Holes (2003)

Based on Louis Sachar’s book of the same name, “Holes” is a staple film for an entire generation. Starring Shia LaBeouf, Sigourney Weaver, Patricia Arquette and more, the story centers on Stanley Yelnats (LaBeouf) who is unfortunately part of a cursed family. Yes, literally. It doesn’t get too supernatural though; it’s just a great neo-Western. Plus, it’s been too long since “Dig It” by The D Tent Boys was in your head.

Wayne’s World (1992)

As far as “SNL” sketches go, “Wayne’s World” may just have the longest legacy at this point. Are we worthy? No. Are we grateful? For sure. Starring Mike Meyers — this actually marks his film debut — and Dana Carvey, this comedy earned love from both critics and fans, and right now you can watch it for free!

The Heat (2013)

Paul Feig has a pretty deep comedy catalogue, but “The Heat” is arguably one of his very best. It stars Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as law enforcement officials who get forced together on a case, despite their opposite personalities — Bullock is an uptight FBI agent, McCarthy is a rough-and-tumble cop. Yes, it’s a buddy-cop movie with two very funny ladies. It’s worth revisiting.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

“Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” is pretty much everything you could want from a Jason Statham action flick. Statham does his thing, every line delivery from Aubrey Plaza is pitch perfect, Josh Hartnett stars as a sweet semi-himbo, and Cary Elwes gets to be a little dastardly. If you’re looking for much else from an action movie, I don’t know what to tell you, your standards are too high.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)

Angela Bassett, Regina King and Whoopi Goldberg. Need we say more? As summer draws to a close, you can send it out properly by going to Jamaica with Stella and watching her fall in love again (having a blast while doing it). This movie is considered one of Bassett’s best, and you can see why pretty clearly when you watch it.

The Wiz (1978)

With “Wicked: For Good” on the way and “The Wizard of Oz” headed to The Sphere in Las Vegas, make sure you don’t leave out another excellent retelling of the story. Starring legends including Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and more, the film takes full advantage of the voices it has in its cast. Ease on down the road while you wait for the next piece of “Wicked.”

Robots (2005)

It’s been 20 years since “Robots” hit theaters, and really, you may not remember it at all. So, we think it’s time to revisit. It’s got Robin Williams, it’s got peak Amanda Bynes and so many more in its cast, and it’s just kind of delightfully silly. It arguably should’ve gotten a sequel, and discussions did happen, but Blue Sky animation instead focused on its “Ice Age” franchise.

“Dazed and Confused”

Few films evoke high school memories as strongly as “Dazed and Confused,” Richard Linklater’s follow-up to his 1990 feature debut, “Slacker.” The film features a sprawling cast of high schoolers, filled with incoming freshmen, rising seniors and everything in between, as they coalesce on the final day of the school year. The movie may take place in 1970s Texas, featuring hazing rituals and pastimes that may seem alien to today’s current crop of high schoolers, yet the feelings depicted within Linklater’s lackadaisical story remain eternal.

“Dazed and Confused” is surely a funny film, with a number of riotous moments that hold up well. In many ways, it’s one of the ultimate hangout movies, an easy watch that also has immense depth. Linklater perfectly renders the high school experience: the want to be liked, the desire to fit in, the simultaneous feeling that you’ve never been more caged and you’ll never be more free, the frustration that those around you are losers but the losers seem to be having more fun. It’s a miraculous movie, and still one of Linklater’s best.

“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”

In August, Netflix added an Amy Heckerling two-hander, adding the director’s debut (“Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) and her most popular feature (“Clueless“) to the service. It’s hard to imagine “Fast Times” as a debut. The film helped launch the careers of several notable stars, including Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forest Whitaker and a slew of others (such as Nicolas Cage, Anthony Edwards and Eric Stoltz in minor roles).

The comic elements of this high school coming-of-age story land well. Reinhold establishes himself as a comedy lead as Brad Hamilton, a high school senior bouncing from job to job and pondering whether he can do better as a “free man” away from his girlfriend of two years. Penn gives a lights out performance as Jeff Spicoli, an eternal stoner who unwittingly finds himself in a feud with history teacher Mr. Hand (played impeccably by Ray Walston). 40 years later, Spicoli remains an iconic performance on the level of comedy movie classics.

Heckerling and screenwriter Cameron Crowe (who based the film on a book he wrote while undercover as a high school student) add emotional weight to “Fast Times” through the central character of 15-year-old Stacy Hamilton (Brad’s younger sister, played by Leigh). Leigh commands her half of this film, playing a young woman looking for romance and sex with nuance and empathy. It’s a phenomenal performance, one that helps elevate “Fast Times” from just another high school comedy to being one of the all-time classics.

“Groundhog Day”

One of the best rom-coms of all time, “Groundhog Day” features Bill Murray as a man who refuses to change until he gets bored of everything else. Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin’s holiday-themed comedy sees weatherman Phil Connors (Murray) stuck in Punxsutawney, PA, reliving the same day on loop for years. It’s a brilliant premise for a comedy, one that has been, ironically, used over and over again.

Murray excels at playing Connors as both hopelessly selfish and believably changed. It is just as fun to see him playing God as it is rewarding to see him finally consider the people around him. Andie MacDowell, meanwhile, plays a strong opposite, showing someone who doesn’t need to be trapped in Hell to think a small town can be interesting and beautiful. For a movie based on repeating its scenes, you would think “Groundhog Day” wouldn’t make a rewarding rewatch, but this comedy could be played on loop without getting old.

“Midnight Run”

It sounds silly to imply that Robert De Niro doesn’t get enough credit as an actor — but when it comes to comedies, does Robert De Niro get enough credit as an actor? Anyone unfamiliar with his skills as a comedian need look no further than “Midnight Run.” Soon after Martin Brest made “Beverly Hills Cop,” he directed this buddy movie from screenwriter George Gallo. The film follows De Niro as Jack Walsh, a jaded bounty hunter who attempts to bring in Mafia accountant Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin) while being pursued by various parties.

“Midnight Run” is buddy comedy filmmaking at its best, a tight, effective script with a slew of engaging character actors and hilarious sequences. De Niro and Grodin have off-the-charts chemistry in their painfully slow evolution from adversaries to begrudging allies to eventual friends. It may not be a drama, but this is a hall of fame performance from De Niro.

“One of Them Days”

As the concept of the cinematic comedy hangs on for dear life, 2025 provided the genre a reprieve. This year saw several outrageously funny films rock theaters, with cringe-out instantly classics like Tim Robinson and Andrew DeYoung’s “Friendship” and joke-a-minute throwbacks like Liam Neeson and Akiva Schaffer’s “The Naked Gun.” Way back in January, Keke Palmer, SZA and Lawrence Lamont’s “One of Them Days” started the year off on the strongest foot imaginable.

“One of Them Days” follows roommates Dreux (Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) as they try to make it through the day from hell. When the pair discovers that their rent payment was misused on the way to their landlord, they have mere hours to come up with the $1,500 they need to keep their apartment. This takes them on an odyssey throughout South L.A., one involving blood banks, vindictive gang leaders and a Terminator-like quest for vengeance. Palmer continues to leap off the screen with the infectious energy she demonstrated in projects like “Nope,” while SZA delivers a phenomenal comic performance in her cinematic debut.

“Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping”

If “The Naked Gun” had you rolling the theater aisles, be sure to check out Akiva Schaffer’s other directorial efforts, including and especially “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” The mocumentary, starring the Lonely Island trio of Schaffer, Jorma Taccone and Andy Samberg, tells the story of fictional popstar Conner4Real (Samberg) as his career reaches a new low.

Listening to the soundtrack alone would be an enjoyable experience, featuring extended versions of the songs in the film. Highlights include Samberg bragging about his own humility and fighting for gay rights while repeatedly underscoring that he, himself, is straight.

The film itself plays in much the same way as Schaffer’s “Naked Gun” reboot, with every few seconds bringing a new joke that’s genius, absurd or some mixture of the two. If you’ve ever even passively laughed at a Lonely Island gag, “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” will be well worth the watch.

“Shiva Baby”

“Shiva Baby” has the honor of being the only film on this list that could also be described as a horror movie. There are no jump scares or murderers or anything like that. The film simply catches tension by placing viewers in a nightmare scenario: a gathering you don’t want to be at with people you don’t want to see asking questions you don’t have answers for.

Emma Seligman’s feature directorial debut (adapting her short film of the same name) introduced many audiences to Rachel Sennott, who has since gone in to become a comedy star in films like “Bodies Bodies Bodies,” “Saturday Night” and Seligman’s “Bottoms.” Sennott stars as Danielle, a 20-something with no professional prospects who goes with her parents to a shiva observance with their family and friends. Also in attendance are Danielle’s ex-girlfriend (Molly Gordon) and current sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari), along with his wife (Dianna Agron) and child.

In “Shiva Baby,” Seligman created a perfect artifact of anxiety, ratcheting tension and discomfort through her mercifully short (yet somehow eternal) 78-minute feature. She and Sennott are a match made in heaven, with the comic performer knowing exactly how to capture every awful aspect of being at a family gathering in your early 20s. “Shiva Baby” is one of the strongest debuts of the 2020s, and an absolute hell of a comedy.

“10 Things I Hate About You”

only Adapting William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” in a 1990s schoolyard setting, the Julia Stiles/Heath Ledger-starring “10 Things I Hate About You” is a gold standard for teenage rom coms. Only four years in the wake of “Clueless” — a megahit modern-day update of Jane Austen’s “Emma” — it would be easy for a movie like this to feel like derivative old news.

Yet the film carries an infectious energy from moment one, mixing bursts of Shakespeare-like language with more modern parlance (“The mewling, rampalian wretch herself. Stay cool, bro” comes to mind). From director Gil Junger and writers Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, “10 Things I Hate About You” holds up 26 years later as a thoroughly enjoyable and well-crafted teen movie that frequently feels like lightning in a bottle.

“District 9”

“District 9” being a feature directorial debut feels impossible. Former VFX artist Neill Blomkamp smashed onto the scene in 2009 with his science fiction phenomenon, a much longer adaptation of his own six-minute short film “Alive in Joburg.” Blomkamp expands upon the already interesting ideas presented in this short, fleshing them out into a full-length feature unencumbered by the same temporal or monetary limitations. The documentary techniques and cinema verite style employed by Blomkamp and cinematographer Trent Opaloch further immerses viewers in the world of “District 9,” one that feels fully realized wherever the extraterrestrial Prawns are concerned.

“John Wick: Chapter 4”

Every movie in the “John Wick” series (sans “Ballerina”) joined Hulu on Aug. 15, allowing fans to stream one of the defining action stories of the 21st century. Each of the films, starring Keanu Reeves as the titular Boogeyman-like assassin, carry their weight, showing a franchise evolution from a nearly straight-to-DVD revenge story to a sprawling, set piece-heavy epic of a finale (for now). You won’t make a mistake by queuing up any of these movies.

But “John Wick: Chapter 4” stands far ahead of the rest of the pack. The film boasts some of the finest action sequences of all time, playing up the physical comedy found across the franchise (the last act in particular plays like a bloody, hour-long dance). Chad Stahelski fine tunes every already admirable aspect of the series to create a stunning conclusion, one where Reeves delivers his best performance as the character to date. A brief scene involving John Wick in a church is one of the actor’s finest moments.

“John Wick: Chapter 4” widens the aperture in an already sprawling underworld, introducing a new cast of characters that feels both enormous and focused. One of the film’s strongest aspects is the introduction of Donnie Yen as Caine, a blind assassin and friend of Wick’s who is sent to kill his former ally. Caine provides a strong foil to Wick, someone who has yet to escape the underworld and struggles to avoid the death of a loved one — essentially, he’s playing a version of John from before the franchise started. In this dichotomy, Stahelski and writers Shay Hatten and Michael Finch find a way to layer a compelling narrative about friendship and loyalty without sacrificing a beat in their massive action epic.

“The Monkey”

Less than a year after the release of “Longlegs,” Osgood Perkins followed his dark and dreary serial killer film with a horror movie with a strikingly more comic tone. “The Monkey” adapts Stephen King’s short story of the same name about a wind-up primate whose cymbals clash as a warning of impending doom (in Perkins’ movie, copyright issues caused the monkey to become a drummer instead). Perkins and star actor Theo James, who plays twin brothers in the film, steer hard into the silliness and absurdity of the story while playing it entirely straight.

What results is an uproarious horror flick both handsomely directed and frequently hilarious. With each progressive death, the gimmick of the monkey only gets funnier, with James’ dual characters treating the wind-up simian as death incarnate. It’s a film both gory and goofy, boasting the same craft as “Longlegs” while seeing Perkins operate in a different register. 2025 is packed with King adaptations, and “The Monkey” started them off on the right paw.

“Pretty Woman”

In August, Hulu added Garry Marshall’s romantic comedy “Pretty Woman,” starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. Roberts received a much-deserved Oscar nomination for the role, delivering a performance that wholly elevates the material. Her chemistry with Gere is off the charts, making them an iconic pair in the ’90s rom-com landscape. These two hold the film afloat with unimpeachable performances that help elevate “Pretty Woman” into one of the most recognizable entries in the genre.

“Raising Arizona”

In the Coen brothers’ second feature, Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter play an odd couple. H.I. McDunnough is a former criminal (they’ve got a name for people like him, a parole board chairman tells Hi, and that name is called “recidivism”). His wife, Ed, is a former police officer. The pair falls in love through a series of meet cute bookings and endeavors to have a child; however, they soon learn that Ed can’t have children, and Hi’s criminal past makes adoption an uphill battle (Ed’s police service, it turns out, does not overrule Hi’s offenses). When the couple learns of wealthy furniture magnate Nathan Arizona’s surprise quintuplets, they decide to do his family a favor by taking a baby off their hands.

If “Raising Arizona” aspired only to be a broad comedy, it would likely work fine, fueled by cartoony set pieces and beyond over-the-top accents. Yet the Coen brothers inject the film with the same patience and cinematic artistry as can be found in any of their character-driven dramas. The central conflict between Hi and Ed is a compelling one, depicting two people who want desperately to be parents and do the right thing, but who are not fully prepared for either. They want to do “everything decent and normal from here on out.”

But Hi, a recidivist in Reagan’s America, can’t quite figure out how to make that happen. He wants to be a father without passing too much of himself onto his son. “I fear that if I stay, I would only bring bad trouble on the heads of you and Nathan Jr.” he writes to Ed late in the film. “I feel the thunder gathering even now. If I leave, hopefully it will leave with me.” It’s both an emotional and a hilarious performance from Cage, building to a gut punch of a final scene.

“Ready or Not”

“Ready or Not” is one of the surprise horror films of the 2010s, making a meal out of what sounds like a truly forgettable premise: what if there was a horror movie about hide and seek? Radio Silence filmmakers Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (the team behind 2022’s “Scream” and “Scream VI”) somehow find gold in this premise, delivering a hilarious thrill ride about a new bride (Samara Weaving) trying to survive a children’s game with her cultish in-laws on her wedding night. Weaving makes a meal out of this intensely physical performance, immediately crowning herself as a scream queen for a new generation — literally. Her guttural, vibrato-heavy yell in the film’s final act needs to be heard to be believed.