New DVD release Archives Page 80 of 254

25 Jan

Oscar Snubs 2024: Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and All the Big Surprises

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The ballots are in, and the nominations for the 96th annual Academy Awards are final. And with their announcement early Tuesday morning comes a new year’s worth of snubs and surprises. Yet 2024 has a particular twinge of deja vu because like on a frosty January morning in 2020, Greta Gerwig was notably passed over in the Best Director category. Indeed, the biggest movie of 2023 will go on to have the biggest snubs at the following year’s Oscars ceremony, with Barbie‘s Gerwig missing out on the Best Director shortlist and star Margot Robbie being absent in the Best Actress…

25 Jan

Dune 2 Has an Unexpected Connection to the David Lynch Movie

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This article contains light spoilers for Dune: Part Two. Even the biggest fan of David Lynch‘s original Dune movie from 1984 has to admit the (unintentional?) comedy that occurs when Chani (Sean Young) pleads for Paul Atreides (Kyle MacLachlan) to “tell me of your homeworld, Usul.” In the very next scene, the two are in the throes of passion, suggesting that “tell me of your homewold, Usul” is a pick-up line with the power of the Voice. Believe it or not, the name “Usul” is not some Lynchian term like “Garmonbozia,” something he made up during transcendental meditation. Rather it…

25 Jan

Road House 2024 Trailer Reveals the Biggest Threat to Masculinity Is Gentrification

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The world has changed a lot since 1989, but that does not mean action movies should. At the end of the day, there is something quintessentially appealing about the lone individual standing tall against the many, and the underdog who is ready to do what is right, one bicep curl at a time. For a generation of specific barfly moviegoers, Road House (1989) is an undisputed classic that is probably playing tonight in a dive somewhere out there. In that cult favorite, Patrick Swayze’s tough guy bouncer (or “cooler”) James Dalton travels from New York City to Missouri in order…

25 Jan

Oscars 2024 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture and Other Categories?

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It’s been a good year for movies. As a film critic, it’s easy to fall into the reflexive trap of stating that every December/January. Yet while looking at the nominees for Best Picture at the 2024 edition of the Oscars, there is (almost) not a bad apple in the lot: Anatomy of a Fall, American Fiction, The Holdovers, Past Lives, Killers of the Flower Moon, and of course the unlikely double act of Barbie and Oppenheimer provide arguably the strongest lineup we’ve yet seen in the 2020s. There were of course snubs and surprises, which we unpacked at length here—including…

25 Jan

See Sydney Sweeney as a Nun Having No Fun in the Demonic Immaculate Trailer

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It’s fair to say Sydney Sweeney is having a moment right now. The young actor has been on the cusp of legitimate stardom for a few years after doing memorable work on HBO’s Euphoria and the first season of The White Lotus—although it was her little-seen foray into verbatim cinema via Tina Satter’s Reality that really impressed us. But after Anyone But You turned out to be the sleeper box office hit of the holiday season, with the picture grossing $101 million worldwide as of press time, it seems Sweeney has finally broken through, and she has the social media…

25 Jan

Why the Title of ‘The Zone of Interest’ Is So Chilling

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This article contains light The Zone of Interest spoilers. Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-nominated film The Zone of Interest never once offers to hold your hand. While the film is not coy about its setting during the mind-crushing horror of the Holocaust, it demurs from telling you what to think about its images. This is a movie that dares you to merely observe, to study, and to have the courage to not look away. It doesn’t even tell you what the title The Zone of Interest is referring to—although it is obviously nothing good. And it is that implicit evil, that unspoken…

24 Jan

The Last Jedi Understood George Lucas’ Star Wars Better Than What Came After

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While recently scrolling Twitter, an interesting anecdote came to my attention. In the fabled George Lucas outline for a Star Wars sequel trilogy, a treatment which the filmmaker shared with the Walt Disney Company when he sold Lucasfilm for $4 billion, Lucas apparently had a strange vision for Luke Skywalker: He wanted the older version of Skywalker to be like a character in a movie Lucas almost made before Star Wars. He wanted him to be, in essence, Marlon Brando’s Col. Kurtz from Apocalypse Now, right down to the bald head and rambling gibberish. This detail is not new. In…

24 Jan

The Best Sci-Fi TV Shows and Movies Inspired by Star Trek

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Star Trek is one of best and most well-known science fiction franchises of all time, so it’s no surprise that it’s had a huge influence on the rest of the genre. From other space-faring adventures to distant worlds to straight up parodies of the Enterprise and its crew, there are plenty of shows and movies that owe a bit to Gene Roddenberry‘s creation. This is not a list of every single show or film that has been inspired by Star Trek because that list would cover a pretty good proportion of sci-fi on screen since 1966. But if you want…

24 Jan

Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera Are Just as Baffled by Those Barbie Oscar Snubs

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It is safe to say that the Barbie movie as we know it—global box office phenomenon and culturally relevant conversation-starter—would not exist without the contributions of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig. In addition to starring in the film, Robbie produced the picture and was the person who originally approached Greta Gerwig and her creative partner Noah Baumbach about taking on the material. She also went to bat for them at the studio level when Gerwig revealed how ambitious her vision was… right down to finishing the movie with a gynecologist joke. More than once, Robbie recalled how she told studio…

24 Jan

An Anatomy a Fall Theory That Changes the Meaning of the Ending

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This article contains major Anatomy of a Fall spoilers. Justine Triet’s new film, which just picked up nominations for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, and Director at the Oscars, as well as the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year, is a courtroom drama following a woman accused of killing her husband. The man in question was found dead after falling out of the window of their remote cabin. There were no witnesses. She says she didn’t do it. Did he fall? Did he jump? Or is she guilty? That’s for the court to decide in this fascinating character study that feels…

23 Jan

The Newest James Bond Story Finally Gets This One Thing Right About Ian Fleming’s 007

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This article contains light spoilers for James Bond: 007 #1. In the first pages of a new comic book series, a mafioso gathers his family and talks of revenge. Reeling with sorrow and anger at the murder of his son, the mafioso vows to destroy his child’s killer. As he talks, the mafioso praises the remaining members of his family, and artist Rapha Lobosco devotes a panel to each, letting the reader see their importance: his strapping sons, his beautiful daughters, his loving wife, and his elderly mother. But just when the mafioso hits the climax of his speech, an…

23 Jan

Where to Watch the Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees

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Each January brings high hopes and bitter disappointments, surprises and snubs. This Tuesday morning was no different when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the best films of 2023. There were some obvious frontrunners who were always going to get in, be it Oppenheimer or The Holdovers, and some that always seemed like at least a strong possibility (looking at you, Maestro!). Still, there were plenty on the bubble, so it’s a relief to see Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives get in. Be that as it may, as an audience member who…

23 Jan

Where to Watch the Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees

New DVD release

Each January brings high hopes and bitter disappointments, surprises and snubs. This Tuesday morning was no different when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the best films of 2023. There were some obvious frontrunners who were always going to get in, be it Oppenheimer or The Holdovers, and some that always seemed like at least a strong possibility (looking at you, Maestro!). Still, there were plenty on the bubble, so it’s a relief to see Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives get in. Be that as it may, as an audience member who…

23 Jan

Where to Watch the Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees

New DVD release

Each January brings high hopes and bitter disappointments, surprises and snubs. This Tuesday morning was no different when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the best films of 2023. There were some obvious frontrunners who were always going to get in, be it Oppenheimer or The Holdovers, and some that always seemed like at least a strong possibility (looking at you, Maestro!). Still, there were plenty on the bubble, so it’s a relief to see Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives get in. Be that as it may, as an audience member who…

23 Jan

Where to Watch the Oscars 2024 Best Picture Nominees

New DVD release

Each January brings high hopes and bitter disappointments, surprises and snubs. This Tuesday morning was no different when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the best films of 2023. There were some obvious frontrunners who were always going to get in, be it Oppenheimer or The Holdovers, and some that always seemed like at least a strong possibility (looking at you, Maestro!). Still, there were plenty on the bubble, so it’s a relief to see Anatomy of a Fall and Past Lives get in. Be that as it may, as an audience member who…

22 Jan

What Does The Boy and the Heron Mean? Exploring the Theories

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Warning: contains plot spoilers for The Boy and the Heron. The English-language title of Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature at Studio Ghibli is misleadingly simple. The Boy and the Heron suggests an Aesop-like fable in the vein of The Ant and the Grasshopper or The Hare and the Fox. The film itself has nothing like the clarity of a fable. It’s crowded, at times to the point of narrative incoherence, with enchanting but mystifying episodes that elude a single reading. It’s the story of Mahito, a boy in 1940s Tokyo who loses his mother in a wartime fire. A year later,…

22 Jan

Back to the Future Had a Different Ending When It Hit Theaters

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Back to the Future is considered to be one of the greatest time travel films ever made. Having become a hit in the mid-’80s, the sci–fi classic has been discovered by fresh eyes in the four decades since its release with each new wave of fans fascinated by its behind the scenes trivia. Do you remember the first time you heard that Michael J. Fox wasn’t originally cast as Marty McFly? Do you recall how weird it was seeing footage of Mask star Eric Stolz as Marty, or finding out that the film would have been called Space Man from…

22 Jan

Richard Linklater and Glen Powell’s Feel-Good Hit Man Movie Gets Groovy Trailer

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When someone talks about a “hit man movie,” or a film about a contract killer, certain images spring to mind: a lonely soul, hollowed out on the inside and waiting across a street with a sniper rifle; a merciless killer who takes no pleasure in life while dealing out cold, calculated professionalism in his trade; maybe a lot of glowering. These are familiar tropes which can sometimes be done well—see: David Fincher’s The Killer on Netflix as Exhibit A. Perhaps, however, their familiarity is why Richard Linklater’s Hit Man has struck a chord with everyone who’s laid eyes on it.…

22 Jan

The Kitchen Ending Explained: What Daniel Kaluuya Is Saying About Class

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This article contains spoilers for Daniel Kaluuya’s The Kitchen. Who’s that knocking at the door? That’s the question left with viewers when credits roll on the Netflix movie The Kitchen, directed by Kibwe Tavares and actor Daniel Kaluuya. Working with his co-writers Rob Hayes and Joe Murtagh, Kaluuya creates a bleak future for England in which rampant inequality and increased privatization of property has left many homeless. Despite its sci-fi setting, The Kitchen doesn’t concern itself with the usual tropes of the genre, focusing instead on the dramatic tension between loner Izi (Kane Robinson) and an orphan boy called Benji…

22 Jan

New Deadpool 3 Set Photos Reveal a Surprise Marvel Twist for Ryan Reynolds

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This post contains spoilers for Deadpool 3. Although its hard to feel bad for noted movie star, mobile phone magnate, gin baron Ryan Reynolds, there is a bit of irony to the fact that the handsome actor’s breakout role forces him to play a man with a mangled body. Fortunately for Reynolds, the Merc With a Mouth’s first adventure in the MCU involves the hit franchise’s conceit de jour, the multiverse. So when he and Wolverine, played once again by Hugh Jackman, but in comics/cartoon accurate yellow spandex, come to the MCU in this summer’s Deadpool 3, they’ll be doing…