Movie Recommendations— My Top 5 List Articles As A Movie Critic/Film Journalist
If you’re looking for your next watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime or whatever streaming platform you prefer— this is a comprehensive & extensive list that has got you covered
This post is going to comprise a lot of films, mainly films I added to list articles I wrote during my stint writing for the film content platform Movieweb. It’s got a lot of movies listed which you must check out! So if you’re looking for your next watch & want some background to them, this piece has exactly what you need!
It was a productive year, or year & a half or so writing for Movieweb. Unfortunately, I had to stop writing for them in December last year after my contract expired. I also had too much on my plate, including a full-time job & two other freelance gigs. Last year was hectic, sheesh…
But anyway, all that aside, it was still a great experience (despite their terrible backend) & I guess it worked out fine in the end. Losing a job isn’t the end of the world, and I did manage to find other gigs & rekindle other projects & life goals.
This article populates my list pieces with films & scenes from films I added based on the topics I was assigned. It’s a great list of movies to check out so do click on the links to see all the titles & the scenes & descriptions I’ve written. This is especially great if you’re looking for new movies to binge on or just cool movies to watch with friends & family or by yourself. This list is totally worth going through at length if you check out the links!
So let’s dive right in…..
The Most Intense Scenes In Film History
Cinema often manages to serve up your typical “edge of your seat” moments; the built-up tension which Hans Zimmer’s theme for Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight perhaps musically serves up as the perfect artistic metaphor. If you haven’t heard it, it’s like pulling on the strings of tension in the audience’s heads & continuing to pull away at it, stretching it as much as possible until the climax of the scene.
The suspenseful build-up to intense scenes — a hallmark aspect of cinema — oftentimes leads to moments that audiences never forget. This is primarily because of the uncertainty & the emotions that sift in & out, sometimes slow or sometimes faster. It’s like the viewers are strapped into an unattended out of control roller-coaster that seemingly might never stop (or at least them not being sure when it’ll stop) as they feel a spectrum of feelings & emotions as the tension & suspense builds.
This list was pretty cool to work on. I had to list the most intense scenes from recent movie history & I got to flex my film scene memory muscles to find films that had scenes that left me watching in awe, & made me completely engrossed & captivated by the drama & tension on screen.
Although, I was instructed to use some popular titles; I did manage to put together a mean list.
It’s a list you must check at length; and it’s got some absolutely powerful scenes that will surely leave you wanting more (linked below).
The ability for a piece of art to convey any bit of an emotional response from the viewer is a kind of pure magic. Turning nothing into something that impacts a total stranger ex nihilo is a feat of accomplishment that makes art important and crucial for humanity.
https://movieweb.com/intense-movie-scenes/
One scene that I missed, is perhaps the ending scene from Public Enemies. I’d like to add that one as a honourable mention. They’re actually 2 scenes, the scene where John Dillinger gets gunned down by the FBI after watching a movie which almost mirrors his own life & the final scene where his last words to his lover Billie(Marion Cotillard) get delivered by the FBI agent who shot him.
The music is also unbelievably perfect, in both scenes — it’s a mix of intense & emotional elements & “bye-bye, blackbird” remains iconic because of the jazz song it’s based on.
The Best Gangster Films Made Outside Hollywood
Gangsters in films are paradoxical characters. On one hand, they resort to notoriety & violence to get their way but they’re also human & have moments where their inner morality & emotions get the better of them. No gangster is an outright cold-blooded killer, although they project it vehemently in their behaviour. It’s this mishmash of good vs evil & a dash of humaneness in every mobster, that makes them likable for most cinema-goers. And of course, there’s a love interest who keeps them grounded & wanting to ‘quit the game’ & live a better life.
Audiences usually feel this glaring contradiction inherently embedded in every gangster film’s plethora of mob characters. There’s a special charm & mishmash of possibilities to mobster films which I (& most audiences) enjoy— an anti-hero with the dark veil of his life in crime but wanting a life tucked away in the French countryside, waking up to his lovely wife & kids — and I guess it’s this suspenseful possibility of whether he’ll get the perfect ending or die just before it that keeps viewers hooked.
Maybe that’s a key element that helps mobster films at the box office and also perhaps is a reason why directors & producers push so much gangster film & TV show product — several directors have hitched & ridden their careers on it.
I’m a huge fan of the gangster film genre. It’s safe to say gangster films are my go-to genre considering how much I enjoy watching them, especially movies by directors like Martin Scorsese & the several others, which I’ve practically grown up on.
But this article was a tad bit different because I had to list gangster films made outside the US. So I had to do a bit of digging for films I’d watched that either portrayed the Japanese Yakuza or India’s D-Company or more popular British gangster films with their atypical Brit humour propelling the screenplay & also France’s le’gangsters.
On the surface Once Upon A Time in Mumbai might seem like a tacky Bollywood film, but it serves up plenty of narratives that make it interesting enough. The film is a fictionalized account based loosely on the lives of prominent Mumbai gangsters Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim…
https://movieweb.com/best-foreign-gangster-movies/
PS: In the list, these are literally the only three Bollywood films that are worth mentioning. And the gangster genre is the only thing Bollywood is mildly decent at, the rest is all sh*t within the moronic Indian film industry.
The Best Tactical Action Films
Another genre I thoroughly enjoy is the war or more broadly the tactical action genre. There’s a huge difference between how war & tactical action films are made in Hollywood & say in the sh*t Indian film industry who are pivoting to quite a bit of it nowadays.
The attention to detail & how explicitly & accurately tactical action is depicted in Hollywood cinema is unbelievable. The realism & cinematography & screenplay are so accurate & in your face that it’s hard not to be engrossed & completely immersed in most scenes of these films.
Here’s a list of some brilliantly real & riveting tactical action cinema, that’s bound to make for a thoroughly entertaining watch. It’s got tactical action & plotlines & screenplay to boot.
It’s the genre that never goes out of fashion — action in cinema started out with the earliest days of the art form and pretty much defined cinematic spectacle before landmark films like….
https://movieweb.com/tactical-action-military-movies-perfect
The Best Performances Of Films Released In 2022
2022 had a diverse variety of films, and there were a wide range of performances ranging from horror, drama, and biopics that captivated audiences.
This was a list of some riveting & great performances from movies released in 2022. I’ve included it in this piece to highlight great acting & compelling performances by actors along with a catalogue of recent films, as recent as 2022 to watch, some standouts include films like Elvis, The Fablemans, The Batman & Babylon.
“It isn’t just the records, no you must have Hollywood,” sings legendary guitarist and songwriter Mark Knopfler on his track Back To Tupelo dedicated to the King, Elvis Presley
https://movieweb.com/best-movie-performances-2022
The Most Iconic Songs Used In Cinema
The intersection of music & cinema has always intrigued me which is why I’ve gravitated towards composing for film as well. Playing mainstream music in cinema is commonplace. The use of popular pop or rock songs or music of any genre for that matter often makes certain shots & scenes in movies more impactful & memorable. The art of using songs in film is technically called a “needle drop” in Hollywood jargon.
The term has its references from playing records on vinyl record players. But in what was one of my first articles for Movieweb, I listed some of my favourite needle drops, or you could say the best mainstream music used in movies.
It’s got twenty entries & apart from the scenes where the songs play, linked on YouTube & they’re also some brilliant movies to watch.
Film scores aren’t the only instance of the intersection of music and film, despite the score being an intricate art form in itself. While the score is an essential aspect of the film, you’ve probably seen a lot of films where directors use mainstream music in their movies
https://movieweb.com/most-iconic-needle-drops-in-modern-cinema/
I hope you find the descriptions under each sub-heading in the linked articles valuable & I hope you enjoy the films mentioned in these pieces (especially those you haven’t seen).
PS: Keep a lookout for the scenes mentioned in the linked articles when you watch the films
Happy watching!
I hope you found this post informative & it entertained you in some way. As always, feel free to subscribe to my publication Light Years & support it & also share it if you’d like.
If you’d like to thank me for this post, if it helped you, or if you found value in it, you can buy me a coffee instead of, or alongside subscribing to this publication by clicking the link below so that I can nice sip my next brew of coffee, all thanks to you! :)
