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10 Feb

Your Place or Mine Review: Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher Lack Romantic Chemistry

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Early on in Aline Brosh McKenna’s romantic comedy Your Place or Mine, rebranding consultant Peter (Ashton Kutcher) hits the nail on the head about this particular genre of movie: His work is “to teach you to tell a story to other people about you that is better than the story that you tell yourself. Because the stories that we tell ourselves are very limiting.” Rom-coms contain all manner of characters stuck in narratives of their own making: A man who can’t be friends with women (When Harry Met Sally), “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” (27 Dresses), and so forth.…

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09 Feb

WandaVision Director Finally Weighs in on Scarlet Witch’s Doctor Strange 2 Arc

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Even those of us who liked Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness have to agree: the movie did Wanda dirty. After being relegated to a background character since her introduction in the post-credit sequence of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) finally got her place in the spotlight with WandaVision. In addition to breaking the formal boundaries of the MCU with a series that mirrored new sitcom styles with every episode, WandaVision also reimagined Wanda as a tragic hero, a woman who desperately clings to fantasy as an escape from her merciless reality. So it was…

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09 Feb

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Will Fix One of Crystal Skull’s Big Mistakes

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Harrison Ford is fairly dismissive of critics of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And he’s not trying to hide it either, as gleaned in his latest profile in The Hollywood Reporter. While chatting with THR’s James Hibberd, the man in the fedora was reminded that some folks were pretty harsh about Indy 4 in 2008. “Where are they now?” Ford apparently retorted. “… I mean, [the critics] were harsh on it, but what are they doing now? I understand, but those were their rules—-not [Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’] rules. They were imposing rules on what…

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09 Feb

The Best Romantic Movies on Netflix Right Now

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“Netflix and chill.” Future pop culture historians will likely look back and chuckle at that turn of phrase, which in the 2010s signaled a hefty technological shift from the days of “we can put on records.” It also represents the moment when Netflix dominated the zeitgeist for years. It’s an open question whether that dominance will continue after next month since the most popular streaming service is doing away with its password sharing capabilities. But in the meantime, let’s all “Netflix and chill” one last time, especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner. Indeed, this Valentine’s season has a winsome…

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08 Feb

Star Wars Finally Solves a Major Prequel Trilogy Mystery About the Clone Wars

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This Star Wars article contains spoilers for The Bad Batch. Believe it or not, clones and the concept of clone armies have existed in the Star Wars universe since the very beginning, going all the way back to when old Ben Kenobi made a reference to the legendary Clone Wars in 1977. Back then, this line delivered by Sir Alec Guinness was just a bit of classic George Lucas worldbuilding, an insinuation that the galaxy far, far away was much bigger and had way more history than what you were watching on screen. There was so much more happening out…

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07 Feb

Skinamarink and the Many Reddit Theories About Kevin, the Monster, and the Ending

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This Skinamarink article contains spoilers. Upon first viewing, it’s easy to see why Skinamarink has sparked so much debate on Reddit forums about its true meaning and what exactly Kevin and Kaylee are experiencing inside their haunted house. There are no clear answers across the film’s challenging 100-minute runtime, just hints as to what happened to Kevin and Kaylee’s missing parents and the identity of the faceless villain who whispers to the children from upstairs. And with the film grain turned all the way up so that you can barely make out what’s happening in the house’s dimly lit hallways…

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07 Feb

First Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Reactions Pour In

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You’ve got big dreams. You want Marvel. Well, Marvel costs. And right here is where you start paying: in sweat 2023 theater tickets and Disney+ subscription fees. With a divisive Phase 4 of the MCU wrapped and shipped, it’s almost time to clap our eyes on the first of Marvel Studios’ Phase 5 entries: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Paul Rudd reprises his role as the little guy who could, Scott Lang, in a threequel that appears to be taking a tonal diversion. Where both 2015’s Ant-Man and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp were fun, family-friendly capers that Marvel was…

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07 Feb

Which TV or Movie Cop Would You Want To Investigate Your Murder?

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Few of us want to face up to the prospect of our actual deaths, which on balance are likely to be undramatic and involve dull phrases like ‘primary hypertension’, ‘ischemic heart disease’ and ‘she really did love Doritos’. Imagining our screen deaths though, is a different matter. On screen, we can expire glamorously. Mid-diamond heist, say, or thrown from the top of the Statue of Liberty, or popping up eviscerated between letters D and F in an alphabet-based serial killer’s magnum opus. These glamorous and exciting screen deaths demand a similarly glamorous and lengthy investigation by a fictional cop of…

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07 Feb

AMC Theatres ‘Sightline’ Pricing Strategy Won’t Improve Moviegoing Habits

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Few folks these days seem to recall where the term “nickelodeon” originates. While the word is now synonymous with children’s entertainment and the heyday of basic cable television, it once referred to an entirely different medium; it was what folks called going to the movies. At the dawn of the 20th century, and at a moment when indoor exhibition of motion pictures was still considered a novelty, “nickelodeons” were some of the earliest movie houses that flourished in the United States. For a mere five cents per person—or one nickel per ticket—all the wonder of the big screen was yours…

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06 Feb

The Best Winter Horror Movies to Watch in the Cold Months

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When folks say they love winter, typically they refer to the earliest months of the season, with winter beginning on Dec. 21 in the northern hemisphere. In those early days of holiday cheer, there is something familiar and comforting about the cold. But eventually the bright lights go away, and the wind howls louder. Eventually, all you’re left with is icy darkness. Perhaps that’s why so many of the best horror movies are set during the winter season! Utilizing folks’ fear of barren bleakness, and the tedium of being trapped inside becoming lethal, filmmakers who run the gamut from Stanley…

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06 Feb

Star Trek: Picard Showrunner Teases Connection to Original Series Movies

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As much as Star Trek promises to boldly go where no one has gone before, the franchise has never been afraid to look back at its past. We’ve seen that in appearances by Janice Rand and Khan Noonien Singh in the movies, cameos from most of the original crew in The Next Generation, and even in reimagined characters in the J.J. Abrams movies, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds. So it isn’t much of a surprise that Star Trek: Picard would bring back the rest of Jean-Luc Picard’s team for the third and final season of the beloved Captain’s adventures. But…

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06 Feb

Knock at the Cabin Returns M. Night Shyamalan to His Post-Sixth Sense Glory

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This article contains mild Knock at the Cabin spoilers. “Don’t you look away.”  That’s the one command a soon-to-be-executed man makes before he sacrifices himself in an attempt to prevent the apocalypse in Knock at the Cabin, the latest from director M. Night Shyamalan. It’s grim stuff, but nasty, ludicrous premises such as these have become the norm for Shyamalan, especially over the past decade. Ever since the once vaunted director’s Hollywood career stalled with famous flops The Last Airbender and After Earth, Shyamalan has found his footing again with a series of nasties, including the found-footage cheapie The Visit…

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04 Feb

M. Night Shyamalan: There’s ‘So Much More’ Than Horror to My Movies

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It’s not what you expect to hear when M. Night Shyamalan, the director of films like The Visit and Split, leans over to tell you, “I never think my movies are horror.” He says that even as it’s the genre he’s been tied to ever since a little boy confessed he sees dead people. “That’s where they are in the supermarket, they’re on the horror shelf,” the director admits, “but there’s so much more.” It’s both understandable that Shyamalan’s name is associated with horror and also that he doesn’t exactly see it the same way. The first watch of The…

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04 Feb

Skinamarink: How Reddit and an Internet Leak Created a Horror Box Office Hit

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Leicester Square, London. A damp Saturday night in January. The Odeon, the largest cinema on the square, shines bright blue, the outside screens projecting images of Na’vi, hoping to entice us to step inside and watch Avatar: The Way of Water. Nearby, another of the large cinemas is covered in posters of Margot Robbie being carried through a blazing party; Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, which cost $90 million to make, is playing there. It’s not too busy—unlike around the corner where something remarkable is happening. A line has formed outside the Prince Charles Cinema, a beloved theater known for spotlighting cult…

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04 Feb

Star Trek Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

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You’d think there wouldn’t be all that many surprises in a ranking of the various Star Trek movies. Official fan doctrine tends to elevate a select handful of them to the very top (and rightfully so, because when this franchise is great, it’s really great) while dismissing, fairly or unfairly, others. But the reality is, there’s such a wide array of tones across Star Trek films that one fan’s skippable entry is another fan’s favorite (well…most of the time). We chose a panel of our most decorated Starfleet experts to vote on the highs and lows of the Star Trek…

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04 Feb

Knock at the Cabin Ending Explained: How to Change the Book But Keep the Spirit

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Contains spoilers for Knock at the Cabin and The Cabin at the End of the World. Knock at the Cabin is about love. It’s a home invasion horror, an apocalyptic disaster movie, a virtually single location character piece, but mostly it’s about love. Paul Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World is also a book about love, though in some ways it’s a rather bleaker prospect when it comes to the end, depending on how you see it. The film sees family Eric (Jonathan Groff), Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and their 8-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) on vacation in…

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03 Feb

Batman Returns Still Has the Best Romance in a Superhero Movie

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Michelle Pfeiffer put a live bird in her mouth in Batman Returns. Let that sink in for a moment: a respected thespian, who by 1992 had already received two Oscar nominations for Dangerous Liaisons (1989) and The Fabulous Baker Boys (1990), put a tricolored Gouldian finch inside her mouth. For nearly a minute! And she never broke character once as she portrayed the feline pleasure in avicide before letting the creature fly out (maybe) unscathed. The scene is remarkable for a few reasons. First, in the days before CGI trickery (and constant social media scrutiny), filmmakers just went ahead and…

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03 Feb

Why Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Has the Most Realistic Underwater Kingdom

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One of the most memorable aspects of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the creation of the undersea kingdom of Talokan, ruled over by the mutant god-king Namor (Tenoch Huerta). Moving away from the comic book canon, in which Namor leads the more fantasy-based realm of Atlantis, director Ryan Coogler reinvented Talokan as an offshoot of an ancient Mayan society, with deep roots in Mesoamerican culture and history. While Talokan and the Talokanil people are still wildly imaginative sci-fi/fantasy conceptions, the film and story nevertheless make them as realistic as possible (relatively speaking), grounded in both real South American…

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02 Feb

Marvel Phase 4 Movies and TV Shows Ranked

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This article contains MCU spoilers. It’s over! It’s officially over. Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is finally in our rear view mirror, and what did we learn? We learned that Marvel Studios wasn’t going to stop taking risks after capping off Phase 3 with the box office juggernaut of Avengers: Endgame. In fact, they were going to take more risks than ever. Sometimes, those risks paid off. Other times, they did not. But during a transformative time for the MCU, Phase 4 was, for the most part, determined not to offer the one thing that would have made…

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02 Feb

Skinamarink Is the Strangest (and Most Original) Horror Movie You’ll See All Year

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The thing you should know about Skinamarink going in is that it’s a movie which does everything in its power to not be a movie. Call it an experience, call it an experiment, call it a nightmare simulator. Whatever it is, it’s unlike any movie you’ll see this year, skirting almost every cinematic convention you’ve ever heard about.  The actors’ faces, for example, are never shown. Virtually every shot seems to have no clear focus, with objects and subjects obscured or only partially in-frame, the camera seemingly misplaced and left on by mistake. Shots are often uncomfortably long and lingering,…

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