Since we learned that Amazon MGM Studios has acquired the creative rights to James Bond, the online mood regarding the franchise’s future has seemed grim. If you’ve ever followed the history of beloved cultural institutions being acquired by corporate behemoths, you’ll understand the sudden jumps to the worst possible conclusions. Even the Bond tribute at the 97th annual Academy Awards felt like an in memoriam package for a series that is not technically dead yet.  What Bond fans across the world are really feeling right now is uncertainty. When will the next Bond movie be released? Will that movie be…

In Mickey 17, Robert Pattinson plays a frozen meat-sickle. Those are not my words; they’re Pattinson’s inside of the first 60 seconds of the movie, and they’re delivered to the audience with a nasally, conversational voiceover that sounds adrift somewhere between Steve Buscemi and Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny. Absolutely everything about this performance and the movie it exists within is a choice. They’re big ones too. Not all of them are necessarily the right call, and more than a few lead to creative dead-ends or cul-de-sacs. But pretty much from the jump, as you hear Pattinson wheeze in…

A science fiction spaceship is a lot like a house party. When I see one, the first thing I want to know is what’s going on in the kitchen. Interior designers are the unsung heroes of sci-fi worldbuilding, and a bit of carefully dressed set can do the work of a dozen dramatic exposition-filled voiceovers or lengthy opening text crawls. And this is nowhere more evident than the kitchen. Take a look at your own kitchen. What appliances have you got? A kitchen-bound time traveler could quickly determine when they are with a look at your microwave and fridge. A…

Picking a favourite Sherlock Holmes might seem elementary, but, when you consider just how many fantastic actors have donned the deerstalker over the years, you’re faced with a conundrum fiendish enough to daunt the master detective himself. Rathbone, Cumberbatch, Brett, Plummer…it was never going to be straightforward, was it? So, in the spirit of the great man himself, we’ll scrutinise the evidence, draw the complex threads together, and present a solution: our very own ranking of the Sherlocks. As with all mysteries, there’s a twist. Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson aren’t merely a detective duo; they’re the detective duo.…

Anyone who decided to catch up with Anora because of Oscar buzz might find themselves confused early on. The movie begins as a Cinderella story with a sex worker in the princess role and the son of a Russian oligarch as the prince, and then switches to a broad farce that veers between slapstick comedy and genuine menace. Why, a first-time viewer might reasonably wonder, do people consider this one of the best movies of 2024? The answer comes at the very bitter end. After a frantic and exhausting 138 minutes, Anora slows to an intimate close. The sudden shift…

Kathleen Kennedy is reportedly stepping away from Lucasfilm at the end of the year. While the news isn’t official, multiple industry trades have confirmed the story  after it was broken by Puck News’ Matt Belloni earlier today, with Variety noting that she is planning to fully retire when her contract concludes at the end of 2025. If so, it will mark the conclusion of an extraordinary career that earned a place in film history larger than the admittedly checkered previous decade of Disney-produced Star Wars films, television series, and other assorted media. It also feels prudent to make this point…

When most people sign up for a Disney+ subscription, they’re probably thinking about catching up with Disney Channel Originals they loved as kids or watching the latest Marvel movie at home. For most, Disney+ means access to endless streams of frothy entertainment, with social issues presented in the form of cartoon allegories like Zootopia. The documentaries that get pushed to the front page tend to be self-mythologizing stories such as the behind-the-scenes Marvel Disassembled series or beautiful nature pictures. Most of those nature films come via National Geographic, an underappreciated wing of the Disney+ service. In addition to showing the…

“Rey Skywalker.” With those two words, the final words spoken in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, many fans threw up their hands in disgust. Honestly, no part of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker worked beyond clunky fan service that, ironically, only further alienated viewers. But even by those standards, Rey’s nonsense turn to adopt the Skywalker name made the universe feel smaller, reducing a vast a galaxy into just supporting players in the lives of two bloodlines and family dynasties. Given the sour taste that Rise of Skywalker left in the fandom’s mouths, news of a new film by…

Legendary actor Gene Hackman has passed away at the age of 95. While the circumstances of his death are still being investigated (he, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their dog were found dead in their New Mexico home), those details can only help us understand this loss rather than truly process it. The great Gene Hackman is gone. Of course, it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen Gene Hackman grace a screen of any size. Aside from some interviews and public appearances (and an accidental cameo on an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives), Hackman’s last movie was the…

It was a career highlight that “blew people away,” wrote Today. Her big moment “jolted awake” and stunned audiences, enthused the LA Times. And it was an “emotional career revelation,” as per The Independent. Such were the heaps of praise showered onto Demi Moore—albeit not for her genuinely amazing career highlight in Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. The performance itself was indeed a stunning tour de force where Moore personified the pressures felt by millions of women, be they entertainment legends or otherwise. In the film, Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle is a former Oscar winner and movie star reduced to destroying her…

For better or for worse, Kathleen Kennedy is often the one ultimately held responsible for the highs and lows of this era of Star Wars. The sequel trilogy she shepherded introduced a new generation to a galaxy far, far away while still giving longtime fans a (mostly) fulfilling end to this saga. And yet in the nearly six years since that saga ended with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Lucasfilm has struggled to figure out its next chapter on the big screen. With Kathleen Kennedy’s rumored exit from Lucasfilm, it doesn’t seem likely that these struggles will…

For decades some critics have argued the Oscars award the most acting, not the best acting. The claim is demonstrable, too, as seen by Joaquin Phoenix‘s subtle work in The Master or You Were Never Really Here going looked over, but his big showy take in Joker gaining recognition. See, yet again, Jessica Chastain’s win for an over-the-top turn in The Eyes of Tammy Faye after putting in incredible work in The Tree of Life and Take Shelter. And, to be fair, at one point in Sing Sing, Colman Domingo does give what you might expect from a typically Oscar-nomianted…

Have the bad guys finally won? After decades of taking down megalomaniacs with designs on the world, James Bond appears to have been bested by a bald man with far too much power. No, not Blofeld. Jeff Bezos, whose company Amazon just secured all creative rights to the James Bond franchise. Okay, that might be a bit hyperbolic, but Amazon’s takeover does feel like the final battle lost on the pop culture landscape. Imperfect as it has been, the James Bond franchise was among the last to be run by actual people who cared deeply about maintaining the series’ integrity…

LEGO Batman has been going strong for nearly two decades. During the first run of the theme from 2006-2008 and its rebirth in 2012, the Caped Crusader has been a consistent cash cow for the toy company. In fact, despite the rest of LEGO‘s DC exports, such as Superman, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, fading off into the ether in recent years, Batman has remained a strong player in the pantheon of licensed themes.  LEGO has continued to adapt many of the different iterations of Batman into sets throughout the years. Just last year, the group dipped their toes into the…

This post contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah. Paul Atreides wasn’t the only one sad to see Duncan Idaho die while battling Sardaukar troops in Dune. Audiences also mourned the loss of Idaho’s performer Jason Momoa, whose carefree attitude lightened the sometimes too-heavy mood. While everyone else is brooding about prophecies and land rights, Duncan Idaho is making fun of Paul’s skinny little arms. So those same fans are probably thrilled to hear a report from insider Jeff Sneider, who indicated that Momoa has joined the cast of Dune 3, which director Denis Villeneuve hopes to start filming this…

A set 65 million years in the making. Dinosaur and LEGO fans alike can rejoice because the biggest Jurassic Park LEGO set of all time has just leaked. Allegedly just 25 more pieces than the 2019 set 75936: T. rex Rampage, the 76968: Dinosaur Fossils: Tyrannosaurus is rumored to be the new set joining the theme this year. You can view the leaked images from Instagram below:  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Claudio Tavella (@itavix_bricks) 76968: Dinosaur Fossils: Tyrannosaurus  Release date: March 1, 2025 Price: $249.99 This massive brick-built rendition of the T. rex skeleton is…

Stephen King’s 1980 short story “The Monkey” (which can be found these days in his outstanding 1985 collection, Skeleton Crew) tells the story of Hal Shelburn, a man who is obsessed with an old toy from his childhood, a wind-up monkey that seems to cause death whenever it claps its cymbals. The tale is in many ways vintage King, with incidents and/or cursed objects from someone’s past re-emerging into the present to haunt that person once again. The Monkey, writer-director Osgood Perkins’ adaptation of King’s story, makes a number of structural, character, and narrative changes to the tale while keeping…

A decade isn’t really such a long time ago, but it feels like ages ago if you’re a Star Wars fan who’s lived through the many highs and lows of the franchise since Disney acquired the rights to George Lucas‘ empire. That must go double for Daisy Ridley, who in that span of time has not only starred in a trilogy of Skywalker films—while experiencing all the good and the bad that comes with landing a role of that cultural magnitude—but also several more intimate indies, including the well-regarded Magpie and Sometimes I Think About Dying. Now she’s also a…

Osgood Perkins is having fun these days. And you know what? He’s earned it. One of the more interesting horror directors to emerge in the last decade, Perkins finally had his mainstream breakthrough last year by writing and helming the surprise indie curio of the summer: Longlegs, an achingly bleak movie about the things the Devil, and your parents, make you do. With his follow-up, a liberal adaptation of a Stephen King short story about cursed toys and even more accursed childhoods, he’s pretty much tackling the same subject matter again, but he does so with a reckless mean streak…

“The coldest blood runs through my veins, you know my name,” croons Chris Cornell at the start of Casino Royale, the film that rebooted the James Bond franchise with a new approach and a new face as 007. Yet, as many times as the guy playing James Bond changed, fans could count on one constant name: Broccoli. But that’s about to change. Amazon Studios has announced a “joint venture” with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the current heads of Eon Productions, to “house the James Bond intellectual property rights.” Although the announcement makes clear that Broccoli and Wilson “will…