Each and every year’s Oscars lineup brings its fair share of snubs and surprises, twists and turns. Still, it’s fair to say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2025 was filled with some stunners, including Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here shocking many prognosticators when it ended up in both the Best Picture and Best Actress races. Indeed, the Brazilian film that is also nominated for Best International Feature saw Fernada Torres get into the Best Actress category (likely at the expense of Nicole Kidman or Angelina Jolie) while the film ended up on the shortlist for the…

Anyone worried that Star Trek: Section 31 would completely undermine the central ethos of Star Trek as a franchise has those fears confirmed within the first 10 minutes of the movie. Section 31 opens in the Mirror Universe, where we see a teenaged Phillipa Georgiou (portrayed here by Miku Martineau) give an arch, sub-Game of Thrones monologue before committing an atrocity, the final step in securing her role as Terran Emperor. The scenes of course lack any of the hope and optimism that define Trek, the belief in fundamental good of collaboration and understanding that the Mirror Universe (and Section…

It’s fair to say that Netflix had pretty high expectations for itself in the fourth and final financial quarter of 2024. Bolstered by the December 26 premiere of Squid Game season 2, the livestream double whammy of two NFL Christmas Day games and the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson fight, and the impending arrival of WWE Raw in January 2025, the streamer was expected to add around 9 million new paid subscribers during the observed October-December timeframe. Still, even that ambitious estimate fell well short of the reality of Netflix’s success to close out the year. In reporting its 2024 Q4 earnings…

“Nothing is of its own explanation,” Adrien Brody’s Lázló Tóth muses in The Brutalist when asked why he became an architect. It’s a cryptic comment, but Tóth gives a slightly fuller context when he adds, “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of [my buildings] remain there, still in the city… my buildings were devised to endure such erosion.” It is safe to say director and co-writer Brady Corbet feels some affinity with Tóth given the monumental nature of The Brutalist,…

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” So finished the party to end all parties in “The Masque of the Red Death,” one of Edgar Allan Poe’s…

Edward Lemuel is a kind, timid man. Or so it seems. For the first act of the 2024 black comedy, A Different Man, Edward tries his best to avoid attention. He sheepishly slides past the couch blocking his apartment door as new neighbor, the aspiring playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves in. He moves through the city with his body bent forward and his arms crossed in front of him, as if shielding himself from some unseen attack. Even when he tries out for various acting gigs, he falls back and gets embarrassed, a quality that only earns him parts in…

While 2025 might be a new year, it will have plenty of familiar names. Reboots and remakes will fill the screen, with filmmakers taking a different look at properties and stories told before. That might sound dire. But before you start complaining about Hollywood’s lack of ideas, just take a look at this list. Sure, there are a few obvious plays for IP dollars, but for the most part, the 2025 reboot and remake slate is full of exciting updates to Superman and the Fantastic Four, as well as compelling updates to classic Universal monsters. The names might be familiar,…

When we first saw Cameron Diaz’s film debut in The Mask, audiences had a response not unlike that of Jim Carrey’s green-skinned protagonist. Okay, maybe we weren’t quite so aroused, but our eyes did practically pop out of our sockets. And with good reason. After all, Diaz is a tall, striking blonde who looked every bit like the model turned actress she was. Given her high profile beginning, it might sound weird to describe any Cameron Diaz performance as overlooked. Not only does Diaz fit well within traditional leading lady roles, but she has a knack for comic timing and…

2025 has barely begun but it already feels like a lot. Climate change-fueled wildfires continue to ravage Los Angeles and parts of Southern California while unease grips the news. A moment of transition on at least one side of the pond for our U.S. readers breeds apprehension, and the rest of the year can look foreboding if you pay attention to the headlines. It’s times like these where it’s nice to have a comforting movie, a piece of escapism, that can lift a mood and maybe rally your outlook for the days and months ahead. Here are some suggestions we…

Last September, well before Halloween and a full four months out from Leigh Whannell’s reimagining of a Universal Monsters classic, The Wolf Man, we got our first look at Whannell and Blumhouse Productions’ new take on the famous werewolf. Supposedly. While a theme park performer visibly stood in front of a poster for this January’s Wolf Man with a goofy-looking latex mask on—presumably it would seem scarier in the dark at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights for where it was intended —it obviously wasn’t the real deal Whannell and makeup artist Arjen Tuiten (Pan’s Labyrinth) designed for the finished film.…

The idea of werewolves has existed since long before movies came along. The concept goes back to antiquity with ancient Greek historian Herodotus writing in the fifth century B.C. about a colony where settlers were transformed into wolves for several nights of the year; several centuries later the story of Greek King Lycaon turning into a wolf was passed down, becoming the root for the still-used psychological diagnosis of “lycanthropy;” and in the Middle Ages philosopher-saint Augustine of Hippo wrote as a matter of fact about how witches could cast spells that turned men into wolves. So yeah, werewolves have…

Variety confirmed Thursday that legendary writer-director David Lynch has passed away at the age of 78. The news was first shared by Lynch’s family via this Facebook post: “It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.” “Keep…

The words Back in Action are as much a promise as they are a title. After all, anyone who considers themselves a fan of Jamie Foxx or Cameron Diaz—and Netflix’s algorithm clearly thinks there are a lot of us out there—will know they’ve been away from screens for serious reasons. It’s been almost two years since Jamie Foxx experienced a stroke that left him hospitalized and initially unable to walk. So seeing him dance, kick, and float across soundstages again is the kind of rare catharsis that even AI analytics can never genuinely quantify. While Diaz’s own reasons for stepping…

Wolf Man begins with a father and son on a hunting trip in which the latter decides to share with his boy some advice about the way of the world. “Dying isn’t hard. It’s the easiest thing in the world,” the dad (Ben Prendergast) warns his son Blake (Zac Chandler). “At every minute it’s closing up behind you.” Given the intense warning, and the cold distance in papa’s eyes, it’s no surprise that when we again meet the adult Blake (Christopher Abbott) 30 years later, he’s living not in the Oregon wilderness of his father, but in San Fransisco. Nor…

The Flash in many ways was an appropriate end to the DC Extended Universe. Yes, the film also included a post-credits scene which set up the obligatory and already forgotten Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, but that underwater superhero movie arrived in theaters like a sunken afterthought. Meanwhile The Flash, directed with a lot of pep and energy by filmmaker Andy Muschietti, came roaring out and swinging for the fences. With a galaxy-brained premise that spent close to a decade in production, The Flash saw Ezra Miller’s super-speedster cause the entire DC universe to implode after he went back in…

Electric Boogaloo. Die Harder. 2 Fast 2 Furious. Movie continuations are a wonderful thing, if only because they give us these wonderful titles. Sadly, 2025 doesn’t offer anything quite so iconic in the way of nomenclature, but it does feature plenty of sequels and prequels that check in on our favorite movie characters. Whether it’s Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones back for another awkward outing or John Kramer continuing his unique form of self-help, 2025 is full of continuing stories and first chapters. Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (Feb 14) What started as a modern update on Pride and Prejudice…

Any good werewolf yarn, and plenty of bad ones, will tell you the line between man and beast is thinner than we care to admit. The same holds true for greatness and greatly missed opportunities. So much of film history is littered with stories of happy accidents and serendipitous choices that proved the difference between obscurity and an eternity of critical adulation. Unfortunately, there are far more examples of movies where those fortuitous twists of fate didn’t occur, or they perhaps went the other way. Worse still is when the press gets wind of gusts blowing in the wrong direction.…

2023 Netflix film Bank of Dave was a triumph of what you’d call ‘not letting the truth get in the way of a good story’. It was a good story, about a working class Northern hero standing up to snooty Southern toffs to provide for his community, and that community uniting to help him do it. There was a sweet romance, there were rousing courtroom scenes, and it was all capped off by a blistering fundraising concert by local band Def Leppard. How much of it was real? Premise aside, not much. That’s why the film came with the caption…

In almost every respect, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is an improvement on its 2018 predecessor. Eschewing a seedy, neo-noir aesthetic in the tradition of Michael Mann in favor of the French Riviera, Pantera at times feels like a vacation movie for Gerard Butler’s Nicholas “Big Nick” O’Brien and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s Donnie Wilson. Seven years after the pair left their cat and mouse games between a good thief and a mean cop with the thief having the upper hand, the sequel is generally a lot more fun as the two work in simpatico on the same side in a…

With the spice giving everyone Dune fever and Star Trek in a second renaissance, sci-fi fans have had it good these past few years. 2025 doesn’t have another Dune movie in store, but it does have a new James Cameron film, and it’s hard to get better than that. Additionally, we’ve got some smaller stories coming to streaming services, a few reimagingings of classic tales, and another movie about dino DNA. What more could you want? Star Trek: Section 31 (Jan 24) Star Trek: Discovery might be done, but the world it established continues. Star Trek: Section 31, premiering straight…