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20 Dec

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Post-Credit Explained: Who Are These Fan Favorite Characters?

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This article contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Sonic saves the day. Even if you keep drowning in Chemical Zone and throwing your old Sega Genesis controller across the room, you know that every Sonic the Hedgehog story ends with the Blue Blur triumphant and Robotnik defeated. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is no different. By the end of his third big screen outing, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) befriends new antagonist Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves) and stops Gerald Robotnik and his grandson Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik (both played by Jim Carrey, hammy as ever) from blowing up the world. Sonic even…

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20 Dec

Day of the Fight: How a Boardwalk Empire Reunion Made Jack Huston’s Dream Come True

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Jack Huston knew if he ever directed a movie, it would not simply be something he wanted to make. It would be something he needed to pursue. An idea which loomed so large and for so long in his mind’s eye that only he could bring it to life. And, perhaps fittingly, it might have begun with an image that never left him in all the years and days which passed since he played the soulful hitman Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire. It began on a New Jersey set and with a co-star pounding away on a sack filled with…

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20 Dec

Lin-Manuel Miranda Fought to Write a Villain Song for Mads Mikkelsen in Mufasa

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Lin-Manuel Miranda has heard the criticism before. As some cynics on the internet have repeated, the songwriter and actor who gave the world In the Heights and Hamilton supposedly cannot write a villain song. It’s an odd take since he previously submitted the delightfully decadent “Shiny” in Moana—and we’d argue Aaron Burr’s jazzy barnburner, “The Room Where It Happens,” isn’t exactly an epiphany for good deeds—yet the critique persists. And like a certain North Carolina basketball player, Miranda chose to take that personally. And in Mufasa: The Lion King, the Tony winner might just have his slam dunk of a baddie…

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20 Dec

Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim Connects to More Than Just Books and Peter Jackson

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There are two kinds of Lord of the Rings fans. Those who have seen the Rankin and Bass version of The Return of the King, and everybody else. It’s okay. I get it. Peter Jackson delivered a near-perfect version of Return of the King in 2003, so, why would you watch the 1980 animated version, complete with singing orcs who are complaining about getting whipped all the time? Yes, most serious Tolkien-heads have seen the classic 1977 Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, but it’s in the beautiful strangeness of the 1980 Return of the King that the best and weirdest…

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20 Dec

Superman: James Gunn Confirms He’s Using John Williams Theme, Alternate Timeline and More!

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It’s the moment that DC fans all over the world have been waiting for: the first trailer for James Gunn‘s Superman is here and we were lucky enough to get a sneak peek at it earlier this week on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, California. As part of the first group to ever see the trailer we also got to take part in an extensive Q&A with writer/director Gunn and stars David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult. The in depth chat revealed many interesting tidbits about the highly anticipated film, from flying dogs to the immense size…

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19 Dec

Why the 1940s Nostalgia of A Christmas Story Still Works Today

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“Ah, there it is,” the adult Ralphie intones in the opening scene of the holiday staple A Christmas Story. “My old house. How could I ever forget it?” Narrator Jean Shepherd, the author whose stories inspired the film, imbues the lines with innocent warmth. Matched with the sumptuous version of “Deck the Halls” that opens the movie, this beginning sets the stage for a nostalgic look at an innocent time in a WASP American boy’s life. So sweet, so welcoming is the music and narration that we almost fail to realize what, exactly, we’re looking at. Accompanying the words and…

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19 Dec

Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd Fight Killer Unicorns in New Bats**t A24 Trailer

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Mythical creatures. Movie stars. And the studio that recently gave the world The Brutalist and Sing Sing. We probably were always going to be at least a little intrigued by Death of a Unicorn, the upcoming dark comedy starring Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd that’s oh, so A24 that it even intentionally misspelled “unicorn” by way of old-timey early modern English when it was first announced. (Its original title was Death of a Unicorne, which might be fitting when one knows the writer-director Alex Scharfman previously worked on Robert Eggers’ The Witch.) Still, when this morning’s gloriously batshit trailer came…

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18 Dec

Day of the Fight Reinvents the Boxing Movie

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Despite the singular event suggested by its title, Day of the Fight features a lower stakes match earlier in the film, hours before prizefighter “Irish” Mike Flannigan (Michael Pitt) has his title bout. Visiting the gym to check in with his trainer, Mike overhears a young fighter mocking the sparring partner he just trounced. Mike, who has spent the past several years in prison for reasons not immediately clear, is a man who’s visibly lived with shame, guilt, and the loss of his once illustrious acclaim. So the cocky contender running his mouth doesn’t object when Mike climbs into the…

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17 Dec

Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s Bizarre Starfleet Costumes Make More Sense Than You Think

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Star Trek: The Motion Picture is an awesome movie. No, it’s not as whiz-bang as its immediate successor Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, nor as spectacular as the 2009 reboot film Star Trek. But what word can better describe a movie that spends so much time on loving shots of all things Trek—the crew, the starbases, and especially the USS Enterprise. The movie strives to evoke a sense of awe. But if there’s one aspect of The Motion Picture that doesn’t get enough recognition, it’s the redesigned Starfleet uniforms. The Motion Picture introduces a full new set of…

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15 Dec

The Phantom of the Opera vs. Wicked: A Comparison in Broadway Adaptations

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I am old enough to remember when Wicked opened on Broadway. I was still in high school and what felt like a million miles away from New York City. Still, even from the relatively provincial wilds of North Carolina, I was aware something big had landed on the Great White Way; an event so extraordinary to my generation that virtually overnight every theater kid was singing “Defying Gravity” and “Popular” in the halls of Green Hope High, whether their classmates wanted to hear it or not. While there had been other hit musicals in my pint-sized life up to that…

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14 Dec

Nickel Boys Is a Masterpiece That Can Change How We Watch Movies

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Five and a half minutes into Nickel Boys, young Elwood stops to watch Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “How Long, Not Long” speech. It is broadcast on a stack of televisions in a storefront window. As the TVs click on and the picture comes into focus, Elwood’s grandmother, her friends, and other passersby stop and watch the face on the screen, to listen to his faithful claims that the injustice America inflicts upon its Black citizens will soon come to an end. We see this crowd gather not directly, but in the reflection of the storefront window where the…

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14 Dec

The Back to the Future SNES Game You’ve Probably Never Played

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If you grew up with 8-bit consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System or home computer of the time, I’d wager you’ll probably remember the painful attempts gaming companies such as serial movie tie-in murderer, LJN, made to bring the classic temporal sci-fi flick Back to the Future to our screens. These games were some of the worst, defecated out onto the market, and bore little to no relation to the events that took place on the silver screen. Often, they were made up of levels that had the smallest, most tenuous link you can imagine to the source material, and they were…

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13 Dec

The Best Movies of 2024

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Is it safe to say the movies are back? Admittedly, they never really left. But it seems in this decade where every year throws up new challenges and hiccups in the industry, folks become convinced the sky is falling and cinema’s days are numbered. Still, here we are back at the end of the year. And once again, there seems plenty to be thankful for as new cinematic images burrow their way into the collective subconscious for years to come. Whether it’s the sight of Muad’Dib standing before a nation of radicalized disciples as if he were a space-aged T.E.…

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13 Dec

The Clayface Movie Is a Very Good Choice for the New DCU

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A Clayface movie is on its way. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. Variety reports that a Clayface movie will begin production next year, produced by The Batman director Matt Reeves and written by Mike Flanagan, creator of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. The news comes just before the release of Kraven the Hunter, the last in Sony‘s ill-fated attempts to build a shared universe around Spider-Man villains. Which begs the question: why would DC try to follow in Sony’s shameful footsteps with its own Batman rogues? The obvious answer is that Reeves and company…

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13 Dec

The End of the Spider-Man-Less Spider-Man Movies Didn’t Come Soon Enough

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It’s official. Knull has destroyed Sony’s Spider-Man villain universe. Morbin’ time is over. Ezekiel Sims has prevented the future. Kraven’s last hunt has commenced. Or so a cynic might say! (Ahem.) Be that as it may, The Wrap is indeed reporting this weekend’s Kraven the Hunter will bring an end to the shared universe Sony has built around Spider-Man villains. Honestly, it’s about time. Look, we’ve all had our fun. Tom Hardy’s sweaty take on Eddie Brock made the Venom movies into unlikely and enjoyable rom-coms. Morbius spawned hilarious memes, which in turn spawned major studio blunders. And apparently, people…

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12 Dec

Kraven the Hunter Review: No Bullets Left in Sony’s Marvel Villain Chamber

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Poor Aaron Taylor-Johnson. We admit that as a preternaturally handsome man and talented actor who in the right role can smolder, he doesn’t need our sympathies. (Seriously check out his sinister good ol’ boy on the Texan frontier in Nocturnal Animals and realize that’s the same English chap who played a perfect American zero in Kick-Ass.) Even so, here is a guy who’s got rizz for days, yet every time he is plugged into an American blockbuster, it’s in one of the most insipid and bleakly impersonal of studio products. And as Kraven the Hunter is the latest Spider-Man-less Spidey…

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11 Dec

Chris Evans’s Avengers: Doomsday Return Could Mean a Dark Turn for Captain America

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Marvel’s Civil War continues! Just months after Robert Downey Jr. announced his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Avengers: Doomsday, his on-screen one-time rival is following suit. The Wrap reports that Chris Evans will be back for the next Avengers film, along with directors Joe and Anthony Russo. But who, exactly, will he be? You might be quick to answer “Captain America, duh!” but there are actually a surprising amount of options here, especially when you consider Downey’s own return to the MCU as baddie Doctor Doom and the multiversal shenanigans that have been the focal point of this…

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11 Dec

28 Years Later Trailer May Have Just Confirmed the Fate of Cillian Murphy’s Jim

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Not quite 28 years later, filmmakers Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are returning to the zombie tale that revitalized and evolved the zombie genre. The horror story that kicked off with 2001’s 28 Days Later and continued in 2007’s 28 Weeks Later jumps forward almost three decades to a world completely changed by the Rage Virus. In fact, the first trailer for the long-awaited third installment reveals an England where survivors armed with bows and arrows live in primitive settlements and a filthy Ralph Fiennes stalks around a temple-like structure made of human skulls. But the trailer may not just…

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11 Dec

The Mandalorian & Grogu Brings Back a Forgotten Star Wars Movie Character

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Well, this is unexpected: Jeremy Allen White, who stars in The Bear as a tortured chef with anger issues named Carmy, is set to voice Jabba the Hutt’s son, Rotta the Hutt, in The Mandalorian & Grogu. This was first reported by industry scooper Jeff Sneider on The Kristian Harloff Show before being corroborated by several trades, including Variety. We highly doubt anyone had this latest casting on their 2024 Star Wars bingo board. While Rotta the Hutt, canonically nicknamed “Stinky,” isn’t exactly a household name these days, he is technically a blast from the franchise’s big-screen past, specifically from…

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11 Dec

A Complete Unknown Review: Timothée Chalamet Doesn’t Solve Bob Dylan’s Mystery

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Midway through James Mangold’s often hushed and occasionally deafening A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan comes as close as he ever will to lowering his defenses. Which is not to say the man who defined a generation’s counterculture verbalizes much in the way of his wants or dreams. Rather, in that classic Hollywood biopic style, he cries out his essence with a pained lamentation. “When people ask me where the songs come from, they don’t want to know,” Timothée Chalamet’s elfin folk singer broods. “They only want to know why they didn’t come to them!” That may be, but the essence…

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