The film you watch at 2am when sleep has given up on you should earn your full attention without demanding you pay for it the next morning.
Despite everything, the 2020s have produced some genuinely remarkable cinema. Films made under pressure that somehow carry none of it.
Crime cinema at its best is a mirror - not a celebration of lawbreaking, but an examination of what drives people to it.
In 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution, a young grifter named Estella is determined to make a name for herself with her designs. She befriends a pair of young thieves who appreciate her appetite for mischief, and together they are able to build a life for themselves on the London streets. One day, Estella's flair for fashion catches the eye of the Baroness von Hellman, a fashion legend who is devastatingly chic and terrifyingly haute. But their relationship sets in motion a course of events and revelations that will cause Estella to embrace her wicked side and become the raucous, fashionable and revenge-bent Cruella.
In the 1980s, a team of lawyers takes on the heads of Argentina's bloody military dictatorship in a battle against odds and a race against time.
In 2006, a group of thieves performed what is considered one of the most famous and smart bank heists in the history of Argentina. How they robbed the Rio bank is as surprising as what happened afterwards. This is their story.
What will be her last straw? A devastatingly bad day pushes a hardworking single mother to the breaking point - and into a shocking act of desperation.
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.
With the price on his head ever increasing, John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.
American expat Mickey Pearson has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he's looking to cash out of the business forever it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.
In his second year of fighting crime, Batman uncovers corruption in Gotham City that connects to his own family while facing a serial killer known as the Riddler.
The now-reformed Bad Guys are trying (very, very hard) to be good, but instead find themselves hijacked into a high-stakes, globe-trotting heist, masterminded by a new team of criminals they never saw coming: The Bad Girls.
A cold and mysterious new security guard for a Los Angeles cash truck company surprises his co-workers when he unleashes precision skills during a heist. The crew is left wondering who he is and where he came from. Soon, the marksman's ultimate motive becomes clear as he takes dramatic and irrevocable steps to settle a score.
The films that change cinema are rarely the ones trying to. They're usually just trying to be great - and accidentally redrawing the map.
These films work because they take their characters seriously - even the ones doing terrible things.