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07 Jan

The Life Aquatic Is Wes Anderson’s Most Underrated Movie

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Twenty years ago, Bill Murray sat perfectly center of frame in an ornate Italian theater near the Mediterranean. In the reality of this shot, he was portraying a storyteller within a story—a filmmaker named Steve Zissou, who after enjoying decades at the top of the international film scene has entered a fallow period. We later learn it’s been nine years since his last “hit documentary” and his reputation as a Jacques Cousteau-like oceanographer-turned-director died at roughly the same time as disco. Yet there he was still in the gilded halls that a filmmaker like Wes Anderson would recognize fresh off…

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04 Jan

Oscars 2025 Frontrunners and Contenders

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Happy New Year! Yep, it is again that time when the culture wakes back to life, groggily wiping away the mist left by another long (and hopefully restful) holiday season. Yet if you’re in the awards season game, either as a voter, prognosticator, or (Thalberg help you) a hopeful for nomination, it’s been anything but quiet. In fact, Oscars buzz has been burning bright for months and is now about to grow into a roaring fire. As miraculous as it sounds, the Golden Globes have survived their PR nightmares of a few years ago and are back to their weekend…

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03 Jan

Skeleton Crew’s Giant Crab Is Hiding Some Surprising Star Wars Callbacks

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Star Wars: Skeleton Crew may have just given us another terrifying space creature to haunt our nightmares, but there’s more than meets the eye to the giant crab monster that Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) and KB (Kyriana Kratter) run into on the outskirts of Lanupa in episode 6 “Zero Friends Again.” It turns out that this giant crab, named Tet’niss according to Art Director and Fabrication Supervisor Mark Dubeau, doesn’t just have a bunch of junk in its trunk – some of the pieces of trash stuffed in its shell are deliberate callbacks to the greater Star Wars universe and the…

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01 Jan

How Marvel’s What If…? Season 3 Teases Thunderbolts and Captain America 4

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This article contains spoilers for season 3 of Marvel’s What If…? The third and final season of Marvel’s What If…? is full of new and exciting peeks at worlds that exist outside of the MCU’s “Sacred Timeline.” From old Hollywood glamour to Russian buddy comedy hijinks to old West shootouts, this season certainly has fun playing in the Marvel sandbox. But despite the fact that the majority of these stories are pretty significant deviations from the characters we know in the MCU, this season does do a good job of setting up important parts of upcoming movies Thunderbolts* and Captain…

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01 Jan

Jason Momoa as Lobo Casting Tests New Ground for Audiences and Superhero Movies

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It’s official: Aquaman and Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa has been tapped to play Lobo in the new cinematic DC Universe. After years of speculation, the actor confirmed his casting as the intergalactic bounty hunter via an Instagram post, with a simple caption reading, “They called.” DCU-head James Gunn validated this with his own post, a picture of Lobo smoking a cigar. The character is now set to make his debut in 2026’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, opposite fellow Westeros-performer Milly Alcock as the eponymous hero with Cruella (2021) and I, Tonya (2017) director Craig Gillespie at the helm. …

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01 Jan

The Must-Watch Movies Coming in 2025

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Should old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind? Frankly, we’re not certain of that any more than we are about the rest of the “Auld Lang Syne” lyrics. But as fun as it is to dwell on the year that was in cinema during this season—with awards voting at a full roar and everyone’s best-of lists flooding the internet (including ours!)—it’s also good to look ahead. 2024 indeed marked an odd time for movies with delays caused by last year’s strikes turning the Hollywood spigot down to a trickle. But things promise to be running full steam ahead…

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30 Dec

Galaxy Quest’s R-Rated Origins Hilariously Linger in the Final Cut

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Galaxy Quest is a perfect motion picture. Argue with a wall … preferably one of the many chrome walls aboard the NSEA Protector. Released on Christmas Day 1999, well in advance of geek culture going fully mainstream, the Dean Parisot-directed film feels like it had early access to decades of modern internet debates, takes, and controversies. That’s because, in a way, it did. Even before wide adoption of social media turned fandom into a contact sport, Star Trek die hards were the vanguard of obsessive message board discourse. Galaxy Quest operates as a gentle satirical takedown of this passionate population…

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29 Dec

Nosferatu and the Role of Paganism in Robert Eggers Movies

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This article contains massive Nosferatu spoilers. Judging by his filmography, it’s probably safe to say Robert Eggers is not strictly a religious man. His first film did, after all, end with a Puritan girl finding liberation from her Calvinist upbringing by selling her soul to the Devil and floating above a fire fed by the fat of her siblings’ flesh. And that’s the happiest finale thus far to an Eggers joint. With those humble beginnings, the influence of religion, tradition, and magic would continue to course throughout all four of Eggers’ feature films to date, from his malevolent exploration of…

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28 Dec

Nosferatu Proves Bill Skarsgård Is a Movie Monster Icon Worthy of the Silent Era

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There are some Nosferatu spoilers in this article. Among the of the many impressive things about Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu is how the marketing team kept the look of its main monster a secret. In posters and trailers, Eggers and his team used shadows and silhouettes to suggest the presence of the vampire Count Orlok, building on the visual style set by German Expressionist F.W. Murnau, who directed the original Nosferatu in 1922. That sense of mystery pays off with the reveal of Orlok in the film. A grotesque beast, furs draped over his hideous body, Orlock glowers from under a…

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28 Dec

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Cast: Who Is Playing Who?

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Christopher Nolan has taken viewers from the streets of Gotham City to the shores of Dunkirk, and from the deepest recesses of the dreaming mind to the edges of a black hole itself. Yet the announcement of his latest project has raised more than a few eyebrows. Homer’s Ancient Greek epic The Odyssey seems like a strange choice for a filmmaker who has devoted his work to puzzle box stories about troubled great men. As different as The Odyssey might be for Nolan, we do already know we can count on one thing. He’ll have a great cast joining him…

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28 Dec

Street Fighter: An Appreciation for Raul Julia’s M. Bison

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Even if you’ve never seen the 1994 film adaptation of Street Fighter, you probably know about one scene; a legend on the internet. M. Bison, a military dictator and the primary villain of the games and the movie, listens as his captive Chun-Li (Ming-Na Wen) explains her desire for revenge. Chun-Li remembers her father leading a band of farmers against Bison’s nascent army, driving them out of the village, but at the cost of his life. Chun-Li savors every word of her speech, pausing to scoff at her recollection of Bison’s thugs running from peasants, and even at his shooting…

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27 Dec

Nosferatu: Willem Dafoe Is the Best Van Helsing We’ve Ever Had

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This article contains spoilers for Nosferatu. Anyone who sees Willem Dafoe‘s name in the cast list for Robert Eggers‘s Nosferatu thinks they know what to expect. Dafoe has worked with Eggers in the director’s two most recent films, giving gonzo performances in each. In The Lighthouse, Dafoe channels Patchy the Pirate to deliver ornate curses when his fellow lighthouse keeper insults his lobster. Dafoe plays a Norse magician in The Northman, urging the king and the prince to act like dogs, scrambling around on all fours and farting wildly. Given that his character in Nosferatu, Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz,…

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26 Dec

Nosferatu and the Aching Beauty of That Ending Shot

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This article contains major spoilers for Robert Eggers’  Nosferatu. It is only in Nosferatu’s final breath that the film’s lighting at last appears golden, pure, and radiant to behold. There at the end of all things and inside the Hutter bedroom—which like previous Nosferatu films is marred by the repression of its period and two separate twin beds for a newlywed couple—goodness has again won out over the dark. The morning dawn bathes a world previously defined by shadow and gloom with every shade of rose and resplendency; and a cold home glows. Somehow though, this warmth makes the final…

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26 Dec

A Complete Unknown: The Bob Dylan History Left Out in Favor of Mythology

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In James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet fingerpicks the tussle-haired troubadour’s guitar and stands inside Bob Dylan’s shoes. But those bootheels wander through a tangle of folk tales about the ambitious young singer’s life from 1961 to 1965 in New York’s Greenwich Village. During the film, Dylan tells girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), a pseudonym for the late Suze Rotolo (seen on the cover of Dylan’s Freewheelin’ album): “People make up their past, Sylvie. They remember what they want. They forget the rest.” Bob Dylan is a master of making up past histories and self-mythology. In a January 1961…

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25 Dec

What Christmas Gift Would You Steal From the Movies?

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Gift-giving scenes are often the most emotional in a festive movie or TV special. They’re usually a quiet moment among the madness, when one character shows another how cherished they are, and why they needn’t have obsessed about the turkey or the decorations or their missing Christmas bonus, because what truly matters at Christmas is love, as shown via the medium of a present. Handmade, sentimental or extravagant, screen gifts are a highlight… …which is why we want to steal them. Below are the movie and TV gifts our writers want to reach into the screen to grab for themselves.…

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25 Dec

Better Man Review: A Musical Biopic Brave Enough to Monkey with the Formula

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… But why is he a monkey? It’s the inevitable question asked by any person who has seen the trailer, or for that matter a TikTok reel, of Better Man, the new left-handed biopic about British pop star Robbie Williams. And even as one begins watching this sardonic portrait of the ‘90s pop music scene in the UK, it’s still not immediately clear why the creative choice was made. Director Michael Gracey has told the press it’s simply due to recognizing how Williams sees himself: a dancing monkey bounding around the stage for our entertainment. Yet there is more at…

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24 Dec

Which Fictional Character Would You Want as Your Secret Santa?

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Yes, yes, it’s better to give than to receive, but in these few, special cases, receiving wins out. That’s because the below are a different class of givers – they’re fictional for a start, some of them have magical powers, and at least one of them is a bear.  These are the movie or TV characters we hope would pick our names out of the hat in the annual Secret Santa draw because we imagine that their choice of gift would suit us down to the ground. Maybe they’re extra thoughtful, or extra loaded, or extra in tune with our…

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24 Dec

Lin-Manuel Miranda Considers If He’d Make Warriors into a Movie

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The Warriors is incredibly cinematic material. After all, the 1965 novel by Sol Yurick about a New York City street gang attempting to survive the night while traveling from the Bronx to Coney Island was turned into a great movie in 1979; a seedy cult classic directed by Walter Hill and which made phrases like, “Warriors, come out and play-yay,” into all-time bangers to a generation of moviegoers. Lin-Manuel Miranda would know, he grew up loving that line and the movie as a child. So much so he adapted the material alongside playwright and musician Eisa Davis into the first (possibly)…

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24 Dec

What Galaxy Quest Gets Most Right About William Shatner’s Star Trek Run

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Everybody loves Jason Nesmith. At least, that’s what Jason Nesmith thinks. As the star of the long canceled sci-fi show, Galaxy Quest, Jason regularly enters to cheers from crowds of admirers, even if they’re really cheering for his character, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart of the NSEA Protector. But behind the closed door of a men’s room stall, Nesmith learns the truth. In a convention hall bathroom, Jason overhears two guys mock their fellow attendees, the Galaxy Quest cast, and especially Nesmith. Actor Tim Allen lets the sadness mix with the dawning on his face, the first of many realizations that…

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22 Dec

Amazon Turning James Bond into Shared Universe ‘Content’ Is a Terrible Idea

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I’ll admit it, I would probably watch an entire TV series that was just about James Bond’s housekeeper. Did you not know he has one? Oh, well, let me tell you about May, this funny lady who looks after Bond’s apartment in the original novels. She’s Scottish. She’s old. She knows how to cook an egg. Aren’t you riveted? Don’t you want an entire show just about May? Here’s the thing, as a Bond nerd I do want a show about May, Miss Moneypenny, or M’s random friends. I also love Kim Sherwood’s Double-O books, all about agents in the…

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