24 Best NR Movies On Itunes (Page 2)

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Find the best movies rated NR, as per MPAA rating standards. These recommendations are at the same time acclaimed by critics and highly-rated by users.

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

Huesera: The Bone Woman might not be the scariest film horror fans would see, but it does strike at the heart of the scary experience of motherhood. Through eerie sounds of breaking bones and weirdly contorted hands at the edge of beds, the film depicts new mother Valeria being haunted by the titular spirit, despite her prayer to the Virgin Mary. Valeria pleads for her husband and family to listen, though each time she does becomes proof of her faults as a mother. The terror in newcomer Natalia Solián’s face makes it all feel believable, but it’s the folk-inspired imagery of first-time feature director Michelle Garza Cervera that turns this film into a feminist masterpiece.

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Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery

Actor: Aida López, Alfonso Dosal, Emilram Cossío, Enoc Leaño, Gina Morett, Martha Claudia Moreno, Mayra Batalla, Mercedes Hernández, Natalia Solián, Pablo Guisa Koestinger, Samantha Castillo, Sonia Couoh

Director: Michelle Garza Cervera

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2022

It’s a bold move, centering a drama around a creature as docile as a donkey, but EO pulls it off without ever leaning on the crutch of CGI. Instead, the film makes ingenious use of a hundred-year-old film technique: the Kuleshov effect. By splicing the image of the titular donkey’s placid, expressionless face against visual stimulus, the illusion of a genuine reaction is produced.

But don’t be mistaken: this is no twee Disney-esque tale of anthropomorphism. Inspired by the classic Au Hasard Balthasar, EO tracks the haphazard journey of a former circus donkey across Europe — one that is often depicted in surreal psychedelic reds instead of idyllic picture-book tones, and punctured by more horrors than joys (though we do, thankfully, get to see him munch away on some well-deserved carrot treats). EO’s docility frames him as a kind of holy innocent, making the cruelty meted out to him feel all the more like a grave violation of something sacrosanct. Seeing the world through his oft-neglected perspective also makes this a movie about humans by proxy — a fresh, empathetic approach that, even in its obvious dramatic liberties, makes us meditate on both the depth of experience that may be unfolding in our animal neighbors and our role in shaping it.

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Genre: Drama

Actor: Isabelle Huppert, Kateřina Holánová, Lolita Chammah, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kościukiewicz, Sandra Drzymalska, Tomasz Organek, Waldemar Barwiński

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

Sophie Compton and Reubyn Hamlyn's British-American documentary about the harm of deepfakes won the SXSW Special Jury Award for its innovative storytelling and deservingly so. The two filmmakers use a clever and considerate way to let a young woman fictitiously named Taylor share her story of how she found deepfake pornography of herself online. With testaments, desktop form reconstructions, and lots of deepfakes, Compton and Hamlyn alert the audience to how terrifyingly widespread this kind of abuse is, and even more: how unregulated it is. Across the globe and 48 US states deepfake pornography is legal to make and spread, while victims remain helpless and unprotected. More than 90% of them are women. These chilling statistics are only part of the reason this documentary takes an activist stance and wants to raise awareness against the uncontrolled spread of face-swapping algorhythms amidst heated discussions around AI and ethics.

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Genre: Documentary

Director: Reuben Hamlyn, Sophie Compton

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2010

Certified Copy starts straightforward enough as it follows an unnamed shopkeeper (Juliette Binoche) and a writer (William Shimell) taking a stroll around picturesque Tuscany, debating the merits of authenticity and simplicity. They’re strangers flirting under the guise of an intellectual debate, and for a while, you think you’re watching a film like Before Sunrise, that is until a mysterious, almost magical, shift occurs, and suddenly, you’re witnessing something entirely different. For better or worse, director Abbas Kiarostami never makes it clear what happens, and that very mystery gives you a lot to think about. Are they pretending to be copies or is it the other way around? Neverending questions run through your head as you watch them banter, but whatever actually happens might be beside the point. At the moment, you get deeply felt, wonderfully rendered, as-real-as-can-be performances from Binoche and Shimell, and you can’t help but surrender.
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Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Adrian Moore, Agathe Natanson, Andrea Laurenzi, Angelo Barbagallo, Filippo Trojano, Gianna Giachetti, Jean-Claude Carrière, Juliette Binoche, William Shimell

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

Many films that deal with the advent of some sort of apocalypse usually hit the ground running, but When Evil Lurks also keeps its sense of panic and paranoia right up to its bitter end. Even during moments of downtime—as this small group of "survivors" tries to keep moving—there is an overwhelming sense that they're only delaying their inevitable suffering, or that evil has existed long before  any of them. There are passing mentions of this demonic presence having originated in the city, and how it manages to infiltrate the lives of those on the outskirts through modern things like electricity and gunfire. It's an intriguing angle that gives possession a new texture: these demons aren't just randomly manifesting, but invading and occupying.

And when the violence kicks in, When Evil Lurks really doesn't spare its characters, as shown by some pretty gnarly practical effects and vicious sound design. The constant escalation of the demonic threat can feel contrived at times—as the rules of how things operate in this world keep on being added or modified, at a rate that can be hard to process—but the anguish it leaves its characters in is suffocating all the same. There may not appear to be a moral at the end of all this, but it evokes a sense of hopelessness better than many other films.

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Genre: Horror, Thriller

Actor: Demián Salomón, Emilio Vodanovich, Ezequiel Rodríguez, Federico Liss, Isabel Quinteros, Jorge Prado, Luis Ziembrowski, Sebastián Muñiz, Silvina Sabater, Virginia Garófalo

Director: Demián Rugna

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

Through this action-packed, absolutely crazy ride of a movie, writer-director Atlee and Bollywood legend Shah Rukh Khan team up in Jawan to question the country’s corruption in multiple fields, including, but not limited to the agricultural sector, the healthcare industry, and the electoral system. They do so through an amped-up, explosion-filled spectacle led by a high-tech Robin Hood and his merry women inmates, who use terrorism in order to pay out loans for poor farmers and other promises that politicians give to their voters. It’s also intertwined with a romance plot that sees the vigilante and the single-parent counterterrorist chief in an unknowing enemies-to-lovers, mistaken identity marriage. It’s a strange film that tries to tackle as many political messages as possible, but it’s also downright entertaining with every plot twist it takes.

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Genre: Action, Adventure, Thriller

Actor: Ashlesha Thakur, Atlee, Bharat Raj, Boxer Dheena, Deepika Padukone, Eijaz Khan, Girija Oak, Jaffer Sadiq, Mukesh Chhabra, Nayanthara, Priyamani, Ravindra Vijay, Ridhi Dogra, Sanjay Dutt, Sanjeeta Bhattacharya, Sanya Malhotra, Shah Rukh Khan, Sunil Grover, Vijay Sethupathi, Yogi Babu

Director: Atlee

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

There's something rich at the heart of Afire that, whether intentionally or not, is kept at arm's length from the viewer. Over the course of Leon's (Thomas Schubert) quiet summer retreat to work on the manuscript for his second book, we come to understand his generally irritable nature as not just creative but existential. Through his eyes and writer-director Christian Petzold's expertly restrained sensibilities for drama, every moment becomes tinged with a vague jealousy—insecurity about other people leading satisfied lives, and his inability to let anything be without finding fault in it first. Leon is meant to be difficult to sympathize with, but at his core is an emptiness that comes with the acknowledgement of how limited one's future really is.

And on the opposite end is Nadja (Paula Beer), a woman who just happens to be staying at the same vacation home due to an overlap in booking, whom Leon sees as a reminder for everything he lacks: romance, thoughtful attentiveness, and a love of life that helps her to stop focusing on what she thinks she lacks. The film stops short of having these characters undergo change that feels truly meaningful, but just seeing them dance around each other with a sharpening tension is well worth the experience.

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Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actor: Enno Trebs, Esther Esche, Jennipher Antoni, Langston Uibel, Matthias Brandt, Paula Beer, Thomas Schubert

Director: Christian Petzold

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2022

Although this adaptation of the 1960s TV show feels like four episodes of material crammed into a feature runtime, Shin Ultraman really does squeeze as much as it can out of every scene, sometimes to the point of exhaustion. Not only are the action scenes as ridiculous as they should be—still imitating the clunkiness and the theatricality of classic Japanese tokusatsu—but even sequences of exposition are made to feel urgent and breathless by breakneck comedic editing and by placing the camera in the weirdest positions for the quickest shots. And somehow, Shin Ultraman still doesn't feel like it's making fun of its source material. It's an honest-to-goodness sci-fi superhero movie that's much more insightful about the nature of international crises than Hollywood tends to be.
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Genre: Action, Science Fiction

Actor: Akari Hayami, Bin Furuya, Daiki Arioka, Hajime Yamazaki, Hideaki Anno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Issey Takahashi, Keishi Nagatsuka, Kenjiro Tsuda, Koichi Yamadera, Kōji Yamamoto, Kyūsaku Shimada, Masami Nagasawa, Ryo Iwamatsu, Soko Wada, Takumi Saitoh, Tetsushi Tanaka, Toru Masuoka, Yutaka Takenouchi

Director: Shinji Higuchi

Rating: NR

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Shot from the movie

, 2023

Like the action thriller Cellular (2004), Unseen plays with the idea of saving someone only through a phone. This time, however, Yoko Okumura’s directorial debut has video call instead of just audio, with video used to help nearly blind Emily run away from her kidnapper ex. Through split screen shots, occasional open hazy irises, and tiny phone screens, Unseen takes us on a desperate escape, an escape made possible by Emily’s connection with random stranger Sam. While some parts feel absolutely ridiculous, the thriller still feels like a wild ride, especially when focused on its two leads. It’s still enjoyable, if you can accept its silliness and the shallow way it approaches certain themes.

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Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Brett Baker, Jolene Purdy, Michael Patrick Lane, Midori Francis, Missi Pyle, Nicholas X. Parsons, Ren Hanami

Director: Yoko Okumura

Rating: NR

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