On the one hand, it’s a simple enough image: Oscar Isaac, veteran stage and film actor, stands before an audience of physicians and academics. We can tell from the style of dress and unkempt hair that Isaac’s Dr. Frankenstein lives in the 19th century (so a bit unlike his literary counterpart). But there’s also a look of mania in his eyes; a face of obsession. It’s fitting for a new screen version of literature’s first mad scientist, and yet it is perhaps more befitting Guillermo del Toro, a celebrated director and dreamer who’s been trying to bring his Frankenstein to…

Doctor Stephen Strange may have the ability to see 14,000,605 futures, but his actor Benedict Cumberbatch cannot. So let’s cut him a bit of slack for being wrong when he initially said that he would not be reprising his role as Doctor Strange for the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday. Cumberbatch retracted that statement on the red carpet at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, telling Business Insider, “I got that wrong, I am in the next one… Don’t ever believe anything I say.” This comes a week after Cumberbatch told Variety he wasn’t in Doomsday but that Strange would be “in a…

“This is a twisted web,” private detective Benoit Blanc tells his partner Marta (Ana de Armas) in 2019’s Knives Out. “And we are not finished untangling it, not yet.” We begin with that quote not just because it’s always nice to recall the syrupy Southern accent Daniel Craig gives Blanc, but because it’s important to keep our limitations in mind when getting a new look at the upcoming Knives Out movie Wake Up Dead Man. Where the first images from Knives Out and Glass Onion highlighted the ensemble cast of those movies, a new first look photo from Wake Up…

Depicted in countless movies and TV shows, as well as in hip hop lyrics, the Shaolin Temple is a very real place, one of China’s historic treasures and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Established in 495 CE, the original Shaolin Temple lies in the heart of China and is considered the birthplace of Zen and Kung Fu. But before Jet Li came, it was in ruins.  The 20th century was tough on the temple too. In 1928 during the turbulent Republic of China period, the temple was burned down by a warlord named Shi Yousan, who was suspicious of the…

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Dr. Julian Bashir is furious. The Chief Medical Officer aboard Federation Starbase Deep Space 9, Bashir has spent the entirety of the season six episode “Inquisition” being mentally tormented by Luther Sloan, a member of Starfleet Intelligence. Sloan came to DS9 to investigate reports of a senior officer collaborating with the enemy Cardassians, and thinks he’s found his man in Bashir. Worse, Bashir begins to question himself, as evidence mounts that he might indeed be the traitor and has wiped his own mind as a…

Cognitive dissonance plays a big role in Companion. It is after all designed to be a feature in the film’s titular companion series, synthetic lifeforms built to offer physical and emotional assistance to their owners (or “fuck-bots” as Jack Quaid’s Josh enthuses about his purchase). These artificially intelligent machines are meant to emulate human consciousness up to a point—but they must never be aware they’re robots. And yet, by virtue of the movie’s title, trailer, and overall marketing campaign, we know that Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is very much a robot during the movie’s first act, even if she and the…

Most of the first teaser for the FX series Alien: Earth feels pretty familiar to anyone who has seen an Alien movie before. Set to the sounds of the warning klaxon used so effectively in the trailer for the 1978 original, we watch a facehugger scramble through a ship, with internal designs not dissimilar to the USCSS Nostromo. However, in the final seconds of the teaser, we see that the ship is crashing and we see where it will land: Earth. The impact of that reveal is certainly lessened by the fact that the show is called Alien: Earth. However,…

We’ve long known that Quentin Tarantino has imposed a 10-movie limit on himself, claiming that he plans to retire after directing his next picture, whatever that picture will be. But while speaking with critic and commentator Elvis Mitchell at the Sundance Film Festival, Tarantino put a new twist on his oft-discussed rule. He’s not working on a movie at all anymore. Now he’s working on a play. He’ll get to that movie eventually, but given the state of the industry (among other reasons) he is in no hurry. When asked why by Mitchell (as per) Variety), Tarantino responded with a…

There’s no shortage of rumors circulating about Natalie Portman’s potential return to Star Wars. Now that Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor have returned as their Prequel era characters Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, there seems to be an even greater desire from fans to see Portman to reprise her role as Padmé Amidala in a future Star Wars project. While most of the current rumors revolve around her making an appearance in Ahsoka season 2 as Christensen did in the first season, a new rumor suggests Portman was actually originally slated to appear in another Disney+ series in 2022.…

The nominations are in, the predictions have begun, and a whole lot of folks are probably just looking for where they can see the 10 films nominated for Best Picture (we got you covered on that as well). Still, all the prognostication, horse race reporting, and second-guessing over the snubs and surprises has a bad habit of obscuring why folks care about these things in the first place. The movies. If you’ve ever cared about the Academy Awards, or simply felt the urge to express your lack of care for their selections, it is because deep down we all share…

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31. A quick scan of the internet finds that Den of Geek was hardly the only outlet to set phasers to kill on Star Trek: Section 31. Fans and critics alike have thoroughly rejected the movie, dismissing it as unfunny, unexciting, and largely derivative. It even ranks at the very bottom of our updated Star Trek movie ranking and it’s deserved. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of people ion the internet saying that Section 31 isn’t “real Trek” or, more directly, that the franchise needs to course correct by going back to the…

You’d think there wouldn’t be all that many surprises in a ranking of the various Star Trek movies. Official fan doctrine tends to elevate a select handful of them to the very top (and rightfully so, because when this franchise is great, it’s really great) while dismissing, fairly or unfairly, others. But the reality is, there’s such a wide array of tones across Star Trek films that one fan’s skippable entry is another fan’s favorite (well…most of the time). We chose a panel of our most decorated Starfleet experts to vote on the highs and lows of the Star Trek…

It might seem strange to say that Conclave, a movie nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, is becoming something of a Best Picture long shot… but conventional wisdom suggests Conclave is now something of a Best Picture long shot. While the Vatican thriller received a host of nominations, including a Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Peter Straughan and Best Film Editing for Nick Emerson, the film’s absence was conspicuously noted in the Best Director race where James Mangold got in for A Complete Unknown over Edward Berger. It was also snubbed in Best Cinematography where, to…

This Star Trek article contains spoilers for Section 31. After an extremely long wait, which has seen it truncated from a spin-off show into a TV movie while Michelle Yeoh has gone and become an Oscar winner, Star Trek: Section 31 is finally here. We have reviewed it. We got the man who wrote a defense of “Sub Rosa” to review it. This article will not add anything to his assessment of its quality (or absolute lack thereof). But whatever your opinion of Section 31’s execution, from the outset the film faced some pretty big hurdles in terms of its…

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31. At the climax of Star Trek: Section 31, Philippa Georgiou has succeeded. She and her newfound teammates in the black ops division Section 31 have returned a massive bomb to the Mirror Universe where it originated, saving the Prime Universe. Never the type to let anything keep them from cackling loudly at a bar, the team reconvenes in a bar in the movie’s final scene, where they get information about their next mission. What is that mission, you ask? Let’s take a look at all of the teases in the ending…

The new movie Star Trek: Section 31 takes its heroes deep outside of Federation space. But in the Star Trek universe, you can’t go anywhere without hearing the word, “KHAN!” No one in Section 31 actually names Khan Noonien Singh, but the 20th century warlord’s presence hangs over one of the main characters. The black ops team is led by Alok (Omari Hardwick), a no-nonsense tough guy tasked with holding together the rag-tag band. We don’t know how Alok holds his own against the outrageous threats they face, at least not until late in the film, when he reveals his…

This article contains Emilia Pérez spoilers. The first time I saw Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, I knew nothing going in other than who was in the cast and that it was a musical set in Mexico. Even the revelation that Karla Sofía Gascón would be introduced as a Mexican drug cartel leader who would simultaneously bribe and threaten Zoe Saldaña into helping her gender transition was a surprise. I imagine many such folks who discovered the film on the festival circuit last summer or in early fall—mine was at the New York Film Festival—had similar reactions to a movie which…

From his very first movie The Witch, Robert Eggers taught us a simple but important equation: Robert Eggers + Monster + Archaic Spelling Conventions = Good Movie. So while we’ve loved The Lighthouse, The Northman, and Nosferatu, we’re even more excited about his announced next project: Werwulf. More than just a stylistic flourish, the title of Eggers’ latest, rooted in the Old English spelling of “werewolf,” indicates the approach he’ll likely take. As when he borrowed from Puritan sermons, court documents, and journals for The Witch, and the ur-Hamlet poem with Norse roots in The Northman, Eggers will probably look…

Two years after SXSW updated the name of its film festival to the “SXSW Film & TV Festival,” the winds of change are on full display in Austin. Ever a forward-looking fest—with SXSW long being the omnibus intersection of where film, music, tech, gaming, and more meet—this fest seems to perpetually keep one eye on the future. Which might explain why 2025 will see the film/TV side’s big opening project be not a motion picture, but the premiere of an eagerly anticipated new television series on Apple TV+. The Studio, an ambitious comedy show from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg,…

The Oscar nominations are at last here. After painful and necessary delays due to the wildfires in California, we now know who the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have deemed to be the best films of 2025. All 10 of them. It’s still a bit surreal after months of speculation and prognostication that the envelope is in for the 10 films nominated for Oscar’s shiniest prize. There have been snubs and surprises along the way, but below we have gathered all chosen few for your perusal. If you need a chance to catch up on some of them,…