Materialists (2025)
Directed by Celine Song
A young, ambitious New York City matchmaker finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex.
12 connections found
View:
12 films that influenced Materialists
What critics say influenced Materialists
Will Smith stars in this earlier variation on the "single matchmaker" premise, playing a dating coach who's more adept at solving his clients' romantic problems than his own.
Welles followed “Citizen Kane,” often talked about as the greatest film ever made, with “The Magnificent Ambersons;” who knows how well it would be regarded if the studio hadn't butchered the editing?
Is she a latter day Julia Roberts from Pretty Woman (1990)?
Yet, on another occasion, she relates how some men spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a painful surgery to increase their height by up to six inches, a procedure I had only previously heard of in Andrew Niccol’s 1997 dystopian sci-fi movie Gattaca (a quick trip to Mar-A-Lago suggests that the compulsion for such dysmorphic butchery is more symptomatic of female rather than male pathology).
Advertisement
Like Lily Bart in Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, Lucy is self-aware enough of her own superficial motives to be unfailingly charming, even to those she rejects, so we understand why John can't forget her.
Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Celine Song’s sophomore effort opens during The Dawn of Man. In an idyllic valley, a hunter-gatherer collects a bouquet of flowers and brings them to the cave of his beloved. He presents them to her along with a pouch full of primitive stone tools and, for a final winning touch, wraps a blossom around her finger.
Perhaps taking a cue from Joachim Trier's inspired use of Harry Nilsson on the soundtrack of another not-quite-rom-com, The Worst Person in the World, Song plays out those honeymoon-phase scenes to “I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City,” one of a handful of choice needle-drops.
Tarantino showed great promise with “Reservoir Dogs,” heralding a new voice that blended grindhouse grittiness with an auteur's touch, and then blew everyone away with “Pulp Fiction,” one of the best and most influential films of the late 20th century.
Advertisement
(Still great, though.)Peele went weird after “Get Out,” one of the best horror films ever made, with “Us.”
The same bar prominently featured in another A24 movie, A Different Man—begging the question, does Birdy's have some kind of deal going with this company?