A first date movie needs to do several things at once: be engaging enough to talk about, not so intense it kills the mood, and ideally leave you both with something to say when the credits roll.
The early 2020s are already proving themselves. The best films from this decade will hold up. These are among them.
Crime cinema at its best is a mirror - not a celebration of lawbreaking, but an examination of what drives people to it.
Suspicious that her colleague is responsible for a series of mysterious patient deaths, a nurse risks her own life to uncover the truth.
At work, she's a renowned assassin. At home, she's a single mom to a teenage daughter. Killing? That's easy. It's parenting that's the hard part.
Baltimore. New Year's Eve. A talented but troubled police officer is recruited by the FBI's chief investigator to help profile and track down a mass murderer.
A small, wealthy family in New York City gets progressively torn apart by secrets, lies, and the theft that orchestrates all of it.
Following the loss of their son, a retired sheriff and his wife leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas.
The crime films worth your time are the ones where the moral calculus is genuinely complicated. Not every villain is a monster. Not every hero is clean.
A man living in self-imposed exile on a remote island rescues a young girl from a violent storm, setting off a chain of events that forces him out of seclusion to protect her from enemies tied to his past.
West Point, New York, 1830. When a cadet at the burgeoning military academy is found hanged with his heart cut out, the top brass summons former New York City constable Augustus Landor to investigate. While attempting to solve this grisly mystery, the reluctant detective engages the help of one of the cadets: a strange but brilliant young fellow by the name of Edgar Allan Poe.
A mysterious woman recruits bank teller Ludwig Dieter to lead a group of aspiring thieves on a top-secret heist during the early stages of the zombie apocalypse.
Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.
A mild-mannered professor moonlighting as a fake hit man in police stings ignites a chain reaction of trouble when he falls for a potential client.
The best suspense doesn't come from action - it comes from caring about what happens. These films make you care, then twist the knife.
The best crime films stay with you because they refuse to let you feel entirely comfortable about who you were rooting for.