Honorable Mentions: Don't Think Twice, Keanu, The Magnificent Seven
Green Room: Calling Green Room a relentless thriller feels too mild. Jeremy Saulnier's brutally realistic shockfest delivers the type of unnerving, pulse-pounding suspense that puts knots the size of boulders into your stomach. Its claustrophobic setting (a backwoods Nazi club in rural Oregon) paired with its legitimately dangerous antagonists and bursts of gruesome violence creates an atmosphere of everpresent danger as the unsuspecting protagonists (the late Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner) fight for their lives that is both gripping and deeply horrifying. Any aspiring filmmaker that wants to learn how to create something that's full of dread and intensity on a microbudget needs to seek this out ASAP.
The Nice Guys: Throwback misfit buddy noir comedy The Nice Guys is easily one of the most fun movies that's come out in recent years. It's one of those movies that I can't possibly turn off if I stumble upon it on TV, which actually happened a few weeks ago on HBO, because it's just so god damn amusing and entertaining. Shane Black's script is full of clever, wildly entertaining twists, the dialogue is razor sharp and Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are just a hilarious screwball duo that boast a rapport so strong that it borders on the absurd. Now if some producer would only step up and fund the sequel they intended to make before this failed to takeoff at the box office...
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stop Never Stopping: The day where it doesn't take years for people to discover the genius of The Lonely Island's movies is going to be a great one. Popstar is slowly and steadily starting to developing a vocal following, but I still feel like it's vastly underrated overall. A parody of the music industry and the self-indulgent documentaries from prominent pop artists (Katy Perry, Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber x2) that were trendy in the late 2000's/early 2010's provides the trio with an ideal setting to utilize their subtly smart, gleefully absurd humor to mine non-stop laughs out of a subject that is a prime target for pointed jabs. The songs are the best The Lonely Island have ever written, the ensemble just crushes (particularly Andy Samberg as Conner4Real, Chris Redd as the Tyler, the Creator-inspired Hunter the Hungry and Tim Meadows as Conner's far too levelheaded musician turned manager) and like all great comedies, it manages to get even funnier upon each rewatch.
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