This weekend sees the release of not one, but two sci-fi epics in the form of Dune: Part Two and Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver on VOD and streaming. If neither of those strikes your fancy, don’t worry; we’ve once again descended into the backlog of Netflix’s streaming library to bring you a trio of the best sci-fi movies to watch in April.
This month’s picks include John Carpenter’s 1984 sci-fi body-horror romance starring Jeff Bridges, an underrated post-apocalyptic blockbuster about mobile city fortresses duking it out for resources, and an anime adaptation of a cult-classic cyberpunk manga.
Let’s take a look at what this month has to offer!
Editor’s pick: Starman
Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Director: John Carpenter Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith
The pitch “John Carpenter’s version of Close Encounters” conjures a far different image for fans of the Halloween director than what his 1984 film Starman turned out to be. The film kicks off with a sleek spaceship descending upon Earth in a frame not too far off from the opening of The Thing. There’s even a bit of body horror: When the alien creeps into the home of the recently widowed Jenny (Karen Allen), the entity uses bits of DNA of her deceased husband to recast his corporeal self — growing from baby to toddler to teen to adult Jeff Bridges in mere seconds. It’s sick! Then Carpenter gets all mushy in his most romantic film to date.
Starman is a sci-fi film through and through — the alien visits our planet after intercepting Voyager 2’s golden disc, and its arrival sparks a classic Spielbergian cat-and-mouse game between bumbling feds and the on-the-lam ET — but in having the alien assume the form of Jenny’s dead husband, Carpenter burrows deeper into human mortality than these screen stories tend to go. Allen, spiraling in an impossible situation, and Bridges, mixing his alien’s hyperintelligence with childlike wonder, have the chemistry to make a silly story sing. Jenny knows the man in her passenger seat isn’t her husband, but he is a second chance. Carpenter mines the dreamlike premise for all the sap, leaning on Jack Nitzsche’s unforgettable score to swell at just the right moments. Starman is pure Hollywood romance, and proof that boxing a director into one genre is the quickest way to limit greatness. —Matt Patches
Mortal Engines
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Director: Christian Rivers Cast: Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving
An underrated post-apocalyptic blockbuster from many of the people who made the Lord of the Rings movies, Mortal Engines was a box-office bomb but deserved much better. Set in a future where cities are mobile and big cities hunt smaller ones, the story follows a young assassin (Hera Hilmar) who seeks to take out a power-hungry leader (Hugo Weaving). Along the way, she finds allies (Jihae) and maybe even a bit of love (Robert Sheehan).
But the characters or narrative aren’t Mortal Engines’main selling point (although Weaving does fully and delightfully commit to an over-the-top villainous performance). Instead, it’s the fantastic production design and creative world-building that make Mortal Engines feel like a breath of fresh air in the sequel/prequel/remake-heavy sci-fi blockbuster landscape. Now that it’s newly on Netflix, check out one of the 2010s’ most undeserved flops. —Pete Volk
Blame!
Image: Polygon Pictures/Netflix
Director: Hiroyuki Seshita Cast: Takahiro Sakurai, Kana Hanazawa, Sora Amamiya
Alongside the likes of H.R. Giger and Shinya Tsukamoto, Tsutomu Nihei is one of the most prolific artists associated with the subgenre of posthuman science fiction, emphasizing horrific man-machine hybrids and massive, desolate worlds set in the far future.
Nihei’s 1997 manga Blame! is inarguably his magnum opus — a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk saga about a mysterious warrior known as “Killy” wandering the metallic wastelands of an Earth overrun by a techno-organic virus. Adapted into a feature-length anime by director Hiroyuki Seshita (Knights of Sidonia), Blame! streamlines the manga’s story into a single adventure in Killy’s quest to find a means of undoing the virus that has reshaped the world and endangered humanity’s last remaining descendents.
While the film loses some of the evocative, wordless melancholy of the manga in its translation from page to screen, it lacks none of the scale and depth of its world-building and vistas. The action is punishing and electrifying, as Killy contends with monstrous killer androids and a ruthless antagonist hellbent on killing as many impure humans (i.e., everyone) as possible. Blame! is a worthy adaptation of the source material, as well as a worthwhile watch for anyone who considers themself a fan of dark sci-fi animation. —Toussaint Egan
April is nearly here and spring has sprung, which means it’s time to comb through the best movies leaving streaming services at the end of this month and plan accordingly.
This month’s lineup is an eclectic assortment of classics, crowd-pleasers, and cerebral gems. Jonathan Glazer’s 2000 debut, Sexy Beast starring Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley, is a top priority; you must watch that if you haven’t already. Other picks include the sci-fi horror film Underwater, starring Love Lies Bleeding’s Kristen Stewart, Kathryn Bigelow’s elusive cyberpunk thriller Strange Days, a classic martial arts action film starring the inimitable Sonny Chiba, and more.
Whatever you’re looking for, there are options for you, with the added urgency of “you won’t be able to watch this here next month.”
Here are the best movies you should watch before they leave streaming this March.
Editor’s pick
Sexy Beast
Image: FilmFour/Fox Searchlight Pictures
Director: Jonathan Glazer Cast: Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Ian McShane Leaving Criterion Channel: March 31
Earlier this month, Jonathan Glazer took home the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, his first Oscar win in his 30-plus-year career. Glazer has only directed four features in that time, each one more cerebral and astounding than the last. His first film, Sexy Beast, is arguably his most “commercial” effort to date — and even that qualifier feels like a stretch: It’s a black comedy crime drama that plays out with the nail-biting tension of a horror thriller.
The film centers on Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone), a career criminal happily whiling away his retirement in Costa del Sol with his wife and friends. Gal is suddenly plagued by a visit from Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), a former associate who has come to recruit him for a upcoming heist. Don is a foul-mouthed, emotionally manipulative sociopath who delights in incessantly berating those around him and bending people to his whim, so when Gal refuses his offer, Don makes it his mission to make Gal’s life a living hell until the job is done.
Glazer’s stellar direction and Ivan Bird’s dreamlike cinematography are what set Sexy Beast apart from other crime movies of its era. So does Kingsley’s scene-stealing performance as a malevolent agent of chaos, who blows in like a bad omen to wreak emotional and physical havoc on anyone and anything unfortunate enough to be close to him. That’s not even mentioning the score, which includes contributions from U.K. trip-hop outfit Unkle, who Glazer previously collaborated with on the music video for their 1998 single “Rabbit in Your Headlights.” Sexy Beast is an exhilarating, thorny, and terrifying case study in emotional manipulation that also happens to be a superb heist movie, and you should absolutely make it your priority to see it if you haven’t already. —Toussaint Egan
One of the most influential action movies ever made, The Street Fighter is a gloriously violent display of Sonny Chiba’s unique star power, as he rips and tears his way through a bunch of gangsters and lowlifes. Decades later, Chiba’s son Mackenyu (One Piece) is carrying that legacy forward… albeit in a slightly less violent fashion.
The first movie to receive an X rating in the U.S. because of violence, The Street Fighter not only inspired the title of the fighting game series, it also introduced the idea of X-ray fatalities, directly influencing Mortal Kombat. If you’re a fighting game fan and you’ve never seen The Street Fighter, this is your chance to fix that. —Pete Volk
Movies to watch on Hulu
Underwater
Photo: Alan Markfield/20th Century Fox
Director: William Eubank Cast: Kristen Stewart, Vincent Cassel, Mamoudou Athie Leaving Hulu: March 31
Underwater is a lean genre project with B-movie flair and solid execution. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Kristen Stewart stars as the mechanical engineer of a research and drilling facility at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. When disaster strikes and part of the facility is destroyed, she joins the remaining survivors in their attempt to make it out alive. With a strong cast (with the exception of T.J. Miller, who is graciously killed very early in the movie), solid direction by William Eubank (who just directed the solid action thriller Land of Bad), and a tight script from Brian Duffield (No One Will Save You), Underwater is a fun popcorn sci-fi thriller. And with Love Lies Bleeding now out in theaters, why not check out an underrated Kristen Stewart project? —PV
Movies to watch on Max
Strange Days
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: Kathryn Bigelow Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis Leaving Max: March 31
Strange Days is a cult classic whose reputation is defined in no small part by how difficult it has been to watch on streaming. Max added the movie to its platform in January 2023, but not all good things last.
Set in a futuristic Los Angeles just two days before the end of the 20th century, Strange Days follows Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a black-market broker dealing in an illicit technology that allows the user to record their own memories and physical sensations and experience them after the fact. When Lenny comes across a recording that threatens to implicate the LAPD in a high-profile murder, he’s forced to turn to his old friend Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett) in order to uncover the origins behind the recording while staying one step ahead of a mysterious killer that wants him dead.
Conceived by producer James Cameron and inspired by the 1992 LA riots that erupted in the wake of the infamous Rodney King trial, Strange Days is a pitch-black sci-fi thriller that touches on institutional racism, voyeurism, societal collapse, and sexual violence, the latter of which is focused primarily on women and Black people. It’s a hard watch — but nevertheless a worthwhile one that rewards its audience with a trio of terrific performances and a strikingly original vision of a bygone alternate future. —TE
Movies to watch on Prime Video
The Swordsman
Image: Well Go USA Entertainment
Director: Jae-Hoon Choi Cast: Jang Hyuk, Kim Hyeon-so Leaving Prime: March 31
There’s no shortage of terrific Korean action movies. If you’re specifically looking for one that’s a stylish, emotional historical drama with fast and frenzied swordplay, I would highly recommend The Swordsman. Set in the aftermath of the Joseon dynasty, the movie follows the story of Tae-yul, the former bodyguard of King Gwanghaegun, who lives in seclusion with his daughter, Tae-ok.
Taey-yul has been afflicted with a condition that threatens to rob him of his sight, and in order to cure it, he’ll need special herbs afforded only to the most well-connected of families. Desperate to help her father, Tae-ok accepts an offer to serve a wealthy family in exchange for the medicine, but when she is inadvertently kidnapped as part of a larger conflict, Tae-yul is forced to come out of hiding to come to her rescue.
Joe Taslim of The Raid and Warrior fame shines as Gurutai, a sneering slave trader and Qing emissary who serves as the film’s primary antagonist. The action itself is terrific, but what really elevates The Swordsman as a whole is Tae-yul grappling with his rapidly diminishing eyesight and the unfolding tragedy of his backstory conveyed through flashbacks. At an hour and a half, it’s a perfect action film to pop on and watch over the weekend. —TE
There’s plenty of great thriller films to watch on Netflix. But if you prefer your stories to be more procedural, there’s just as many fantastic TV series to choose from on the service.
We’ve put together our conspiracy corkboards, crunched the numbers, and followed the money to bring you our list of the top suspects for the best thriller TV series to watch on Netflix. From modern classics like David Fincher’s Mindhunter and You to pulse-pounding murder mysteries like Erased and more, Netflix has a selection of thriller TV just waiting to become your next obsession.
Here are the best thriller series you can watch right now on Netflix. Our latest update added The Diplomat as our editor’s pick.
A throwback to the kind of plot-heavy political thriller that used to run television (and the screwball comedies of days gone by), The Diplomat is a delightful star vehicle for Keri Russell. She is Kate Wyler, a whip-smart career diplomat whose plans are thrown into disarray when her upcoming assignment in Afghanistan is changed to what seems to be a cushy post as the new U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom. For Kate, who loves her work and is very good at it, this is a clear downgrade, but the more power-focused people in her life (including her conniving husband Hal, played by Rufus Sewell) are delighted by the new role. What follows is a whirlwind of intrigue and mystery, with snappy dialogue, strong chemistry between the leads, and plenty of twists and turns.
After courting many viewers for its first season, The Diplomat will return for a second. We can’t wait, especially after the first season’s cliffhanger ending. —Pete Volk
Babylon Berlin
Image: X Filme Creative Pool
Bad things are coming to 1929 Berlin. We know this, of course — with the vantage point of history, the Weimar Republic era was marked by economic insecurity and the beginning of the Nazi Party. But the ’20s in the world of Babylon Berlin exist just before that horror, when the degeneracy from all that economic downturn could give way to roaring ’20s clubs just as easily as unending darkness.
That tension is captured in Babylon Berlin by two protagonists: Gereon Rath (a soft and strong Volker Bruch), a vice inspector on a secret mission to take down an extortion ring, and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries, all vinegar and chutzpah), the new police clerk who moonlights as a sex worker. Together they provide two very distinct vantage points on the Weimar Republic’s waning days, exposing the rot of what’s to come at the same time they find hope in what could’ve been.
Babylon Berlin’s trick is by not getting ahead of itself. The show is perhaps one of the slower boils on this list; the thrills of the mystery, such as they are, come from meticulous pacing. Answers don’t come easy, and a whole country’s politics don’t change overnight. Babylon Berlin is a web of history and conspiracy, and by taking those elements equally seriously and methodically, you get a twisty, hardboiled detective story for the ages. —Zosha Millman
Bodies
Image: Netflix
Solving a murder is hard enough, but how do you go about apprehending a culprit whose crime literally transcends space and time?
Bodies is a terrific cerebral whodunit with an excellent ensemble cast whose stories weave into one another effortlessly as the series builds and the mystery deepens. Created by Paul Tomalin (Torchwood) and based on Si Spencer’s 2014 comic, this sci-fi crime thriller follows four detectives living in different time periods of London who find themselves investigating a strange murder. What’s so strange about it? Well, the victim’s body appears — and reappears — in each time period in the exact same location. What’s even stranger is that the victim was last seen alive in 2053, despite being seen dead both in that year and as early as 1890.
A engrossing drama that feels like a mashup between Class of ’09, Dark, and Alex Garland’s Devs, Bodies is one of Netflix’s most compelling releases this year and wholly deserves to be added to your watchlist. —Toussaint Egan
Erased
Image: A-1 Pictures/Aniplex of America
This sci-fi mystery thriller miniseries from 2016 centers on Satoru Fujinuma, a 29-year-old delivery man who is inexplicably sent back in time and reawakens in his 11-year-old body. Determined to save the lives of his mother and his elementary school classmate, who died and disappeared, respectively, under mysterious circumstances, Satoru must combine his knowledge of the future with his ability to change the past in order to apprehend the culprit and bring them to justice.
Erased is a compulsively watchable thriller anime, filled with enough twists and turns to keep audiences guessing right up to the series’ exhilarating conclusion. —TE
Ganglands
Image: Netflix
French action cinema is having a bit of a renaissance, and one of the leading figures is director Julien Leclercq. He made the very good Olga Kurylenko thriller Sentinelle, the Jean-Claude Van Damme-led The Bouncer, and my favorite movie of his, the tense crime thriller Braqueurs (also known as The Crew).
Six years later, Leclercq took his talents to television with the Netflix series Ganglands (also known as Braqueurs). It shares the same name, lead (the excellent Sami Bouajila), and general vibe, but is not technically a sequel or a remake. In Ganglands, a crew of expert armed robbers are drawn into a gang war: They’re so dang good at crimes, everyone wants to hire them, even the people they rob.
Leclercq and writer Hamid Hlioua have created a muscular little thriller anchored by strong leading performances and the director’s tension-filled style of building action and conflict. The second season was recently released on Netflix, and both seasons are very much worth your time. —Pete Volk
Lupin
Image: Netflix
The thrill of the heist — there’s just nothing like it. Ask Assane Diop (Omar Sy). He’s been working as a con artist and thief for years, drawing his inspiration (and moniker) from an obsession with the literary gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. His thrills are hard-won, but they’re also smoothly meticulous. For Assane, the art of the heist — even with a priceless diamond necklace worn by Marie Antoinette — is a given.
What comes less naturally is revenge. Lupin’s first season follows his quest to seek vengeance on the rich family that wronged his father, and the show is full of twists and turns as his mission starts to bleed from his gentleman thief persona back into his real life.
The French series was a breakout hit when it premiered on Netflix, thanks in large part to Sy’s performance. He is magnetic as he makes con artistry look easy, with the sort of natural charm that makes you believe he can fake his way into any vault or safe in France (and that’s all before we get into his thieving skills and connections). With a heist, the end is, typically, self-assured. Sy’s performance ensures Lupin has the same confidence, and makes every step of the ride along the way its own thrill. —ZM
Mindhunter
Image: Netflix
David Fincher’s exacting vision is applied to the television format in one of the best shows Netflix has ever produced. Over two seasons, odd-couple FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (the terrific Holt McCallany) interview serial killers in the burgeoning field of criminal psychology.
In a nice twist on conventional character tropes, it is the young agent who is often cold and emotionally removed, and the older one who worries about the consequences of their actions. Their chemistry, as well as Mindhunter’s deep study of our culture around serial killers and the approach to stopping them, makes the show excellent, and it never veers into the exploitation of its peers in the genre.
How exacting is Fincher’s vision? Take a look at this mind-blowing VFX reel from the show, which literally changed how I watch modern cinema. —PV
Monster
Image: Madhouse/Viz Media
If you’re a fan of the 1960s crime drama series The Fugitive, you’ll likely love the 2004 anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s psychological thriller manga. After all, the series was inspired by it! Set in Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Monster centers on the story of Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese brain surgeon living in Düsseldorf. After being implicated in the murders of his superiors, Kenzo must go on the run to clear his name by tracking down the real culprit: a young man he once treated.
Spanning 74 episodes, Monster is a labyrinthine drama filled with a rich cast of characters and enough harrowing twists and revelations to fill a Matryoshka doll. —TE
The Night Agent
Photo: Dan Power/Netflix
Sometimes, you want a “light brain” thriller — something not too deep that might be perfect for a bucket of popcorn or for background viewing while you fold some laundry. The Night Agent is Netflix’s quintessential plot-heavy popcorn thriller, elevated to solid fare thanks to the surprising chemistry between its two leads.
Adapted by The Shield creator Shawn Ryan from the novel, The Night Agent stars Gabriel Basso as an FBI agent who has been relegated to watching a phone that never rings in the basement in the White House. When that phone does ring one night, he and the person on the other end (Luciane Buchanan) are brought into a vast conspiracy that threatens to unravel everything he knows. —PV
You
Image: Netflix
No one is doing it like Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley). The man is in a league of his own when it comes to stalking women and obsessing over them. This is the double-edged sword of watching You and following Joe in his unethical exploits: He is outright the villain of his own story.
Luckily, You is very aware of this, taking the initial premise of the first season — boy meets girl, boy stalks girl, boy manipulates her whole life to a dangerous degree — and continues flipping it over, putting Joe through his paces, letting him scramble to cover his ass as he gets in deeper and deeper. Each You season is a flavor unto itself, switching locales and ladies and letting Joe make the worst kind of case for himself.
You is not a show for the faint of heart, but it’s also not a thriller that rests easily on its underlying darkness. Joe may be an absolute piece of shit (even Badgley thinks so, and would really like it if you did too), but the show knows how to keep him engaging as it turns the screws on him. Each of the four seasons challenges him in new ways, and it makes for a snaky and startlingly good time. With You there’s only one thing you can always expect: for Joe to go to extreme and violent lengths to prove he’s not the bad guy. Also a plexiglass vault. —ZM
Hazbin Hotel’s frenetic first season finished up on Friday, with a dozen reveals and dangling plot threads, all primed for a second season. The devilish comedy comes from creator Vivienne Medrano, who first posted the pilot episode on her YouTube channel, and follows Charlie, the princess of Hell, who opens a hotel in hopes that demons will rehabilitate and get to heaven. Oh, and it’s also a musical!
The first season finished with a bang, but it might be some time before we see the second season of Hazbin Hotel. So if you need something to sate your devilish desires for now, Medrano handpicked some of the show’s biggest influences.
Invader Zim
Image: Netflix
Where to watch: Paramount Plus
Merdano calls this one a “huge one” and it’s not hard to see why: Both shows share a similar kind of feverish sensibility, along with a strong, vibrant color palette. The spindly style of Invader Zim feels clearly at play in Hazbin, with characters like Alastor and Angel Dust feeling like they could fairly comfortably roll between shows.
The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy
Image: Cartoon Network Studios
Where to watch: Max
The other childhood show Merdano cites is about two kids (one a clueless happy-go-lucky oaf, the other a cynical and smart-ass tomboy) who summon the Grim Reaper and beat him at a game of limbo, thus making him their eternal servant best friend. They get wrapped up in the paranormal world of demons, gods, and other supernatural creatures, but it’s all done with a goofy spin. The infernal through-line from Grim Adventures to Hazbin Hotel is pretty obvious.
BoJack Horseman
Image: Netflix
Where to watch: Netflix
While there were other shows she watched when she was younger, Medrano says Netflix’s BoJack Horseman — about an anthropomorphic, depressed washed-up sitcom actor (who is also a horse) — is the one that came at the “perfect time” to show her that she could tell a complicated emotional story in adult animation.
“[It’s] actually one of my favorites of all time; phenomenal show,” Medrano says. “It kind of showed me that adult animation can not only just be raunchy comedy, but it can be a story that has intense development of its characters. It can have incredibly flawed characters. It can make you cry. It can really get deep and dark.
“It had just started around the time that I was like, really making the pilot and they kind of made me go, Oh, wow, adult animation is starting to change. And it’s starting to evolve.”
South Park
Where to watch: Paramount Plus
Medrano calls South Park a “huge turning point” for her with adult animation — an experience a lot of people had around Comedy Central’s classic. The show tackled topical ideas and events, all with a gleeful, jaded humor that has kept it running since 1997. “From that point on,” Medrano says, “I kind of just kept watching [adult animation].”
Rick and Morty
Image: Adult Swim
Where to watch: Max
Similar to BoJack, Medrano cites this ever-popular Adult Swim comedy as a proponent of the depth and humor she tries to balance with her work. As anyone who has watched Rick and Morty can attest, there’s more to the show and more to Pickle Rick than the reputation it gives. “Something like Rick and Morty that is still very raunchy, and vulgar, and shocking in a lot of ways — it went this direction of like, Yeah, but let’s go a little deeper, let’s get a little darker. I think that also helped shift the space kind of more towards Oh, that works! That has an audience that did really well.”
With the recent international success of live-action adaptations of manga and anime like One Piece and Yu Yu Hakusho, Netflix finally seems to have made solid forward progress on a process that it has spent a few years on. Though some major franchises remain in development (no real news on that My Hero Academia movie yet aside from “production might have started”) the streaming service has amassed quite a list to run through if you’re interested.
Now, whether that interest is genuine or morbid is up to you. The live-action adaptations of anime and manga on Netflix were certainly not made equally. And while some creative choices make the series feel like fitting spiritual successors to the source material, others remain baffling or simply disappointing. Note that if an adaptation consists of more than one film, the sequels will be judged alongside the originals here.
13. Rurouni Kenshin, Rurouni Kenshin: The Final, Rurouni Kenshin: The Beginning
Image: Warner Bros. Japan
The three Rurouni Kenshin films available on Netflix are fine. Director Keishi Otomo does his best to bring the thrilling (and often surprisingly violent) battles to life, and the results are admirable when not chopped up in intense, jumpy editing. The character development, particularly of the lead character, can’t escape comparisons to the source material. In the manga series, protagonist Himura Kenshin is a vibrant man of contradictions, capable of both immense destruction and charming affability, and actor Takeru Satoh does his best with it (it’s clear that he put a lot of work into sword fight training). But it too often feels like an impression of a character rather than a fully realized one.
While this is a more positive take than some you’ll read ahead, it’s hard to recommend any aspect of the franchise thanks to the actions of author Nobuhiro Watsuki. Getting little more than a slap on the wrist for being discovered with an immense amount of child pornography, Watsuki’s legacy (and the series which he is known for) is stained, and as such, these three films are impossible to wholeheartedly endorse.
12. Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead
Photo: Masako Iwasaki/Netflix
The concept behind this manga series (what if the zombie apocalypse allowed you to quit your wage slave existence and live life the way you want?) is undeniably fun, but the Netflix series is never quite able to hone in on it. It doesn’t help that it debuted in the middle of the first season of the anime, a refreshing, colorful experience that, despite its various episode delays, took the energetic scope of the manga and ran with it. With two strong comparison pieces, the film becomes little more than a lighthearted exercise in Netflix covering its franchising bases. Watch this only if animation gives you hives or something.
11. Cowboy Bebop
Photo: Geoffrey Short/Netflix
Likely the most infamous series on this list is Cowboy Bebop, an adaptation of the most widely praised anime of all time. In retrospect, it seems ill conceived to have put so much pressure on it to tap into the inimitable cool of director Shinichiro Watanabe’s masterpiece. The anime’s combination of noir aesthetics, space opera grandness, moody character work, and all that jazz makes it unfair to compare it to, well, most other works of fiction. Adapting Cowboy Bebop into live action was a big swing from the top of a high mountain, and sadly, it was a miss.
If it succeeds in anything, it’s the dedication of its cast, particularly the lead, John Cho. Given the unenviable task of trying to replicate a character whose mix of mystery and relatability only really works in animation, Cho is as adequate as any live-action performance of Spike Spiegel could be. The same goes for Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, and though her quips have been reduced to mocking memes, Daniella Pineda’s Faye Valentine can be really fun when divorced from its connection to the anime. The rest, however, is a mess that does little more than fumble through Watanabe’s work.
10. Death Note
Photo: James Dittiger/Netflix
Death Note is a weird case. On paper, it has elements that should work. The story is a thriller that seems easy to trim down into a shorter movie length. It’s not so fantastical as to leave one wondering, “Well, how are they gonna pull that off?” And it has Willem Dafoe voicing the death god Ryuk. Willem Dafoe! When assembled, though, none of it coalesces, and it falls apart instantly.
The decision to turn main character Light from the sociopathic deity wannabe of the manga into an angsty outsider meant that, in the mental duel between him and super detective L, there was really no one to root for. This decision takes the effortless drive of the manga and anime and renders it inert. Even when the titular murder journal falls into even more unscrupulous hands, the film is too dragged down to enter its “Oooh, maybe there will be a sequel…” resolution with any excitement. Better luck next time (probably).
9. Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Revenge of Scar, Fullmetal Alchemist: The Final Alchemy
Image: Netflix
There are a lot of great ways to enjoy Fullmetal Alchemist — its fantastic manga, its underrated 2003 anime, or its faithful anime reboot from 2009. The Netflix live-action trilogy doesn’t quite join that pedestal. It’s a fun time if you’ve read the manga previously, but there’s so much crammed in (particularly in the third film, where the glue and tape of editing the narrative down are most apparent) that it’s never clear why anything, outside of the two main brother characters, is important. It’s a trilogy of films, but it only manages to skim the surface of the series’ emotional depth and exquisite themes.
8. Kakegurui
Image: Netflix
Kakegurui doesn’t have to make any big special effects or labyrinthine plotline leaps to work as a TV series. Instead, it mostly sticks to the manga and the joy of the chemistry of the three leads: teenagers in a private academy where status is determined by gambling. It’s an easy watch, though Netflix has yet to add the live-action film where the actors reprise their roles.
7. Bleach
Image: Netflix
You can tell how old someone is by how they recommend Bleach. Older manga fans remember the dynamic, genre-bouncing early days, while those who came in later likely know it by how it fell into a swamp of storytelling tropes and incomprehensibility. Luckily, the live-action Bleach film harnesses a lot of the mythology when it was at its most potent before manga author Tite Kubo exhausted it. In fact, the film’s best quality is that it’s able to deftly build its world without feeling like it’s preparing the audience for a pop quiz after. Whereas a few of these adaptations, like the aforementioned Fullmetal Alchemist, approach the details of the manga in vague, bullet-point fashion, Bleach weaves them into its story, which uplifts a film that is otherwise middling in most respects.
6. The Ingenuity of the Househusband
Image: Netflix
Disclaimer: The Ingenuity of the Househusband is not a direct adaptation of the delightful manga series The Way of the Househusband. You’ll have to watch the lackluster anime series for that. Instead, it’s a collection of shorts that show the husband, a former yakuza boss, dealing with various domestic duties, like making coffee or fixing a screen door. It’s cute and certainly doesn’t aim for the heights of anything else on this list. But playing it safe is its most appealing quality, and it serves as a pleasant side gig for fans of the manga (which you should read.)
5. Kingdom
Image: Juhan Noh/Netflix
Kingdom, running at over two hours, is one of the most fun efforts of Shinsuke Sato (a director who, having helmed films like Gantz, I Am a Hero, and Bleach, is a go-to in the space). It’s also a noble attempt at tackling a manga/historical fiction series that, to date, runs 70 volumes. Very little of the emotional weight of the manga carries over, but Sato brings undeniable visual panache to the battle choreography and stunt work here. Kingdom is best when it’s pure spectacle, with sequences that even folks with no connection to the manga can enjoy. At one point, during a barrage of arrows, the camera lingers briefly on a man that dies from having been shot through the mouth by one. What’s not to like?
4. Alice in Borderland
Image: Netflix
Directed by Shinsuke Sato (jeez, that man is everywhere), Alice in Borderland is a series that thrives whenever you don’t have to think too much about the “who” of it all. Character development is slim — the actors are mostly around to look tense and nervous in a Battle Royale-esque survival situation where they have to win “games” to survive. Even if new viewers might compare it to Squid Game but without all that pesky social commentary, Sato is very good at building stakes and making you grip the sides of your chair as you wonder who is going to get gruesomely murdered next.
3. From Me to You
Image: Netflix
This live-action adaptation of a powerhouse shojo manga (Another “If you haven’t read it, go read it right now!” series) was never going to approach the charms of its source material. Karuho Shiina’s art, both quirky and engrossing as it expresses the blushing warmth of young love, would leave any live-action adaptation struggling to fit in. So From Me to You mostly works as a tribute to an irreplaceable series and, as such, does an exceptional job. It’s got cuteness to spare and the dedication of its lead performers carries it through any stumbles.
2. Yu Yu Hakusho
Image: Netflix
Yu Yu Hakusho’s main offense is that it’s just too short. At only five episodes (which cover over 100 chapters of manga), there’s simply no time to get through everything. As such, events that would otherwise be big emotional moments (especially in the latter half, which is full of them) get little more than a shrug. However, the first half of the series is rather marvelous. The fight choreography in the opening battles is top-notch, and the way we get to know each of the four main beloved boys is appropriately awesome. It also handles the tonal shifts of the story well, jumping from genre to genre (horror to fantasy to martial arts to comedy) adeptly. And just as in the Yu Yu Hakusho manga and anime, co-lead Kuwabara shines through with his trademark masculine insecurity and swaggering pathos.
1. One Piece
Image: Netflix
It’s weird to live in a world where we not only got a serviceable live-action One Piece adaptation, but one that’s good enough to adequately capture the spirit of the manga. Eiichiro Oda’s epic, 25-plus-year saga is such a testament to the power of manga art that trying to recreate it with flesh and blood, on first glance, looks like a dumbfounding proposition. But Netflix’s One Piece found a way.
This is mostly thanks to the enthusiasm of its cast, who are all able to capture the broad emotional swings of the characters without falling into parody, and what looks to be an every-penny-spent approach on set design. There are so many practical flourishes, from the exteriors of the ships and seaside towns to the interiors of locations like Kaya’s mansion and the Baratie floating restaurant, that it manages to feel less like an imitation of Oda’s world and more like its own entity. The commitment paid off: The astounding viewership of One Piece’s first season led Netflix to greenlight a season 2, one that, from the looks of things, will be a flagship (pun intended) addition to the service’s manga-to-live-action lineup.
But ever since HBO rebranded to Max, guess what? You can call it TV again, and nobody can stop you.
We’re here to round up some of the best TV shows available to watch on Max. More than enough people have likely already extolled to you the virtues of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, and Game of Thrones. (If not, where have you been?) Consider this a supplementary list. A Max 2.0, if you will.
For more great TV, check out our lists of the bests shows of 2022 and 2023, which include many selections on Max.
Editor’s pick: Rome
Image: HBO
Before the fantasy renaissance Game of Thrones kicked off, Rome was the setting for HBO’s best sword-swinging prestige play. And while this amped up historical drama didn’t quite hit the heights of HBO’s A Song of Ice and Fire adaptation, it’s still plenty entertaining, and one of the most interesting shows on Max.
Rome’s first season chronicles the rise and fall of Julius Caesar. The story is told through the lives and intrigue of the most powerful players, including Game of Thrones vets Ciarán Hinds as Caesar and Tobias Menzies as Brutus, but also through two lowly soldiers (Ray Stevenson and Kevin McKidd), who just happen to be around to witness some of the biggest moments in this period of Rome’s history.
As fun as Rome is as a series in its own right, it’s equally as fascinating as a historical document for HBO. While it feels slightly out of step with the slower dramas the network was known for at the time, like The Wire, Deadwood, or The Sopranos, Rome’s quick-paced brutality and prestige sheen make it feel right at home in the current line up for Max. — Austen Goslin
Fringe
Image: Fox
Back in 2008, J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, and Roberto Orci launched a series that was intended to be spiritual successor to The X-Files by way of Lost. Over the course of five seasons, Fringe became that and so much more: a cerebral procedural drama about urban legends, parallel universes, anomalous oddities, and a beleaguered mad scientist’s long quest for redemption.
The series centers on Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), an FBI agent assigned to investigate unexplained phenomena related to a mysterious series of occurrences known simply as “The Pattern.” With the help of a Department of Homeland Security consultant (Joshua Jackson) and his eccentric father (John Noble), a brilliant yet troubled researcher known for his speciality in the field of “fringe science,” Dunham is tasked with unmasking the culprits responsible for these strange phenomena and bringing them to justice.
The series overcame multiple threats of cancellation and precipitously declining ratings to amass a passionate cult following, all while delivering one of the most complex and emotionally moving storylines seen in a mainstream sci-fi TV drama. Featuring guest appearances from such lauded sci-fi icons as Leonard Nimoy and Peter Weller and an absolute standout supporting performance by the late Lance Reddick as Fringe Division director Phillip Broyles, Abrams and company’s show is an enduring series worthy of reappraisal and admiration. —Toussaint Egan
Unicorn: Warriors Eternal
Image: Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street
What do you get when you combine Arthurian legend, the “rubber hose” art style of Osamu Tezuka and Max Fleischer, and the determination of one of the most successful American animators of the past 20 years? You get Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, of course — the passion project of director Genndy Tartakovsky and writer Darrick Bachman set in a Victorian steampunk world.
The series follows a trio of immortal warriors: Melinda, a powerful sorceress; Seng, a cosmic monk; and Edred, a warrior elf, who are reincarnated across several generations by the wizard Merlin to fight an unending battle against an ancient evil. Upon realizing her destiny as the latest reincarnation of Melinda, a young bride-to-be named Emma Fairfax sets off in search of how to get her old life back while fending off the droves of malicious henchmen her reawakening has brought about.
Brilliantly animated and exquisitely original, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal is without a doubt one of the best animated series Max has to offer. Both Tartakovsky and Bachman have expressed interest in exploring the world of Unicorn more in future installments. Only time will tell if that comes to fruition, but one of the best ways to help ensure that it does is by watching the entire series in full. You won’t regret it. —TE
Banshee
Image: Cinemax
Like Antony Starr in The Boysand Warrior on Max? Have I got some good news for you!
Warrior creator Jonathan Tropper’s first show, Banshee,follows an expert thief recently freed from prison who accidentally becomes the sheriff of a small fictional Pennsylvanian town.
It’s a perfect fish-out-of-water setup for a great lead performance, and Starr is fantastic, carrying this show much like he does The Boys. It’s also one of those shows that falls in between the era of serial television and the era of “10-hour movies,” and the mix often gives Banshee the best of both worlds, as Starr’s Lucas Hood uses his unconventional background and skills to be a very different kind of sheriff. Not everything works in the show — some of the plotlines are more thought through than others — but it’s a consistently good time anchored by a great premise and a fantastic leading performance. —Pete Volk
Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s seminal 1992 reinvention of the Dark Knight changed American animated television forever. Set in an anachronistic 1950s vision of Gotham City, the show follows billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne/Batman, of course, but also a rogues’ gallery almost as large as his arsenal of gadgets and vehicles.
The dark color palette and art deco aesthetic is as much a revelation to behold now as they were over 30 years ago. The series’ writing delivered some of the more memorable and defining stories related to Batman’s various nemeses, while also inventing its own enduring original character in the form of Harley Quinn, the paramour and sidekick to Batman’s adversary the Joker. There’s too much to say about Batman: The Animated Series to fit into only one article, let alone one blurb. To say that it is one of the best series to watch on Max is an understatement; it’s practically a prerequisite. —TE
Veep
Image: HBO
For every profession, there’s a TV show that makes people who work that job go, Yeah, that’s the one that got it really right. When watching Veep, the insult-filled comedy about a dysfunctional vice president and her dysfunctional staff, it won’t bring you comfort to know that it’s the show most D.C. insiders nod along to as the best reflection of their life. But the genius of Veep is you can put that out of your mind for a spell; you’re laughing too hard to care.
In Veep, you can see the roots of big shows to come: Succession and its insult comedy, the comedy of errors of Barry. But Veep is singular because it is just always fucking on. Where most shows are finding themselves in the first season, Veep confidently charges out with guns blazing and F-bombs flying. And it only gets stronger from there. As you watch, and you inevitably remember that this is how our elected officials (at the very least) feel they should be reflected, it might seem terrifying. Then again, in a way it makes sense; Occam’s razor tells us the simplest explanation is often the right one. And that’s the same ethos that makes Veep’s comedy so cutting — these are the simplest people, doing the simplest mismanagement you can imagine. At least here, it’s funny. —Zosha Millman
Watchmen
Photo: Mark Hill/HBO
People have a lot of opinions about Watchmen. One of the more popular ones is that no one should bother adapting or expanding on it, and they are, generally speaking, right. Damon Lindelof’s sequel/reinvention of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ acclaimed comic appeared about as ill-conceived as every prior attempt to revisit Watchmen, and Lindelof even seemed apologetic about attempting the same. How lucky we all are that he did: HBO’s Watchmen was dazzling, a nine-episode limited series that took the superhero metaphor to uncharted territory, turning a deconstruction of superheroes into a stylish contemplation of American power and racism. Violent, funny, and surprisingly moving, HBO’s Watchmen lures you in the same way the comic did: A man is found dead, and that death exposes a conspiracy that threatens to unravel the entire world. —Joshua Rivera
I May Destroy You
Photo: Natalie Seery/BBC/Val Productions
Michaela Coel’s searing black comedy follows Arabella, an author with a viral success under her belt and a terrible case of writer’s block keeping her from her next one. When Arabella blacks out following a night with friends at the pub, she learns that she was raped, and attempts to reconstruct the night as best she can. What begins with abject horror grows — thanks to Coel’s incredible performance and razor-sharp writing alongside co-writer Sam Miller — to become a morbidly hilarious, compassionate portrait of modern womanhood, where violence is an occupational hazard of being alive and surviving trauma becomes a marketable asset. I May Destroy You is remarkable for the tonal tightrope it walks but also its unsparing eye, which lets no one — not the audience, nor its characters — off the hook when it comes to its most biting satire or devastating blows. —JR
Starstruck
Photo: Mark Johnson/Max
A rom-com about Jessie (Rose Matafeo) — an unassuming Kiwi woman living in London, where she works at a movie theater — and Tom Kapoor (Nikesh Patel), the actor and movie star that she keeps running into and falling in love with, Starstruck makes charm look easy. Like most romantic comedies, a lot of this is due to Matafeo and Patel’s easy chemistry, as both play characters with a naturalism that makes the unlikeliness of their relationship less of a big deal and more of a big complication. It is just hard to get involved with someone whose whereabouts are news, which forces the 20-something Jessie to be way more decisive than any 20-something is about anything. Starstruck is, at least in part, a rom-com about how many good romances are ones that nearly don’t work out, and its old-school screwball approach to modern love makes it feel both specific and timeless. —JR
Station Eleven
Photo: Ian Watson/HBO Max
Look: If you’re going to watch one pandemic show, you should make it Station Eleven. The story itself is simple: In a world where a flu-like pandemic wiped out the bulk of civilization, Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) leads a traveling theater troupe in the Great Lakes area. A run-in with a dangerous wanderer makes her revisit her past, and stare down a dangerous future.
Like a lot of HBO shows, Station Eleven tells its story by braiding individuals and their stories together. Through the various perspectives and players of the story, Station Eleven builds something new: a treatise on the value of art, the things that stick with us, and the people we choose to keep in our hearts, whether for reasons happy or sad. Without being too preachy, the show breaks free of mere COVID-19 relevance. What makes Station Eleven a relevant watch isn’t what makes it a powerful one. What we carry through the pandemic isn’t all we’ll take away. —ZM
The Leftovers
Photo: Van Redin/HBO
The show kicks off a few years after 2% of the population has vanished. Not a fiery rapture, nor a giant robot plucking a few people off the face of the planet before life goes on. No — this is more like a quiet missing, the sort of act that’s confounding just for how sudden it is, and all the more so when the world keeps spinning. Such trauma is total disorientation for everyone in The Leftovers, whether they like it or not. The world has been rocked, and as some try to hold on to their old way of life, others want to get as far away from it as they can.
And so The Leftovers (and everyone in it) spins out from there. Like so much of modern media, The Leftovers is “about” “grief.” But as it kaleidoscopes out and picks out one character or another to focus an episode around, it tells a story much more heady and richer than so many other tales of grief and coping. And as it goes on, The Leftovers grows more bold, more mysterious, until reaching its final chapter, an all-timer of a finale. Each of these chapters and characters is its own fault line, but in The Leftovers, you never know when things will come tumbling down. —ZM
Adventure Time
Image: Cartoon Network
I’ve recently rewatched Adventure Timefor the second time, and I’m happy to report it still holds up even as you continue to age out of its target demographic.
The tales of Jake the Dog, Finn the Human, and the rest of their colorful friends and foes deftly move between silly humor and intense drama in ways few other shows have. While ostensibly a children’s show, Adventure Time isn’t precious with its audience: It isn’t afraid to delve into serious topics (the finale remains a remarkable feat, using the end of a long-running show as an allegory for grief), tell complex stories and jokes, or throw in a few real scares.
That’s all packed into a story with a massive scope, told in bite-size episodes as hilarious as they are moving. And the show looks good while it’s doing it, consistently pushing itself and the medium to find new ways to express itself. That’s how Adventure Time can be an excellent show for children that also gained a dedicated fandom of adults: It’s just That Good.
When you’re done with Adventure Time, the post-finale specials Distant Lands and the new spinoff Fionna and Cake are also on Max and worth your time. —PV
That’s what we’re here for today: To help you figure out what shows with new seasons in 2024 you should catch up on, and which ones might not be worth the effort. First things first, we’re counting out the easy ones: Big returning shows like The Boys, You, and Bridgertonare cultural phenomena that have been massive for years, so you probably know whether or not they’re for you. If one of them seems like your bag, start watching, but trust your gut instinct either way. As for everything else, here’s what you should know:
Image: Peacock
Watch it if you like: 30 Rock, or any sitcom with a constant barrage of hilarious and offbeat jokes Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: Peacock (Netflix after March 14)
This is an easy one. This sitcom about four women who used to be pop stars in a girl group is heading into its third season, and its first after moving from Peacock to Netflix. There are only 16 episodes in the first two seasons, and at just 30 hilarious minutes each, it’s easy to breeze through. —Austen Goslin
Image: CBS
Watch it if you like: Elementary, or any other offbeat procedural, or exorcism movies Previous seasons: Three Where to watch: Paramount Plus
From the minds behind all-time great legal procedural The Good Wife, Evil takes the elements of procedural shows we know and love and expertly applies them to the demonic and supernatural. Gleefully playful, surprisingly scary, and mischievously funny, Evil is unlike anything else on television. —Pete Volk
Image: Syfy
Watch it if you like: The Chucky movies, horror comedy, Jennifer Tilly Previous seasons: Two-and-a-half Where to watch: Peacock
Chucky is one of the boldest shows on television, never afraid to reinvent itself or dive into the deepest recesses of its canon. After seasons set in a quiet small town and a Catholic boarding school, the current season (in a mid-season break) is set in the freakin’ White House!! It’s one of the funniest shows on TV, and almost inarguably the goriest. Four more years! —PV
Image: Apple TV Plus
Watch it if you like: Dry British humor, spies, fun television Previous seasons: Three Where to watch: Apple TV Plus
Slow Horses really started to catch on with the 2023 debut of its third season, but if you’re not on board yet, 2024 is the perfect time to catch up. The series centers around Slough House, essentially the island of misfit toys for disgraced British spies who are disdainfully called Slow Horses. The horses are led by Jackson Lamb, a fantastic spy with awful hygiene and a penchant for rudeness — played terrifically by Gary Oldman. Slow Horses’ third season was its best so far, which is saying something for one of the most fun and watchable shows on TV. —AG
Photo: Ser Baffo/ABC
Watch it if you like: Sitcoms like Parks & Recreation, or generally sweet and funny shows Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: Hulu
Genuinely funny broadcast sitcoms feel like a rarity nowadays, but Abbott Elementary is doing a great job holding down the fort. Set in a Philadelphia elementary school, the growing roster of phenomenal guest stars helps keep each episode fresh, while the show lets its core cast of teachers grow as characters, friends, and more. Abbott isn’t the funniest sitcom ever, but it’s got a few great jokes every episode and as much heart and personality as any show on TV right now. —AG
Image: PBS Masterpiece
Watch it if you like: Animals, British shows, procedurals Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: PBS All-Access
The latest adaptation of James Herriot’s books about being a veterinarian in the British countryside as World War II looms is equally tender, charming, and beautiful. Another example of applying the procedural format in an unlikely direction, All Creatures is about how we care for our community — human and animal alike — and it’s one of the best shows hidden away on PBS. —PV
It’s easy to think of Denzel Washington as the best actor of his generation, and in conversation with the greatest actors who have ever lived. He already has two Oscars, and has deserved many more. And with the recent release of The Equalizer 3 on Netflix, it’s the perfect time to look back on his body of work and legitimately pose the question: Is he also the greatest action star of his generation?
If Denzel is on screen in a movie made this century, he’s likely got at least one gun on him. Perhaps you’d conclude that, like Liam Neeson, that means Denzel has been on autopilot. But from the beginning, Denzel has had coinciding populist taste, multiplex butter-flavored syrup infused in his cinematic DNA. Amid historical biopics, Civil War epics, and Spike Lee’s formative romantic meditations, there have always been gleeful crowd-pleasers in Denzel’s body of work: noirs, heists, erotic thrillers, and serial killers.
You may ask, is The Manchurian Candidate really an action flick? And the answer is that once, yes it was. Not that long ago, movies could be more than one thing. A prestige drama could have a great tension-packed car chase. A vigilante movie could be about socialized medicine. A noir could also be a time-traveling sci-fi. By cataloging his hits over decades, through Denzel’s resume, we can chart a devolution in what kinds of genre/spectacle films are being made in Hollywood.
If this is the end of that kind of film, it is fitting to celebrate it by honoring Denzel’s great action flicks, and his best moments in them. He remains one of the best who ever did it. Let’s kick some ass.
Honorable mentions that aren’t quite action movies: American Gangster, Cry Freedom, The Tragedy of Macbeth
26. The Taking of Pelham 123
Image: Columbia Pictures/MGM
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Starz, AMC Plus, or for digital rental/purchase
Every one of these movies is a good idea on paper, but this is the most disappointing, because it had the potential to be really special. It’s Denzel and Tony Scott with James Gandolfini, and maybe the last good Tony Manero performance, taking on one of the greatest detail-rich, lived-in New York movies ever made. The original Pelham 123 is a film that really embodies that cliche about the city as a character, and it utilizes it like few movies ever had. It’s about a city of pressed-together schnooks that speak and think like neurotic piece-of-work Jews like me, arguing with each other through the duration of a crisis they all seem more annoyed by than concerned about. This film is entirely drained of that energy, focusing on Scott’s continuing experiments with digital photography instead of the liveliness of the city. Denzel gets to play hostage negotiator versus a scene-chewing John Travolta, and even though Travolta is supposed to be the dominant force in the conversation, Denzel bodies him in most of their exchanges by thinking through his lines.
Best Denzel moment: Confessing to Travolta that he took a bribe to save a hostage’s life, leading to a masterful controlled breakdown over the phone.
25. Safe House
Image: Universal Pictures
Director: Daniel Espinosa Where to watch: Netflix, or for digital rental/purchase
An actually admirable attempt that’s better than what you may remember, Safe House features an old-school Tom Clancy plot about a house cat itching for a taste of the field who finally gets his monkey-paw wish granted. Unfortunately, the movie has either no feel or no time for character development. It’s reaching for the intimate kinetic grit of Paul Greengrass’ Bourne movies via Sam Peckinpah, and of course it doesn’t get there, but I have to respect a movie that pays this much attention to its spycraft. The fun of the film is watching Denzel’s endlessly resourceful old agent think his way out of a series of seemingly impossible dead ends by leaning on his experience and reflexive improvisation. The Achilles heel is that we’re forced to care about a perfunctory Ryan Reynolds love story C-plot when what we want is more Reynolds and Denzel face-offs. For whatever you may feel about Ryan Reynolds’ “gifts,” this humorless film wastes them. Safe House is better than the next three films in many ways, but they have the courage to be weird and take some swings.
Best Denzel moment: The hint of a smile after Denzel comes up from a first session of being waterboarded.
24. The Bone Collector
Image: Universal/Everett Collection
Director: Phillip Noyce Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
Solely based on the title and poster, this feels like it should’ve been Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. But it’s Denzel and young Angelina Jolie, and it is so much worse and stranger than the Morgan/Judd movies. Denzel is quadriplegic and waiting for a seizure that will put him in a vegetative state, and he is desperate to be euthanized. Instead, he becomes the cuddly cop version of a bedridden Hannibal Lecter, with Jolie as his Clarice. The movie anticipates CSI, as the genius and his protege study the crime scenes left by the killer, who has a research-loving crime fiction writer’s interest in historical New York City trivia and lore and communicates directly with forensic investigators via obscure clues. It also presents an alternate universe where most of the NYPD seems to give a fuck about doing their jobs.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel, who doesn’t have the ability to move his arms or legs, destroys a serial killer’s hand and rips off his ear using only his mouth.
23. Virtuosity
Image: Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Brett Leonard Where to watch: Paramount Plus, free with a library card on Kanopy, free with ads on Pluto
A riff on Frankenstein and the Stallone/Snipes dystopian face-off classic Demolition Man, this is a pretty silly and absurd sci-fi trifle about society, technology, and humanity in the form of a goofball summer thriller. They used to make these inadvertently hilarious techno-thrillers in the ’90s both by and for people with no understanding of how computers work. Virtuosity wins the award for worst CGI on this list, and maybe ever in the history of film? Russell Crowe, as a VR serial killer composite, is made of some cybernetic material that manifests on screen as hair gel tendrils, so he can grow his finger back when it’s chopped off, bullet holes fill back in immediately, etc. You want to give them a pass for the technology not being quite there to execute the vision, but they’re attempting to rip off Terminator 2, a film that was released four years earlier. It’s a more interesting iteration of Denzel’s standard, upstanding, dour straight cop because his character is an ex-cop, ex-con with a dead family and an edge to him, released to track down and kill the film’s true saving grace: young Russell Crowe having more fun than anyone besides Denzel gets to have on this entire list. In fact, here’s a list within a list:
Best Denzel moment: I’d conservatively estimate Denzel shoots cybernetic serial killer composite Russell Crowe 300 times.
22. Ricochet
Photo: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Director: Russell Mulcahy Where to watch: Cinemax
You really have to see this movie to believe it, particularly if your only relationship to John Lithgow is 3rd Rock from the Sun or Love Is Strange. Ricochet is just a completely unhinged, borderline slapstick exploitation film. It’s Cape Fear on meth, and ironically came out the same year. Denzel matches Lithgow’s energy here. He begins the movie stripping to his drawers and shooting a hostage-holding Lithgow with a behind-the-back trick shot, then spends a portion of the movie on drugs ranting and raving in a pink robe. It’s wild shit, and wildly entertaining.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, to his wife, after handing both of his daughters off to drug-dealing gangster Ice-T’s bodyguard for protection before going after Lithgow for the final showdown, and after his wife finds out he has tested positive for gonorrhea:
“Listen, you were right before. I should’ve trusted you with everything, but now you gotta trust me with everything too. Now, if you don’t love me, tell me right now, because I’m fighting for what used to be my life, and you are all of it. Are you with me?”
[Instant nod from his wife] “Yes.”
21. The Manchurian Candidate
Image: Paramount Pictures
Director: Jonathan Demme Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
So you get Streep as Hillary Clinton and my guys Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, and Bruno Ganz, all directed by Jonathan Demme, in a political thriller about literally incestuous cronyism in party politics, phony patriotism, PTSD, the American war machine, the prison of ambition, and the nefarious influence of special interests on our representatives. Unfortunately, this Manchurian Candidate is unbearably goofy and nothing lands. No one is doing their best work, including Demme. And because it’s a Denzel film, which almost always have tidy resolutions, there isn’t even the conviction to go through with the standard cynical conspiracy thriller ending.
Manchurian provides an interesting opportunity to discuss Denzel and what makes him great. It’s not the worst movie on this list by far, but this is probably my least favorite performance of his, maybe ever. He’s playing this broken, paranoid guy, and it completely robs him of his warmth and charisma. I can’t even really think of another dramatic performance that does that. If you’re into over-the-top metaphors for late-’90s/early-aughts liberal politics, there’s another film down this list I greatly prefer.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel takes his first shot at Liev, trying to convince him they’ve been compromised.
20. Deja Vu
Image: Touchstone Pictures
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
Very silly shit. The film doesn’t always respect or really even seem to understand the rules of time augmentation it sets up for itself. It turns into a series of Choose Your Own Adventures where Denzel goes out into the field, then the team back in the lab debates what happened and why and the nature of fate and time. It’s a pretty dry and joyless Denzel performance in a pretty dry and joyless film. Tony Scott gets the game ball for elevating the material. If you want to see a much, much better version of this, I’d recommend the brilliant and heavily slept-on Source Code.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, watching helplessly from the future, reacting to his partner getting killed because he inadvertently led him to his death by meddling with the past.
19. Fallen
Image: Warner Bros./Everett Collection
Director: Gregory Hoblit Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
What is this movie? A detective stumbling upon, then attempting to fight, a demonic consciousness of an evil angel passed by physical touch? What is its objective? To destroy humanity at the rate of one detective in a cabin in the woods every few decades? This is a borderline horror flick, but we’ve decided to classify it as a supernatural thriller. Unlike some of the films above, it’s pretty good at staying faithful to its dumb conceit and sticking to the rules it establishes. I also believe it’s probably the only film on this list where Denzel actually loses. But it’s Denzel doing his version of a Philip Marlowe — up against an angel-demon, of course, but still a good time.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel thinks he’s killed the demon and starts singing its own theme song back at it.
18. The Equalizer
Image: Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
A fine action film, I guess. It’s Denzel’s bid for his own Mission: Impossible, another old piece of TV IP barely tethered to its superstar’s modern, globe-trotting franchise machine. You could also call it his John Wick, but unlike that film, it’s a movie that’s both too serious and not serious enough. Wick just had its best installment by far because it leaned into the over-the-top giddy spectacle of a phantasmagoric blood opera. The Equalizer is no fun. It also doesn’t have any real stakes. Denzel simply, methodically kills his way through an army of bland Russians with no tension, or any remote sense of danger or threat. Denzel is an inevitable guardian angel of death, with no flaws or weaknesses, so none of the kills mean that much to him, or to the film, or to us. The result is a competent slog, but as the rest of his body of work proves, we used to demand more from our “mindless” blood-soaked genre movies.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel gets one speech, at dinner with a Russian bad guy whose full-body tattoos make Master Gardener appear modest by comparison, and obviously nails it.
17. The Book of Eli
Image: Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
Directors: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
A pretty fascinating, high-concept misfire: a Kung Fu dystopian Western about Christianity. Denzel is the lonely wandering ronin who lives simply and humbly off the land after a human-made apocalypse. He adheres to his own code, navigating an American wasteland overrun by scavengers and cannibals. Denzel doesn’t make many films about his faith, but this one is clearly deeply felt by both the directors and their star. The only “disappointment” for me is Gary Oldman, who is fine, but casting him as your bad guy means you’re walking on sacred ground, and through no fault of his own we get maybe 60% of the way to a The Professional/True Romance/Fifth Element-level performance.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel, gut-shot and dying, recites the entirety of the King James Bible by heart so it can be committed to page and reintroduced to society.
16. The Magnificent Seven
Image: Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
Denzel on a horse! If Fallen is Denzel channeling Bogart, here he channels John Wayne, albeit in the classic Badass Black Cowboy’s mustache-and-mutton-chop pairing. He has a death wish, and he’s enjoying himself. Can’t understate how special it is seeing one of the greatest movie stars of this era imprinting on a nearly extinct form of American cinema, even if it’s not the great film the cast list and trailer promised. It gets maybe 70% of the way there. Needed some shock and awe, some Eli Wallach energy. Instead, it typifies this tier on the list of competent and unspectacular popcorn flicks.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel eats a heart.
15. The Equalizer 2
Image: Columbia Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase
Improved on the original because of a crucial plot point that actually lends the story purpose (killing Melissa Leo), but not by much. I don’t really have much else to say about it, so for fun:
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel demands, and gets, a five-star Uber rating from the women-abusing frat bros he beats the shit out of in their apartment.
14. The Little Things
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: John Lee Hancock Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
Notable because Denzel really leans into being paunchy and washed. We’re not quite hitting Roman J. Israel levels, but we’re not far off. The headline is a three-hander with Denzel and two weirdos with Oscars. But it’s Denzel’s dumber and less meticulous diet-Fincher. A film about obsession and the inability to live with life’s mysteries. The ball is fumbled in the red zone, and its resolution is problematic to say the least, but for much of its run time it’s atmospheric and well paced, and Denzel is unsurprisingly great as a detective battling madness and the mess he made of his life.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel has a heart-to-heart with the corpse of a murder victim that is legitimately some of his best work.
13. 2 Guns
Image: Universal/Everett Collection
Director:Baltasar Kormákur Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
This one’s based on a series of graphic novels by Steven Grant, with a screenplay from Blake Masters, who has worked primarily as a network TV workhorse, and there’s the issue. It needed to be 20-30% funnier. You see from the beginning what they’re going for, two frenemies bickering over a diner breakfast order and how much to tip as they cooly set the building on fire and head to their muscle car without looking back just before it explodes. It’s Avary/Tarantino/McQuarrie-in-the-’90s quippy action comedy territory. There’s still fun to be had: a heist, a lot of Mark Wahlberg with his eyebrows raised, ending his sentences with upspeak. For the most part, Wahlberg gets to have the lion’s share of the fun, except…
Best Denzel moment: Denzel, whose characters have sex surprisingly rarely considering how much of a sex symbol he has been, has sex with Paula Patton!
12. The Siege
Image: 20th Century Fox
Director: Edward Zwick Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
A messy movie with fraught politics, but generally good ideas: The liberal resistance to the coming fascist post-9/11 Patriot Act world, but also one that is not above the fearmongering, stereotyping, and profiling that made it possible to exist in the first place. The Annette Bening character is probably the focus of an NYU poli sci class this semester. In a lot of ways this is a reprisal of Crimson Tide, with Denzel attempting to posit himself as the voice of liberal reason in the face of a black-and-white fascist.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel makes a stirring but hilariously quaint and naive argument against torture and why it will compromise the constitution and American way of life.
11. Unstoppable
Image: Twentieth Century Fox
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase
An admirable simplicity of purpose. This might be the only movie on this list with no gun and no bad guy. It’s a disaster movie, ThePerfect Storm for trains. Purely in terms of direction, it’s Tony Scott’s best work throughout the partnership. Working-class Denzel is the best. How many people in action movies have actual jobs anymore?
Best Denzel moment: I know it had to be a mix of stunt work and green screen, but it’s Denzel hopping from car to car on top of the train, setting the individual brakes, trying to slow it down.
10. The Mighty Quinn
Image: MGM Home Entertainment
Director: Carl Schenkel Where to watch: Prime Video, free with a library card on Hoopla, free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV
By no means a perfect film, The Mighty Quinn is a product of the late ’80s and feels very much like one (complete with a harebrained, nonsensical resolution). Denzel and the great Robert Townsend are doing borderline parody accents. It’s obvious there was no budget or experience behind the camera to really know how to shoot action. From fistfights to car accidents, those moments are rife with bad transitions and continuity errors. But it’s a fun and original bizarre hybrid: a musical noir set in Jamaica about race, class, imperialism, and corruption. And Denzel is great! He’s a rebel, beset on all sides by superiors who want to sweep a mess under the rug, and he manages a blend of determined, defiant, charming, and dignified while telling his elders to go fuck themselves.
Best Denzel moment: Dezel sings the blues in a piano bar/shack.
9. Out of Time
Image: MGM/Everett Collection
Director: Carl Franklin Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
A blend of Bad Lieutenant and Body Heat. Notable in Denzel’s oeuvre because Matt Lee Whitlock is arguably the biggest loser he’s ever played, a piece of shit constantly working off his back foot (perhaps aside from another cop, Alonzo Harris in Training Day). The film is essentially a series of unlikely narrow escapes a sweat-drenched Denzel has to pull off to fix an escalating pile of fuck-ups and loose ends. Everyone’s slimy and dumb and depraved — a perfect old-school erotic thriller.
Best Denzel moment: When the book is finally closed and we gather to tell the tales and sing the songs, the real Johnny Appleseed, Bunyan, John Henry shit will be the time Denzel literally cucked Superman.
8. The Equalizer 3
Photo: Stefano Montesi/Sony Pictures Entertainment
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Netflix
I’m as shocked as you are, but the third installment of The Equalizer is not just the best of the series, it’s one of Denzel’s best action flicks. If I wasn’t afraid of recency bias, I might’ve ranked it higher. It starts with the fun grindhouse smut I requested in discussing the first installment of the franchise. It’s also much slower, a shockingly patient film that isn’t just about being washed, but actual mortality. It really leans into Denzel, who looks every day of his then 68 years, being old and frail. It’s at times moving, not just about protection or revenge, but rather about finding peace and preserving a way of life in a coastal Italian village.
But the true genius of the film is casting Denzel’s old co-star, Dakota Fanning, as his young protege, which essentially makes the film a Man on Fire sequel. It made me think about Ghost Protocol and Fast Five, two films that elevated their respective franchises by embracing all the old characters who had passed through and reveling in the lore. Why not turn The Equalizer into the Denzel extended universe? Obviously not the same characters across the non-canon films, but let’s bring them all back, Cheadle and Snipes and Owen and Wahlberg and Patton and Pine and Streep. I’ll watch 10 more of these.
Best Denzel moment: The reunion tea with Dakota Fanning.
7. Training Day
Image: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Antoine Fuqua Where to watch: Free with ads on Tubi, or for digital rental/purchase
One of my hotter takes is I think the Oscar has unduly raised the appraisal of this pretty goofy film whose message has aged terribly. A great cartoon Denzel performance, full of his most memorable (and I think crucially, quotable) line readings, and cartoons are obviously a lot of fun, but it’s not close to his best, so I won’t belabor the point. All I will say is on this latest rewatch, the “Not All Cops” message embodied by Ethan Hawke’s Boy Scout dignity was particularly grating. Also, I will just never get over the leap off the roof onto the hood of Denzel’s car. Bird-brain shit.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel making Ethan Hawke get wet.
6. Man on Fire
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: Max, or for digital rental/purchase
Obviously a great film, but Scott’s visual language hasn’t aged well. It’s treated and cut like a Nine Inch Nails video or a Fincher credit sequence. But aside from that, Scott is near his peak here. The camera rarely stops moving, even when it’s two people talking in a room, which adds to the film’s restless, manic energy of pissed-off pulp. Man on Fire is a quasi-religious text about a broken sinner killing his way to redemption. Denzel is that sinner, awash in layers of alcohol and nihilism, attempting to drown his regret. The chemistry with young Dakota Fanning jumps off the screen, and totally sells the extremes he goes to in order to bring her home.
Best Denzel moment: The film-long touching bond between an adorable little girl and her father figure.
5. Inside Man
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Director: Spike Lee Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
At the outset of this list, I criticized Pelham for not honoring the Jewishness of its text. This film does that. It’s a multi-ethnic and bilingual melting pot of annoyed, annoying, combative, neurotic, and stubborn people getting on each other’s nerves in a high-stress and cramped environment. Or, they’re all “Jewish” New Yorkers. It’s the texture of New York that Pelham completely missed the boat on. Another in a rare sort of Denzel performance: Denzel the dumbass, always a step behind and a second late.
Best Denzel moment: It’s a cooperative with Spike Lee and his calling card, but the revved-up dolly shot might be Lee’s best. Denzel has just fallen for a gag execution, and his laser-focused anger in the shot is a microcosm of the film: He’s a marionette reacting to each step of Clive Owen’s meticulous plan.
4. The Pelican Brief
Image: Warner Bros/Everett Collection
Director: Alan J. Pakula Where to watch: For free with ads on Pluto TV, or for digital rental/purchase
A great, fascinating adaptation from the John Grisham era of ’90s Hollywood blockbusters, when a thought-provoking legal thriller could still be a blockbuster. Two Supreme Court justices are simultaneously assassinated, and a plucky law student (prime Julia Roberts) hacks the plot by studying case histories and following threads in a conspiracy that goes all the way to the Oval Office. Denzel is a determined, dickhead politico journalist who goes on the run with her (but infamously, in what is the film’s only glaring flaw, doesn’t have sex). It’s Pakula’s last great film, and the likes of Sam Shepard, John Lithgow, and Stanley Tucci show up to cook for perhaps three minutes each. It’s a pure piece of nostalgia for a better, lost age of movies.
Best Denzel moment: I’mcurrently working on a tough story with a lot of moving parts, and I greatly appreciate watching Denzel work a source.
3. Crimson Tide
Image: Buena Vista Pictures/Everett Collection
Director: Tony Scott Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
A chamber drama conveyed through cheesy Dutch angles about fascism and Cold War-era nuclear paranoia, but really on a very short list of the greatest all-time “actors at the top of their games face off” films. Coming off Malcolm X, this movie signaled Denzel becoming the greatest actor in America. He’s riveting as a rebellious son who actually has the upper hand on his father figure and refuses to give an inch. It’s a deceptively simple film — as the two men trade mutinies for control of a nuke — that doesn’t need the scaffolding of a B-, C-, and D-plot. There’s no spouse at home for Denzel to sneak off and spend five minutes with here and there to distract from the basic core of the story. It knows exactly what it is and what it wants to do, and lets its incredible talent fill in the rest.
Best Denzel moment: The shouting match when Denzel backs down Hackman and takes control of the sub.
2. John Q.
Image: New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection
Director: Nick Cassavetes Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase
Could hear arguments for this not being an action movie, but I won’t listen. It’sa good old-fashioned Chayefsky-esque message film as agitprop, taking down capitalism, told by a working-class schlub trying to get his son a heart transplant and socialize health care in one Chicago hospital by any means necessary. There is some sermonizing infotainment, but it’s a righteous cause and doesn’t bog down the film or break the tension. It’s moving and thought-provoking, heady stuff for a dumped-out February popcorn thriller, and quite possibly the most emotional Denzel performance on this list and beyond.
Best Denzel moment: Denzel pleading for James Woods to take his heart out of his chest and give it to his son so he can live, and then when he says goodbye to him before the surgery. There’s zero chance you won’t cry.
1. Devil in a Blue Dress
Image: Sony Pictures
Director: Carl Franklin Where to watch: For digital rental/purchase
In these films, it can be easy to lose sight of Denzel’s Blackness. Many of the roles on this list could’ve been played, by design, by any leading actor. Among many, many other elements in this incredible noir, what makes Devil in a Blue Dress special is that Liam Neeson couldn’t play Easy Rawlins. It’s Chinatown for race in America, a raw, sad, thrilling movie that showcases Denzel’s full complement of gifts and the very unique space he’s held in American cinema for 40 years. It’s channeling Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but also Nella Larsen. There are great performances all around, with an outrageous, all-cylinders Don Cheadle being fairly recognized and winning a SAG Best Supporting Actor Award that should’ve been attached to an Oscar. But Denzel is center frame in every shot, and it’s unlike any of his other detective films because when the movie starts, he’s not established, not even a detective. It’s an incredible origin story, as we watch Easy discover his gifts and his calling. If this isn’t his very best performance, it’s on his Mount Rushmore.
Best Denzel moment: When Denzel is so caught up having sex with his friend’s girl that he completely forgets about the information he’s ostensibly having the sex to obtain.
2023 was a banner year for anime. From beloved continuing series like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Jujutsu Kaisen to long-awaited passion projects like Pluto and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, there was pretty much something for every type of anime fan. While we’ve already published our picks for the best anime of the year and where to watch them, we also wanted to highlight one of the important yet overlooked elements of any great anime: the opening title sequence.
Opening title sequences in anime have a lot of purposes, from crediting the staff of animators who pour their hearts and craft into creating an excellent production to foreshadowing significant moments in the series itself. Combined with a particularly memorable theme song, a well-done title sequence has the potential to create a lasting impression on audiences and fans, if not even possibly eclipsing the quality of the show itself.
With that in mind, we’ve pulled together a list of some of our favorite anime openings of the year to highlight the work of the animators who created them while sharing our favorite anime theme bops.
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off — “Bloom”
Director: Masamichi Ishiyama Music by: Necry Talkie
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was one of the year’s big surprises, despite being highly anticipated. The anime adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s action rom-com comic series turned the story of Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers’ whirlwind romance on its head, reinventing its world as a way of reintroducing characters that fans knew and loved.
Chief animation director and character designer Masamichi Ishiyama’s opening sequence was the perfect reintroduction of Scott to new and old fans of the series, taking the video game-inspired visuals of the comic and injecting them with vibrant anime flair. Aside from a very clever blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to the opening sequence of the 2004 anime Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad, what makes the opening sequence for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is for how much it doesn’t tease the big twist of the series. It’s just a brilliant distillation of what made Scott Pilgrim such a beloved hang-out in the first place, and that’s all that it really needs to be. Combine that with an awesome track “Bloom” courtesy of the Japanese pop rock band Necry Talkie, and you’ve got a certified banger.
Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 — “SPECIALZ”
Director: Yuki Kamiya Music by: King Gnu
This season of Jujutsu Kaisen took a significantly darker turn, and the series’ second opening title sequence encapsulates that. Just as Shōta Goshozono took on the role of directing the show’s second season from previous director Sung Hoo Park, so too did Yuki Kamiya inherit the role of crafting this season’s opening title sequences from Jujutsu Kaisen’s former animation director Shingo Yamashita.
Of the two sequences Kamiya directed for this season, it’s the second one, created for the “Shibuya Incident Arc,” that stands out as one of the year’s best. It’s dark, ominous, and foreboding; foreshadowing not only Yuji Itadori’s fraught battle against the cursed spirit Mahito and the increased prominence of the malicious jujutsu sorcerer Sukuna, but also the tragic passing of one of the series’ most beloved characters. It’s an apt opening for a bracing, violent, and heartbreaking season.
Heavenly Delusion — “Innocent Arrogance”
Director: Weilin Zhang Music by: BiSH
Heavenly Delusion was one of my favorite anime premieres of the year, so it’s little wonder the series’ opening title sequence would also win a place in my heart. Weilin Zhang absolutely nails it with this opening, translating the already excellent character designs by the artist known as Utsushita into scenes that feel as unruly and adventurous as the series’ protagonist.
One particular moment in the sequence that stands out to me is at the one-minute mark, when Kiruko is running against a pink and purple sunset sky, the outline of their body racing out of sync alongside them before eventually merging. It’s a memorable and impressive artistic decision that feels, in hindsight, like a symbolic metaphor for Kiruko’s struggles with body dysmorphia throughout the season. The gorgeous sequence is made even more impactful for how perfectly BiSH’s original theme song “Innocent Arrogance” complements it.
Spy x Family season 2 — “Ado Kura Kura”
Director: Masaaki Yuasa Music by: Ado
Who do you choose to direct the opening title sequence for the second season of Spy x Family, one of the best animated action comedies in recent memory, if you want it to be an absolute legendary effort? Why Masaaki Yuasa, former president of Science Saru, of course!
The opening sequence for Spy x Family feels like the anime equivalent of an Avengers-style team up, with Yuasa’s whimsical polka-dotted animation backed by a theme song performed by Ado (of One Piece Film: Red-fame) and composed by none other than Cowboy Bebop’s Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts. The result is a sequence that feels every bit as auspicious as the creative team behind it, a wild and rollicking adventure that finds everyone’s favorite family of undercover spy-assassins-psychics enjoying a good cup of tea in-between performing donuts in their car.
Trigun Stampede — “TOMBI”
Director: None listed Music by: Kvi Baba
Much has been said about Trigun Stampede, the latest 3D CG anime adaptation of Yasuhiro Nightow’s space western manga, and the differences between it and the beloved 1998 anime produced by Madhouse. One of the key points of contention that fans of the original anime have is the absence of any equivalent to the 1998 Trigun’s rock-’n’-roll-inspired score by Tsuneo Imahori, with Trigun Stampede composer Tatsuya Kato taking on a more electronic and orchestrally inspired approach for the new series.
As a fan of the 1998 anime, I totally get it. But I will happily go to bat for it, and I absolutely loved the western-inspired title theme song by Kvi Baba and its accompanying sequence. Without fail, every time I watched this sequence before a new episode of the series, I was locked in and ready to take in the latest chapter in Vash the Stampede’s mission to protect the people of the planet Gunsmoke from his murderous brother Knives. It sets the tone for the series perfectly, striking a balance between mournful, adventurous, and appropriately epic.
The Fire Hunter — “Usotsuki”
Director: Kenichi Kutsuna Music by: Leo Ieiri
The Fire Hunter flew under the radar of many anime viewers this year, despite the pedigree of talent attached to its production. Make time to watch it — Ranma 1⁄2 director Junji Nishimura reunites with Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) on an epic apocalyptic fantasy story and the opening title sequence for the series absolutely rocks.
Directed by Kenichi Kutsuna, who previously worked as a key animator on Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Dororo, the opening for The Fire Hunter is a beautiful and memorable sequence that expounds on Takuya Saitō’s delicately rendered character designs and pairs them with elegantly pictorial backgrounds. I mean, look at that shot at the 23-second mark with the shafts of light piercing through the thinly outlined mass of clouds! Art!
Vinland Saga season 2 — “River”
Director: Yūsuke Sunouchi Music by: Anonymouz
Like Jujutsu Kaisen season 2, the second season of the historical adventure epic Vinland Saga took a sharp tonal shift from the vibe of its first season. Far from a revenge story, this season’s focus was on Thorfinn’s search for a sense of meaning and a life separate from the vengeance that previously drove him.
Directed by Yūsuke Sunouchi, who previously worked as an episode director on the first season of Vinland Saga, the opening title sequence for Vinland Saga season 2 perfectly captures the feeling of someone emerging out of the darkness and grasping after a sense of renewed clarity and direction. It’s a sequence that drops you directly into Thorfinn’s mindset at the outset of the season and primes the audience for the next chapter of his story.
It’s been a great year in movies. So great, in fact, that it was hard to limit our year-end list to just the 50 best new movies. Similarly, TV had a stellar year, and the 50 best new shows only scratches the surface of the year in episodic storytelling.
But not all of those movies are available to watch at home, and many of those shows are spread across a litany of streaming services. Netflix remains the king of streaming services for now. Statistically, you, dear reader, probably have a subscription. But the platform released well over 100 new movies in 2023, and even more shows. Not all of them can be winners. How do you make the most of your subscription? By sticking to these great picks.
A note: This list doesn’t include movies or TV shows produced by other companies but licensed for distribution by Netflix, like May December and Jawan.
Here are the best new Netflix original movies and TV series that came out this year.
Netflix’s best new movies of 2023
The Killer
Image: Netflix
David Fincher’s technical precision is a perfect fit for a story about a methodical hitman. The Killer is an immense technical feat — watch the behind-the-scenes about the sound design and VFX after.
They Cloned Tyrone
Photo: Parrish Lewis/Netflix
One of the year’s most impressive directorial debuts, Juel Taylor’s sci-fi farce They Cloned Tyrone also features one of the year’s funniest performances by way of Jamie Foxx.
Kill Boksoon
Photo: No Ju-han/Netflix
One of many stellar 2023 offerings from Netflix’s investment in Korean entertainment, Kill Boksoon follows an assassin who is also a single mom. It’s a great mix of action thrills and domestic drama, aided by a layered lead performance from Jeon Do-yeon.
Extraction 2
Photo: Jasin Boland/Netflix
Arguably Netflix’s best pure action movie of the year, Extraction 2 improved on the first thanks to a change in setting and one of the year’s most ambitious one-take sequences.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Image: Netflix
One of four experimental shorts by Wes Anderson adapting Roald Dahl stories, Henry Sugaris the first and best of the bunch. Benedict Cumberbatch is trying to learn how to cheat at cards, but the real joy is Anderson continuing to toy with the inherent artifice of storytelling, having actors read directly to the camera and using stage-like props and sets.
Netflix’s best new TV shows of 2023
Pluto
Image: Netflix
The long-awaited adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s legendary manga lived up to expectations, and then some. It’s a gorgeously told story about the hunt for a serial killer targeting the world’s most powerful robots. Unflinching in its depictions of personhood for humans and robots alike, Pluto is a masterpiece.
Blue Eye Samurai
Image: Netflix
Husband and wife duo Michael Green and Amber Noizumi delivered one of the year’s biggest surprises in this bloody, sexy, and satisfying revenge thriller about a mixed-race warrior who hides her gender and ethnicity while seeking to kill the four white men in Japan, seeking vengeance against her father.
Steven Yeun and Ali Wong excel in this intense thriller about two regular people who get in a feud that spirals out of control after a road rage incident. It’s a smart show about how the pressures of capitalism pit people against each other, anchored by two terrific lead performances.
The Diplomat
Photo: Alex Bailey/Netflix
A throwback to the kind of plot-heavy political thriller that used to run television, The Diplomat is a delightful star vehicle for Keri Russell. It’s an absolute treat to see her lead a TV show again, and the supporting cast, led by Rufus Sewell and Rory Kinnear, are more than up for the task of letting Russell shine.
Others worth watching:
Movies
Jung_E, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi from the director of Train to Busan and Hellbound
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, an Adam Sandler family joint that is a fun and funny teen comedy
Reptile, a dark crime thriller starring (and co-written by) Benicio del Toro
Wingwomen, a French heist/found sisterhood movie directed by and starring Mélanie Laurent
Ballerina, a dark Korean revenge thriller
TV
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, the third season of Tim Robinson’s zany sketch comedy show
The Night Agent, one of Netflix’s biggest hits of the year and a fun popcorn thriller
Ganglands, the second season of the excellent French crime thriller series
Bloodhounds, a Korean drama about two boys in a bromance who just love to box
Physical: 100, a Korean competition show about finding the fittest person in the country
Happy December, Polygon readers! The winter holidays are only a few short weeks away, but don’t fret: There’s plenty of presents in the form of movies new to streaming to enjoy in the meantime. With November now behind us, we’ve combed through the latest movies to stream on Netflix, Hulu, Max, and more to bring you the best of what December has to offer.
This month, we’ve got a bunch of DC Comics films arriving this weekend on Netflix, including Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel starring Henry Cavill and Matt Reeves’ explosive take on Batman starring Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz. Hustlers, the comedy crime drama starring Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu, comes to Hulu this week, while the modern slasher movie The Strangers: Prey at Night comes stalking its way onto Max.
Let’s dive in and see what this month has in store!
Editor’s pick
The Batman
Photo: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.
Genre: Superhero action Director: Matt Reeves Cast: Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano
It’s a daunting task, creating a new incarnation of Batman. Since the character’s first appearance in 1939, the Dark Knight has become one of the most iconic characters in the entirety of popular culture, with several feature adaptations having taken their own unique crack at what makes Bruce Wayne, the man beneath the cowl, tick.
Matt Reeves’ 2022 reboot starring Robert Pattinson shows audiences a Batman younger and angrier than any they’ve seen before — a costumed vigilante who’s only two years deep into his campaign as a caped crusader for justice. This shift affords Reeves the opportunity to devote more time to Batman as a crime fighter and detective, piecing together clues and surveilling suspects as he attempts to uncover the truth behind a conspiracy at the heart of Gotham City and apprehend a vengeful serial killer, the Riddler (Paul Dano). From the film’s gothic modernist version of Gotham City to the ferocity of the film’s close-quarters fight sequences, The Batman feels like a brilliant distillation of all the qualities that have made the character such an enduring pop culture icon while carving its own niche in the broader universe of Bat-media. We’re still two years out from the highly anticipated sequel, but if it’s been a while since you last saw it in theaters, The Batman’s arrival on Netflix is the perfect opportunity to revisit it. —Toussaint Egan
New on Netflix
Man of Steel
Image: Warner Bros.
Genre: Superhero action Director: Zack Snyder Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon
Stay with me as I share my journey with this movie. Like many others, when I first saw it, I hated it. I thought the violence and destruction were excessive and without thought, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. With the passing of time and the completion of the trilogy of movies, I have done a complete 180, and Man of Steel is now a movie I unexpectedly and unabashedly adore.
This is a deeply personal movie about feeling alienated from the world around you and wanting to be accepted, and about the failures of our parents while they try to look out for us. (Man of Steel could also be referred to as “Inside You There Are Two Dads: The Movie.”) All the elements that left me cold the first time around have since been contextualized thoughtfully in the movies that follow, especially in the opening scene of Batman v Superman.
Henry Cavill seems born to play Superman, bringing his natural charisma and good looks to the role in addition to an undercurrent of melancholy as he tries to navigate a world that seems to have no clear place for him. Michael Shannon is menacing as Zod, as is Antje Traue as his lieutenant Faora-Ul. With incredible fight scenes, a roaring score from Hans Zimmer, and thoughtful meditations on where our parents’ vision of our path in life differs from our own, Man of Steel deserves your reconsideration (or a rewatch, if you’re already in the “this rules, actually” camp). Now that it’s on Netflix (and with a new Superman on the way), that’s doubly true. —PV
New on Hulu
Hustlers
Image: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Genre: Crime comedy-drama Director: Lorene Scafaria Cast: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles
Based on an article from fellow Vox Media publication New York Magazine (hello, my colleagues), Hustlers is a colorful, exciting crime thriller about a group of strippers in New York City who scam wealthy clients. The movie features one of Jennifer Lopez’s best performances as the group’s ringleader and mother figure, and Constance Wu, Riverdale’sLili Reinhart, Keke Palmer, Lizzo, and Cardi B fill out the lovable group of women just trying to make it on their own terms. From our review when the movie was first released:
If anything, the film, based on a true story, feels more like the female reboot of a franchise than any of the actual remakes and reboots in that vein that we’ve gotten (Ocean’s 8, Ghostbusters, Men in Black: International, etc.) in that it tells the kind of story usually reserved for men with a cast full of women. Unlike those attempts, Hustlers never once feels like it’s just “a heist movie but with women;” it’s a full-fledged epic, made by and about women, and proof positive that female-centered films can flourish without being based on a pre-existing male-based IP.
Lopez recently announced a new album and short film due this February, which makes it a great time to revisit one of her best roles. —PV
New on Max
The Strangers: Prey at Night
Image: Aviron Pictures
Genre: Slasher horror Director: Johannes Roberts Cast: Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison
Director Renny Harlin is taking a page out of the Fear Street playbook by spearheading a new trilogy of stand-alone sequels to 2008’s The Strangers, all scheduled to be released throughout 2024. What better occasion could there be to revisit the last time the series’ sinister trio of masked murderers last stalked their way across screens?
Bryan Bertino’s original 2008 movie was a hit: a lean, mean psychological horror film that felt like a much-needed back-to-basics serial killer thriller for audiences fatigued with special effects-reliant spectacles and the “torture porn” traps of the Saw franchise. The Strangers became a sleeper hit among fans and saw significant success at the box office, so it’s a wonder why it took over a decade for the sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, to finally come out.
Set 10 years after the original, the movie follows a family vacationing at a trailer park in Ohio who unexpectedly cross paths with three masked killers intent on adding them to their body count. With no other recourse and desperate to survive, the family must band together to fight back and escape with their lives. The sequel leans more into the tropes of slasher horror, and the sedate barebones aesthetic of the original gives way to a more neon-infused contemporary grunge, but overall, The Strangers: Prey at Night is still a wickedly fun and terrifying horror movie. Here’s hoping that Harlin’s trilogy is able to push the carnage even further. —TE
New on Prime Video
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Image: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Genre: Action comedy Director: Doug Liman Cast: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Adam Brody
Every once in a while, you’ll see people complaining about how there’s too much sex in movies and TV. The truth is very much the opposite — our mainstream entertainment has never been less sexy (even filmmakers during the Hays Code era worked around those restrictive standards to imbue sexiness into their work). Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a wonderful antidote to these times, a sexy movie about sexy people doing sexy things.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play a husband-and-wife assassin duo who are in the midst of marital problems — turns out, it’s hard to keep your home life spicy when your work life is as dangerous as it comes. When they’re both assigned to kill the same person, things go very wrong.
It’s a very fun time at the movies, but there’s another reason to watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith right now — Prime Video is working on a TV adaptation starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine (Blue Eye Samurai), which will premiere next February. —PV
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, the anime adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s hit comic series by studio Science Saru, premiered on Netflix last friday. Produced and written by O’Malley and co-creator BenDavid Grabinski, Scott Pilgrim Takes Offdiverges significantly from the source material, morphing into an adaptation that at once functions as both a sequel and a remake of O’Malley’s original comic.
If you’re new to anime, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off might be your very first introduction to the work of Science Saru, the Japanese animation studio co-founded by Masaaki Yuasa and Eunyoung Choi. In recent years, Science Saru has garnered a reputation as one of the most memorable anime production houses of the past decade, thanks to a wildly idiosyncratic body of films and TV series and Yuasa’s flair for expressive, comically-inclined animation.
If you’ve already watched through the entirety of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and are looking for something else to watch as you puzzle over what exactly that ending might mean for Scott and his friends, not to worry: We’ve got just the list in mind.
We’ve pulled together our favorite Science Saru anime for you watch, from freewheeling romantic comedies, to macabre supernatural action dramas, and more.
Adventure Time, “Food Chain”
Image: Science Saru/Cartoon Network
Run time: 11m Where to watch: Max
What better place to start on a journey through the weird and wild animation of Science Saru than the studio’s first production? Directed by studio co-founder Yuasa, this 11-minute episode of the beloved show Adventure Time follows Finn the Human and Jake the Dog supervising a field trip to the Candy Kingdom’s Natural History Museum. After being transformed into birds by the mischievous Magic Man, the pair experience the circle of life firsthand as they transform into bacteria, plants, and eventually caterpillars which eat and are subsequently eaten by bigger birds.
It’s a beautiful and trippy short that hones in on Adventure Time’s distinctive brand of surreal humor while coming across as a great sampler for Yuasa’s particular approach to animated comedy and storytelling.
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl
Image: Science Saru/GKIDS
Run time: 1h 32m Where to watch: Max
The 2010 anime The Tatami Galaxy is commonly regarded as Masaaki Yuasa’s magnum opus and one of the best anime to come out of Science Saru. Adapted from Tomihiko Morimi’s 2004 novel, the 11-episode anime follows the story of an unnamed college student who, paralyzed with indecision, is bounced between multiple parallel universes as he re-experiences his freshman year over and over again. Unfortunately, at this time of writing, The Tatami Galaxy is not available to stream. But The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, the standalone spiritual sequel to the series, is just as good a place to start if you’ve never watched a Science Saru anime before.
The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl follows a hapless senior student at Kyoto University who plans to confess his feelings to his classmate at the school’s yearly night festival. Unfortunately, the two are separated while taking in the local nightlife, creating two parallel storylines of a comedic bar crawl and an over-the-top series of mishaps and shenanigans. If there’s one anime on this list that feels the closest to Scott Pilgrim Takes Off in terms of comedy and premise, it’s this one.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
Image: Science Saru/Crunchyroll
Number of episodes: 12 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! won its way into our hearts, and onto our list of the best anime of the year, back when it first aired in 2020. Based on Sumito Ōwara’s manga, the 12-episode anime follows a trio of high school girls who form a bond over their mutual love of animation. The series follows the girls’ journey through the wild world of amateur animation, first establishing a “film club” to circumvent the resistance of their teachers and parents, before creating a short film to sell their first commercial anime project.
Aside from being a delightful anime in its own right, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is a passionate tribute to the craft and dedication of traditional cel animation that puts an unsparing focus on the struggle that goes into taking a creative vision from an idea to reality. Filled with brilliant fourth wall-breaking sequences and charismatic characters, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is as entertaining as it is educational.
Devilman Crybaby
Image: Science Saru/Netflix
Number of episodes: 10 Where to watch: Netflix
Long before Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was even announced, Yuasa’s adaptation of Go Nagai’s apocalyptic superhero manga Devilman was a breakthrough success for both Science Saru and Netflix when it debuted back in 2018. An alternate modern retelling of the original story, Devilman Crybaby centers on Akira Fudo, a lonely high school student who is transformed into a powerful human-demon hybrid shortly after reuniting with his childhood friend Ryo Asuka. A hyper violent dark fantasy with intense action sequences and an ambiguous ending that borders the line between implicitly hopeful and explicitly nihilistic, Devilman Crybaby is a modern classic that’s strongly recommended for fans of anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Chainsaw Man, and the supernatural thriller anime X.
Inu-Oh
Image: Science Saru/GKIDS
Run time: 1h 38m Where to watch: Max
Masaaki Yuasa’s latest film is also, as of this writing, his final production with Science Saru, having announced his retirement from the company shortly before the movie’s premiere in 2021. That doesn’t necessarily mean Yuasa won’t ever direct another project at the studio again, but if it is, Inu-Oh is one hell of a way to cap off his time there. As critic Kambole Campbell noted in his review for Polygon, the film is, “a psychedelic, bombastic rock opera [that] ponders what stories have been lost as society’s more controlling elements attempt to control how art is made and distributed.” Music has always been a large part of Yuasa’s animation, and here, that love for the tightly wound relationship between the visual and the musical erupts into a howling display of breathtaking scenes and foot-stomping musical numbers. If you’re looking for an anime that matches Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s energetic beat, Inu-Oh is an easy recommendation.
The Heike Story
Image: Science Saru
Number of episodes: 11 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
The Heike Story is an undersung entry in Science Saru’s body of work. That’s a shame, because it’s an achingly beautiful series that more than deserves appreciation.
Directed by Naoko Yamada (K-On!, A Silent Voice), this adaptation of the classic Japanese epic follows Biwa, a traveling orphan who is brought into the home of lord Shigemori, a powerful lord whose servants killed Biwa’s father. Framed as a classic tragedy, the series follows the members of Shigemori’s family as his empire crumbles from the inside out, with Biwa documenting the various twists and turns of their destruction while playing her lute. The Heike Story was one of the best anime of 2021, and for good reason: It’s a beautiful, complex story of power undone by hubris with a delicate and beautiful art style and an evocative musical score.
Ping Pong the Animation
Image: Science Saru/Funimation
Number of episodes: 11 Where to watch: Crunchyroll
Ping Pong the Animation is one of the best anime of the past decade. Based on Taiyō Matsumoto’s (Tekkonkinkreet) original manga, it follows the story of two young men: Yutaka “Peco” Hoshino, a cocky self-assured high school student who’s a local Ping Pong whiz, and Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto, his reserved childhood friend.
The series follows the diverging lives of Peco and Smile, as the former is humbled and eventually forced to grapple with the limitations of coasting on sheer talent alone, and the latter is coaxed out of his shell to live up to his own potential as a ping pong player. Animated entirely in Flash, the series is one of the most unique productions of its era: A coming-of-age psychological drama, brought to life with idiosnycratic blend of misshapen lines and odd proportions that coalesce into an inspired display of visual and emotional storytelling.
Kingdom opens ominously, with two attendants walking across a Joseon-era Korean palace’s courtyard to bring the king his meal. Once inside, the older attendant warns his young companion not to look into the king’s bedchambers while passing the food underneath the curtain. The young attendant can’t resist, and when he opens his eyes he’s dragged under the curtain by a snarling beast. It’s a dread-filled scene that grabs your attention, but Kingdom also uses that moment to set itself apart. Most zombie shows are centered around characters thrust into survival mode without knowing what caused the outbreak in the first place. In Kingdom, the original zombie is not just a known entity, he’s also being tended to by a royal staff.
The rest of the intro reveals a lot of information in a short amount of time. A group of scholars has been posting flyers that the king is dead and it’s time for Crown Prince Lee Chang to ascend to the throne. But there’s an issue: Prince Chang’s mother was a concubine, and his current stepmother, Queen Consort Cho, is very pregnant. Her family has seized power with their new royal status, and they’ve rounded up and tortured these scholars to find out who’s behind their support of the prince. Meanwhile, Prince Chang has grown suspicious, and decides to find out the truth about his father’s mysterious recovery from smallpox.
If that sounds more like a Game of Thrones plot than a zombie show, well, you’re right. Kingdom is really, at its core, a political thriller set in medieval times. The zombie stuff, well, that’s just part of the politics — until, you know, it isn’t.
Photo: Juhan Noh/Netflix
The brilliance of Kingdom is that it doesn’t rely on twists and aggressive plot machinations to drive the show forward. The core conflict is laid out in 15 minutes flat: The king is a zombie, the queen is pregnant with his baby, and the queen’s family has seized power that would be threatened if the crown prince were anointed as the new king.
It doesn’t take much to realize who’s behind the zombification of the region’s ruler — but knowing the truth isn’t the same as proving it. Kingdom follows Prince Chang as he tries to collect evidence that he’s the rightful heir while avoiding the Cho clan’s guards, who are actively pursuing him. That alone would make for an exciting show. And then, of course, there are the zombies. As Prince Chang leaves the palace to find the doctor who treated his father, he discovers something even more terrifying: The king bit one of the doctor’s young assistants. We all know how that goes.
With a tight two-season story written and directed by Kim Eun-hee, Kingdom plays out its political games in conjunction with a growing zombie threat. It’s gripping, smart, and subtle, pacing its story in snippets of dialogue for viewers to stitch together. It’s also full of incredible action, painful suspense (characters in the daytime walking over dormant nocturnal zombies under floorboards, etc.), and truly terrifying horror: Victim by victim falls to brutal isolated zombie attacks, until a proper horde grows big enough to assault the entire royal city. Kingdom is truly an equal mashup of two different genres, and the fact that it’s done so well feels like a miracle. Just be prepared for things to get gnarly — two guards are beheaded in the opening sequence for being traitors, and if that’s the sort of violence that’s unleashed in a human-to-human conflict, just wait until the undead come into the picture.
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