival. One or two big-name titles start things off with gala premieres on the fest's first Thursday night. Red carpets get rolled out. Flashbulbs go off. Famous faces break into smiles. Crowds squeal. But though the 2011 edition kicked off its usual to-do at the cavernous Eccles Theater with celebrities—notably Harry Belafonte, the subject of the docuportrait Sing My Song—and audience members with tickets were allegedly turned away at the door, the fact that films had already started screening during the day gave the evening a slightly already-in-progress feeling. The first Dramatic Competition film to screen at the Eccles was not a star-studded affair, but a scrappy slice-of-life drama named Pariah—the sort of earnest, regional low-budget indie that would have fit in with Sundance's lineup 25 years ago. It was, by many accounts, a mellow beginning for what can be a maelstrom-filled affair, suggesting the tone for '11 would be, hey, like, chill out. This year's official symbol is a delicate snowflake; "Be there" is the motto. Um, where else would we be? So you can imagine the sigh of relief that came from the great unshaven masses of film journalists when we showed up to our inaugural press screening and it resembled the cacop

Unless you caught Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 moody martial-arts flick during a blink-and-ya-missed-it run at your local Chinatown theater, the only way to see this whacked-out wuxia was on DVD. But with all due respect to Tai Seng, the San Francisco company that’s sporadically released Ashes of Time on various home-video formats, the joy of locating a copy was always followed by a buzzkill. The source print appeared to have been excavated from a sandpaper factory and the murky transfer made you wonder whether your TV screen needed a Windex wipe-down. Even the film’s creator couldn’t find a complete negative in decent condition. But thankfully, Wong has pieced together what he calls a “definitive” cut, unleashing a spruced-up Redux version of his swords-slinger drama. The auteur trimmed seven minutes to tighten the pace and added a new score from renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, but it’s the reworking of the film’s visuals that signals the true difference. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle’s imagery is not only crystal clear now, but has also been digitally color-coded for maximum Day-Glo effect. Travelers wander under key-lime green skies, and blade-wielding warriors battle before psychedelic lemon-meringue hills. To call this new Ashes gorgeous and retina-searing is an understatement; you may want to schedule a postscreening ophthalmologist appointment. Does the fresh coat of pixel paint make the film’s labyrinthine plot about an assassin (Leslie Cheung), his clients and their various lo