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08 Sep

Upcoming Stephen King Movies and TV Series: Which Projects Are Still Happening?

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On Sept. 8, 2017, New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Pictures released It: Chapter One, the first of two movies based on the classic 1986 novel by Stephen King and a film destined to go down in cinema history as the highest grossing horror movie of all time. Opening to a record-shattering $124 million and eventually earning $701 million worldwide (against a measly budget of $40 million or so), It: Chapter One was also a fantastic movie. It captured both the unimaginable terror of the entity known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown (helped by a genuinely unnerving performance by Bill Skarsgard) and…

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08 Sep

How Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi Makes A New Hope Even Better

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This Star Wars article contains spoilers. 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope is without question one of the most important films of its era, a movie that paved the way for the massive blockbusters and cinematic universes we enjoy in theaters today. It’s a masterclass in worldbuilding, visual effects, editing, character work, and also helped shape Hollywood’s modern understanding of franchising. Without Lucas’ classic space opera, it’s possible there would be no MCU as we know it. So, it’s only natural that Disney has repeatedly gone back to the source material while sculpting its own rebooted Star Wars timeline, whether…

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07 Sep

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Promo Art Reveals Battle Armor for Namor and Nakia

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This post contains potential spoilers for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever It’s hard to remember the last time a superhero movie garnered as much interest and speculation as Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Not only was its predecessor a truly transcendent movie, one that became a key cultural artifact, even more so than its fellows in the genre. But also the film has been rocked with production issues, from the surprising death of star Chadwick Boseman to Shuri actor Letitia Wright’s reported anti-vaccination stance. In fact, so great has the on-set drama been that little is known about the plot of the…

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07 Sep

Flaming Star Is the Best Elvis Movie You Never Saw

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“I made him the highest paid actor in Hollywood history. We had a lot of fun!” So purrs Tom Hanks’ brazenly camp Col. Tom Parker in the new Elvis biopic. The film, which is the most decadent, jewel-encrusted piece of kitsch ever given an $85 million budget, is as much a monument to director Baz Luhrmann’s showmanship as it is Elvis Presley’s. For who else could condense the larger than life excess of a man dubbed “the King of Rock ’n Roll” into a three-ringed circus that keeps all its plates in the air for 160 minutes? Elvis really is…

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06 Sep

The Witch, Hot Summer Nights, and More Best Free Movies on Plex This Month

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As the summer starts to wind down and autumn approaches, it’s safe to assume you’ll be spending a bit more time indoors. Allow Plex TV to be your companion this year as the seasons change! Plex’s collection,  The Cinephiles — A24 on Plex, is adding great new titles to get you in the mood for fall, but there are plenty more marquee and under-the-radar flicks to choose from on Plex. While other streamers only seem to be pulling beloved content, Plex keeps adding must-watch movies and TV shows! Plex offers a one-stop-shop streaming service offering 50,000+ free titles and 200+…

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06 Sep

Black Panther Star Chadwick Boseman Wins Emmy for Marvel’s What If…?

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This article contains spoilers for What If… Season One, Episode Two In another universe, Chadwick Boseman got to enjoy the awards he earned. To be sure, praise was heaped upon the actor for his breakout role as James Brown in Get On Up and for playing the titular superhero in the culture-defining Black Panther. But major nominations did not come in until after Boseman’s shocking death at age 43 in 2020. Boseman’s final two live-action performances, as an inspiring leader of a Vietnam platoon in Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, and as an electric jazz musician in the film adaptation…

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06 Sep

Star Trek Star Missed Two Major Superhero Roles Before Landing Spock

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Ethan Peck knows a lot about stepping into big shoes. When the actor came onboard the U.S.S. Discovery in season two of Star Trek: Discovery, he became the third actor to portray Mr. Spock (not counting the various baby Spocks seen in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and 2009’s Star Trek). But before boldly going into space, he almost took a role even older and more distinguished than the Federation’s most beloved Vulcan, that of the Sentinel of Liberty. Speaking to attendees at DragonCon in Atlanta, Peck revealed that he had been among “a smaller few” Kevin Feige…

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06 Sep

The Internet Is Convinced Harry Styles Spit on Chris Pine at the Don’t Worry Darling Premiere

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This article contains existential spoilers At the time of writing, the internet at large is still arguing about whether Harry Styles spit on Chris Pine at the premiere of the pair’s beleaguered new thriller, Don’t Worry Darling. It’s only the latest juicy (but in this instance probably not that delicious) slice of drama from the film’s production and subsequent review-panning debut, which has included the kind of intriguing nonsense that expensive PR bods spend considerable time micromanaging on big budget projects so it never sees the light of day, but because Don’t Worry Darling has a much, much lower budget…

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06 Sep

First Omen and Lord of the Rings: Enough Already with the Hollywood Prequels

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Enough already with the prequels. From Marvel to Lucasfilm, from House of the Dragon to The Lord of the Rings, from one horror classic to another, Hollywood is fully investing in and doubling down on movies and TV series that show us what happened before the iconic or classic films and series that we already love, whether we really need to know what happened or not. The empire of dreams known as Tinseltown, alleged source of unbridled, endless creativity and imagination, is resorting to massive dumps of fan service, easter eggs, and the apparently bottomless pit of emotional nostalgia in…

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06 Sep

D23 2022 Schedule and Predictions: Marvel, Star Wars, and More!

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This post contains light spoilers for upcoming Disney projects. It was pretty big news when Disney came back to San Diego Comic-Con after an absence of several years. And, to be sure, the event didn’t disappoint, with MCU boss Kevin Feige revealing the schedule for the franchise’s next two phases. Heroes from a galaxy far, far away also got attention earlier this year at Star Wars Celebration, which included the announcement of a new series from Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts and a trailer for the upcoming show Andor. But Disney isn’t done hyping up their nerd franchises.…

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05 Sep

The Hood Could Be the MCU’s Next Big Street Level Villain

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Marvel Studios have already settled on the big villain that they are taking into the next few phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Kang the Conqueror will be the multiversal threat that Earth’s mightiest heroes have to face. But the two-part Avengers finale might not be enough to wrap up the loose ends within every corner of the Marvel Universe. Is the studio secretly building up to a secondary big bad? There are countless characters who could serve such a role, from Doctor Doom to Magneto, but most of them are just too compelling to play second fiddle to the…

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05 Sep

How Clueless Turned Paul Rudd Into a Lifelong Heartthrob

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Okay, Paul Rudd is kind of a Baldwin*, but when People magazine named the then-52-year-old actor the Sexiest Man Alive in 2021, it was a bit of a surprise… Or was it? For years now Rudd has wooed the world with his particular brand of unassuming niceness, boyish looks (how is he 53?!), philanthropic acts, apparent lack of ego, and incredibly charismatic screen presence. But it was Amy Heckerling that launched him into the hearthrob limelight when she cast him in Clueless, her Valleygirl take on Jane Austen’s Emma. From the outset, Heckerling had wanted to make a movie about…

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04 Sep

A Clockwork Orange Ending Is Better Off With Alex Not Being Cured

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“I was cured all right,” Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) asserts at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 cautionary science fiction classic, A Clockwork Orange, and audiences cheered. We left theaters relieved the teenaged thug who’d been beating and attacking his way through the future suburbs of London escaped government brainwashing, conformity, and supplication with his mind, and baser instincts, intact. Good for him. He is free to brutalize and pillage another day. This may be problematic as a working social application in real life, but it is the better cinematic choice. The film ends on a classically framed shot of…

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03 Sep

The Problem With Making a Faithful Starship Troopers Adaptation

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This year marks 25 years since the release of Paul Verhoeven’s movie adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein novel, Starship Troopers. It’s a great movie, although not one that hues tightly to its source material. You could even be forgiven for thinking the director had never read the book or that this was a completely unrelated film which has had the Starship Troopers title slapped on it to sell more tickets. Because, as it turns out, both of those things are true. Verhoeven is on record as saying he tried to read Starship Troopers but stopped after two chapters “because…

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03 Sep

Celebrating Wong’s Iconic MCU Exits

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This article contains MCU spoilers If there’s one character who has really increased their stock by jumping off the comic book page and into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s Wong, the current Sorcerer Supreme. No, wait. Actually, it’s M’baku of the Jabari Tribe. But after him, it’s probably Wong, the current Sorcerer Supreme. A character whose existence in the comics was to be little more than Doctor Strange’s butler, Wong’s cinematic self has become a fun secondary hero who tends to pop up here and there. Then again, Wong’s secondary superpower is not so much popping up, but skipping out.…

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02 Sep

Classic ’80s Horror Movie Monster Finally Brought Back with New Look

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While 1987’s Hellraiser never set the box office on fire and split critics down the middle, Clive Barker’s supernatural horror film has gone on to become a cult classic, spawning nine sequels. The films, centered on a mystical puzzle box called the Lament Configuration that summons extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic beings called Cenobites who cannot differentiate between pain and pleasure, are anchored by their leader Pinhead, who has rightfully become a horror movie icon. Since the movie monster’s big screen debut, most of the sequels have featured English actor Doug Bradley in the role of Pinhead, and all of the Hellraiser films…

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02 Sep

The Best Korean Action Movies

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Korean filmmakers have produced some of today’s most cutting-edge movies by borrowing the best elements from Hollywood, Chinese, and Japanese cinema, and mixing them their own unique cultural vision. So when it comes to the action genre, K-films are all over the map. K-actioners range from irreverent comedies to gritty brutal ultraviolence. Story arcs move from funny to savage in the blink of an eye.  Always well-crafted, Korean action films are filled with clever plot twists, refreshing characters that are fully fleshed out, and superb cinematography, However, Korean cinema tends to defy being as easily pigeonholed into genre boxes as…

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02 Sep

Why Austin Powers Would Not Be a Hit Today

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It’s hard to overstate just how popular Austin Powers was 20 years ago. But back in the summer of 2002, when Mike Myers starred in his third and (as of press time) final appearance as the character via Austin Powers in Goldmember, the James Bond and 1960s spoof was more than just a comedy hit in its moment; it was the moment. Released in late July, Austin Powers 3 opened to $73 million in its first domestic weekend. Back then that was staggering for a comedy. And frankly, it’s staggering for a comedy right now. The debut marked a 75…

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01 Sep

New Spider-Man: No Way Home Footage Reveals a World Without Peter Parker

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This post contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home: The More Fun Stuff Version For its detractors, Spider-Man: No Way Home is less a movie and more two hours of fan service. These viewers argued that cameos from Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus, Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, and Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as alternate reality Spider-Men drove the narrative to the detriment of the actual story. It’s safe to say that these critics probably won’t be shelling out the cash to see Spider-Man: No Way Home: The More Fun Stuff Version when it comes to theaters this weekend.…

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01 Sep

Disney+ New Releases September 2022

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This month Disney will be hosting Disney+ Day, which means the streamer’s list of new releases for September 2022 is more jam-packed than usual. Keeping with tradition, however, the biggest release this month is of the Marvel of Star Wars variety, with Star Wars taking its turn after Marvel did with She-Hulk in August. Prequel series Andor is set to premiere on Wednesday, Sept. 21 with three episodes. Starring Diego Luga as the titular rogue, Andor will take place in the time before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Disney has big plans for this property, with an uncommonly large…

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