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06 Jan

Good Grief: Dan Levy Brings Big Emotions and Excellent Sweaters to Directorial Debut

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This article contains some Good Grief spoilers. For the entirety of Good Grief, I couldn’t look away from Dan Levy’s sweater: that excellent cable-knit style popularized in recent films like Knives Out, yet here in a lovely dove gray unlike the usual preppy cream. It was also radically different from the black-and-white jumpers he modeled as David Rose in the dramedy Schitt’s Creek, establishing that queer character’s distinctive fashion sense in a uniform that would recur even with his emotional development. Yet it feels like a costuming through-line to Levy’s next memorable character, widower Marcus, in his feature debut as…

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05 Jan

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Gets What Makes the Joker So Scary

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At the end of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s 1988 one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker lays out his worldview in plain terms. After testing his theory that “one bad day” could make even the most decent person into a madman like himself, the Joker tells his nemesis, “It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for… it’s all a monstrous, demented gag!” Even more than the grisly sights of The Killing Joke—in which the Clown Prince of Crime sets out to prove his theory by brutalizing Batgirl Barbara Gordon and tormenting her father Commissioner Gordon—that line…

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05 Jan

The Batman Returns Spinoff That Would Have Been a “Black and White” Horror Movie

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Believe it or not, the dreadful 2004 Catwoman was not the movie Warner Bros. set out to make. After Michelle Pfeiffer‘s stunning turn as Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, nobody initially thought, “Yes, but what if we get some terrible French commercial director to shoot a story about a different cat lady fighting a budget-Emma Frost like it’s a perfume ad?” In the truth, the Catwoman project went through many iterations, not landing on the laughable mess that stalled the career of Halle Berry (who’s actually quite good in Catwoman) until the early 2000s. Recently, Batman Returns screenwriter Daniel Waters…

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05 Jan

Oscars 2024 Frontrunners and Contenders

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Holiday lights are coming down. From every street corner, Christmas trees lie in abandoned disarray. Right now, you’re probably swearing you’ll never touch a glass of champagne again. Yes, 2023 is well and over, and with that passing comes a chance to turn the page toward what will hopefully be a brighter, sunnier 2024. And yet, for a certain breed of movie lover, film buff, cinephile, and/or unapologetic red carpet fashion-watcher, there remains one last ritual left unaccounted for from 2023: the culmination of awards season. When the 96th annual Academy Awards announce the Oscar winners from the year that…

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04 Jan

Margot Robbie Explains Why Saltburn Bathtub Scene Is Both ‘Disgusting’ and ‘Titillating’

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This article contains Saltburn spoilers. It’s strange times when the biggest streaming hit during the past holiday season was neither a family film nor a starry blockbuster filled with A-listers like Daniel Craig and Jennifer Lawrence. Instead the one experience this writer heard about time and again during the extended holiday break was of families gathering around and sharing a good old cringe as Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn played on. Released briefly in theaters last November (where it barely grossed $20 million worldwide), this even pervier riff on The Talented Mr. Ripley didn’t truly come into its own until distributor MGM…

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04 Jan

Todd McFarlane Is Giving You a Spawn Movie Reboot Whether You Like It or Not

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For a guy that looks like a clear rip-off of Batman and Spider-Man, Spawn has some convoluted backstory. And in the decades since the character first appeared in the original launch of Image Comics, his mythos have only grown more overwrought, with each addition including ever more players in a war between Heaven and Hell. It may not (yet) involve cyborg gorillas like Cy-Gor or any number of angels and demons who trouble the late Al Simmons, but the saga of a Spawn reboot on the big screen has similarly had a myriad of twists and turns. In 2019, Spawn…

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04 Jan

Eternals TV Show Would Have Been Weirder (and Better?) Than the Movie

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Consider the opening scene from Marvel‘s Eternals. A teenage boy picks up a power drill and switches it on. As the whirring of the motor intensifies, the boy puts the drill to his ear and slowly, methodically. pushes it in. What? You don’t remember that scene? Probably because it comes not from the 2021 movie Eternals, but from the 2015 television show Eternals. Moreover, it comes from a treatment from writer John Ridley, who had been hired by Marvel to develop the show, which never came to fruition. Unlike Inhumans, another unpopular Jack Kirby tale about an anti-social group of…

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04 Jan

Whether Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh, Public Domain Horror Movies Need to Stop

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Mickey Mouse has got a knife. With those simple words, and the corresponding horror movie trailer which goes with them, it’s become clear that the 21st century is about to get weird. Well, weirder, at any rate. Nearly a hundred years after Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks animated the short film “Steamboat Willie,” which introduced a rodent who helped Walt build an empire, the same short cartoon has entered the public domain as of Jan. 1, 2024. And already there have been as many new Mickey Mouse slasher projects announced as there’ve been days in the New Year. The first…

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03 Jan

Margot Robbie Reveals the Barbie Line That ‘Terrified’ Mattel

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This article contains Barbie spoilers. The final bit of dialogue in the Barbie screenplay is one of the funniest, as well as most subversive. Over the course of two hours, audiences have watched one of the most beloved (and commercialized) icons of femininity in American pop culture experience a dawning self-awareness about what it truly means to be a woman. And in the final scene of the movie, she becomes one, with the newly relocated Barbie now going by the name “Barbra Handler” in the real world. More important though is she’s seeing a doctor for the first time, and…

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03 Jan

The First Omen Trailer Looks Like Rosemary’s Baby But Trashy

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When Richard Donner’s The Omen came out in 1976, it was at the tail end of a recent wave of demonic, faith-based horror. Less than three years earlier, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist became one of the highest grossing films ever, and both movies likely got their greenlight because Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby chilled audiences to the bone in 1968 by showing a mother slowly realize she is giving birth to the Antichrist. So nearly 50 years later, it seems kind of appropriate that The Omen returns to that initial influence in this year’s The First Omen, a devilish prequel if…

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03 Jan

The Biggest Movie Sequels and Prequels Coming in 2024

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Theatrical movies truly came back in 2023. Despite a major strike and the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic, audiences returned in droves to watch big releases. From the twin tentpoles of Barbie and Oppenheimer to the more niche faves such as Five Nights at Freddy’s, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, and John Wick: Chapter 4, the cinematic slate of 2023 gave fans of every variety a reason to get back to the cinemas.  Moviemakers hope to continue this trend in 2024, and the key strategy seems to be sequels, prequels, and remakes. Some of these movies come from the…

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03 Jan

Queenpins: The True Story Behind the Movie

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Contains spoilers for Queenpins It’s early doors in 2024 and a movie about a couple of women who have no money using coupons to defraud big companies is no.1 on Netflix UK. It figures. Written and directed by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, Queenpins was originally released in 2021 to Showtime and Paramount+ but now it has appeared on Netflix UK it seems to have captured a new audience.  The movie stars Kristen Bell, reunited with her The Good Place co-star Kirby Howell-Baptiste as skint friends who come up with a scheme to sell stolen coupons over the internet at…

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02 Jan

8 Awesome Things the DCEU Legacy Leaves Behind

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Friends, Bialyans, DC fans, lend me your ears. We come not to bury the DC Extended Universe, but to praise it. Yes, the franchise has met its ignoble end with the bloated but lackluster Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and yes, the franchise gave us the internet scourge known as Snyder Bros. But no one who loves superhero movies can dismiss the entire ordeal. There will be time to analyze the many mistakes of DC’s first live-action cinematic universe or to continue looking forward to what James Gunn and Peter Safran have in store for DC Studios. For now, let’s…

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29 Dec

Gary Oldman Is Too Hard on His Harry Potter Performances as Sirius Black

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Gary Oldman had a confession to make when he appeared on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast: He is not a fan of his performances as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter franchise. Sitting down with the media journalist during the last days of 2023, Oldman was in good spirits when he admitted, “I think my work is mediocre in [those movies].” Oldman is referring specifically to when he appeared as the Wizarding World’s most notorious escaped convict, and surprise godfather of Harry Potter, in the films Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet…

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29 Dec

Tombstone: A Classic That Proved Its Doubting Studio Wrong

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In February 1994, Roger Ebert felt like he was the last one to get to the party when it came to celebrating a new movie. This would usually be a strange thing for a film critic to admit, particularly when he has a Pulitzer Prize. But despite—or perhaps because—he and fellow critic Gene Siskel hosted the nationally syndicated At the Movies TV series, Disney and its film production label Hollywood Pictures went out of their way to keep the men with the thumbs from seeing Tombstone. Even though the new Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer-starring Western enjoyed a vaunted Christmas…

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28 Dec

The Best Movie and TV Performances of 2023

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As a former teaching colleague was very fond of saying: “You can’t make a pie out of sh*t”.  He was wrong and right. You can technically make all manner of things – up to and including pies – out of sh*t, but in the end, put any amount of sh*t in a pie and what you’ll end up with is a sh*t pie. Ingredients matter, is the point. Just ask Gordon Ramsay, or Minny Jackson from The Help.  The ingredients in the below movies and TV shows are the opposite of shit. They’re grade A, top drawer, high quality constituent…

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28 Dec

After The Marvels and Aquaman 2, Can Deadpool 3 and Joker 2 Save Superhero Movies?

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For more than a decade, there seemed to be three absolutes in Hollywood: death, taxes, and superhero movies doing big business. The genre of capes and cowls looked as invincible as many of its protagonists, soaring above the rest of the industry’s slings and arrows, and always landing on its feet in a heroic pose. This status quo arguably goes back nearly a quarter century, to when Hugh Jackman first donned a pair of claws and Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire made you believe a boy could swing. Still, for most moviegoers, the genre has long been synonymous with one…

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27 Dec

Rebel Moon Part 2 Trailer Teases a Moment Fans Wanted in the First Movie

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This Rebel Moon article contains spoilers. Zack Snyder’s explosive new Netflix movie, Rebel Moon, takes his fans across the stars to a cruel galaxy engulfed in endless war. Even the faraway moon of Veldt, home to humble farmers who are very into Nordic culture, isn’t safe from the tyranny of the Imperium. In fact, it’s a surprise visit from the cruel Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein), who’s after the moon’s ample resources, that sets the blood and violence in motion, as central character Kora (Sofia Boutella) heads out on a mission to recruit the galaxy’s greatest warriors to defend her village.…

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25 Dec

Aquaman 2 Box Office Marks End of DC’s Worst Year Since Batman & Robin

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Ho ho ho! Santa Claus came to town last night and when he stopped over at the Warner Bros. lot, he seemed to leave two sparkling new presents in shiny wrapping paper… and a lump of coal they call Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Indeed, the strangest thing about this year’s four-day Christmas weekend frame at the box office is that technically Warner Bros. is overall having a pretty happy Christmas. The studio’s all-ages and holiday appropriate release from last weekend, Wonka, is projected as having a respectable 52 percent drop over the three-day weekend, but that doesn’t account for…

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24 Dec

If I Could Invite One Fictional Character to Christmas Dinner…

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No matter what they tell you, Christmastime is the best time. It’s the deep breath on the last page of the calendar; the chance to take stock of the year that was and appreciate that we’re halfway through the darkest days of winter, hopefully surrounded by beloved family and friends. But you know what would make it one better? If it was family, friends, and a fictional character of our choosing each year! Imagine for just one magical evening every December, Doc Brown rolled up in a DeLorean to sample Christmas cookies? Or what if it’s Han Solo or Princess…

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