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18 Oct

Smile 2 Ending Explained: Making Sense of that Game-Changing Final Scene

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This article is full of spoilers for Smile 2. Lots of musicians spill their guts on stage, but no one does it quite like Skye Riley at the end of Smile 2. Smile 2‘s stomach-ripping conclusion is the climax of Smile 2‘s mandate to go bigger in every way than the 2022 original. Whereas writer/director Parker Finn kept things small in Smile, dealing with therapist Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) and her familial history of mental illness, Smile 2 raises the stakes to stadium tour size. This time, pop star Skye Riley (a committed Naomi Scott) becomes the target of the…

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18 Oct

Gladiator 2: Ridley Scott Sees Our Future in the Fallen Roman Empire

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This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. History tells us that for a brief period circa 209-211 A.D., twin brothers named Caracalla and Geta ruled the Roman Empire as co-emperors at the behest of their late father (and previous emperor) Septimius Severus. The brothers’ shared stewardship of their kingdom did not end well, nor was it a particularly illustrious time for the empire itself. But it has, more than 18 centuries later, provided us with one positive aftermath: it forms much of the basis of Gladiator II, the long-awaited sequel…

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18 Oct

New York Comic Con 2024 Preview: Best Panels, Activations, and Events

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Fans from all over the world hit the Big Apple once again for New York City’s biggest pop culture event of the year. And New York Comic Con 2024 boasts some of the biggest and most exciting panels and activations ever.  From panels that will deliver the inside scoop on the debut of Dune: Prophecy and Star Trek: Section 31 to deep dives into The Walking Dead Universe and the seedy world of HBO’s The Penguin, there’s plenty to look forward to in and around the Javits Center this weekend. There are even a few nerdy exhibits and giveaways you…

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18 Oct

eBay Live’s NYCC 2024 Collectible Auction Bonanza Features Jim Lee, Amanda Conner, Jeff Lemire & More

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This article is part of Collector’s Digest, an editorial series powered by: VISIT THE EBAY LIVE HUB FOR ALL NYCC LIVE STREAMS HERE. NYC’s biggest pop culture convention of the year is here! New York Comic Con brings the biggest stars in comics and geek culture to the Javits Center for a weekend of news and chats and cosplay. And a weekend of stuff! New York is going to have more con-exclusive merch than it will Famous Ray’s Pizzas. And if you can’t make it to New York, good news! eBay is bringing the con to you, with a special…

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17 Oct

Joker 2 Isn’t Even the Best Joker Movie of 2024

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In an early scene from the best Joker movie of 2024, the camera pans across Gotham City in ruins. Despite the protesters rioting outside, one person seems completely calm. Waiting in a studio green room, the Joker prepares to go onto live television and shock the society in which we all live. Of course this Joker isn’t going to shoot Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro doing his best Johnny Carson impression). Nor is he going to flashback to shooting Murray Franklin while on trial for murder. No, this is Joker the Harlequin, who disrupts the totalitarian state that Bruce Wayne…

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17 Oct

Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare Review – A Bonkers True Story That Didn’t Warrant a Documentary

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If you like learning about serial killers, scammers, cults, dodgy doctors, tech fraudsters, fake millionaires, Tiger Kings and the unbelievable clusterfuck that was FyreFest, then Netflix has got you covered with a host of documentaries. Trouble is they are not all gold, and don’t all lend themselves to the format. A good story does not equal a good documentary, such is the case with Sweet Bobby: My Catfish Nightmare. This is the incredible tale of a young woman, Kirat, from the South Asian community living in London who meets a man named Bobby via Facebook. Bobby knows members of Kirat’s…

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17 Oct

Smile 2 Review: It Leaves You Frowning

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Smile 2 might have the most uncomfortable scene in any movie this year, a notable feat given that Terrifier 3 is playing across the hall. Director Parker Finn throws the viewer in the middle of an argument between drug-addicted pop star Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) and her movie star boyfriend (Ray Nicholson). As the two race down twisting California roads, their argument gets increasingly intense, each hurling cruel barbs at the other and neither showing any tenderness. Finn puts the camera right between the two combatants and whip pans from one to the other, forcing the audience to look at…

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17 Oct

The Movies That Define Generation Z

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Generation Z consists of the last remnants of births from the 20th century and the early founding generation to have been born in the 21st. The Zillennial generation has witnessed the emergence of numerous social media platforms, the dominance of CG-animation in the film industry, the peak of Disney/Cartoon Network/Nickelodeon, flash games, and the departure of Saturday morning cartoons. Among that, Gen-Z has become more socially conscious, or “woke” as an out of touch loser old dude would say, in the midst of the offerings of humor as we aged into adulthood. As the initial generation to be fully ingrained…

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17 Oct

“I Was A Bit Shocked” – Deku, Bakugo, and All Might Actors on My Hero Academia: You’re Next

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Kohei Horikoshi’s My Hero Academia has been one of the biggest shonen anime of the past decade ever since it made its debut in 2016. Now, seven seasons and four feature films later, My Hero Academia is more popular than ever and primed to end on a high note. Set in a world where superpowered “Quirks” are commonplace, Izuku “Deku” Midoriya and other strong heroes-in-training tirelessly fight against vicious villains who want to watch the world burn. My Hero Academia: You’re Next, the franchise’s latest movie, follows a deluded criminal who co-opts All Might’s inspirational message of hope into a…

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15 Oct

Batman: Resurrection Is a Batman ’89 Sequel That Explores a City Still Haunted by the Joker

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This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. John Jackson Miller watched 1989’s Batman 12 times in the theater. As a reviewer for his college paper, Miller went into the film with low expectations, burned by the poor adaptations of the past, but was thrilled to find a movie that reflected the richness of the comics he loved. And yet, there was one nagging issue he couldn’t get over, one moment that just didn’t make sense, no matter how many times he revisited Batman. “Hey, bat-brain, I was a kid…

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15 Oct

The Joy of Terrifier 3 Goes Far Beyond the Gore

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This post contains spoilers for Terrifier 3. Terrifier 3 is often a joyful movie, and not just because of its Christmas trappings! That might strike some as a surprising statement. After all, writer/director Damien Leone begins his film with Art the Clown, dressed as Santa Claus, murdering a little girl’s family with an axe. Another sequence climaxes with Art using explosive gifts to blow up a bunch of kids. Yet another is a prolonged sequence of Art spraying an older, good-natured store Santa with liquid nitrogen and then battering away at his body parts. And yet, Terrifier 3 is joyful,…

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15 Oct

Anora Review: Mikey Madison and Sean Baker Leave You Cackling

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Russian toughs are scary most of the time. You know the look: big muscles, hard stares, and often a faint suggestion that they’re connected to something while strutting around the boardwalks of Brighton Beach. In most American movies, this kind of typecasting is a visual shorthand for intimidation and menace. But not in Anora, and not next to Mikey Madison. Five-foot nothing, petite, and buried beneath a forest of raven hair, Madison is dismissed as “just a little girl” by Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Eastern European middle manager who is attempting to put the fear of Ivan the Terrible into…

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15 Oct

Nosferatu: Exclusive First Look Inside Robert Eggers’ Reinvention of the Vampire

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This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. Bathed in light and shadow, past and present, the castle looming over Robert Eggers and his companions is haunted by its history. It was here, at Pernštejn Castle, that Werner Herzog filmed his reimagining of the German Expressionist classic Nosferatu (1922), and it is here again, more than a hundred years after the original F.W. Murnau masterpiece, that Eggers is attempting to make the most famous vampire story his own. In a location that actor Nicholas Hoult describes as “cold in terms…

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15 Oct

Joker 2: How Much of a Character Can You Strip Away and Still Be Faithful?

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Even from the first film, Joker has only had the thinnest veneer of being a film about the criminal clown who fights Batman. It was, first and foremost, an homage to Martin Scorsese’s films The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, with some comic book signifiers to guarantee a wider audience and studio funding. So when Joker: Folie à Deux announced that it was going to introduce Joker’s on/off girlfriend, Harley Quinzel (played by Lady Gaga), it should not have been a surprise the character was going to see some reworking. In an interview with Variety, director Todd Phillips revealed,…

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14 Oct

Terrifier 3 Guts Joker 2 at the Box Office and Makes Art the Clown a Star

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Sometimes a horror icon is born right out of the box. Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s Ghostface had the zeitgeist by the throat pretty much from the moment Drew Barrymore picked up that phone. Other movie monsters, though, take a little time to catch on. While Craven’s own Freddy Krueger was pretty iconic in the ‘80s following A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Robert Englund baddie didn’t turn into a strange kind of folk hero in pop culture until he interrupted Zsa Zsa Gabor in the third Nightmare flick and said, “Who gives a f*ck what you think?!” Well, Terrifier…

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14 Oct

Chevy Chase Gives the SNL Movie Saturday Night a Strange Review

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For Jason Reitman, many of the iconic faces that compose Saturday Night Live’s earliest, and oft-glorified, years are more than just comedy legends. They’re friends of the family—or at least work acquaintances. Long before this weekend’s real-time dramedy about SNL’s origin story, Jason’s father Ivan Reitman directed several of the “Not Ready for Primetime Players” in films like Ghostbusters (1984) and Stripes (1981). In fact, Ivan knew many of them as how they are introduced in Jason’s Saturday Night film: hungry no-name comedians scrounging around New York City, looking for a break. “My father directed the National Lampoon Show, which…

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14 Oct

The Best Blumhouse Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked

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Has any single person had a greater impact on horror this century than Jason Blum? The one-time Miramax executive struck out on his own in the 2000s when he founded Blumhouse Productions, a company where he remains the CEO. And in the ensuing years, Blum’s production label would define, and redefine again, the trends of horror movies and thrillers. Operating on the philosophy that a horror film with a micro-budget will almost always turn a profit, Blum frequently allows directors broad freedom to make what they want within the genre, and in the process has kept multiplexes perpetually spooky. In…

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12 Oct

Things You Probably Did Not Know About the Universal Monsters

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Earlier this year, Universal Orlando Resort revealed that 2025 will see the long-awaited opening of Dark Universe: a theme park dedicated entirely to classic Universal Monsters like The Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein’s Monster. It’s a fitting and long-awaited tribute to the creatures that have come to define an almost timeless idea of horror movies that transcends generations.  For as celebrated as those monsters and movies are, quite a lot about them has been lost to time. That’s due to both their extreme age (not all who know about those monsters have actually seen their original movies) and the generally…

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12 Oct

Piece by Piece Elevates the Celebrity Documentary with LEGO

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Ten years ago, The Lego Movie shocked the world. What was once considered a cynical corporate cash grab preying on consumers’ goodwill for a recognizable brand became a revered animated feature. The film’s lightning pace, zany humor, unrelenting catchy songs, and eccentric characters cemented The Lego Movie a place in the pop culture zeitgeist. Yielding desirable returns on their financial investment, Warner Bros. expedited the inception of a franchise, with three spinoffs/sequels arriving in the following five years. However, the studio proceeded to see diminishing box office returns, resulting in the franchise going dark after the disappointment of 2019’s The…

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11 Oct

The Apprentice Ties Donald Trump to an Ancient Rot in the American Right

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This article contains spoilers for The Apprentice. Before we ever see Sebastian Stan in a slicked back blond wig and long red tie, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice reveals its hand by focusing on an entirely different Republican president—and the only other who was seriously threatened with impeachment. In infamous archival footage, a sweaty and defensive Richard Nixon stands behind a lectern marked by the presidential seal while denying, denying, and denying he did anything improper regarding the Watergate break-in. Nestled in amongst his most immortalized defense—“I am not a crook”—Nixon also said something especially salient to Abbasi’s new film. “People…

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