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  • The Top 10 Movies of 1977, a Year That Changed Film Forever

    The Top 10 Movies of 1977, a Year That Changed Film Forever


    Here are the top 10 movies of 1977, ranked by domestic box office. The film at No. 1 permanently changed the kinds of movies that get made in Hollywood.

    10 — Semi-Tough

    United Artists – Credit: C/O

    Burt Reynolds was such a huge star in 1977 that he starred in two of the films on this list. Semi-Tough is a sports comedy that features a love triangle between the very 1970s cast of Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson and Jill Clayburgh.

    The United Artists release, which came out November 11, earned over $37 million, making it No. 10 on this list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    9 — Annie Hall

    United Artists – Credit: C/O

    Widely considered Woody Allen’s masterpiece, this romantic comedy starring Allen and Diane Keaton, as the title character, was not only a commercial but critical smash: It won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actress (for Keaton) and Best Director (for Allen) — as well as Best Screenplay for Allen and Marshall Brickman.

    The film, released by United Artists, debuted April and earned $38.2 million. It’s No. 9 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    8 — Oh, God!

    Warner Bros – Credit: C/O

    George Burns (right), who was 81 at the time of the film’s release, plays God, who visits normal-guy grocery store assistant manager Jerry (John Denver, left).

    When Jerry agrees to spread God’s message, his wife Bobbie (Teri Garr) isn’t sure it’s the best idea.

    The film inspired a trilogy that includes one of the film’s on this list. Released by Warner Bros. on October 7, it earned $41.7 million. It is, you guessed it, No. 8 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    7 — The Spy Who Loved Me

    United Artists – Credit: C/O

    The third James Bond film to star Roger Moore (left) — who is No. 4 on our list of James Bond Actors, Ranked — pairs him with Soviet agent Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach, right) as they try to stop a plot to end civilization in favor of a new undersea world.

    They’re bedeviled by Jaws — not the shark from the top-grossing film of 1975, but the henchman played by Richard Kiel.

    Released by United Artists on July 13, The Spy Who Loved Me moonraked in $46.8 million. It ranks No. 007 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    6 — The Deep

    Columbia Pictures – Credit: C/O

    This thriller stars Jacqueline Bisset and Nick Nolte as amateur treasure-hunting divers who come across the cargo of a World War II shipwreck, which puts them at odds with local criminals. It was co-written by Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel Jaws and co-wrote the film.

    Released by Columbia Pictures on June 17, it earned $47.3 million. Its No. 6 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    And Bisset is on our list of Stars of the 1970s Who Are Still Going Strong.

    5 — A Bridge Too Far

    United Artists – Credit: C/O

    Richard Attenborough’s World War II drama stars a plethora of great actors, including Sean Connery, Laurence Olivier, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine, and the recently departed Ryan O’Neal. It’s also co-written by the great William Goldman (All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride.)

    Released by United Artists on June 15, it collected $50.8 million. It comes in at No. 5 on the list of the 10 top movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    4 — Saturday Night Fever

    Paramount Pictures – Credit: C/O

    With a soundtrack that defined the late ’70s, this John Travolta disco drama follows Tony Manero (Travolta) as he splashes paint and dances up a storm in Brooklyn. It’s based on the New York article “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” which author Nik Cohn later admitted he mostly made up.

    Audiences didn’t notice, or didn’t care. The Paramount Pictures release, which came out December 16, hustled up $94.2 million. It is, of course, No. 4 on the list of the top 10 movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    It also earned a place on

    3 — Close Encounters of the Third Kind

    Columbia Pictures – Credit: C/O

    Stephen Spielberg’s followup to his hit Jaws, which reunited him with Jaws star Richard Dreyfuss, wasn’t as big a hit as the shark epic — but few movies are.

    Close Encounters — the second movie on this list to feature Teri Garr (who would reunite with Dreyfuss for 1989’s Let It Ride ) — earned $116.4 million after its November 16 release by Columbia Pictures. It’s No. 3 on the list of the top 10 movies of 1977, by domestic box office, not adjusted for inflation.

    2 — Smokey and the Bandit

    Universal Pictures – Credit: C/O

    This Burt Reynolds-Sally Field action comedy — about a Trans-Am on a mission to distract from a truck full of beer — was the No. 2 film domestically with a total haul of $127 million. This is one time the Bandit ended up in second place.

    By the way, all of these domestic box office totals are from Box Office Mojo, a fun site we highly recommend exploring.

    Interestingly, Smokey and the Bandit debuted on May 27 — just two days after the No. 1 movie on our list.

    1 — Star Wars

    20th Century Fox – Credit: C/O

    The 20th Century Fox film, which eventually became known as Star Wars: Episode IV — a New Hope, was the top film of 1977 with a domestic gross of $307 million. (Adjusted for inflation, that’s $1.3 billion.)

    George Lucas’ story of Luke Skywalker’s quest to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star — and her quest to lead the Rebellion to use some secret plans to blow up said Death Star — launched the second-most successful franchise in film history. Star Wars films have made more than $5 billion, trailing only the $11.8 billion for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

    The incredible box office receipts of A New Hope (we still just call it Star Wars) helped open studios’ eyes to new ways of making money — not just through films, but endless merchandising in the form of action figures, remote-controlled R2D2s, and lightsabers.

    It changed the kinds of movies that got greenlit, and signaled that ’70s audiences — who had grown accustomed to downbeat endings — were ready for optimism. Movies would never be the same.

    Liked This List of the Top 10 Movies of 1977, Ranked by Domestic Box Office?

    Dr. No Behind the Scenes First James Bond 007 Movie
    United Film Distribution Company – Credit: C/O

    You might also like this list of All 11 Star Wars Movies, Ranked Worst to Best or this list of 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember.

    Main image: A publicity still of Jacqueline Bisset in The Deep. Columbia.

    Editor’s Note: Corrects main image.



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  • 12 Excellent Movies Where Not Much Happens

    12 Excellent Movies Where Not Much Happens


    Here are 12 excellent movies where not much happens. Or does it?

    There aren’t a lot of car chases, murders, sex scenes, or explosions, but lives are quietly changed.

    Lost in Translation (2003)

    Seductive Movies
    Focus Features – Credit: C/O

    Newlywed Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and burned-out married actor Bob (Bill Murray) meet at a Tokyo hotel, talk, and sing some karaoke. Everything is melancholy and luminously beautiful.

    We keep thinking maybe they’ll leave their spouses — and yet we’re somehow grateful when they don’t. Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is a celebration of small, intense interactions we’ll never recapture, and maybe shouldn’t.

    At the end, Bob finds Charlotte in a crowd. They look in each other’s eyes, embrace, and he whispers something we can’t hear. They kiss in a way that feels not at all sexual. They’re friends.

    The Power of the Dog (2021)

    Netflix

    Jane Campion’s drama looked like a likely Best Picture winner in 2022 before CODA scored the honor in an unusual, Covid-tainted year.

    It is, on its surface, a slow, ponderous story about a widow (Kirsten Dunst), her kindly suitor and eventual husband (Jesse Plemons), her effeminate, intellectual son, (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and her brutal brother-in-law (Benedict Cumberbatch).

    For most of the movie, we think we’re watching a sensitive Western, perhaps with a revisionist take on the very 2020s theme of “toxic masculinity.” But by the end, we realize it’s been a different kind of movie all along — and a more ruthless one than we realized. It makes a hard, shrewd shift in genre, and we respect it.

    Dazed and Confused (1993)

    Gramercy Pictures – Credit: C/O

    The ultimate hangout movie, Dazed and Confused follows a group of high schoolers on graduation night as they cruise around and make plans to go to a party at the Moontower. There’s some fighting and bullying and flirting, and some mailboxes get battered. Football star Randall “Pink” Floyd (Jason London) has to decide whether to sign a pledge. not to do drugs.

    And that’s it. No one dies, nothing explodes, no one pulls off the heist of the century. And yet it’s a pure joy, helped launch the careers of Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, and Matthew McConaughey, and is the best hangout movie ever. Quentin Tarantino has called his favorite movie of the 90s.

    Dazed and Confused is one of several deceptively simple Richard Linklater movies, where very normal days and nights turn out to be the most memorable of our lives.

    And, since we mentioned Tarantino…

    Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

    Sony Pictures Releasing

    A slice of life story about real-life actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), her burnout actor neighbor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and Dalton’s pal-stuntman-assistant Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).

    The film takes us on a pleasant meander through three days of their lives — at one point we join Sharon on a solo trip to the movies — but writer-director Quentin Tarantino knows he doesn’t need to do much to move the plot along…

    … Because we’re on the edge of our seats the entire time, thinking about the hellish thing we know happened to the real Sharon Tate. Waiting for it to happen onscreen. Horrified.

    There are little smatterings of violence before the big finale as Cliff fights both Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) and Tex Watson (Austin Butler).

    And when the grim ending comes… it turns out to be not what we expected.

    Perfect Days (2023)

    Koji Yakusho and Arisa Nakano in Perfect Days. DCM

    The newest film on our list, Perfect Days follows a Tokyo bathroom custodian named Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho) as he goes about his simple days, fueled by mix tapes, good books, and his love of photography.

    It’s a curious, transfixing film about making the most of a seemingly simple existence. People enter his life who seem poised to change it dramatically, but he takes comfort in his routines.

    Its excellent movie credentials include premiering at the the 76th Cannes Film Festival, where it competed for the Palme d’Or and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the Best Actor Award for Yakusho. It was also nominated for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards,.

    Before Sunset (2004)

    Movies Where Not Much Happens
    Warner Independent Pictures

    Another Linklater movie, and the sequel to his lovely Before Sunrise, which could also be on this list. Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who co-write the movie with Linklater and Kim Krizan) reunite in Paris, nearly a decade after the night they spent together in Vienna in Before Sunrise.

    Jesse has written a book about that night, and he and Celina reminisce about what could have been and what can never be. Or can it?

    The biggest event in Before Sunset comes at the very end, when instead of doing something, Jesse doesn’t do something — and it changes his and Celine’s lives. It also sets up the third film in the series, the beguiling Before Midnight.

    Last Days of Disco (1999)

    Gramercy Pictures

    Writer-director Whit Stillman has said that during the tough days of filming his 1994 Barcelona, a rare moment of joy came while shooting a disco scene. He wondered why he couldn’t just make a whole movie of young women loving the nightlife and dancing. So he made Last Days of Disco.

    Chloe Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale star as aspiring book editors who eke out small salaries while looking for love or connection or something on dance floors and the sexy banquettes at their edges. At least one character considers them overprivileged and insipid, and the big climax is a debate about Lady and the Tramp.

    But there’s a lot happening in the subtext, including a richly detailed, nearly invisible subplot about tax fraud. And — much more importantly, from the movie’s perspective — people find real meaning in the most seemingly superficial of settings. This might be your humble correspondent’s favorite movie — and it’s one of the most seductive movies we’ve ever seen.

    The Brutalist (2024)

    Brutalist Judy Becker
    A24

    The newest film on this list, and a leading Oscar contender, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist moves as a patient, often hypnotic pace, inviting you to enjoy and appreciate its anthemic score, nuanced performances, and the brutally beautiful architecture of protagonist László Tóth (Adrien Brody).

    It unfolds over 3 hours and 35 minutes that do not fly by: One of its leads, Felicity Jones as Erzsébet Tóth — doesn’t really show up until after the midpoint intermission. Strikingly, for a movie with plenty of time, The Brutalist never over-explains, often waiting until years after events in the film to have occurred before the characters discuss them at any length.

    Arguably the most devastating moment in the film — it occurs between László and his benefactor/antagonist Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce) — unfolds with such understatement that you may not immediately understand the trauma unfolding unless you catch the sound of an unbuckling belt.

    Contempt (1963)

    Marceau-Cocinor 

    French writer Paul (Michel Piccoli) is enlisted to work with Fritz Lang (played by the real Fritz Lang) on an adaptation of The Iliad.

    When Paul and his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) are invited to the home of cocky American producer Jeremy Proko (Jack Palance), Proko’s car only has room for one passenger. And so begins a period of intense agony for Paul.

    It’s all very slow — yet you wish it were even slower. Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt is one of the most gorgeous movies ever made. The visuals are sumptuous, including of Casa Malaparte, the seaside home on Capri, Italy where key scenes occur. And “Camille’s Theme,” by Georges Delerue, is so stirring that Martin Scorsese borrowed it for Casino.

    Contempt has two very violent deaths, but they’re almost an afterthought. The emotional carnage comes first.

    La Piscine (1969)

    Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie

    TimeOut perfectly describes this one as “a deliciously languid, slinkily unsettling affair.”

    Director Jacques Deray spends lots of time on the uncluttered elegance of la piscine of the title (la piscine is French for “the swimming pool”) and the magnetism of its four central inhabitants, played by Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, and Jane Birkin.

    There’s lust and jealousy, sure, though we’re never sure how seriously to take it all until, about midway through the film, someone commits a rompishly casual murder. When it happens, you’re almost sad to see the movie take a break from shots of people just lying around.

    The Father (2020)

    UCG Distribution

    The setup for Florian Zeller’s magnificent debut is so simple it barely seems sufficient for a movie: A daughter (Olivia Colman) is trying to move her dementia-struck father (Anthony Hopkins) from his flat and into a nursing home.

    But the scenes that result are both aching and mesmerizing. Zeller designed the film, he told MovieMaker, “to make the audience feel as if they were going through a labyrinth.” He envelops the audience in Anthony’s confusion by moving the proportions of the apartment, changing the locations of items, and even changing the colors of a wall.

    We see and feel a man losing his mind, and the film makes us share in his alternating peace and terror. Zeller was so certain that Hopkins was the only actor for the job that he named his main character Anthony and wrote the script for the Silence of the Lambs Oscar winner without ever having met him.

    All worked out: Hopkins won his second Best Actor Oscar for The Father, one of the most excellent movies of recent years.

    Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

    Olympic Films

    The gold standard of movies where not much happens, Jeanne Dielman follows a widowed housewife (Delphine Seyrig) as she goes about her domestic routines over three days: cooking, cleaning, taking care of her son, and having sex with a different client each afternoon.

    Yes, she has sex three times, and there is one pointed act of violence, which may sound like a lot is happening. But consider that the movie is three hours and twenty minutes long. At one point it devotes four minutes to a static shot of Jeanne making veal cutlets.

    Released when writer-director Chantal Akerman was just 25, Jeanne Dielman initially drew a mixed response, but steadily gained respect. In 2020, the Sight + Sound poll named it the greatest movie ever made. It replaced Vertigo at the top of the list.

    Liked This Gallery of 12 Excellent Movies Where Not Much Happens?

    Sony Pictures Classics

    You might also enjoy this list of 10 Great Documentaries About Making Movies That You Can Stream Now.

    Main image: Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. Marceau-Cocinor 



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  • The 12 Coolest Time Travel Movies of All Times

    The 12 Coolest Time Travel Movies of All Times


    Here are the 12 coolest time travel movies of all time — and all times.

    Cinema’s obsession with time travel makes perfect sense, given that movies may be the closest most of us will ever get to it: The filmmakers of the past told stories for the audiences of the future. As the gap between creation and audience grows, so does every film’s value as an artifact of its time.

    As people and places disappear, films can become our best ways to remember them, and experience something like immersion in times we may remember only faintly, if at all.

    So in a way, all movies are time travel movies. But the following films are explicitly about people starting in one time, and traveling to another.

    It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

    Donna Reed, Jimmy Stewart and Karolyn Grimes in It’s a Wonderful Life. RKO Radio Pictures

    If you think It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t a time travel movie, we would ask: How is it not? The dark Christmas classic from Frank Capra follows George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart at his best) revisiting his past — or rather an alternate version of his life in which he was never born.

    Rather than going back and changing the past, George has to endure the present — and in doing so, shape the future. Just like all of us do every day.

    As popular as the multiverse concept is today, it’s notable that It’s a Wonderful Life hit on it long, long ago. Credit goes to Capra and co-writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, as well as Philip Van Doren Stern, who wrote the story upon which It’s a Wonderful Life was based.

    The Time Machine (1960)

    When Morlocks attack: Yvette Mimieaux as Weena in The Time Machine. MGM

    No discussion of time travel is complete without bowing to H.G. Wells’ 1895 novel The Time Machine, one of the most influential stories of all.

    George Pal’s adaptation of the novel presents a two-caste future in which humans have evolved into Eloi and Morlocks. The passive, vegetarian Eloi seem to have it good: They live a pleasant, idyllic existence — above ground, no less.

    It all seems very nice until we realize the Eloi (including Yvette Mimieaux as Weena, above) are basically veal for the Morlocks, the scrappy, resentful subterraneans who emerge occasionally from their caves to feed on their pampered cousins.

    The Time Machine is a great time travel movie, and inspired many others on this list., sometimes quite overtly. But it’s also a provocative, still-relevant piece of social commentary.

    La Jetée (1962)

    Hélène Châtelain in La Jetée. Argos Films.

    Chris Marker’s La Jetée explains to audiences that it is “the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood” — a violent image he witnessed “sometime before the outbreak of World War III.”

    He comes to understand it only by experiencing it again and again, in a time loop that the short film illustrates almost entirely illustrated in still photos. His link to the past is a memory of a woman (played by Hélène Châtelain, above) he once encountered on the observation platform, or jetty, of Paris’ Orly Airport.

    Between its deliberate repetition, black-and-white photography and unsettling setting — we are watching the past’s vision of our own possible future, which feels simultaneously dated and far beyond us — La Jetée is hypnotic.

    Time After Time (1979)

    Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen in Time After Time. Warner Bros.

    Nicholas Meyers’ Time After Time has one of the best setups of any film. Pointedly inspired by The Time Machine, it begins in Victorian London, where Jack the Ripper (aka Dr. John Leslie Stevenson, played by David Warner) has just struck again.

    He joins a gathering at the home of his friend H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell), who unveils a time machine he’s a bit apprehensive about using.

    When the police close in, Stevenson flees to the future in the time machine — and H.G. follows him. They end up in 1979 San Francisco, where fish-out-of-water Stevenson adapts swimmingly to the violence of the (then) modern age, while gentle H.G. tries to stop him from killing again.

    He’s aided by bank employee Amy (Mary Steenburgen), who becomes Jack’s target. Things build to kind of a disappointing climax, but there’s so much thoughtfulness and delight along the way that it’s silly to linger on it.

    And in a sweet behind-the-scenes ending, Steenburgen and McDowell fell in love and were married for a decade.

    The Terminator (1984)

    Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn in The Terminator. Orion Pictures. – Credit: C/O

    When the low-budget Terminator emerged in 1984, some people dismissed it as a dumb, violent shoot-’em-up about a killer robot.

    While it’s undeniably one of the best killer robot movies ever made, it also offers one of the coolest takes on how time travel works.

    In the world of The Terminator, time travel is like an inevitable loop that transgresses calendar years: Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is sent back in time to save Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) so she can give birth to her son John, the savior of humankind in a dark, robot-infested future. But he also ends up fathering John — who, in turn, is the one who sends him back in time.

    Brilliant.

    Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

    Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. TriStar Pictures – Credit: C/O

    Yes, we’re going with two Terminator movies, because the inevitable-loop concept ramps up to another level when we learn in T2 that the arrival of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 in the first Terminator was the cause of the Judgment Day that sparks the A.I. takeover.

    In short, the last remaining piece of technology from the T-800’s final battle against Sarah and John becomes crucial to Cyberdyne, the company that creates SkyNet, which quickly makes things very tough for humanity.

    The past creates the future which creates the past which creates the future. At least, that’s how it goes in The Terminator.

    The next time travel movie on our list has a different theory about it all works.

    Back to the Future (1985)

    Back to the Future
    Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. Universal Pictures.

    One of the most flat-out entertaining movies ever, Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future embraces the geekiness of time travel and makes it as goofily cool as possible — while grounding everything in a very human story.

    1980s teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travels back to the 1950s thanks to a time traveling DeLorean built by his mentor, Doc Brown (Christopher LLoyd). But upon arrival, Marty prevents a crucial meeting of his young parents (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson).

    Worse, his mom develops a crush on him — which is a huge problem for many reasons. But it’s arguably most troubling because in the Back to the Future school of time travel, nothing is inevitable, even Marty’s existence. If he can’t get his parents together, he and his siblings will never be born.

    Things get more complicated (and occasionally even more fun) in Back to the Future 2, in which Marty is propelled into the future, and back to the past — and has to avoid running into himself. And Back to the Future 3 goes for pure Western thrills.

    Diehard fans of time travel movies will note that in the latter, Mary Steenbergen plays a character in a similar situation to the one her character faced in the aforementioned Time After Time.

    Groundhog Day (1993)

    Andie McDowell and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Columbia Pictures – Credit: C/O

    Harold Ramis’ masterpiece stars his Ghostbusters castmate Bill Murray as a weatherman cursed to repeat the same holiday again and again. It enlivened the time travel movie genre and popularized the time-loop format. It’s also another of the best movies ever made.

    Screenwriter Danny Rubin, who was steeped in Anne Rice’s vampire novels, became interested in the idea of immortality, and of repeating the same day over and over again. He and Ramis turned his original script into a meditation on life itself, and how all of us have the choice, each time the alarm goes off, to make each day a grinding re-enactment of the one before, or to take it in an entirely new direction.

    Assemble enough of those decisions together, and you’ve completed a lifetime.

    Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)

    Michael York as Basil Exposition in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. New Line Cinema

    In the first Austin Powers film, 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Mike Myers’ swinging ’60s spy is frozen in 1967 and thawed out in the ’90s.

    In the sequel, Austin must travel back — this time to 1969 — to match wits with Dr. Evil (also Myers) who has stolen Austin’s mojo. The ramifications of crossing paths with his (frozen) past self causes Austin to go cross-eyed — but the wise Basil Exposition gives him some advice.

    “I suggest you don’t worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself,” he says.

    Then he and Myers turn smilingly to the audience, as Basil adds, “That goes for you all, too.”

    Thus freed from thinking about the space-time continuum, we’re able to just enjoy Austin returning to the past to dance and fight alongside Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham.)

    Midnight in Paris (2011)

    Midnight in Paris. Sony Pictures Classics

    Woody Allen’s beguiling Midnight in Paris skips any concern about how time travel works in favor of charm. Owen Wilson’s character, who is having trouble with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams), travels back in time simply by stepping inside a 1920s car each night at midnight.

    It transports him to glorious 1920s Paris, where he mingles with the likes of Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston), Zelda Fitzgerald (Alison Pill), Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody) and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). He also becomes captivated by Adriana, Picasso’s mistress, played by Marion Cotillard.

    Instead of a new take on how time travel works, Midnight in Paris lays out a universal truth: Some people will always prefer to live in the past.

    Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

    Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow. Warner Bros.

    This Tom Cruise-Emily Blunt gem takes the Groundhog Day concept into the realm of action and sci-fi. But it’s also funny, in a different way than Groundhog Day.

    Cruise plays against type as a man who, like Murray in Groundhog Day, must re-live the same day again and again. But Cruise, known for playing ultra-competent heroes like Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible films and Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun, goes against type by portraying a bit of a bumbler.

    He’s a PR man who dies in a series of darkly amusing ways under the tutelage of Blunt’s experienced super soldier, Sergeant Rita Vrataski.

    The film was a box office disappointment, but has gained much respect since its initial release. Based on the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel All You Need Is Kill, it was almost given director Doug Liman’s preferred title, Live Die Repeat, which became the film’s tagline.

    Spoiler Warning: The next and final film on this list isn’t obviously a time travel movie until its incredible ending.

    Planet of the Apes (1968)

    Charlton Heston and Linda Harrison in Planet of the Apes. 20th Century Fox.

    Like we said, the presence of this film on this list is a spoiler — we’re sorry. Then again, the original Planet of the Apes has been out for 57 years, so you’ve had time to see it.

    What’s coolest about Planet of the Apes is that for almost its entire running time, you don’t realize you’re watching a time travel movie. It just seems like a nightmarish sci-fi film in which a trio of astronauts led by Charlton Heston’s George Taylor crash-land on a planet ruled by apes. They treat humans — including Nova (Linda Harrison) — like animals.

    Then we get to one of the greatest movie twist endings of all time, and realize the astronauts never left the planet earth.

    Liked This List of the Coolest Time Travel Movies of All Time?

    Linda Harrison in Planet of the Apes. 20th Century Fox.

    Thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time.

    You might like this list of the 13 Best Post-Apocalyptic Movies We’ve Ever Seen, featuring, once again, Planet of the Apes.

    If these time travel movies have taught us nothing, it’s that it’s much easier to prevent an apocalypse now than to try to build a time machine and go back to prevent one later. Good luck, everyone.

    Main image: Yvette Mimieaux, as the Eloi Weena and Rod Taylor as H. George Wells in The Time Machine. MGM

    Editor’s note: Corrects error in Time After Time item. Jack the Ripper flees into the future, not the past.



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  • 13 Movies About the World’s Oldest Profession That Don’t Sugarcoat Anything

    13 Movies About the World’s Oldest Profession That Don’t Sugarcoat Anything


    Pretty Woman is among the many movies about the world’s oldest profession that make it seem kind of glamorous. These movies don’t.

    Klute (1971)

    Warner Bros.

    The first film in Alan J. Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy — which also includes The Parallex View and All the President’s Men — this dark thriller stars Jane Fonda as Bree Daniels, who believes she’s being stalked by a deadly john. She works with a detective played by Donald Sutherland who of course thinks he can save her, in every sense.

    Fonda (above) won her first Best Actress Oscar for playing Daniels, a complex character who initially seems to enjoy her job — except for the part of being stalked, of course.

    Midnight Cowboy (1969)

    Credit: C/O

    The first and only film with an X rating ever to win Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy tells the seedy story of Joe Buck, a Texas boy who moves to the big city and dresses up as a cowboy to sell his wares. He falls under the shaky wing of Rico “Ratso” Rizzo, played by Dustin Hoffman, who gets to deliver the often-imitated line “I’m walkin’ here!”

    Directed by John Schlesinger and written by Waldo Salt, the film is notable for its empathetic portrayal — especially by 1960s standards — of low-level street hustlers, and its willingness to just spend time with its characters without judgement or false moralizing.

    There’s a long story behind the film’s rating, which was later changed to an R.

    Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

    Credit: C/O

    At first, it seems like Mike Figgis’ drama is going to go along with the heart-of-gold trope as Elisabeth Shue’s Las Vegas sex worker, Sera (above), tries to save Hollywood washout Ben (Nicolas Cage) from his plan to drink himself to death. But then things get darker and darker, especially in a horrific scene in which Sera takes on multiple awful young clients.

    Leaving Las Vegas is a sad, sad movie, but Shue imbues Sera with dignity and supreme likability throughout, even as her plans collapse — and she still holds onto her dreams.

    Cage won a Best Actor Oscar, and Shue was nominated for Best Actress but lost to Susan Sarandon for her role in Dead Man Walking. Sarandon is great but Shue absolutely deserved to win for a harrowing, tough performance in one of the most bluntly sad movies about the oldest profession.

    Monster (2003)

    Credit: C/O

    Charlize Theron played hard against type as she de-glammed for this searing, uncompromising Patty Jenkins film inspired by the story of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos.

    Suggesting that Wuornos first descended into murder out of desperation, mental illness and self-defense, Monster makes you kind of sympathize with a serial killer — until you definitely don’t. Wuornos’ claims of self defense soon turn into empty justifications.

    Theron deservedly won a Best Actress Oscar for the role.

    Taxi Driver (1976)

    Credit: C/O

    The young Jodie Foster is heartbreaking as a child so caught up in street life that she doesn’t comprehend how horribly she’s being exploited by the smooth-talking Sport (Harvey Keitel) in this masterful collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader.

    With Mean Streets, Taxi Driver is one of the best and most-imitated time capsules of 1970s New York City grime, and it’s a testament to the film’s narrative virtuosity that by the end we’re rooting hard for obvious psychopath Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) to do what needs to be done.

    De Niro and Foster were both nominated for Oscars in this, one of the most enduring and harrowing movies about sex trafficking.

    My Own Private Idaho (1991)

    Credit: C/O

    A highlight of 1990s indie filmmaking, this Gus Van Sant drama follows narcoleptic hustler Mike (River Phoenix in one of the best roles of his too-short life) in a journey from Portland to Idaho to Rome with fellow hustler Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves).

    The film is a very loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, and Reeves believed in Van Sant’s script so much that he rode over 1,300 miles by motorcycle to convince Phoenix to make the movie with him. Its one of the most even-handed movies about sex work to focus on men.

    Requiem for a Dream (2000)

    Credit: C/O

    If you want to convince people not to do heroin, show them Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky’s brilliant but painful adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel about people who turn to drugs to escape reality — and end up in a much worse place than they started.

    Things turn out especially horribly for Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly, above), whose despair culminates in a party scene you’ll wish you could forget.

    Sin City (2005)

    Credit: C/O

    This early mostly black-and-white masterpiece, directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller based on Miller’s graphic novels, does nothing to minimize the struggles of the hardworking women of Old Town.

    But it also stresses that pretty much all of them — including the very blue-eyed Becky (Alexis Bledel, above) — can very much hold their own.

    When one would-be john Jackie Boy (Benicio Del Toro) pulls a gun on Becky, she intones: “Oh sugar. You just gone and done the dumbest thing in your whole life.” Then her reinforcements arrive and things go very badly for Jackie Boy and his boys.

    Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

    Movies About Sex Work That Don't Sugarcoat Anything
    Credit: C/O

    In 12 vignettes, Jean-Luc Godard directs his then-wife and muse Anna Karina in this tough drama about a struggling woman who works in a record shop, mourning her collapsing marriage and dreaming of stardom.

    Instead, she descends into the world’s oldest profession, and things only get worse from there.

    The film’s bittersweet title translates to “My Life to Live.”

    Tangerine (2015)

    Credit: C/O

    Director and co-writer Sean Baker may be the greatest chronicler of modern-day hustlers, and Tangerine, shot on iPhones, is one of the best films of our relatively young century. It follows to transgender sex workers (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor) who stage a donut-shop confrontation with a cheating boyfriend.

    Comic, tragic, totally empathetic and gorgeous throughout — especially the drive-thru carwash scene — Tangerine is also, according to Rotten Tomatoes, it’s No. 4 on the list of the best Christmas movies ever made.

    The Florida Project (2017)

    Credit: C/O

    Sean Baker’s followup to Tangerine is another wild, brutally honest look at the life of a woman selling herself — one in perhaps even more desperate straits than the protagonists of Tangerine.

    The film stars first-time actress Bria Vinaite as Halley, who works out of a cheap motel on the outskirts of Orlando’s magic kingdom as she tries to shield her daughter (Brooklyn Prince) from the hardship of her life and make their sad surroundings feel like the happiest place on earth.

    Willem Dafoe (above, with Vinaite) earned an Oscar nomination for his role as motel manager Bobby, who doesn’t need money to have endless generosity. This is a real faith-in-humanity movie, even when things seem impossibly bleak.

    Almsot every Sean Baker film is in some sense about the world’s oldest profession, including the next one on our list…

    Anora (2024)

    Anora intimacy coordinators Anora easter egg Red Rocket easter egg
    Credit: C/O

    Baker’s 2024 story about a dancer and escort who finds herself in a relationship with a Russian oligarch’s son seems like a Pretty Woman fantasy — at first.

    But then Ani, aka Anora, discovers some grim realities about her new beau’s life. The movie is somehow frank, suspenseful, very funny and deeply sad, all at once.

    Anora cleaned up at the Oscars, winning Best Picture, Best Director for Sean Baker, Best Actress for lead Mikey Madison, and more. It also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

    Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

    Credit: C/O

    If you’ve never heard of this film, you’re not alone — but film cognoscenti who took part in last year’s prestigious Sight and Sound poll declared it the greatest film of all time. You can decide for yourself next time you have three hours and twenty-one minutes to spare, because that’s the runtime of this French film, made by Chantal Akerman when she was just 25, about a widowed single mother who supports her son by entertaining male clients in her humble apartment.

    Whether its the best movie ever made is up for debate (among those who’ve actually seen it, at least) but it’s one of the most remarkable movies about the oldest profession in the way it presents it, nearly 50 years ago, as just another job.

    Liked This List of Movies About the World’s Oldest Profession That Don’t Sugarcoat Anything?

    Credit: C/O

    You might also like this list of movies that do sugarcoat the world’s oldest profession.



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  • 15 Classic Black and White Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch

    15 Classic Black and White Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch


    if you think classic black and white movies are dull, we hope this list will change your mind.

    The General (1926)

    Credit: C/O

    The next time a CGI movie makes you sigh with its lack of style and verve, you’ll feel especially awed by The General, a silent black and white movie masterpiece that pretty much epitomes the concept of pulling out all the stops.

    Buster Keaton’s character helping the Confederate Army hasn’t aged well. Everything else has. A bit of a bomb in its time, The General is stunning now thanks to its clockwork inventiveness and derring-do. It’s hard to believe anyone made anything this ambitious, so early in the life of cinema.

    Keaton, known as the great stone face, throws his body into violent-yet-comic hazards without changing his expression — a skill he developed while being kicked around vaudeville stages by his father, hence the nickname “Buster.” Okay, maybe that didn’t age so well, either.

    Metropolis (1927)

    Credit: C/O

    Fritz Lang’s silent, expressionistic Metropolis somehow still feels futuristic and avant-garde nearly 100 years after its release.

    Operatic and vast in scope, it’s a visual feast that moves much slower than modern films — which is a sheer joy if you can allow yourself the time.

    Also, it’s moral, literally spelled out in the final inter-title – feels especially relevant in the age of A.I. It is simply: “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.”

    Originally 153 minutes long, Metropolis has been frequently recut, and while we aren’t big fans of chopping down a great director’s work, we think you can grasp the gist of the film with one of the shorter versions.

    It Happened One Night (1933)

    Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night. Columbia Pictures. – Credit: C/O

    One of two Frank Capra films on this list. It Happened One Night is a screwball comedy that inspired countless road movies and rom-coms, almost none of them as good.

    Clarke Gable and Claudette Colbert have electrifying chemistry as, respectively, a newspaper reporter on the make and a socialite on the run, trying to reunite with her husband. Yes, husband: This movie is fairly gleeful endorsement of extramarital love, and It Happened One Night could get away with that sort of thing because it came out just before the restrictive Hays Code took effect.

    It also endorses showing a little leg (shame!) while hitchhiking (shame! shame!). It may leave you with the impression that life was a little more fun about a hundred years ago.

    Casablanca (1942)

    Credit: Warner Bros.

    When people say they love old movies, this is likely the old movie they’re picturing. It’s perfect from beginning to end.

    Ingrid Bergman, who also appears later on this list, is captivating as Ilsa Lund, a woman torn between love and her duty to fight fascism. Humphrey Bogart, as her ex-lover Rick, is as good a male lead as any movie had ever had.

    But Casablanca is a movie where every single person is giving it their all, from director Michael Kurtiz to writers Howard Koch and Julius and Philip Epstein.

    Everyone has their favorite moment, but ours is “I’m shocked, shocked” which we think about every time we read the latest headlines.

    The Postman Always Rings Twice (1944)

    Credit: C/O

    If you ever long for the good old days, watch this one to remind yourself that people of the past were anything but naive.

    John Garfield makes being a drifter look like a good life choice when his character, Frank, wanders into a service station operated by the stunning Cora (Lana Turner). Unfortunately, she runs it with her husband.

    Frank and Cora work out a little scheme to take care of that obstacle. It goes about as well as you’d expect if you’ve ever seen a ’40s noir.

    Double Indemnity (1944)

    Credit: C/O

    The most fun movie ever made about insurance, this noir extravaganza sizzles off the screen in moments like the anklet scene — aka the “how fast was I going” scene — between Fred McMurray as an insurance man and Barbara Stanwyck as a scheming client.

    It never goes too fast, which somehow makes it all the more wildly seductive.

    It inspired many (often color) films, including 1981’s very good Body Heat, but we still prefer the black and white movie.

    High Noon (1952)

    Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon. United Artists. – Credit: C/O

    High Noon seems to fly by as it unfurls in real time over the 85 tight minutes leading up to the title. Gary Cooper plays Will Kane, a New Mexico marshall ready to ride into the sunset with his new bride Amy (Grace Kelly).

    But Frank Miller, a brutal outlaw Kane once sent to prison, will arrive in town at noon, as his gang is ready to meet him. Everyone would understand if Kane slipped out of town to let someone else deal with the disaster to come.

    But that’s not what he does.

    It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

    Credit: C/O

    Did you make it through another holiday season without watching this Frank Capra gem?

    If so, like many of us, you may wrongly remember it as a sweet little affair. But no. The film is surprisingly honest about how much failure and struggle are part of the cost of living, and makes a clear-eyed case about why it’s still worth it to press on.

    Also, we have to agree with this tweet about how the phone scene between Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart, despite its lack of anything gratuitous, is pretty hot.

    Notorious (1947)

    Old Movies
    Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. RKO Radio Pictures. – Credit: C/O

    The Alfred Hitchock films of the 1950s and ’60s could get a little slow — but Notorious crackles from start to finish thanks to the presence of one of the all-time greatest actresses, and magnetic lead characters.

    Ingrid Bergman is magnificent as Alicia Huberman, whose virtue and morality are in constant question. She juggles endless demands and expectations, keeping her intentions a mystery until the very end.

    Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin, a U.S. agent who recruits her. When people start falling in love, things get very tricky.

    All About Eve (1950)

    Credit: C/O

    From the start of theater critic Addison Dewitt’s very unreliable narration (wryly delivered by George Sanders), you know you’re in excellent hands with this showbiz satire written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

    Bette Davis plays a Broadway star who won’t give up the spotlight, and Anne Baxter is Eve Harrington, a shrewd manipulator ready to take her place. It’s a dynamic we’ve seen a million times since, from The Devil Wears Prada to Showgirls, but no one’s done it with more wit than All About Eve.

    When a young Marilyn Monroe is the seventh or eight billed person in the cast, you know you’ve got an incredible lineup of actors.

    The Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

    Credit: C/O

    TMZ might want to take notes from this noir classic, a story of a showbiz columnist, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster) who rules Broadway with a velveted fist.

    Ruthless press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) toadies up to him, but proves to be pretty clever himself, as he tries to break up a relationship between Hunsecker’s little sister Susan (Susan Harrison) and a jazz guitarist.

    It’s also one of the most beautifully shot black and white movies — the lights of Broadway have never felt so hot.

    The Apartment (1960)

    Credit: C/O

    You’ll find yourself saying again during The Apartment: They made this in 1960? A Mad Men-era story of sex and ambition — and an obvious Mad Men influence — the film is about a young clerk on the make (Jack Lemmon) who has to loan out his apartment to executives who use it for secret trysts with vulnerable women, including one played by an adorable, and vulnerable, Shirley MacLaine.

    You quickly finding yourself rooting hard for the have-nots in this film about refusing to bend over for the man.

    MacLaine, Lemmon, director Billy Wilder and screenwriter IAL Diamond reunited three years later for Irma la Douce, which revisited some of the themes of The Apartment. It’s not a black and white movie, but don’t hold that against it.

    Psycho (1960)

    Janet Leigh in a promotional image for Psycho. Paramount. – Credit: C/O

    We know, everyone thinks first of the shower scene. But Psycho hooks you long before that with its setup: Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane robs her boozy boss to flee across the Arizona desert to the arms of her deadbeat boyfriend. It’s juicy as hell, even before she checks into the worst possible hotel.

    The only thing that keeps Psycho from perfection is its stodgy expository ending that feels unnecessary now, but may have been helpful for a 1960 audience that hadn’t yet seen a million movies about psychos.

    You know how Shakespeare plays can feel cliched, but only because they were the first to do something that later inspired countless shallow imitations? Psycho is exactly like that.

    The Third Man (1949)

    British Lion Film Corporation – Credit: C/O

    Joseph Cotten plays pulp novelist Holly Martins, who arrives in ghostly postwar Vienna to investigate the death of an old friend, Harry Lime. But things aren’t as they seem.

    The highlight is an utterly chilling little monologue by Orson Welles as he and Cotten ride a Ferris wheel and look at all the little people below.

    Breathless (1960)

    Credit: C/O

    We could tell you about all the great film deconstruction critic-turned-director Jean-Luc Godard is doing in this sexy, breezy girl-and-a-gun French crime thriller, but just watch it. You’ll be blown away by how fresh and cool it feels all these decades later.

    Also, if you’re not a fan of subtitles, a lot of it is in English. This is one of those black and white movies that may sound like it’s going to be a challenge, but turns out to be as fun as anything you’ve ever watched.

    Liked This List of Black and White Movies That Are Still a Sheer Pleasure?

    Old Movies of the 1960s That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch
    Credit: C/O

    You might also like this list of the 1960s Classic Movies That Are Still a Pleasure to Watch. Several are, yes, black and white movies.

    Main image: Ingrid Bergman in Notorious. RKO Radio Pictures.





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  • The 5 Best Casino Movies — Every Movie Has a Lesson

    The 5 Best Casino Movies — Every Movie Has a Lesson



    The flickering of the gaming tables, the clinking of chips, and the tense silence as the cards are dealt – casino movies transport us to a world full of thrills, glamour, and clever tricks. Whether it’s gritty underworld dramas or stylish heist comedies, the big screen transforms every casino into a setting for great emotions.

    In this article, we present five films that explore the casino genre in unique ways. From Martin Scorsese’s mafia epic to a fast-paced poker thriller: Grab your popcorn and immerse yourself in stories where everything is on the line!

    “Casino” (1995) – Martin Scorsese’s Masterpiece

    Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” is no ordinary film about a Spilaviti – as a casino is called in Iceland – but a relentless study of power, money, and corruption in Las Vegas.

    Robert De Niro portrays Sam “Ace” Rothstein, an experienced bookmaker who controls the eponymous casino. Sharon Stone plays his ambitious wife, Ginger, whose life is characterized by both glamour and dependency.

    Particularly worth seeing:

    • Authentic atmosphere: Scorsese lets you practically feel the bright lights and the thrill of the gaming tables.

    • Mafia entanglements: The backroom intrigues and power struggles demonstrate how closely luck and danger are linked in the casino.

    • Character study: From their rise to their dramatic fall – the characters remain memorable and give the film depth.

    With its blend of opulent staging and gripping plot, “Casino” is one of the timeless classics of the genre.

    “Ocean’s Eleven” (2001) – The stylish heist with a casino twist

    “Ocean’s Eleven” is the epitome of a coolly staged heist comedy. George Clooney slips into the role of the charming mastermind Danny Ocean, who, with eleven accomplices, plans to rob three major Las Vegas casinos simultaneously.

    What makes the film so special are:

    • A star-studded cast: Alongside Clooney, Brad Pitt shines as a laid-back professional thief and Matt Damon as a clever card counter.

    • Sleek elegance: From the meticulous planning to the sophisticated diversions to the execution – everything is handled with a wink and plenty of style.

    • Casino flair: The impressive casino backdrops and the vibrant Las Vegas nightclub let you experience the excitement up close.

    • Humor and team spirit: Each character has their own specialty, and their quick wit provides plenty of laughs.

    “Ocean’s Eleven” is not only a film about speed and skill, but also about the perfect interaction of a well-coordinated team. An entertaining classic heist that will keep you on the edge of your seat, puzzle along, and, above all, have fun.

    “Casino Royale” (2006) – Bond’s classic high-stakes duel

    In “Casino Royale,” James Bond (Daniel Craig) makes cinematic history – relying less on weapons than on his poker face. In a high-profile tournament in Montenegro, he must take on the ruthless Le Chiffre.

    The realistic poker action is particularly captivating: large stakes, long bluffing phases, and direct glances across the table. Craig reveals a vulnerable side of Bond, which is difficult to conceal under the pressure of the table, revealing what makes him so human.

    The film combines spy thriller and casino suspense: explosions and chases alternate with nerve-wracking card games – a must-see for fans of adrenaline and elegant casino duels.

    “Rounders” (1998) – The poker drama with cult status

    “Rounders” tells the story of aspiring law student Mike McDermott (Matt Damon), who tries his hand at becoming a poker pro in New York. After losing an illegal underground tournament, he vows never to gamble again – until his friend Worm (Edward Norton) pulls him back to the table to collect a large debt.

    The film impresses with its authentic portrayal of the underground poker scene:

    • Real poker games: The action at the table is believable and captivating thanks to professional advice from poker pros and real card deals.

    • Character study: Mike wrestles with moral questions and the temptation of quick money, while Worm, an unpredictable partner, creates suspense.

    • Suspense until the very end: The stakes steadily rise, and every decision could cost Mike his future.

    “Rounders” has retained its cult status as a poker drama to this day, inspiring amateur and professional players alike. The mix of suspense, character conflicts, and impressively staged poker scenes makes the film a must-see for all casino fans.

    “21” (2008) – The Calculation Heist at the Blackjack Tables

    In “21,” a clique of brilliant MIT students sets out to land a big win by counting cards at the blackjack tables in Las Vegas. Jim Sturgess plays Ben Campbell, who, thanks to his mathematical talent and under the guidance of charismatic professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey), reaps enormous profits.

    The film combines suspense and moral questions:

    • Card counting as an art: Precise teamwork, secret signals, and strict betting plans

    • Risk and seduction: The temptation to exceed the limit and the pressure of the casinos

    • Moral dilemma: Is the quick profit enough for the students – or will they ultimately pay a high price?

    “21” captivates with its high pace and shows how much brains and chutzpah a real blackjack heist requires.

    Conclusion

    These five films demonstrate, in their own unique way, how fascinating and diverse casino worlds can be in cinema. Whether you immerse yourself in Martin Scorsese’s mafia epic, cheer on Danny Ocean during his stylish heist, or watch James Bond play high-stakes poker – each film offers excitement, style, and great emotion.

    There’s something for every mood:

    • Drama and depth in “Casino”

    • Clever humor in “Ocean’s Eleven”

    • Thrills in “Casino Royale”

    • Authentic poker feeling in “Rounders”

    • Sparkling-clean mathematics in “21”

    Treat yourself to a movie night and immerse yourself in the world of casinos – don’t forget the popcorn!



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  • The 12 Most Captivating Prison Movies We’ve Ever Seen

    The 12 Most Captivating Prison Movies We’ve Ever Seen


    These prison movies are captivating. Get it?

    Some of the best movies are actually movies about life on the outside, where the prison represents the mental traps imposed on us by society, or our own fears.

    Other prison movies are about very real prisons, built for the deserving and innocent alike.

    Caged (1950)

    Prison Movies
    Credit: C/O

    An early entry in the subgenre of women behind bars prison movies, John Cromwell’s Caged is about a married 19-year-old (Eleanor Parker) who is locked up after a botched bank robbery in which her husband is killed.

    Hope Emerson plays sadistic prison maven, Evelyn Harper, in a story that reveals that prison may be the most corrupting influence of all.

    The film was nominated for three Oscars.

    The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

    Credit: C/O

    Is it a prison movie? Or a war movie? We would say it’s both — David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai is a movie that never does what you expect.

    Set in a Japanese prison camp in Thailand, the film portrays a battle of wills between captured British P.O.W. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guiness) and his captor, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa). Saito demands that Nicholson and his troops build a railroad bridge over the River Kwai, which leads to questions of ethics and honor, and how to maintain your humanity while in captivity.

    It was the most successful movie at the box office in 1957, and deservedly won seven Oscars, including for Best Picture. It’s one of those 1950s movies that is both a classic and a joy to watch.

    Escape From Alcatraz (1979)

    Paramount Pictures – Credit: C/O

    One of the greatest prison movies, this Clint Eastwood film was the star’s fifth and final collaboration with Dirty Harry director Don Siegel. In fascinating detail, it imagines the circumstances of a real-life escape from the supposedly escape-proof Alcatraz Island in 1962.

    Eastwood plays the real-life prisoner Frank Morris, whose whereabouts have been unknown since that chilly night in the early ’60s. He’ll turn 98 this year, if he’s still around.

    The FBI’s investigation into the escape remains open.

    The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

    Columbia Pictures – Credit: C/O

    You knew this was coming, so we’re putting it in this gallery nice and early.

    One of the most beloved films of recent decades, and pulled from the same Stephen King story collection, Different Seasons, that also spawned Stand by Me and Apt Pupil, The Shawshank Redemption is a story of refusing to surrender your soul.

    Tim Robbins stars as Andy Dufresne, a banker sentenced to consecutive life sentences in the killings of his wife and her lover. He befriends Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman) — and hatches a plot to dig his way out, while hiding the hole in his cell wall behind a poster of Rita Hayworth.

    It’s one of the best prison movies and one of the best movies, period — IMDb ranks it No. 1 on its list of the Top 250 Movies of all.

    Cool Hand Luke (1967)

    Warner Bros.-Seven Arts – Credit: C/O

    Paul Newman is transfixing as the title character, a man of few words (and hardboiled egg gourmand) who refuses to bend to the cruelty of his Florida prison camp.

    Strother Martin, as the captain of the camp, earned a place on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes for this monologue that begins, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

    Guns N Roses fans will also recognize it from the opening of the band’s “Civil War.”

    Penitentiary III (1987)

    Cannon Films Distributors – Credit: C/O

    The third film in a series of hit independent prison movies written and directed by Jamaa Fanaka, Penitentiary III is extremely worth watching for the Midnight Thud fight alone.

    Oh, you don’t know about the Midnight Thud? Thud is the toughest fighter in the prison, a powerful little person (played by Raymond Kessler, aka the WWE’s Haiti Kid) who delivers one of the most captivating fight scenes ever committed to film when he faces off with our protagonist, Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy).

    Also, this is the first of two films on this list to feature the great Danny Trejo. He plays See Veer.

    Con Air (1997)

    Could Any Other Actor Play Himself as Well as Nicolas Cage Plays Nicolas Cage
    Buena Vista Pictures Distribution – Credit: C/O

    Trejo is one of the murderer’s row of stars who turns up in Con Air, a prison-on-a-plane movie in which Cameron Poe (played by Nicolas Cage, looking incredibly cool) takes on a whole plane full of felons when its Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom masterminds a hijacking.

    This is one of those movies that — if you haven’t watched it in a while — will have constantly saying, “He’s in this, too?”

    The cast includes John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle, and many, many more.

    Some people argue that this doesn’t belong on a list of prison movies because the characters are on a plane. But as anyone who’s ever flown a middle seat in basic economy can attest, planes can be prisons.

    The Great Escape (1963)

    United Artists – Credit: C/O

    Steve McQueen leads an all-star cast playing POWs who heroically escape from a Nazi prison camp in this classic, heavily fictionalized story of British POWs’ escape from Stalag Luft III during World War II.

    Among the concessions to commercialism: sprinkling three Americans into the action. Thanks goodness McQueen’s Captain Virgil Hilts was there, or else who could have pulled off that spectacular motorcycle sequence (above)?

    Hunger (2008)

    Pathé Distribution – Credit: C/O

    And now, a prison movie from the other Steve McQueen — the masterful British director whose film 12 Years a Slave won the Best Picture Oscar in 2014.

    His directorial debut, however, was Hunger, in which his frequent collaborator, Michael Fassbender, plays Bobby Sands, a real-life member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who led an IRA hunger strike and took part in a no-wash protest behind bars.

    Hunger is a brutal, hypnotic film that skillfully captures the day-to-day dehumanization of the prisoners.

    Clemency (2019)

    Clemency Alfre Woodard witness execution
    Neon – Credit: C/O

    Another grim prison saga that was also the directorial debut of a great filmmaker, Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as a prison ward trying to unemotionally do her job — which includes overseeing the death of a young inmate, Anthony Woods (Aldis Hodge) who maintains his innocence.

    Many death-penalty films lecture their audiences (who may have already opposed the death penalty), but Clemency writer-director Chinonye Chukwu does not: She just lays out the facts of the situation, with as much restraint as Woodard’s warden — until emotions eventually make their inevitable break.

    This is a wise, patient film that sidesteps preaching and Hollywood hokum in favor of a very chilling, very human story.

    The Longest Yard (1974)

    Paramount Pictures – Credit: C/O

    On the lighter side, The Longest Yard is a sports movie crossed with a prison movie… and a comedy. The film stars Burt Reynolds as a hard-driving, hard-hitting now-incarcerated former NFL quarterback who is tasked by a nasty warden with assembling a team of prisoners to play against the guards.

    How do you think that works out?

    American History X (1998)

    New Line Cinema

    Edward Norton stars as a savage white supremacist, Derek Vinyard, who realizes in prison that all of his beliefs are misguided.

    ‘In one deeply allegorical scene, he learns that a Black fellow inmate, Lamont (Guy Torry) received a harsher sentence (six years) for stealing a TV than he received for killing two Black men (three years).

    In another crucial scene, he learns that the prisons Aryan Brotherhood is just using white supremacy as a facade to manipulate hopeless, uneducated people and wrest power for its leaders.

    Caged Heat (1974)

    New World Pictures – Credit: C/O

    A very different look at prison life, released in the same year as The Longest Yard. We aren’t going to claim this low-budget Roger Corman production, also known as Renegade Girls, is a great film. But it is the debut of a very great filmmaker: writer-director Jonathan Demme would go on to make Silence of the Lambs, one of the best films of all time, and to repay Corman for his confidence by casting him in the role of FBI Director Hayden Burke.

    Silence of the Lambs was also shot but Demme’s go-to cinematographer, Tak Fujimoto, who also shot Caged Heat.

    Caged Heat is a cheap exploitation flick, sure, but it contains some Demme hallmarks: strong female protagonists, a strong sense of empathy for the characters, and social consciousness.

    A 1975 New York Times story on the rise of “trashy” midnight movies concluded that it “does not set new standards of cheapness, violence or grossness, as most midnight movies seem determined to do. It is a film about women in prison that offers little more than some zippy music, a lot of bosom shots and a perverted prison doctor.”

    High praise from the paper of record.

    Liked This List of Captivating Prison Movies?

    Paramount Pictures – Credit: C/O

    You may also like this list of the 15 Movie Con Artists We Fall for Every Time. Some of them end up in prison.

    You might also like this list of Gen X Movie Stars Gone Too Soon.

    Main image: Caged Heat. New World Pictures.



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  • Why People Like Casino Movies and Three Movies to Watch from the Last Decade


    There’s something magical about casino movies that keeps us glued to the screen. Maybe it’s the way the roulette wheel spins with our hearts racing, or how a poker player’s blank face hides a world of strategy. These films transport us to a world where fortunes change with a single card flip, where ordinary people become high-rolling risk-takers, and where the line between smart play and dangerous obsession blurs beautifully. Online casino movies aren’t just about gambling – they’re about human nature, everyone’s dreams of easy money, and the thrilling dance between luck and skill. Here’s why we can’t look away from these cinematic gems, along with three recent films that mastered the art of the gamble

    Compelling reasons Why People Like Casino Movies 

    a) Thrill of Risk with no Reckoning

    You will experience the excitement of gambling without losing our shirts. You can cheer when someone puts everything on a poker bet or hold our breath as dice roll across a table, secure in the fact that our money is still in our pockets. It’s a rush – like riding a rollercoaster from the safety of our own chair.

    b) The Style And Luxury

    From Monte Carlo’s glittering chandeliers to Vegas’ lights, casino films ignite dream realms we are irresistibly attracted to. Designer tuxedos, champagne coupes clicking together, high- stakes suspense make us imagine members of an elite club in which we all stylishly roll dice.

    c) High-Stakes Human Drama

    Aside from the cards and chips, casino movies are all about dramatic narratives of greed, addiction, and redemption. When a bettor puts everything on one hand, we aren’t looking at a bet – we are looking at what people do when they are desperate or determined.

    Three Must-See Casino Movies of the Last Decade

    1. Molly’s Game (2017) – The Poker Princess

    Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut tells the true story of Molly Bloom, who ran Hollywood’s most exclusive underground poker games. Jessica Chastain delivers a career-best performance as the Olympic skier turned poker entrepreneur. The film stands out for:

    • Riveting monologues that make poker strategy sound like poetry
    • An all-star cast of fictionalized celebrities (including a memorably awful Tobey Maguire)
    • A rare female perspective in the male-dominated gambling genre

    2. Uncut Gems (2019) – Anxiety Attack Cinema

    Adam Sandler shocked critics with his portrayal of Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer and gambling addict spiraling out of control. The Safdie brothers direct this stress-inducing masterpiece featuring:

    • The most realistic depiction of gambling addiction ever filmed
    • A pulsating electronic score that mimics a gambler’s racing heart
    • A career-defining performance from Sandler that’s light-years from his comedies

    3. The Card Counter (2021) – Poker as Penance

    Paul Schrader’s haunting film follows William Tell (Oscar Isaac), a former military interrogator who channels his trauma into poker. Unlike typical casino movies, this focuses on:

    • The monastic discipline of professional card counting
    • How gamblers use ritual to cope with past demons
    • The quiet intensity of low-stakes games rather than Vegas spectacle.

    Casino movies work because they tap into our deepest fantasies and fears about risk-taking. They let us imagine what we’d do with a lucky streak or how we’d handle devastating losses when dealing with real online casino all from the safety of our seats. These three modern classics show how the genre continues to evolve, offering everything from pulse-pounding tension to deep character studies. So next time you want to feel the rush of the casino without leaving home, these films are your perfect bet. 



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  • 13 Movies About the Adult Entertainment Industry That Don’t Sugarcoat a Thing

    13 Movies About the Adult Entertainment Industry That Don’t Sugarcoat a Thing


    Here are 12 films about the adult entertainment industry that don’t sugarcoat a thing.

    Of course, it’s hard to generalize about a multibillion-dollar industry that has existed nearly as long as film itself, headquartered for decades in the San Fernando Valley over the Hollywood Hills from the mainstream Hollywood studios.

    When Hollywood looks to its Valley neighbors, it often does so by sugarcoating things — treating the industry as silly and amusing — or playing it for horror, with the implication that the adult entertainment business leads inevitably to violence.

    The following films are noteworthy for their blunt presentation of the industry. For the most part, they present it as an underground, unregulated economy where some people get along just fine — but others find themselves disappointed or worse. If you are looking for adult content, you may explore the best milf onlyfans pages.

    Hardcore (1979)

    Hardcore
    Credit: C/O

    Hardcore — recently part of a Paul Schrader retrospective on the Criterion Channel — is a fascinating but not completely successful film. George C. Scott plays Jake Van Dorn, a very religious Midwestern dad who has to travel to seedy Los Angeles when he learns his daughter, Kristen (Ilah Davis) has entered the adult entertainment industry.

    The film is a fascinating look at how the adult entertainment business functioned in the late 1970s. But Scott’s transformation from everyman to shrewd undercover avenger isn’t totally convincing. And it feels a bit melodramatic that Kristen descends so quickly into very violent films.

    Still, Season Hubley is excellent as Niki, Jake’s guide into the seedy underworld. it’s fun to imagine an older and more accomplished Schrader remaking this film with someone like Liam Neeson, the master of dad-on-a-rampage movies.

    Videodrome (1983)

    Universal Pictures – Credit: Universal Pictures

    David Cronenberg’s 1983 film fairly brilliantly presages the rise of the internet and our willingness to surrender some of our humanity in the service of technology, but it starts with a journey into old-fashioned adult entertainment.

    Max Renn (James Woods), president of a small UHF station, stumbles upon a broadcast signal of very alarming videos. This leads him to Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry) an explicit radio host with dark predilections.

    Max’s investigation of her disappearance leads to him having a Betamax cassette inserted into his torso, and his eventual effort to transcend our sick sad world and “leave the old flesh.” It’s all very metaphorical, but feels especially relevant in the age of artificial intelligence.

    Boogie Nights (1997)

    New Line Cinema – Credit: C/O

    You knew this would be here. For about the first half of Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful second film, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg, in his best role) finds a chosen family under the tutelage of Valley filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds). Jack’s partner Amber Waves (Julianne Moore) and rising starlet Rollergirl (Heather Graham) even have kind of a mother-daughter dynamic.

    But as drugs and — gasp! — video take hold, Dirk descends into darker and darker stuff, and it quickly becomes apparent that the romanticized good times of the ’70s aren’t sustainable in the ’80s.

    Lots of people would love to live Dirk’s high-flying ’70s life, but no one would want his wretched existence in the ’80s.

    Demonlover (2002)

    Adult Entertainment Industry
    SND Films – Credit: C/O

    This French neo-noir corporate drama by Oliver Assayas stars Connie Nielsen as a sneaky, ice-cold executive involved in a French company’s acquisition of a Japanese company that makes very gross anime.

    The film is surprisingly frank in its presentation of said anime, but all the executives involved in the negotiations seem to see the material merely as a product, not a thing to be judged. There’s a great metaphor here about transactional relationships.

    As is often the case in dramatic portrayals of the industry, the more mainstream films portrayed in Demonlover (we use the phrase “mainstream” very loosely here) are a gateway into violent content in which people really get hurt. Or worse.

    After Porn Ends (2012)

    Lisa Ann in After Porn Ends. – Credit: C/O

    Documentarian Bryce Waggoner released three volumes of this excellent series with a simple but arresting concept: Adult entertainment performers simply explain what they’ve been doing since leaving the industry. (Waggoner directed the first two, and the third was directed by former adult performer Brittany Andrews.)

    The series removes artifice and fantasy to reveal the people of the industry as just people — some of whom are thriving, and some of whom are mightily struggling.

    It raises questions about stigma, exploitation and reinvention, without telling anyone how to think or feel.

    Lovelace (2013)

    Radius-TWC – Credit: C/O

    Amanda Seyfried (above) is excellent as Linda Lovelace, one of the most contentious figures in the history of the adult entertainment industry.

    She became a sex symbol for starring in what became one of the most mainstream and profitable of all adult films. But years later she wrote in her memoir, Ordeal, that she was violently forced into the business and all sorts of animalistic degradations.

    Lovelace handles her story sensitively and sympathetically, never crossing the line into the kind of exploitation the real Linda Lovelace tried to escape.

    King Cobra (2016)

    IFC Midnight – Credit: C/O

    One of the most common criticisms of the industry is that it exploits women. King Cobra is all about gay adult product, so the gender component is removed.

    But that brings into more stark relief other potential forms of exploitation: namely older people exploiting younger people, and people with money exploiting those without it. (These are also problems, of course, in supposedly respectable fields.)

    King Cobra is based on a true story — the source material is the book Cobra Killer by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, about the the life and early career of former adult actor Sean Paul Lockhart (Garrett Clayton, above).

    Written and directed by Justin Kelly, it’s a little-seen but captivating film with a top-notch cast that also includes Christian Slater, Molly Ringwald and James Franco, who is also a producer on King Cobra.

    American Porn (2002)

    PBS – Credit: C/O

    Journalism doesn’t get more serious than PBS’s Frontline, and in 2002 the Oscar and Emmy winning documentary program investigated the business of adult entertainment, charting its rise and the reason for the demand.

    If Hardcore provides a fascinating but melodramatic look at the industry in the late 1970s, this Frontline doc is a fascinating investigation of the state of the industry in the early 2000s, when the internet was radically shifting the dynamics of the business and making adult product more accessible than ever before.

    You can watch the entire documentary — and every episode of Frontline — for free online via your local PBS station.

    Red Rocket (2021)

    Simon Rex as Mikey Saber and Suzanna Son as “Strawberry” in Red Rocket, from director Sean Baker. A24 – Credit: Simon Rex as Mikey Saber and Suzanna Son as “Strawberry” in Red Rocket, from director Sean Baker. A24

    One of the best films on this list, Sean Baker’s Red Rocket is a judgment-free portrait of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) an adult semi-star forced to return to his Texas hometown while on the outs from the industry.

    Mikey believes he can wheedle his way back in by convincing Raylee (Suzanna Son), a 17-year-old donut shop employee who goes by the name Strawberry, to join him. He also strings along his ex, Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mom Lil (Brenda Deiss), so he can live with them while he gets back on his feet.

    Packed with excellent first-time actors, the film feel visceral and alive, adroitly blending comedy and sadness. It avoids moralizing, yet you’ll probably come to hold some strong opinions about Mikey.

    Baker is one of our greatest filmmakers, who uses stories about sex work to make broader points about hard work in general. His latest, Anora, is up for six Oscars, including Best Picture.

    Starlet (2012)

    Besedka Johnson, left, and Dree Hemingway in Starlet. Music Box Films – Credit: Besedka Johnson, left, and Dree Hemingway in Starlet. Music Box Films

    Almost every Sean Baker film involves some element of investigating sex work, always empathetically and evenhandedly.

    Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch came up with the concept for the Mikey Saber character in Red Rocket while doing research for Starlet, when they realized how many male actors live off of female talent.

    Starlet follows Jane (Dree Hemingway), a 21-year-old rising star who strikes up an unlikely friendship with 85-year-old Sadie (Besedka Johnson).

    Money Shot (2023)

    Netflix – Credit: Netflix

    Director Suzanne Hillinger’s documentary about one of the most prominent websites for adults isn’t interested in anything salacious. It just sets out to normalize — and humanize — the people who just happen to make adult content for a living.

    “To me, it was really important the way that we shot the interviews, for example — that the environment around each interview subject is very much a part of the frame, that these are people in their homes, with details and lives and plants and pets and shoes in the background,” Hillinger told MovieMaker.

    Again, about the dashes — we know there’s nothing wrong with the word “shot,” but algorithms don’t, particularly when it’s paired with the word “money,” and we want people to be able to see these articles rather than having them buried by robots.

    Pleasure (2021)

    Movies About the Adult Industry
     SF-Produktion – Credit: C/O

    A Sundance darling that gained lots of initial attention for its blunt depictions, director Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure is the story of Linnéa, a small-town Swede played by Sofia Kappel (pictured) who travels to Los Angeles to try to break into the industry.

    The film is notable for its multifaceted presentation of the adult world. Some of Linnéa’s experiences are good, but others are horrible, including a scene in which she technically consents to a violent scenario but does so only under considerable coercion and pressure. She soon finds herself contributing to the abuses.

    Bonus: X (2022)

    Ti West asked Mia Goth and every actor on X: Why the hell do you want to be in this movie?
    Mia Goth is Maxine, a young Texan looking for stardom in X, from Ti West. Photo by Christopher Moss. A24 – Credit: Sofia Kappel is Bella Cherry in Pleasure, from writer-director Ninja Thyberg

    All three films in Ti West’s X trilogy — the other two are 2022’s Pearl and 2024’s Maxxxine — seek to demystify the adult entertainment industry while exploring the stigma around both sex and violence.

    X is the most blunt about it. The film takes place on a very DIY adult film location — a Texas farm — where the older couple who own the place seem to disapprove of the young people’s shenanigans. But things are more complex than they seem.

    In all three X films, the main protagonist is a young woman — always played by Mia Goth — trying to use her sex appeal to get ahead. It doesn’t usually work out as she planned.

    Liked This List of 12 Films About the Adult Entertainment Industry That Don’t Sugarcoat Anything?

    Movies About Oldest Profession That Don't Sugarcoat Anything
    Vivre sa vie. Panthéon Distribution – Credit: C/O

    You may also like this list of movies about the world’s oldest profession that sugarcoat things quite a bit.

    Main image: Sofia Kappel as Bella Cherry in Pleasure, from writer-director Ninja Thyberg. SF-Produktion



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  • The 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish

    The 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish


    Here are the seven sexiest movies about the Amish.

    Yes, we know what you’re thinking: How can anyone narrow it down to just seven? We did our best, and came up with the following.

    7. Amish Stud: The Eli Weaver Story (2023)

    Sexiest Movies About the Amish
    Lifetime

    Try as we might, we can’t find a better movie title than that of the ripped-from-the-headlines Lifetime film Amish Stud, which is drawn from the screen name that Eli Weaver (Luke Macfarlane) used to meet women in chatrooms.

    The film follows the wayward Eli as he plots with his mistress to murder his wife, to the horror of his conservative Amish community, which is strongly opposed to using the internet, and more specifically using the internet for online dating, and especially to using the internet for online dating that leads to the murder of one’s spouse.

    The movie has its sexy moments before the killing.

    6. Sex Drive (2008)

    Sexiest Movies About the Amish
    Summit Entertainment

    Sex Drive seems like one of those Old Hollywood classics in which they thought of the title first and built the movie around it. And what a movie.

    The plot concerns a young man named Ian (Josh Zuckerman) who meets a woman online (don’t worry, he’s not Amish, no rules are broken yet) and embarks on a long road trip to meet her. He’s joined by his best friends Lance (Clark Duke) and Felicia (Amanda Crew, a perfect Cute Brunette Friend in an ’80s Movie, except in a 2000s movie.)

    The sexy Amish stuff comes into play when the gang has car trouble, and a sarcastic Amish guy named Ezekiel (Seth Green, great as always) provides some help. Lance soon meets an Amish girl named Mary (Alice Greczyn).

    But here’s the twist: When Lance learns that his dalliance with Mary could lead to her being shunned, Lance chooses to stay with her, and they marry. Lance sports an Amish beard at the end, strongly suggesting that he has adopted Mary’s way of life. And so this sex drive turns out to be a love drive.

    It’s not only one of the sexiest movies about the Amish, but also one of the most pro-Amish.

    5. Amish Affair (2024)

    Sexiest Movies About the Amish
    Lifetime – Credit: Lifetime (obviously)

    Not content to rest on the laurels of Amish Stud, Lifetime delved back into the Amish erotic thriller subgenre with another ripped-from-the-headlines bodice ripper, Amish Affair.

    The film tracks the passionate barnyard trysts between Hannah (Mackenzie Cardwell) and Amish also-stud Aaron (Ryan McPartlin) after he welcomes her into his home to help with his ailing (and inconvenient) wife.

    Lines are crossed, questions are raised, and, as so often happens in these situations, rat poison is dispensed.

    This Lifetime original received a mostly positive reception, though one YouTube user commented, “OMG! We Amish are so not like this! LOL.” It was probably Eli Weaver.

    4. Deadly Blessing (1981)

    United Artists – Credit: United Artists

    We know, we know: Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing, as everyone remembers, isn’t technically about the Amish. It’s about the Hittites, a very Amish-like sect. (WesCraven.com notes that the film “is set in Amish Country, at a local farm, where a woman’s husband is mysteriously killed by his own tractor!”)

    But the Hittite stuff feels like a fig leaf covering up the fact that the sect is intended as an obvious stand-in for the Amish. This slasher film, which landed between the early mayhem of Craven classics like Last House on the Left and the commercial success of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, relies heavily on the appeal of its scantily clad actresses (including Sharon Stone in an early role) as they deal with an evil incubus. (Though really, is there any other kind?)

    There’s lots of Biblical imagery, including an icky scene with a snake in a bathtub. It combines titillation and terror, in classic slasher tradition, but with some religious extremism thrown in. We can understand why the Amish probably wouldn’t want to be connected with it, and its ickier aspects explain why it’s only fourth on this list.

    Also: Stone grew up in a part of Pennsylvania not far from Amish country, which makes us like Deadly Blessing more.

    3. The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968)

    Sexiest Movies About the Amish
    United Artists

    Though it’s set in the 1920s, you can really feel the ’60s swinging through The Night They Raided Minsky’s, one of many films that had fun with the changing sexual mores of the year that followed the Summer of Love. Minsky’s was also one of the first films to pit the plain Amish against the constant temptations of the outside world.

    A pure romp, the film follows Britt Eckland as Rachel Schpitendavel, a young Amish woman hoping to make it in New York City with dance numbers inspired by the Bible. Through a series of complicated events, she ends up performing her chaste numbers at a burlesque show. When her furious Amish father tries to drag her offstage, ripping her clothes, she accidentally invents a new kind of entertainment.

    The people involved in The Night They Raided Minsky’s are A-list all the way, and include producer Norman Mailer, director William Friedkin (who would go on to direct The Exorcist), and actors Jason Robards, Elliott Gould and Denholm Elliott. The latter would go on to appear in two Indiana Jones films with a gentleman who stars in the next film on our list.

    2. Witness (1985)

    Sexiest Movies About the Amish
    Paramount Pictures – Credit: Paramount Pictures

    A basically perfect movie, Witness is rather chaste by the standards of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Of course it wasn’t the first film to juxtapose the plain lifestyle of the Amish with the sultriness of the big city, but it is one of the first to do it with respect.

    There’s a passionate, beautifully shot makeout scene between Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Philadelphia cop John Book (Harrison Ford) before the big fight with the English who come to invade Rachel’s idyllic community to get her son, Samuel (Lucas Haas), who has witnessed a murder. The scene is as effective as it is because of the restraint leading up to it: John and Rachel’s silent assignation is naturalistic, cathartic and entirely convincing.

    Witness follows a lot of Hollywood tropes — the fish out of water, the mismatched lovers — and yet it works completely because everyone, from Ford to McGillis to director Peter Weir, commits and tries to give the Amish depth and dignity, instead of just treating them as comic foils.

    But this isn’t a list of the best movies about the Amish — it’s a list of the sexiest movies about the Amish. Which brings us to No. 1 on our list.

    1. Kingpin (1996)

    MGM – Credit: MGM

    For our money, Kingpin is one of the funniest Farrelly brothers films, and has a proud spot on our list of ’90s Comedies That Just Don’t Care If You’re Offended.

    It follows bowling burnout Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson) as he attempts to exploit Amish bowling savant Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid). But he must compete with Claudia (Vanessa Angel) who uses her considerable wiles to both corrupt and liberate the naive Ishmael. Some of the most memorable scenes in Kingpin come when Claudia uses the aforementioned wiles to help her boys on the bowling circuit by distracting their opponents.

    What makes Kingpin so satisfying is how all three main characters, despite their intense differences and flaws, ultimately uplift one another. As in many Farrelly brothers films, the tawdrier parts of life lead to wholesome outcomes.

    Liked Our List of the 7 Sexiest Movies About the Amish?

    Elizabeth Hurley as The Devil
    20th Century Fox – Credit: C/O

    Did we miss one of your favorite sexiest movies about the Amish? Please let us know in the comments.

    You may also like this list of 11 Shameless Movies That Glamorize the Devil, including Bedazzled, above, which somehow manages to be one of the sexiest movies around, despite lacking any Amish.

    Main image: The Night They Raided Minsky’s. United Artists.



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