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You can imagine it as the plot of a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode: A woman drops her friends’ baby on her head while attending their tropical getaway wedding. (Actually, Larry probably wouldn’t even agree to hold the baby in the first place for fear of dropping her. Also: germs.)

But despite that intriguing premise, “ The Drop ” never reaches its full cringe comedy potential. It never even comes close. Director and co-writer Sarah Adina Smith offers some inspired moments and laughs here and there, but too often, running bits simply don’t pay off. She’ll bring up plot points or characteristics and then abandon them. The dialogue is so low-key and the pacing is so shaggy, it feels as if the actors did a lot of improvising. And with a couple of exceptions, the characters are all so superficial and unlikable that it often makes the film feel interminable.

If you’re going to amass a bunch of awful, selfish people at a resort and then sit back and watch them rip into each other, at least make them flawed in a complicated, compelling way, as in “Glass Onion” or “ The White Lotus .” There’s not much to the people who comprise the wedding party in “The Drop” beyond a few annoying quirks, so when Smith aims for real emotional stakes toward the end, it’s difficult to care because the groundwork isn’t there.

Everything is upbeat and optimistic at the start, though, as married Los Angeles bakers Lex ( Anna Konkle of “PEN15”) and Mani ( Jermaine Fowler of “ Sorry to Bother You ”) are trying to make a baby of their own. They’re also making the cake for the destination wedding of their lesbian friends, Peggy and Mia ( Jennifer Lafleur and Aparna Nancherla ), who have an infant daughter. (The whole cake thing is very distracting, by the way – like, how are the layers going to withstand changes in cabin pressure during the flight? Since they’ve got a big container for the frosting AND their carry-on luggage, how will the airline allow them to bring everything? Couldn’t Peggy and Mia have hired a local baker?)

But the real problems arise once they arrive in paradise and see all their old friends. Joining in the festivities are the self-serious Shauna and Robbie ( Robin Thede and Utkarsh Ambudkar ), a narcissistic TV actress and her name-dropping husband; and Josh and Lindsey ( Joshua Leonard , who co-wrote the script, and Jillian Bell ), the hippie couple who owns the beachfront Mexican resort where the wedding will take place. As they’re all greeting each other at the airport curb, Lex briefly holds the baby, inspiring Mani to gaze at her lovingly. But when a bee buzzes by her head, Lex panics and drops the child on the sidewalk. (She’ll be fine.)

The moment is intended as a crucible of these characters and their relationships, a catalyst for confrontations as the weekend progresses. And it’s especially meant as an opportunity for Lex to explore whether she’s prepared to be a parent herself. Instead, we get a series of awkward conversations that never feel like they’re going anywhere. The college pals don’t have much in common anymore, but even that dynamic doesn’t result in any sort of pricky friction. And a through-line about Lex having been romantically involved with various members of all the other couples – both male and female -- adds up to nothing. Also along for the ride is Shauna and Robbie’s obnoxious teenage son, Levi ( Elisha Henig ), who watches porn on his iPad on the plane and hosts a vlog about the importance of men spreading their seed. Maybe Smith is making a point about toxic masculinity, but it feels underdeveloped.

Konkle and Fowler have an enjoyable, easy chemistry with each other, but they’re the only ones. Far too much of “The Drop” is exemplified by an eternal scene on a boat in which Smith cuts around between various duos or groups chatting. Round and round it goes, with the discussions growing more personal without getting any more interesting. You may find yourself tempted to do what Mani does: jump in the water and swim for shore.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

The Drop (2023)

Anna Konkle as Lex

Jermaine Fowler as Mani

Aparna Nancherla

Jillian Bell

• Joshua Leonard

Utkarsh Ambudkar

Elisha Henig

Jennifer Lafleur

Robin Thede

• Sarah Adina Smith

Cinematographer

• Shaheen Seth
• Daniel Garber

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Bob Saginowski finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deeply into the neighborhood's past where friends, families, and foes all work to... Read all Bob Saginowski finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deeply into the neighborhood's past where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living--no matter the cost. Bob Saginowski finds himself at the center of a robbery gone awry and entwined in an investigation that digs deeply into the neighborhood's past where friends, families, and foes all work together to make a living--no matter the cost.

• Michaël R. Roskam
• Dennis Lehane
• Noomi Rapace
• James Gandolfini
• 319 User reviews
• 303 Critic reviews
• 69 Metascore
• 4 wins & 5 nominations

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• Detective Romsey

• Father Regan

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• Trivia Last film appearance of James Gandolfini . He died one month after shooting had wrapped.
• Goofs At the movies end Bob and Nadia are in Nadia's front yard. It's right after the Super Bowl, which is usually at the end of January, but the forsythia is clearly in bloom which happens in the spring. Showing forsythia in bloom was intentional and intended to alert the viewers that several months had passed.

Bob : There are some sins that you commit that you can't come back from, you know, no matter how hard you try. You just can't. It's like the devil is waiting for your body to quit. Because he knows, he knows that he already owns your soul. And then I think maybe there's no devil. You die... and God, he says, Nah, nah you can't come in. You have to leave now. You have to leave and go away and you have to be alone. You have to be alone forever.

• Connections Featured in Film '72: Episode dated 12 November 2014 (2014)
• Soundtracks Little Clocks Written and Performed by Zachary Kibbee Courtesy of Platform Music Group

User reviews 319

• PostingandToasting
• Sep 14, 2014
• September 12, 2014 (United States)
• United States
• Official Facebook
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• Fox Searchlight Pictures
• Big Screen Productions
• Bob Industries
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $12,600,000 (estimated)
• $10,724,389
• $18,658,381

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• Runtime 1 hour 46 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Surround 7.1

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Review: ‘The Drop’ doesn’t always work as a comedy, but it has the ring of hard-won truth

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The title of director Sarah Adina Smith’s anxious social satire “The Drop” refers to a momentary mistake that becomes a life-altering embarrassment. Anna Konkle plays Lex, a sweet-natured middle-class Angeleno looking forward to a fun trip to a beachfront destination wedding with her husband and business partner, Mani (Jermaine Fowler), with whom she’s been running a hip bakery and trying to conceive a child. Then Lex accidentally drops a friend’s baby on the ground after a bee flies at her face; while the infant’s OK, the incident prompts the party guests to rethink everything they know about one another.

Co-written by Smith and Joshua Leonard, “The Drop” relies heavily on the improvisational talents of an experienced cast of comic actors, including Leonard himself — as well as Utkarsh Ambudkar, Jillian Bell, Elisha Henig and Robin Thede. They play a mix of privileged L.A. types, who are all vaguely dissatisfied with their lots in life. A lot of the dialogue is about these people coming to that conclusion, through passive-aggressive conversations that are never quite as funny as they should be, no matter how much the movie leans into “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-style cringe humor.

Still, while “The Drop” doesn’t always work as a comedy, it does have the ring of hard-won truth. Smith and Leonard spoof the presumptions and pretensions of people who like to outwardly project as kindly and enlightened; and they unsparingly illustrate how someone’s seemingly rock-solid reputation can be undone in an instant.

‘The Drop.’ R, for sexual content, language and some drug use. 1 hour, 32 minutes. Available on Hulu

‘The Old Way’

The Nicolas Cage vehicle “The Old Way” has been described as the actor’s “first-ever western,” which is sort of true, in that he’s never before played someone living out on the American frontier with hats, guns, horses and all that. But it’s also true that a lot of Cage’s recent work — like “Prisoners of the Ghostland,” “Mandy,” “Pig” and more — has been at least western-adjacent, in that they’re movies about haunted loners out for revenge.

That’s the zone Cage returns to in “The Old Way,” playing Colton Briggs, a reformed gunfighter who gets pushed too far when a vengeful gang tracks him down and kills his wife, leaving Colton to raise their young daughter, Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). Without the civilizing influence of true love, the widower returns to his roots, teaching Brooke how to track, shoot and lie. Ironically, their quest to execute the other outlaws brings the father and child closer than they’ve ever been.

Director Brett Donowho and screenwriter Carl W. Lucas could have done more with this premise. Their story is slim, moving directly from the very basic setup to a predictable payoff that sees Colton facing off against a young killer (Noah Le Gros), who has a very particular reason to ruin the gunslinger’s life. But the locations have some appealing old-school western grandeur; and the chemistry between Cage and Armstrong carries the picture through its more hackneyed moments. Ultimately, this is a movie with real personality, about a man coming to realize with no small amazement that he has an actual legacy to pass on — even if it’s a grim one.

‘The Old Way.’ R, for violence. 1 hour, 35 minutes. Available on VOD; also playing in limited theatrical release

‘Candy Land’

The talented genre filmmaker John Swab brings a distinctive touch to the ’70s-style exploitation picture “Candy Land,” a gamy mystery thriller that combines a slasher plot with a frank exposé of the lives of “lot lizards” — the prostitutes who ply their trade at truck stops. Olivia Luccardi plays Remy, an exile from a Christian cult who finds a makeshift family among the male and female hookers at a run-down spot in rural Oklahoma. Just as her new friends are showing her how their business works, the gas station and nearby motel start to be terrorized by a blade-wielding killer, who is cutting up both the hustlers and their johns.

Swab doesn’t keep the murderer’s identity secret for long. About halfway through its running time, “Candy Land” essentially dispenses with its plot and turns into a series of scenes in which the psychopath openly dispatches one victim after another, with a messianic zeal. Throughout these sequences, Swab delivers the grindhouse goods, serving up hefty amounts of nudity and gore.

Yet while “Candy Land” is unapologetically sleazy, it also has a sharp visual style and a fully realized little world, filled by a vibrant ensemble of sex-worker characters (well played by Sam Quartin, Eden Brolin, Virginia Rand, Owen Campbell and Guinevere Turner), one creepy lawman (played with gusto by William Baldwin) and fascinating details about the art and craft of sexually satisfying truck-stop customers. It’s possible Swab made this film just to tell a story about the more compassionate side of prostitution. If so, the movie’s guilty-pleasure thrills are just a bonus.

‘Candy Land.’ Not rated. 1 hour, 33 minutes. Available on VOD

‘Come Find Me’

On the surface, writer-director Daniel Poliner’s “Come Find Me” may seem like a typical tearjerking indie drama. The first half is about a stressed-out young lawyer named Christina (Victoria Cartegena), who is back in her home city of New York to work on a big case while trying to avoid her meddling mother, Gloria (Sol Miranda). The second half jumps ahead a couple of years to Gloria’s last days as a middle-school principal, which she juggles while preparing for Christina’s wedding. This bifurcated structure — along with a late-film introduction of a time-loop element — are indicative of Poliner’s more subtle ambitions with this picture, about how personal goals and relationships evolve.

Not everything Poliner tries here succeeds — especially in the film’s first half, which can be hard to follow at times. But the story gets better as it plays out, and the dialogue and performances are uniformly strong, helped along by the accumulation of information about Gloria’s and Christina’s jobs and their history together. If the movie feels a bit overstuffed, that may be because Poliner clearly cares about these characters, and — quite touchingly — has thought a lot about what would make them happy.

‘Come Find Me.’ Not rated. 1 hour, 47 minutes. Available on VOD

‘The Offering’

There’s a welcome simplicity to director Oliver Park and screenwriter Hank Hoffman’s “The Offering,” a supernatural thriller that replaces the genre’s usual generic Christian mysticism with a Jewish take on curses and devils. Nick Blood plays Art, who left his Orthodox family to marry the gentile Claire (Emily Wiseman), but then returns to his father, Saul (Allan Corduner), when he needs money to help with his pregnant wife and their unborn child. Unfortunately, Art arrives at Saul’s place of business — a mortuary — just as a child-stealing, hallucination-inducing demon known as the Abyzou has been conjured. Most of the action in “The Offering” takes place in and around the family’s funeral home, where a few freaky incidents turn into full-on Abyzou attacks. The plot is pretty routine, but its finer points about religious faith and rituals give the creep-outs and jump-scares real nuance. What makes this such a satisfying horror film is its cultural specificity.

‘The Offering.’ R, for violence. 1 hour, 33 minutes. Available on VOD; also playing theatrically, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, downtown Los Angeles

‘The Price We Pay’

The grim and gory “The Price We Pay” belongs to the subgenre of horror films like “Don’t Breathe” and “From Dusk Till Dawn,” where some not-so-nice people show up at the wrong place at the wrong time, and soon find out what true evil is. Here, Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff play fugitive crooks who take a hostage after a holdup gone haywire, and then attempt to lie low at a farm. There, the thieves discover the property’s secret torture chamber — and that the folks who own the place aren’t exactly pushovers. Directed by Ryûhei Kitamura (best known for “The Midnight Meat Train”) from a Christopher Jolley screenplay, “The Price We Pay” lacks the shocking twists and lively performances of the best “knock on the wrong door” thrillers. The cast is fine, but there’s a dispiriting dourness to the film. Nevertheless, after a slow start, Kitamura does offer up some impressive splatter scenes — peaking at the end, with a wild climax that partly justifies the movie’s existence.

‘The Price We Pay.’ R, for strong horror violence, gore and pervasive language. 1 hour, 26 minutes. Available on VOD

Also on VOD

“The Celluloid Bordello” is a provocative documentary essay about the many different ways that movies and television have depicted prostitutes and strippers across the decades, in ways sometimes bracingly honest but more often exaggerated and exploitative. Directed by Juliana Piccillo, the film is loaded with clips, strung together with interviews in which critics and sex workers offer insights into pop culture’s love-hate relationship with the people who sell their bodies for a living. Available on VOD (also available on DVD from First Run Features)

Available now on DVD and Blu-ray

“She Said” stars Carey Mulligan as Megan Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Jodi Kantor in a hard-hitting journalism drama that looks back at how these two New York Times reporters pursued the rumors and allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein, while struggling to get his accusers to go on the record. The DVD and Blu-ray editions add a featurette in which Twohey and Kantor tell the story behind the story. Universal (also available to stream on Peacock)

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The Drop Reviews

Cringe-worthy comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

[The filmmakers] aren’t concerned with telling you very loudly that this is funny, they just let it be funny.

Full Review | Apr 21, 2023

What may seem conceptually ripe on paper is inevitably squandered in an aimless and half-baked extension of mumblecore mannerisms.

Full Review | Jan 27, 2023

Sarah Adina Smith’s comedy is bereft of laughs, leaving us stuck with irritating people.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 26, 2023

The meandering plot can go largely unnoticed thanks to The Drop's collection of comedic actors, each offering his or her own uniquely bizarre caricature.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 18, 2023

It’s a weirdly noncommittal movie, stuck in a no-man’s-land between hangout movie and a story with substance.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2023

While Konkle and Fowler are very strong as the central relationship being tested, the script treats them more as easy punchlines trying to navigate a series of escalating, cringe-worthy friend faux paus.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 17, 2023

The cast gives it their all to make sure the best jokes land, but ultimately “The Drop” just doesn’t have enough skill to fully make good on its admittedly hilarious premise.

The Drop drops the ball at every turn, only coming together in the final moments of the film, and by that point the viewer has already checked out.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jan 16, 2023

With the exception of Jillian Bell and Joshua Leonard, everyone in the cast looks like an improv group desperately waiting for someone in the audience to set each and every scene for them.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 16, 2023

The film isn’t dumb — the quips are quick — but the problem is, quite simply and quite fatally, that it’s just not… funny.

Full Review | Jan 16, 2023

The Drop ultimately flops because it’s a comedy without enough humor.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 15, 2023

...a collection of characters who are thoroughly unlikable but great fun to watch. Alas, while they are indeed one odious bunch, they wear out their welcome long before we’re subjected to one last cheap joke and mercifully fading to black.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 14, 2023

The Drop runs intimacy, relationships, and family planning through a comedic grinder. It takes a while to identify each supporting character, but you're laughing hysterically the whole time. Wackiness compounds as long-held insecurities erupt.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 13, 2023

The Drop’s meandering 90 minutes are entertaining enough, but they’ll inevitably have you wishing that it really was as bold as dropping a baby on the concrete.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.2/10 | Jan 13, 2023

The Drop isn’t really about dropping a baby. But it’s not about much else, either.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2023

A quick and enjoyable trip with well-considered humor.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 13, 2023

Thanks to an amusing batch of characters, the heavily improvised film provides some big laughs while maintaining its satirical edge, even if it stumbles in the uneven final act.

A solid premise and an appealing cast get bogged down and the film ends ups dropping the ball—and the baby.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 13, 2023

All efforts are put into comedy which leads to underdeveloped characters and a story that constantly teases there is something more, but never quite delivers. It will definitely elicit a laugh, but that may not be enough for some.

Toronto Film Review: ‘The Drop’

Tom Hardy gives another terrific performance as a Brooklyn bartender in writer Dennis Lehane's adaptation of his own short story.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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For all the moderately surprising twists served up in “The Drop,” the big revelation turns out to be no revelation at all: Man, that Tom Hardy can act. Like an adorable puppy that turns out to boast an extremely sharp set of teeth, Hardy’s skillfully restrained performance as a mild-mannered Brooklyn bartender who finds himself an unwitting pawn in all manner of crooked schemes isn’t just the film’s strongest element; it’s the reason this serviceably constructed thriller remains as absorbing as it does, despite a succession of ham-fisted plot turns and goombah stereotypes. Dennis Lehane’s first adaptation of his own work feels minor compared with “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” and “Shutter Island,” but it’s not without its low-key pleasures, including a sturdy final screen performance from the late James Gandolfini . Fox Searchlight should expect some decent dough from this Sept. 12 release.

Fans of Lehane’s pungent Boston crime fiction may be a bit surprised that the scribe has relocated his Dorchester-set short story “Animal Rescue” (the film’s original title) to Brooklyn for the purposes of the film, though under the smooth direction of Belgian filmmaker Michael R. Roskam (“Bullhead”), there’s no major loss in seedy atmosphere. As Hardy’s happily infrequent voiceover informs us at the outset, the borough is home to any number of drinking establishments that double as “drop bars” — places where, on very rare nights, large quantities of dirty money can exchange hands away from the prying eyes of the police. Manning the counter at Cousin Marv’s is Bob Saginowski (Hardy), a soft-spoken, hard-working type who likes to keep his head down while Marv himself (Gandolfini) tends to the shadier dealings at the behest of Chovka (Michael Aronov), the Chechen crime lord who owns the bar.

That Bob dutifully attends Mass every morning but abstains from taking communion is an early clue that there’s more to this gruff but likable heavy than meets the eye. Whatever it may be, Hardy does a fine job of keeping the audience guessing: All we can assume is that he’s been scarred by some distant trauma, which may explain why he reacts with such fear and vulnerability when two masked robbers enter the bar and empty the register late one evening. Fortunately, it isn’t a drop-bar night, which means they’ve only lost $5,000. But it’s still enough to piss off Chovka and his thugs, who order them to recover the money — a tricky proposition, as Bob or Cousin Marv would presumably have to be in cahoots with the robbers in order to do so.

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As that particular plot thickens, the film sets up a second narrative track in which Bob discovers a pitbull puppy in someone’s garbage, brutally beaten and left for dead by its owner. With the help of an attractive neighbor, Nadia (Noomi Rapace), he nurses the dog back to health, his better judgment and inexperience with pets overcome by his genuine affection for the animal. Naturally it’s not long before Nadia and Bob also begin to get close, taking turns walking and looking after Rocco, as they call him. But Bob soon finds himself inexplicably stalked by the dog’s original owner, Eric (Matthias Schoenaerts), an intimidating ne’er-do-well who takes a sadistic pleasure in harassing our hero at every opportunity.

It’s hard to remember the last time a canine was made so shamelessly pivotal a character in a mainstream movie (“Marley & Me,” perhaps), but “The Drop” is at once upfront and highly effective in its manipulations, tugging at our heartstrings even as it flicks away at our nerves. Rocco is quite plainly a stand-in for Bob himself — a cute, defenseless, moist-eyed creature who can take only so much abuse before he finally snaps, and it’s clear enough from the setup that Bob will eventually come into his own and become a righteous defender of the weak, rather than remaining one of the weak himself.

Until then, however, the violence arrives from other quarters. Fittingly enough for this gangland genre territory, Roskam throws in the occasional impaled foot and severed limb for effect, but it all feels pretty tame and impersonal compared with the steroid injections and crushed testicles of “Bullhead,” his much more graphic study of tormented masculinity. (The director has learned to economize, however; “The Drop” clocks in at a welcome 106 minutes.) Meanwhile, Hardy underplays to the point of passivity, lowering his gaze, speaking in a mumble, shying away from confrontation and delaying the moment of truth as long as possible without turning the viewer against him.

While the climactic reversal is undeniably effective and darkly funny to boot, the drama can feel fairly creaky, even perplexing, during the buildup. The parallel narrative structure, cross-cutting between Bob’s woes at work and his puppy-love story at home, never seems especially organic — least of all when the two threads converge, and “The Drop” essentially becomes a three-way showdown, pitting Bob against Marv against Eric, and leaving it to the viewer to decide which man has more dangerously underestimated the others. This is one case of the destination being more satisfying than the journey: Even allowing for the generic requirements of a suspenseful action climax, the pieces don’t snap satisfyingly into place as they should, and it’s hard not to wonder if something crucial got distorted in the process of expanding Lehane’s story into a feature.

Slapping on a persuasive Noo Yawk accent and eliminating all traces of the suavity he’s displayed elsewhere, Hardy is so good here that it almost doesn’t matter that Bob feels like a somewhat hollow construct in the end, engineered to stir the audience’s compassion and their bloodlust simultaneously. In his English-language filmmaking debut, Roskam has pointedly cast both his countryman Schoenaerts (“Bullhead”) and Swedish actress Rapace (best known for the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” movie trilogy), neither of whom blends as seamlessly into the Brooklyn background as Hardy does, but who both prevail on the strength of their screen magnetism alone.

Elsewhere, John Ortiz and Ann Dowd round out the working-class environs with brief but effective turns as a nosy police detective and Marv’s put-upon sister, respectively. Adding further flavor and texture are Marco Beltrami’s lightly pulsing score and Nicolas Karakatsanis’ moody lensing of Brooklyn locations, whether on an abandoned street where a bloody double-cross is afoot, or under the golden glow of the lamps at Cousin Marv’s. As for Hardy’s four-legged co-stars, three puppies (aged a few weeks apart) handle Rocco’s thesping duties with predictably scene-stealing aplomb.

Unsurprisingly, though, it’s Gandolfini who offers the most invaluable support here, putting across Cousin Marv’s cynicism and capacity for reckless violence in a few deft, understated strokes, certainly all that’s needed from an actor whose iconic tough-guy stature can hardly be overestimated. “The Drop” may not be as moving or revelatory a final showcase for Gandolfini’s talents as last year’s “Enough Said,” but it’s a fitting, well-played note to end on nonetheless.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 5, 2014. (Also in San Sebastian Film Festival — competing.) Running time: 106 MIN.

• Production: A Fox Searchlight Pictures release and presentation of a Chernin Entertainment production made in association with TSG Entertainment and Ingenious Media. Produced by Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping. Executive producers, Mike LaRocca, M. Blair Breard, Dennis Lehane.
• Crew: Directed by Michael R. Roskam. Screenplay, Dennis Lehane, based on his short story "Animal Rescue." Camera (color, widescreen), Nicolas Karakatsanis; editor, Christopher Tellefsen; music, Marco Beltrami; music supervisor, Gabe Hilfer; production designer, Therese DePrez; art director, Michael Ahern; set decorator, Mila Khalevich; costume designer, David Robinson; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Justin Gray; sound designer, Ron Bochar; re-recording mixers, Michael Barry, John Ross, Bochar;  special effects supervisor, Drew Jiritano; visual effects supervisor, Eran Dinur; visual effects producers, Richard Friedlander, Glenn Allen; visual effects, Brainstorm Digital; stunt coordinators, Stephen Pope, Bobby Beckles; associate producers, Chuck Ryant, John O'Grady, T.K. Knowles; assistant director, Timothy Bird.
• With: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz, Ann Dowd, Michael Aronov, James Frecheville, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Tobias Segal, Michael Esper.

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Screen Rant

'the drop' review, the drop is ultimately a solid mood piece, with strong performances that help elevate it above its derivative story elements..

The Drop revolves around Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy), a soft-spoken bartender who works at his cousin Marv's (James Gandolfini) bar, which is one of many Brooklyn bars that serve as "drop spots" for local criminals to funnel their cash through. One night, while walking home from work, Bob discovers a battered pit bull puppy in a garbage bin and, with help from a woman who lives nearby named Nadia (Noomi Rapace), decides to care for the dog.

A short time later, Marv's bar is robbed and he and Bob are left being held responsible by the bar's true owners - a group of Chechen gangsters - for recovering the stolen money. However, in addition to that, Bob must fend off unwanted attention from a detective (John Ortiz), who uses the robbery as an excuse to start digging deeper into both Bob and his neighborhood's past, as well as the interest of his newly-acquired dog's former - and threatening - owner (Matthias Schoenaerts).

The Drop is based on the short story "Animal Rescue" by author/screenwriter Dennis Lehane ( Mystic River , Gone Baby Gone ), who also turned his source material into a feature-length script for the cinematic version. As such, the movie ends up covering similar thematic territory as past Lehane projects have (by touching on related issues of morality, religious concerns, etc.), yet there are enough subtle differences in the execution to distinguish The Drop from similar recent crime dramas.

Lehane projects often attract the cream of the crop in directing talent and The Drop is no exception, with Belgian filmmaker Michaël R. Roskam (the Foreign Language Oscar-nominated crime drama Bullhead ) serving at the helm. Here, Roskam delivers a slow-burn affair that favors mood and character development over action, creating a drama that tonally recalls the disaffected vibe of 1970s cinema (think of the films by directors Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet that were released during that decade). As such, filmgoers who are intrigued by  The Drop  should keep in mind: this is a crime movie that's far more drama than thriller.

Roskam's approach uses simpler visual symbolism over stylistic flourishes, as well as quiet storytelling over melodramatic plot developments - allowing the moments of intensity or sudden violence to pack all the stronger an emotional punch for it. Combined with Lehane's tightly-constructed script, which never meanders nor includes scenes that aren't necessary from a character-building standpoint, Roskam's direction allows the film to work as an effective crime tale with a decent moral core. The Drop is ultimately a solid mood piece, with strong performances that help elevate it above its derivative story elements.

Hardy delivers yet another excellent performance as Bob, offering a portrait of a man who seems kind and lonely on the surface, yet often leaves you with the sense that there's something dark and dangerous bubbling on the inside. He is a psychologically complex protagonist, for sure, and Roskam's usage of simple visual cues only further enhances that uneasy sense that Bob could, at the turn of a hat, become something very different than a gentle man who rescues injured puppies.

Gandolfini, in his final movie role, is compelling as ever playing Cousin Marv in  The Drop ; at first, the character appears to be another variation on the late actor's famous Sopranos persona, yet as more is revealed about just what kind of person Marv truly is, Gandolfini continues to add more vulnerability and nuance to his performance. The same holds true for Matthias Schoenaerts (who also worked on Bullhead with Roskam) as Eric Deeds, a man who is clearly unstable and dangerous - yet, thanks to the way that Schoenaerts plays the character, it's often difficult to nail down exactly what kind of threat Eric presents (which makes him all the more interesting to watch in the film).

Rapace as Nadia is another strong link in the chain of performances offered by The Drop ; her portrayal of a person who is kind and thoughtful, yet clearly has a troubled past, is convincing and moving, despite the character not having much of an arc in the film. John Ortiz ( Silver Linings Playbook ), as Detective Torres, also remains fairly static throughout the movie's running time, but Ortiz does fine work - playing the street-wise, yet pushy, cop archetype - and, at the end of the day, the character serves his purpose in the overarching narrative well enough.

The Drop , on the whole, is yet another fine addition to the growing collection of crime drama films that originated with the literature of Dennis Lehane. Its biggest shortcomings are, put simply, that it doesn't break much new ground of terms of the genre, and that it may be a bit  too contemplative and character-oriented for a number of filmgoers (meaning, they'll just find it boring). However, if a slow-burn, well-acted, and mood-heavy adult drama sounds like your cup of tea, then you might want to give this one a look.

The Drop is now playing in U.S. theaters. It is 106 minutes long and is Rated R for some strong violence and pervasive language.

• Entertainment
• Review: <i>The Drop</i>: Bane and Lehane in a Brooklyn Thriller

Review: The Drop : Bane and Lehane in a Brooklyn Thriller

E verybody knows a guy like Bob Saginowsky — everybody who’s seen an intimate urban crime movie over the past 60 years. Amid the tough talkers packing loud pistols and big balls, Bob (Tom Hardy) is the quiet, pensive one, a decent sort who’s a bit on the slow side, keeping his head down and doing his job. That’s serving drinks at the Brooklyn bar run by his cousin Marvin (James Gandolfini). Marv, who is up to his burly shoulders in mob worries, calls Bob “the guy who wasted his entire life waitin’ for it to start.”

It’s easy to see Bob as a movie descendant of Terry Malloy, the emotionally wounded pug played by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront , but with Brooklyn for Hoboken and a pit-bull puppy to care for instead of pigeons. What he lacks is the chance at a boxing title in his regretful past. Bob’s backstory is a blank slate for much of The Drop , the long-fuse thriller that Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam has fashioned from a screenplay by Dennis Lehane, who birthed the dramas Mystic River , Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island — all set in Lehane’s Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.

(READ: Richard Schickel on the Dennis Lehane–Clint Eastwood Mystic River )

Cousin Marvin’s Place is a “drop bar”: On certain nights, Bob stashes hot cash from bookies for the higher-ups to collect at closing time. One night two punks raid the bar and take $5,000 — Marv’s, not the bookies. But he’s in debt to the Chechen gangster Chovka (Michael Aronov) whose father took over ownership of the bar some years back, a transfer that still rankles Marv. Bob, who goes to daily Mass but never takes Communion, has his own problems. A nosy detective (John Ortiz) keeps badgering him about the punks’ disappearance. Bob has also saved a battered terrier puppy from a trash can in the front yard of pretty, grim Nadia (Noomi Rapace). The puppy used to belong to psycho case Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), and so did Nadia. He’d prefer it if Bob stayed away from both of his new friends.

For a certain kind of moviegoer, the cast of The Drop is a polyglot dream come true. Imagine a mix of Hardy, the try-anything English star who incarnated the catarrhal monster Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and was the only person in-screen in Locke ; Rapace, a revelation as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy ; Schoenaerts, who played the pathetic cattle farmer in Roskam’s first feature, the Oscar-nominated Bullhead , as well as Marion Cotillard’s therapeutic beau in Rust and Bone ; and Gandolfini the great, in his final film role. What’s weird is that they would all meet in Brooklyn, not Dorchester, to impersonate a passel of Kings County lowlifes trying to survive winter. It’s as if Leonardo deCaprio and the cast of Shutter Island had convened in Reykjavik to film some 11th-century saga in the original Icelandic.

(READ: Corliss on the Dennis Lehane–Martin Scorsese Shutter Island )

Not that the imported actors, who surely have been watching American movies all their lives, have any trouble with the Brooklyn accents. They fit snugly into Ruskam’s muddy noirish scheme, fraught with blurred movement in the foreground of a long shot (is some evil dude watching?) and the soughing violins of Marco Beltrami’s slightly too emphatic score. But in the first hour or so of the film, expanded from Lehane’s original short story “Animal Rescue,” they seem to be marking time, circling around their characters, stalking them, in a full-dress improv rehearsal.

All except for Gandolfini, who brings lumpen poetry to the sort of bottom-rung ganef Tony Soprano would have dispatched in a single episode. Fat and tired — the character, not the performance — Marv used to be a serious player in Brooklyn crime but, stripped of his bar ownership and living with his sibling Dottie (Ann Dowd), mourns that he’s become “a guy who goes to Europe with his sister.” He should live so long.

(READ: Mary Pols on Gandolfini’s next-to-last movie, Enough Said )

Eventually all the stars slip into their characters: Hardy, with a fretful, coiled power that hints at Bob’s unknown depths; Rapace, making the most of a conflicted-girlfriend role previously played by Eva Marie Saint ( On the Waterfront ), Talia Shire ( Rocky ), Maria Tommie ( The Wrestler ) and countless others; and especially Schoenaerts, who can impart madman menace in a whisper. With The Drop as with Shutter Island , you have to sit through the slow parts to savor the cool parts. The movie’s little surprise is that you didn’t waste your time watching it; you were just being primed for an explosion of low volume and high impact.

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Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini Transcend Grim The Drop

It’s impossible to take your eyes off Tom Hardy, who plays a bartender named Bob in the draggy but atmospheric mob thriller The Drop : You need to watch him every second for clues to the character’s slow, unassertive, yet hyperalert demeanor, to his complicated simpleness. Apart from his thick-slab lips, Hardy is hardly recognizable from role to role. Here, he pitches his voice in a higher register, and, with his Brooklyn stammer, sounds a bit like Jerry Lewis. But in the creepiest way! Bob is a compulsive churchgoer and conflict-averse — he backs away from people, he’s a peacemaker — yet his center is scary-solid. He stays upright even when he’s handling severed limbs or staring into the face of psychotic killers.

Bob works at a Brooklyn bar called Cousin Marv’s, which is run by his actual cousin (James Gandolfini) and occasionally used as a “drop” — a mob depository for illicit transactions. Cousin Marv isn’t a happy publican. A decade ago, he was booted by Chechen gangsters who kept him on as an employee; now he sits in a semi-stupor and stews about the power he has lost while the mild-mannered Bob serves drinks and occasionally handles the drop. One night, two not-so-bright thieves hold up the bar; they’re too late for the drop but get $5,000 that belongs to the Chechens, who are not the sort of men who’ll shrug it off. Bob’s other problem is a dog. He’s busy nursing — along with a neighbor, a visibly damaged nurse named Nadia (Noomi Rapace) — a horribly abused pit-bull puppy he found in a garbage can. You know what kind of film this is when the least threatening creature is a pit bull. The Drop is another thriller based on the work of Boston native Dennis Lehane, a purveyor of the Higher Pulp: Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Shelter Island . This is his first produced screenplay, closely based on his story Animal Rescue , and it’s not very well shaped. (As it happens, The Drop is also the name of Michael Connelly’s last Harry Bosch thriller, and I wouldn’t have wanted to be in the room when Connelly got the news that his title was being ripped off.) Lehane is clearly taking his cues from the marvelous Boston writer George V. Higgins, whose Cogan’s Trade became the more-than-decent 2012 thriller Killing Them Softly . Higgins found the poetry in his garrulous hoods — he made their winding conversations both scary and hilarious — but Lehane doesn’t have Higgins’s command of dramatic beats, and the shift from Boston (where the story was set) to Brooklyn hurts. Director Michael R. Roskam (who made an excellent Belgian crime drama Bullhead) gives the movie a layered, lived-in texture, but there’s something about the tribalism of Lehane’s Boston Irish Catholic gangster milieu that can’t be replicated. The film is always losing its rhythm. There’s a psycho named Eric Leeds played by Bullhead star Matthias Schoenaerts who factors in the climax but until then seems almost peripheral, and people keep referring to a character who disappeared — probably bumped off — ten years earlier, which doesn’t give the plot much urgency. The fine stage actor John Ortiz reads his lines like a pale TV hack as a detective, and the part seems extraneous. Plus, every major character wears a beard, which makes them hard to tell apart at first glance — apart, of course, from Hardy and Gandolfini.   As a vehicle for those two actors, The Drop is gangbusters. This was Gandolfini’s last movie role and his second-to-last role, period, if you count an un-shown TV pilot. Watching him in The Drop — like watching Philip Seymour Hoffman in A Most Wanted Man — is heartbreaking. Gandolfini might have never shed Tony Soprano, but as an actor, he was still at his peak. His cousin Marv is a loser with dramatic stature, a Tony Soprano who never happened. His non compos mentis father is draining his income, and he’s grasping at anything — anything — to get a piece of his own back. In the film’s saddest scene, Marv sits in his basement man-cave in an easy chair, all hope visibly drained, and lashes out at Bob for never having fulfilled his promise. He’s projecting — delivering the ultimate judgment on himself.

Lehane always works some sort of higher message into his pulp material, and in The Drop , it’s more of his grim fatalism. There are hoods like Bob who’ve learned to take the most emasculating events as they come and bide their time, and hoods who try to change things fast — in most cases, stupidly, shortsightedly — and end up lying in pools of their own blood. Most thriller writers don’t aim so high: You really have to grapple with Lehane’s vision to see how tiresome it is.

• movie review
• james gandolfini

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Common sense media reviewers.

Hard crime drama is well written/acted but violent.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Characters get away with all kinds of threats and

Most of the characters are violent and self-servin

A couple of brutal shootings, with spurting blood

There's a romantic subplot, but it remains platoni

"F--k" is used regularly, as is "s--t." "P---y" is

An opening montage has a rather obvious shot of so

Quite a bit of drinking by bar patrons, as well as

Parents need to know that The Drop is a crime drama taken from a story by author Dennis Lehane that stars Tom Hardy (Bane in The Dark Knight Rises ). It's violent, with brutal slayings, spatters, and sprays of blood, plus an all-around sense of menace. Even a dog is found in a trash can with blood in…

Positive Messages

Characters get away with all kinds of threats and violence with no consequences. This neighborhood dispenses its own brand of justice, and everyone works for the mob without much choice in the matter. A woman decides it's OK to go on a date with a cold-blooded killer.

Positive Role Models

Most of the characters are violent and self-serving, with no consequences for their actions except perhaps more violence. The main character rescues a dog and is kind to a woman he's met, but other aspects of his character nullify any positive traits.

Violence & Scariness

A couple of brutal shootings, with spurting blood and dead bodies. A minor character is tortured in the back of a van with a huge bolt screwed through his ankle; there's a huge pool of dripping blood. A bloody, severed arm is found in a bag of money. A man deliberately runs over another man in his car, several times. Fights lead to bloody cuts and bruises; threatening situations. A female character has scars on her neck that she made herself; she explains that she did it with a peeler while she was on drugs. A puppy is found in a garbage can, with blood all over its fur; he's rescued and turns out just fine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

There's a romantic subplot, but it remains platonic for almost the whole movie.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k" is used regularly, as is "s--t." "P---y" is used once, and "Jesus" (as an exclamation) is heard.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

An opening montage has a rather obvious shot of some Nike shoes. Many brand names of beer and other alcoholic drinks are mentioned and/or shown in the bar's day-to-day business.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Quite a bit of drinking by bar patrons, as well as a few beers shared socially, but no one ever seems to have a drinking problem. A supporting character is shown smoking cigarettes on a regular basis. Harder drugs are mentioned and/or discussed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Drop is a crime drama taken from a story by author Dennis Lehane that stars Tom Hardy (Bane in The Dark Knight Rises ). It's violent, with brutal slayings, spatters, and sprays of blood, plus an all-around sense of menace. Even a dog is found in a trash can with blood in its fur. Language is also strong, with many uses of "f--k" and "s--t." There's a romantic subplot, but sex isn't an issue; the relationship remains platonic through almost all of the movie. Much of the movie takes place in a bar, so there's a lot of social and casual drinking, though not really to excess. There's also regular cigarette smoking. This is a fairly grown-up story, so teens likely won't be too interested unless they're die-hard Hardy fans. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Definitely NOT "bland"

Surprisingly bland., what's the story.

Bob ( Tom Hardy ) works for his cousin, Marv (the late James Gandolfini ), in a bar in a tough New York neighborhood. Occasionally, Chechen crime lords use the bar for their nightly "drops," and Bob must collect and keep packages of money overnight. Things are stable until Bob finds a pit bull puppy in a trash can and decides to rescue him; a woman named Nadia ( Noomi Rapace ) lends him a hand. Unfortunately, a dangerous-looking thug ( Matthias Schoenaerts ) comes around, claiming that the dog is his. At the same time, the bar is robbed, and the Chechens come knocking, looking for the stolen cash to be replaced -- all while a police detective (John Ortiz) snoops around. Bob must dig around in dark secrets before making his next move.

Is It Any Good?

After landing an Oscar nomination for his film Bullhead , Belgian director Michael R. Roskam comes to America for this gritty, streetwise crime drama. The film was written by Dennis Lehane and based on his own short story. Roskam emphasizes character and dialogue first, giving the main characters -- as well as a handful of supporters -- a strong inner life; each one feels as if he or she existed in the outer edges of the story before the movie ever started.

Lehane's sharp, prickly dialogue includes enjoyably lively throwaway moments, while Roskam uses weather to fine effect. Viewers learn through dialogue that it's the Christmas and New Year season, but the film emphasizes drizzly cold, rather than any kind of celebration or joy. The plot, on the other hand, is a tad on the mushy side and doesn't generate an air-tight scheme or much suspense, and the ending is a little too pat. But the performances, especially by Hardy and the late, great Gandolfini, as well as by Bullhead star Schoenaerts, are quite strong.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Drop 's brutal violence . How much is shown, and how did it affect you? How is the story served by such violence? Is it necessary to the plot?

How is the story affected by the fact that it takes place in a bar? How much alcohol do characters drink? Do they seem to drink for pleasure or to deal with pain? Are there realistic consequences?

What makes Bob fascinating, given the good and bad sides of his personality? Does one connect to another? Is he someone to admire or emulate?

How did you feel about Nadia and her choice in men? Is she a strong female character or closer to a stereotype ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 12, 2014
• On DVD or streaming : January 20, 2015
• Cast : Tom Hardy , Noomi Rapace , James Gandolfini
• Director : Michael Roskam
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Fox Searchlight
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 107 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some strong violence and pervasive language
• Last updated : November 19, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Movie Review: ‘The Drop’

Are you a fan of movies where pretty much everyone is haunted by the decisions they’ve made in life? Are you okay with the constant threat of what some may deem slightly graphic violence? (I might not deem it too graphic but I see a lot of movies.) And do you enjoy Tom Hardy playing a stoic, soft-spoken man who you just know is going to do a bad, bad thing to someone at some point?

Well, then I think The Drop is going to be right up your alley. The script is based on a short story, both written by Dennis Lehane. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he wrote Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone . Hell, if you really want a doozy of an interesting movie marathon, try those two along with The Drop and see if your urge to down a few shots of whiskey and sleep with a gun under your pillow rises to unhealthy levels.

Needless to say, Lehane deals in some dark stuff but he always manages to weave a sense of morality into the awful acts, so many of the characters perform. Sure, it’s basically street justice, but there’s an admirable searching for redemption element that comes through in all of his scripts, and somehow you find yourself rooting at times for people you wouldn’t want to live in your neighborhood, let alone have a casual drink with at the bar during Monday Night Football.

But I digress.

Look, I had forgotten I saw the trailer for this movie months ago and only saw fit to check it out because of my high esteem for the actors: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini. Seriously, that’s worth the price of admission on its own. Learning that the project came from the virtual typewriter of Lehane only sweetens the pot.

As expected, the acting is spot on. Every character, no matter how “significant,” serves a purpose and is given a genuine quality by the actors that root the film in a tangible, albeit seedy, environment that both captivates and repulses you at the same time. Hardy and Gandolfini have done similar work before but are so fit for the task that it’s simply a joy to watch them. Rapace also treads on some familiar ground, but she has such a great capacity to exhibit both fierceness and vulnerability, all in the same beat; it’s truly astounding.

Now, I don’t think this movie is quite for everyone. It’s a crime drama, with only Rapace and a cute pit bull puppy as elements of the film one might truly describe as likable. Sure, you want someone like Hardy to be your friend, but the balancing act his character performs throughout the movie is that beautiful mix of virtuous, dangerous, and unpredictable that makes watching films like this such fun for those of us who enjoy the genre. It just may be a bit too much for people who want a more black-and-white definition of good and bad. Their loss, I say.

On the negative side, there is a strong sense of been there/done that with a tale like this, and I didn’t find the supposed “reveal” to be all that surprising. As such, if you’re looking for an organized crime tale to watch, I might say my first recommendation of films in recent years would still be Killing Them Softly – which I find to be seriously underrated and overlooked. With that said, since you’ve already seen Guardians of the Galaxy a few times, and there’s nothing in a mainstream theater otherwise worth two shekels at the moment, I’d like to think the more savvy filmgoer will think about spending their time and money on something like The Drop before succumbing to whatever other fluff is out there at the moment.

Then again, I’d like to think we’ll never see another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles produced by Michael Bay. So apparently, I just like to think things.

The Drop is rated R for some strong violence and pervasive language.

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By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Who doesn’t miss seeing James Gandolfini onscreen? The Drop , a potent, propulsive crime drama, gives us one more chance to salute the formidable talent of a remarkable actor who died in June 2013 at age 51. Gandolfini is dynamite in his final screen role, as Marv, a small-time crook who runs a Brooklyn dive bar that serves as a money drop for Russian wiseguys. The bartender, Marv’s cousin Bob (a transfixing Tom Hardy), goes along with the scheme until he’s pushed too far.

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Working from a taut script by Dennis Lehane ( Mystic River ), director Michaël R. Roskam ( Bullhead ) makes every brutal, bracing minute count as Bob takes a stand with the help of a damaged woman (a very fine Noomi Rapace) and a rescued pit bull. Lehane based the script on Animal Rescue , his short story about redemption, not just for the dog but for Bob. Hardy, a British actor of uncommon versatility, from The Dark Knight Rises and Inception to his tour de force in Locke, takes a slowburn approach to his deceptively quiet role. He’s a time bomb primed to explode. You can’t take your eyes off him.

Though The Drop covers familiar ground, it simmers with charged emotion. The image that lingers belongs to Gandolfini. Marv sits in his armchair, remembering his days as top dog. “I was respected,” he tells Bob. “I was feared. That meant something.” It also means something to watch the actor who embodied the contradictions of Tony Soprano bring such gravitas to what would be his last screen hurrah. That closing glimpse of him, awaiting his fate, is indelible.

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‘Drop’ – Violett Beane Joins the Cast of Christopher Landon’s New Thriller

Christopher Landon  ( Happy Death Day, Freaky ) is staying busy here in 2024, directing not only the werewolf movie  Big Bad but also an upcoming thriller titled Drop .

The project for Blumhouse and Platinum Dunes is being described as a “fast-paced thriller,” and Deadline reports today that Violett Beane ( Truth or Dare ) has joined the cast.

Newcomer Jacob Robinson has also signed on to star in the mysterious thriller. Previously announced, Meghann Fahy (“White Lotus”) will be leading the cast.

Landon recently teased on Twitter , “ This is my love letter to DePalma .”

Jillian Jacobs  and  Chris Roach  wrote the script.

Michael Bay, Jason Blum, Brad Fuller and Cameron Fuller — “who brought the script in to Platinum Dunes” — are producing the upcoming  Drop . Sam Lerner is an executive producer.

THR notes, “The film is a Platinum Dunes and Blumhouse production for Universal.”

Writer in the horror community since 2008. Editor in Chief of Bloody Disgusting. Owns Eli Roth's prop corpse from Piranha 3D. Has four awesome cats. Still plays with toys.

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Movie Review: The Drop (2014)

• Dan Franzen
• Movie Reviews
• 4 responses
• --> September 15, 2014

Family ties are strongest?

In The Drop , Tom Hardy offers a subdued performance as a bartender in a two-bit dive that gets held up by crooks who apparently don’t realize that they’re stealing mob money. The subsequent investigation slowly stirs up old neighborhood stories and tragic secrets.

Hardy’s Bob Saginowski is an area lifer; he and his cousin Marv (James Gandolfini in his final film) run the joint, which Marv owned a long ways back and that still bears his name. Marv isn’t a terribly nice guy — he’s a bitter roughneck who apparently frittered away his beloved bar thanks to gambling debts. Bob, on the other hand, seems to be almost a cipher to the regulars; a guy from the old neighborhood who never made much of himself. He says little and doesn’t drink with his customers. He keeps his nose clean.

One evening, Bob hears sounds emanating from a trash can in front of a house. Inside’s a puppy, which Bob mistakes for a boxer (it’s a pit bull). The lady who owns the house, one Nadia (Noomi Rapace), helps Bob clean up the dog and then obtain food, toys, and accessories for its upkeep. In a separate (but oh-so-connected) thread, Marv and the mob are embroiled in the mystery of who jacked the bar, where the money is, why was the bar robbed, and so on.

This is a Dennis Lehane movie (he adapted the screenplay from his short story, “Animal Rescue”), but now the setting is New York instead of Boston. There’s a distinct noir feel to it, and had The Drop been a low budget, bare-bones movie, it may have been more effective of a film. There’s plenty of moral ambiguity afoot and much for the viewer to discover, too.

Gandolfini and Rapace offer award-caliber performances, although the latter isn’t given much to do other than act as a romantic foil for Bob and be someone he feels protective of — well, protective from their mutual enemy, one Eric Deeds (Matthias Schoenaerts), a mentally ill hood of some repute who not only claims to be the owner of the dog stashed in the trash but is also Nadia’s ex-boyfriend. Small world.

Some might call Hardy’s performance “restrained” or “minimalist.” And it’s true that sometimes less is more. Bob is a knowable unknowable, a man profoundly affected by the past and doomed to float through the present. He’s tougher than he appears, mentally and physically, and his taciturn nature belies the intellect of a man who is familiar with playing angles and protecting himself. Hardy’s Bob has much more in common with Bartleby’s Scrivener than Pacino’s Scarface. With a mumbled delivery and a slight shuffle-limp, Bob gives a nonthreatening appearance, sort of a slurring Roger “Verbal” Kint.

Trust is a major theme in The Drop . Nadia, an archetype for the surviving, put-upon femme fatale, is reluctant to trust Bob after her experiences with Eric. Bob, who knows more than he should, knows he can’t fully trust Marv, certain that his cousin would attempt any harebrained scheme for a possible positive payoff. Marv, a seasoned, battle-hardened loser himself, puts so little trust in others that he works on as many double and triple crosses as he can. Lots of balls in the air with this one.

The puppy link.

There’s more than a fair share of contrivances, too.

I found the scene in which Nadia and Bob “meet-cute” to be a little puzzling. Bob hears the dog whining from within one of Nadia’s trashcans, which are inside her chain-link fence. She comes out and, after they bring the dog inside and clean him up, she practically forces the pup on Bob, telling him he’s Bob’s responsibility. This doesn’t quite make sense and seems to be in the script solely so Nadia and Bob could have more to do with each other (bringing men and women together is one of the main purposes of puppies in movies). In another later in the movie, Nadia and Bob are walking “his” dog in the park. Nadia excuses herself for a moment, and that gives Eric Deeds the opportunity to meet Bob for the first time, complimenting him on the dog. Why does Nadia temporarily leave? Apparently because the plot required Eric and Bob to encounter each other, and nothing more.

Some viewers might see The Drop as a gritty, no-nonsense crime thriller that makes use of violence only sparingly, electing the nuance of silence over bloodletting. Others may believe that it’s a little too minimalist — when the canvas is empty, we wind up projecting what we want onto it. That is, there’s no there there; there isn’t enough in Bob’s words or action to warrant a further look, and even the reveal at the end isn’t enough to lift the movie out of its (sometimes) logically challenged doldrums.

Tagged: gangster , neighborhood , novel adaptation , robbery

For more reviews, visit Frothy Ruminations , the oldest review site you've never, ever heard of. Now in color! Remember - there's no need not to be critical. Kittens are critical of you; we should learn from them. And who doesn't love kittens? Ergo, cogit sum! QED! Whatever. I'm going to go have a kitten sandwich. Don't wait up.

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'Movie Review: The Drop (2014)' have 4 comments

September 15, 2014 @ 8:19 pm Timothy Price

I recommend ‘Locke’ for another impressive minimalist film with Tom Hardy.

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September 15, 2014 @ 8:35 pm Otis 5

It’s a solid flick.

September 15, 2014 @ 9:27 pm codered

I’ll watch anything with Tom Hardy in it. He’s been overlooked for years but man this guy can act.

September 16, 2014 @ 6:06 am Distant Voyager

Great movie until the ending. Footsteps. Smile. Cut to black. I hate open-ended endings like that.

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CRITIC’S PICK

For this tennis-pro triad, it’s love, set, match.

‘Challengers’

The highly-anticipated latest from the director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me by Your Name”) follows three tennis pros as they shift between lovers, friends and foes. It stars Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist.

From our review:

All three leads in “Challengers” are very appealing, and each brings emotional and psychological nuance to the story, whatever the characters’ current configuration. They’re also just fun to look at, and part of the pleasure of this movie is watching pretty people in states of undress restlessly circling one another, muscles tensed and desiring gazes ricocheting. Guadagnino knows this; he’s in his wheelhouse here, and you can feel his delight in his actors.

In theaters. Read the full review .

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A series of powerful vignettes.

‘terrestrial verses’.

Tehranians interact with various cultural officials in their everyday life — finding the right uniform for a daughter’s school ceremony, applying for a job or a drivers license, registering a son’s name — and must navigate the restraints of authoritarian bureaucracy.

Because each vignette is no more than a few minutes long and consists of Kafkaesque conversations that border on the absurd, “Terrestrial Verses” operates with a cumulative effect. It’s death by a thousand pinpricks, a succession of small indignities. Each seemingly simple task is not just saddled with procedural irritations — forms to fill out, appointments to attend, banal questions to answer — but with fear. Suppose your answer to a routine query could incriminate you or there’s no way to prove to an official that you aren’t lying. How would you live your life?

B(oredom). D(etachment). S(tagnation). M(alaise).

‘the feeling that the time for doing something has passed’.

This deadpan sex comedy directed, written by and starring Joanna Arnow in her debut feature follows a woman as she’s dominated both at work and in various B.D.S.M. relationships, none of which seem to bring her fulfillment.

Arnow films her own nude body with the kind of frankness that is called brave because she wants to be more confrontational than arousing. She’s so visible that it takes a beat to remember that someone can be physically exposed and emotionally opaque.

A tear-jerker that’s unusually understated.

‘nowhere special’.

A terminally-ill single father (James Norton) searches for the right adoptive parents to care for his son (Daniel Lamont) after he dies.

After being admonished by a snotty rich client because of slow work, John, taking the adage “you only live once” to heart, eggs the fellow’s house. It’s one of the few moments when the movie deigns to deliver a conventional satisfaction. But the mostly low-key mode of “Nowhere Special” is the right one. Norton is spectacular, but little Lamont delivers one of those uncanny performances that doesn’t seem like acting, and makes you feel for the kid almost as much as his onscreen parent does.

Another Cronenberg progeny with unsettling in her DNA.

In Caitlin Cronenberg’s feature debut, ecological collapse leads Canada to reduce its population by calling on citizens to volunteer for euthanasia. One well-off family discovers that the choice might not be so voluntary.

“Humane” is a thought experiment sprung to bloody life, a cross between the trolley problem and dystopian extinction nightmares. Set in the very near future, it tries to tackle a cascade of ethical questions. Who counts as valuable? What does it mean to be good? If humans wreck the earth, what will we do to survive? Do we even deserve it?

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There are no fresh ideas in the French creepy-crawler “Infested,” yet this first feature from Sébastien Vanicek scurries forward with such pep and purpose that its shortcomings are easily forgivable. Add a handful of eager young actors, a sociopolitical slam and a claustrophobic location swarming with venomous spiders and you’ll be hunting for the DEET long before the credits roll.

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‘unsung hero’.

Based on a real family of musicians who have five Grammy Awards between them, this faith-based drama follows a tight-knit clan as they move from Australia to Nashville, and find success in recording Christian music.

Viewer beware: Between the uplift and the cringe, this movie may cause whiplash. Joel Smallbone plays his own father, David, who faces financial and reputational ruin after booking a big concert and failing to pack the house. He resettles the family in the United States, but no job materializes. His pep-talking spouse, Helen (Daisy Betts), and their beatific children pull up bootstraps and practically whistle while they work, but it’s not enough.

A boyish action flick starring a boy named Boy.

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Blood begets more blood when a victim of an attack that left him deaf and mute seeks revenge on the perpetrators.

At least give it up for the stunt crew on “Boy Kills World,” a boneheaded action movie that gives some exceedingly fit performers — its hard-body star Bill Skarsgard very much included — a chance to flaunt their physical skills. To judge from all the grunting, the straining muscles and cascading sweat, Skarsgard, along with a few of his nimble co-stars and an army of stunt performers, puts in serious work to try to make the relentless bashing and smashing, flailing and dying look good. Too bad the filmmakers were incapable of doing the same.

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Two close friends from film school, Tom and Vongani share an apartment in Maboneng Johannesburg with a sexy high spirited girl, Loretta. Tom is looking for inspiration for his first film script, when a heist takes place in the street below, and a gunman bursts into their apartment. They are taken hostage, but things quickly go wrong and the gunman dies by his own gun. The three friends' lives are turned upside down, when they discover a backpack containing money and a memory stick that every badass in town seems to be after.

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War Is Hell, Ain’t It?

For a movie that set off a firestorm with its trailer, Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ is surprisingly bereft of any major commentary—choosing instead to merely drop the viewer into a war zone and see what happens

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“What’s so civil about war, anyway?” asked Axl Rose back in 1990, when he and his band had the world’s ear. Nobody would accuse Guns N’ Roses of being a political act like, say, U2, but releasing a single that paid homage to Martin Luther King Jr. while critiquing America’s misadventures in Vietnam was a risky move, especially considering the core demographics of their fan base. For extra pop-cultural cred, “Civil War” sampled the villainous prison warden played by Strother Martin in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke , whose ominously drawled warning of “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate” became a sort of sinister catchphrase —a euphemism suggesting progressive rhetoric wrapped around authoritarian brutality like barbed wire. It’s less that Martin’s character is worried about being understood than that he doesn’t want his charges to talk back.

Alex Garland’s Civil War is a movie with a failure to communicate, though not for lack of trying; its maker understands the visual and rhetorical language of agitprop, but he has such a limited vocabulary as a dramatist—and such a narrow agenda as a provocateur—that it doesn’t matter. There is a significant difference between movies that are polarizing because they ask difficult questions and ones that are simply designed to be divisive, and Civil War belongs decisively in the second category. Not only does the film’s depiction of a near-future America smoldering in the wreckage of its own colliding kamikaze ideologies feel borrowed from a number of other sources, but it also rings hollow, precisely because its vision of violent social collapse is so derivative. In attempting to make a movie largely about the ethical dimension of image making—a dilemma experienced by a group of war correspondents wandering through a country that’s become its own private twilight zone—Garland succeeds mostly in exposing his own limitations. He’s a pulp merchant, a purveyor of high-toned exploitation trying his best to strip-mine an anxious election-year zeitgeist while there’s still time.

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Officially, Civil War is an original screenplay, just like 2014’s Ex Machina , the wryly funny, sexily technophobic Bluebeard riff that positioned him as, if not the new Stanley Kubrick, then at least a worthy pretender. Like a lot of successful genre filmmakers—including his countryman Christopher Nolan—Garland is an inveterate magpie, subsuming aesthetic and conceptual material from a range of sources into his own vision. And whatever one thinks of films like Annihilation or Men , they are movies with a vision—carefully engineered acts of world-building suffused with atmosphere and punctuated by striking, unsettling moments. Which is why it’s all the stranger that right from the very beginning the storytelling language of Civil War feels so totally borrowed, including a pair of brazen allusions tilting toward copycatting more than homage. The first is a prologue nodding to the opening of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 in which the president of the United States (Nick Offerman) nervously rehearses a none-too-convincing victory speech from behind barricaded doors; the more he talks about his government’s impending triumph over insurgent forces—specifically, a coalition led by the state governments of Florida and Texas—the more he looks and sounds like a cornered rat. The second reference is even more on the nose: At a rally in downtown New York City, a suicide bomber clad in an American flag ignites a booby-trapped backpack, resulting in carnage whose gory imagery and stylized, ear-ringing sound design are indebted to Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men .

It’s worth noting that Fahrenheit 9/11 and Children of Men are keynote works of what could be called post-9/11 cinema— an early-millennial period when both serious and satirical American filmmakers were aligned in trying to criticize (or, in Moore’s case, outright topple) the Dubya White House. With his smug frat-boy countenance and aides who dated back to Nixon, Bush II was the poster boy for “America: Fuck yeah” and a perfect symbolic scapegoat for filmmakers running the gamut from Gus Van Sant to Sacha Baron Cohen. Two decades later, Hollywood obviously still leans mostly to the left, but the terms of engagement have changed. One thing that Barack Obama and Donald Trump had in common was that while their presidencies were both lightning rods for extremist criticism, they didn’t yield much in the way of memorable or great cinema. The closest thing to a cogent popular political allegory in that period was the ever-reliable Purge franchise, which imagined a silent, seething majority perpetually counting down the hours until a preordained, murderous, insurrectionist return of the repressed.

There’s a potentially great, cathartic dark comedy to be made about the psychology of an event like the Capitol attack of January 6, or about the dangers of unchecked autocracy manifesting as common-sense, anti-woke populism (among his myriad outrageous policy moves, Offerman’s commander in chief apparently opted to gift himself with a third term). Garland, though, is not the guy to thread that particular needle: Where a director like Jordan Peele is able to channel seriousness through sketch-comedy absurdism (including Get Out ’s earlier and superior three-term president joke), Garland doubles down on the idea that he’s doing important work. The strain is palpable. In interviews, the director has explained that Civil War was originally written before January 6 but that the shadow of the insurrection still fell over the production; talking to Dazed , he admitted that he could “detect [it] around the set” and that the bad vibes gave the production “a greater sense of anger.” It’s an interesting observation insofar as the finished film doesn’t so much seethe with rage as ooze a kind of cynical resignation—the sort that comes when a filmmaker either considers himself to be above his subject matter or isn’t being honest about his relationship to the material.

There’s certainly some kind of irony in a guy whose best work—2012’s Dredd , which Garland cowrote and produced with director Pete Travis—is an (exhilarating) exercise in hyperbolic carnage suddenly producing a sanctimonious statement against violence, but otherwise, Civil War doesn’t seem to come from a particularly personal place. Garland’s fascination with female protagonists over the years is laudable, but, as in Annihilation and Men , he can seem to conceive women only in terms of lack: The main character here is a veteran shutterbug named Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) who’s grown so inured to the sight of death and decay—and her role in sharing it with an increasingly information-starved public—that she’s basically a zombie. If that’s not enough of a cliché, she’s been given a younger kindred spirit as a combination apprentice and surrogate daughter: Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a 20-ish wannabe war correspondent whose lack of worldliness is her defining characteristic. Jessie isn’t a character, but a device; her job will be to carry the torch for journalistic integrity after her mentor (inevitably) meets her demise in the line of duty.

Lest that last bit seem like a spoiler, Civil War is the sort of movie in which hard-edged professionals grimly sit around prophesying their own fates. And although Lee’s arc is predictable, the flatness of the role is no fault of Dunst’s; like Jessie Buckley in Men , the actress inhabits Garland’s barren idea of dramaturgy so fully that she occasionally draws us all the way in with her. Spaeny, meanwhile, is livelier than she was as an anesthetized princess in Priscilla , yet Jessie isn’t much more than a cipher—a device through which we witness a series of showdowns between characters of different allegiances or tableaux testifying to the sheer photogenic brokenness of the social contract. In structural terms, Civil War is a road movie, with Lee and Jessie traveling from New York to Washington in the company of two other members of the fifth estate: a hard-drinking (and, it’s implied, possibly sexually predatory) reporter, Joel (Wagner Moura), and an ex-op-ed specialist, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), both of whom have inside information on the embattled president’s location and hopes of scoring a final interview before he’s toppled once and for all.

Civil War has been set up so that each successive rest stop bristles with a different kind of anxiety. Stopping for gas means encountering a garage’s worth of bloody strung-up dissidents, displayed like trophies for rubberneckers. Despite traveling with the word “press” emblazoned on their van and flak jackets, Lee and her merry band aren’t insulated from the surrounding dangers, and on a few occasions, they even go looking for trouble: A firefight in an abandoned apartment complex eventually finds Jessie growing into her point-and-click instincts. (The juxtaposition of different kinds of “shooting” in this movie is relentless, a pale imitation of motifs developed in Full Metal Jacket , which, like all of Kubrick’s provocations, understood the relationship between savagery and satire.)

A couple of the set pieces are effective, like an idyll in a Lynchian small town whose smiling inhabitants seem oblivious to the larger conflict (the punchline is Garland’s best and shiveriest sight gag), or a pitched battle between snipers whose worldview no longer extends beyond their own scopes. But there are also risible bits, like a nighttime drive through a forest fire where the floating, burning embers are meant as signifiers of some terrible, fatalistic beauty—a scene that, however well shot, practically vibrates with banality. And then there’s the bit featuring a wandering platoon of disillusioned, trigger-happy soldiers—a device Garland used as far back as 28 Days Later —led by a deadpan Jesse Plemons, clad in red heart-shaped shades that mock the idea of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. “What kind of Americans are you?” he asks our heroes, who, having found themselves on the wrong end of the barrel, don’t know how to answer.

The failure to communicate is ominous, but the question (and its consequences) might be even scarier if we knew what kind of America Civil War took place in. Last month at South by Southwest, Garland got in some trouble when he said that “left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state” and that he didn’t consider either to be “good or bad.” The statement may have been twisted in bad faith by the media (another irony considering the film’s faith in journalists as truth tellers), but at a minimum, it still suggests a filmmaker who doesn’t want to get his hands dirty with such crass things as sociopolitical specifics.

It may be that trying to fill in the blanks of how the sort of scenario depicted in Civil War could come to pass is a fool’s errand—an invitation to criticism that would weaken an already rickety conceptual infrastructure. (Exhibit A: a fleeting mention of “The Antifa Massacre,” which sounds more like a band name than a possible flashpoint.) But would it really be worse than using America’s current political strife as a coy structuring absence? Would it be worse than Garland acting as if such avoidance makes him the adult in the room? The ostensibly outrageous climax, meanwhile, features sequences of urban warfare meant to drop jaws, but these scenes point in such an obvious direction that the suspense is flattened while the audience is simply flattered into acquiescence. There are a number of genuinely profound movies whose thesis boils down to “war is hell,” several less expensive or pretentious than Civil War , but typically they arrive there honestly, and only after challenging their audience. Civil War , which is somehow simultaneously pedantic and frictionless, feels weirdly like a movie of the moment that won’t last—a victory lap around an observation that was already made by Axl Rose.

Adam Nayman is a film critic, teacher, and author based in Toronto; his book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together is available now from Abrams.

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10 great movies leaving netflix at the end of april.

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LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 31: Austin Butler attends the Elvis UK screening at BFI Southbank on May 31, ... [+] 2022 in London, England. (Photo by Lia Toby/Getty Images)

Sometimes the lineup of movies leaving Netflix NFLX by the end of any given month can be underwhelming—but that certainly is not the case this month. By the end of April, some incredible motion pictures will disappear from the streaming platform, including an ensemble western from Quentin Tarantino, a stark portrayal of mental health within the Batman universe, and what I personally consider to be the best horror movie of the 2020s so far. All in all, there’s a daunting amount of quality films leaving the Netflix library within the next couple weeks you do not want to miss.

So what movies should be at the top of your watchlist? Let’s dig in. Below, you’ll find my ten picks for the best movies leaving Netflix by the end of April 2024. Then at the bottom of the article, you’ll find a full list of every single movie exiting the platform by month’s end. From blockbusters to indies to every genre in between, I’m positive there’s at least one movie (and probably several more) that cater to everybody’s tastes.

The 10 Best Movies Leaving Netflix in April 2024

Train to busan (2016).

A harrowing journey unfolds on a high-speed train as a mysterious viral outbreak rapidly turns passengers into zombies, setting the scene for Train to Busan . Starring Gong Yoo as Seok-woo, a father who must protect his young daughter amidst the chaos, this Korean thriller delicately balances its relentless action with emotional stakes that keep you invested up until the final frame. The claustrophobia of the confined train only amplifies the suspense, making each decision a matter of life and death. As social norms collapse in this high-octane flick from Yeon Sang-ho, the same filmmaker who brought us projects like Peninsula , Hellbound , and JUNG UNG _E , the survivors are forced to confront not only the undead but also their own moral limits, resulting in a film that’s both a gripping horror and a heartrending commentary on humanity.

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New apple id password reset issue hitting iphone ipad and macbook users, new ios 18 ai security move changes the game for all iphone users, the florida project (2017).

On the periphery of Orlando's glittering theme parks, the stark reality of life at a budget motel unfolds in The Florida Project . This A24 production from director Sean Baker, who has directed several other indies like Starlet , Tangerine , and Red Rocket , explores the summer of a precocious six-year-old girl named Moonee, played by Brooklynn Prince, who filters her challenging environment through a lens of wonder and mischief. The juxtaposition of childhood innocence with the harsh realities faced by her young mother, portrayed by Bria Vinaite, and the gruff, caring motel manager played by Willem Dafoe, offers a vivid glimpse into the less seen side of poverty. The film touchingly highlights the stark contrast between the manufactured joy nearby and the struggles of those living on the margins.

Elvis (2022)

In Elvis , the turbulent life of rock and roll icon Elvis Presley is dramatized through the Baz Luhrmann filter, featuring a career-defining performance by Hollywood’s most exciting young thespian, Austin Butler. Chronicling Elvis’s meteoric rise to fame and his complex relationships, particularly with his manipulative manager Colonel Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks, the film paints a rich tableau of mid-20th century America. From the glitz and glamour of celebrity to the personal battles with identity and control, this story from Luhrmann, who previously brought us classics like Romeo + Juliet , Moulin Rouge , and The Great Gatsby , captures the vibrancy and the shadows of Elvis's life, exploring how his revolutionary music and troubled presence reflected the changing American landscape.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Amidst a blizzard in post-Civil War Wyoming, tensions rise and secrets unravel in a stagecoach lodge where “The Hateful Eight” find shelter. This ensemble cast, including Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, are drawn together by necessity but divided by past crimes and mysteries. This incredibly underrated Quentin Tarantino film slowly simmers as each character's backstory is revealed, leading to betrayal and violence. Crafted with rich dialogue and intense character development that we find in other Tarantino projects—from Pulp Fiction to Inglourious Basterds to Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood— the unpredictable story keeps you guessing, making for a thrilling examination of deception and survival in a confined and volatile setting.

Joker (2019)

Set against the gritty backdrop of Gotham City in Batman’s cinematic universe, Joker delves into the psyche of Arthur Fleck, a failed comedian who transforms into the infamous titular villain. Joaquin Phoenix's portrayal of this dejected man’s descent into madness earned him an Academy Award, as his harrowing performance captured the essence of a man marginalized by society. This origin story from comedy master Todd Phillips, who brought us gems like Road Trip , Old School , and the Hangover film series, provides a dark and unsettling look at the complexities of mental illness and societal neglect, challenging the our collective perception of a character traditionally viewed only as a villain. This Best Picture nominee’s bold story and stylistic choices create a stark, visceral experience that redefines superhero cinema.

Down with the King (2021)

Down with the King features a famous rapper, Mercury Maxwell, played by Freddie Gibbs, who seeks solace from his high-pressure career in the serene farmlands of Massachusetts. However, his escape from the music scene leads to unexpected self-reflection as he forms connections with the local residents. This introspective journey directed by Diego Ongaro challenges Mercury’s aspirations and desires, leading to profound questions about identity and fulfillment outside the fame that has defined him. Forget what you’d typically expect from a hood film and think more Lost in Translation set in the forest. This unique film beautifully contrasts the tranquility of rural life with the tumultuous inner world of a public figure at a crossroads, offering a thoughtful exploration of life beyond the spotlight.

Malignant (2021)

In Malignant , Madison is plagued by visions of gruesome murders—which she soon discovers are not just nightmares but terrifying realities. As these horrific premonitions begin to manifest physically, she is forced to confront her own past to unravel the connection between her visions and the violent acts they foretell. This horror thriller starring Annabelle Wallis takes audiences on a twisting journey that challenges the boundaries between illusion and reality, weaving a tale filled with suspense and shocking revelations. James Wan's as-expected innovative approach to the genre—which is frequently on display in his other films, like The Conjuring , Aquaman , and Insidious —keeps viewers enthralled and guessing up until one of the most unexpected plot twists in recent memory.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Silver Linings Playbook narrates the life of Pat Solitano, portrayed by Bradley Cooper, who, after spending time in a mental institution, moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. His life takes an unexpected turn when he meets Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, a young widow with her own troubled past. As they partner up for a dance competition, their friendship offers them both a chance to heal and find silver linings in their struggles. This film from the award-winning David O. Russell, who has made a name for himself with heralded films like Three Kings , The Fighter , and American Hustle , balances humor with the emotional weight of mental health issues, crafting a heartwarming story about the unpredictability of life and the importance of second chances.

Whiplash (2014)

Whiplash captures the intense dynamics between a promising young drummer and his formidable music instructor in an elite conservatory. Andrew Neiman, played by Miles Teller, aspires to greatness, but finds himself under the rigorous and sometimes brutal tutelage of Terence Fletcher, portrayed by J.K. Simmons (who won an Oscar for his unbelievably intense performance). Their relationship tests the limits of ambition, talent, and sanity, illustrating the sacrifices required for mastery in the arts. The film from Damien Chazelle, who created deeply adored experiences such as La La Land and Babylon , features pulsating jazz soundtrack and sharp editing style mirror the high stakes and pressure-filled environment, making it a compelling study of obsession and the pursuit of perfection in the competitive world of music.

The Meg (2018)

Almost every movie on this list can be appreciated for its emotionally enriching story and captivating characters. But sometimes...you just need a dumb movie after a long hard day. In steps The Meg , where t he discovery of a massive prehistoric shark known as the Megalodon brings terror to the crew of an underwater research facility. Jason Statham stars as a deep-sea rescue diver tasked with stopping the monstrous creature before it can wreak havoc on the world. Combining science fiction with explosive action, this insane film from Jon Turteltaub, who gave us other goofy entertainers like the National Treasure films, delivers thrilling sequences as mortal humans confront this seemingly immortal ancient predator. With its high-stakes adventure and spectacular underwater scenes, The Meg offers a gripping tale of survival against a seemingly unstoppable force.

Every Movie Leaving Netflix in April 2024

Note: The dates mark your final days to watch these movies.

• April 22 : Perfume Imaginary Museum (2020); The Meg (2018); Train to Busan (2016)
• April 24 : Shepherds and Butchers (2016); Sniper: Assassin’s End (2020); Sniper: Ultimate Kill (2017); The Hateful Eight (2015)
• April 25 : Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016); Loving is Losing (2019); Njan Prakashan (2018)
• April 26 : Malignant (2021)
• April 30 : 13 Going on 30 (2004); 27 Dresses (2008); 30 Days of Night (2007); Above Suspicion (2019); Anger Management (2003); Annabelle (2014); Antz (1998); Apollo 13 (1995); Beethoven (1992); Bird on a Wire (1990); Cowboys & Aliens (2011); Desperado (1995); Down with the King (2021); Dumb and Dumber (1994); Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Death Squads (Limited Series); Elvis (2022); Erin Brockovich (2000); Fletch (1985); Fried Green Tomatoes (1991); How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014); Igor (2008); Joker (2019); Jurassic Park (1993); Jurassic Park III (2001); Kindergarten Cop (1990); King Kong (2005); Legion (2010); Love & Basketball (2000); Mamma Mia! (2008); Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again! (2018); Margot at the Wedding (2007) Munafik 2 (2018); Parenthood (1989); Play Misty for Me (1971); Silver Linings Playbook (2012); Silverado (1985); Sincerely Yours, Dhaka (2018); Sixteen Candles (1984); Soul Surfer (2011); Step Brothers (2008); Sun Cry Moon (2019); Sur Sapata (2019); Tammy (2014); The ‘Burbs (1989); The Change-Up (2011); The First Purge (2018); The Flintstones (1994); The Florida Project (2017); The Glass Castle (2017); The Good Shepherd (2006); The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997); The Other Side of the Mountain (1975); The Purge: Election Year (2016); The Sting (1973); The Yeti Adventures (2018); Tom and Jerry (2021); Twins (1988); Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? (2010); Underworld: Evolution (2006); Vanquish (2021); Warrior (2011); Whiplash (2014); Why Did I Get Married? (2007); Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008); Zoom: Academy for Superheroes (2006)

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Quentin Tarantino scraps plans for his final film – reports

The 61-year-old director, who says he will retire after his 10th film, has abandoned The Movie Critic, according to industry reports

Quentin Tarantino has reportedly abandoned his plans for The Movie Critic, the film that was to be his 10th and final project.

Deadline reported on Thursday that an anonymous source close to Tarantino had confirmed the news, reporting that Tarantino had “simply changed his mind” about making The Movie Critic and would be “going back to the drawing board to figure out what that final movie will be”.

The 61-year-old director has long said he would only make 10 films before retiring . He has said that he considers Kill Bill to be one film, although it was split into two parts, and that he does not count his first project, an amateur film called My Best Friend’s Birthday that was never released, towards the total.

The Movie Critic, which was set to be his 10th film and would star Brad Pitt , was inspired by Tarantino’s job as a teenager: loading porn magazines into a vending machine.

“All the other stuff was too skanky to read, but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page,” Tarantino told Deadline in 2023 . He said the film “is based on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag … He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell.”

“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic,” Tarantino later said, of his unnamed inspiration. “I think he was a very good critic. He was cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic.”

The Movie Critic was to be set in California in 1977 and the critic would be working for a fictional publication called The Popstar Pages, Tarantino had confirmed. He also said he was looking for a lead “in the 35-year-old ball park” and “a new leading man for me”.

It had been rumoured that Pitt would play his Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood character Cliff Booth, who was a big movie fan in Tarantino’s novelisation of the film .

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Production on the film was previously delayed when Tarantino decided to rewrite the script.

Tarantino has previously returned to projects after shelving them: in 2014 he temporarily cancelled his plans to make The Hateful Eight when a rough draft of the film’s script leaked online after he shared it with a small group of actors . After calling this a “betrayal” and saying “I have no desire to make it”, The Hateful Eight was eventually made and released in 2015.

• Quentin Tarantino
• The Hateful Eight
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

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