Even if you don’t know an El-Aurian from an Illyrian, even if you can’t tell the original Enterprise from the Enterprise-D, you’re probably familiar with one of the fundamental rules of Star Trek: redshirts always die. Unlike many of the popular misconceptions about the series (Kirk doesn’t actually chase women, for example), the redshirt stereotype does have grounding in the show. Over the course of three seasons in The Original Series, 26 characters wearing red tunics died, as opposed to 15 wearing gold and blue combined. But that trend stopped with the Star Trek movies, and continued to fall away…

This article contains mild spoilers from the Dune novel. Director Denis Villeneuve faced many dilemmas when crafting the finale of his two-part Dune adaptation. Frank Herbert’s narrative is sprawling, and the climactic confrontation between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and the forces of the Emperor (Christopher Walken) was full of landmines in terms of excessive exposition and outdated sensibilities. In fact, as last lines of a famous book go, we’re not sure if “we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives” would have flown for modern audiences buying tickets to this weekend’s Dune: Part Two. So it is…

Warning: contains spoilers for Wicked Little Letters. Wicked Little Letters is remarkable for two things: being stuffed with the kind of language to make a sailor blush, and generosity to the real-life figures who inspired its story. If the film had told the complete tale of the poison pen campaign that scandalised 1920s Littlehampton, audiences may not feel as ready to empathise with Edith Swan or Rose Gooding. As played by Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley – two actors who never stop reminding you that no matter what despicable things their characters say or do, they’re flesh and blood people…

For all its influence and vision, Frank Herbert’s original Dune novel never quite hit the note the author intended. With its sweeping sci-fi vistas of desert worlds and space age T.E. Lawrences, it’s easy to see why some readers got lost in the adventure of it all—or simply extracted those fun bits for their own riffs on galaxies far, far away. Still, it was never Herbert’s goal to pen a white savior narrative about Paul Atredies, a boy hero plagued by prophecies of genocide. After viewing the second volume of Denis Villeneuve’s grand but immensely foreboding adaptation of Dune, it’s…

It’s hard to believe it’s been 47 years since we first witnessed the adventures of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, but across the nine-movie Skywalker saga, two standalone movies, a multitude of TV series, and one questionable Holiday Special, we’ve learned it’s a big ol’ galaxy out there. With enough characters to fill a Death Star, it’s inevitable that not every player in this grand space opera would get the same attention as Luke, Han, and Leia.  In fact, the franchise has allowed a few characters to slip to the sidelines. From major players who were discarded into the trash…

Within weeks of its release in the summer of 2008, The Dark Knight cemented its place in popular culture. People were quoting the Joker, debating Batman’s questionable surveillance tactics, and praising the film’s grounded take on superheroes, even before the movie hit home video. Obviously, The Dark Knight means a lot to everyone who sees it. Well, almost everyone. A key part of the movie doesn’t mean anything to one of the most important people involved in the movie: director Christopher Nolan. “I’m plagued by a line from The Dark Knight, and I’m plagued by it because I didn’t write…

Anne Boleyn has been played on screen since the silent movie era. She’s been portrayed as a six-fingered boo-hiss villain, a Saturday Night Live punchline, a ghost haunting Princess Diana, and in recent stage musical Six, a Kate Nash-style aitch-dropping popstrel. Now, Henry VIII’s second wife is trending on TikTok as a new generation gets sucked into the scandals of the Tudor court and stakes their allegiance to her, the Spanish queen unseated for her, the simpering virgin who followed her, or any other player during this eventful period in history when the king of England made the position of…

Before Blu-ray or DVD, before you could just open up an app on your phone and stream things, there was the beloved VHS tape, that most bulky of physical media. Whether you rented them from Blockbuster, owned a library of them and organized them neatly in the shelves running alongside your home entertainment center, used them to record your favorite movies or TV shows, or simply prayed for your teacher to pull one out on a Friday afternoon in middle school, the VHS tape was king of ’80s and ’90s home media. There was simply nothing better than the experience…

Hallmark Channel is capping off a month of original films themed around Jane Austen’s works with the premiere of a new feature-length adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. The classic story about whether young women should choose husbands based on romantic notions of love or practicality has been adapted for both television and film several times before. Many fans may remember either the 1995 film adaptation directed by Ang Lee or the 2008 BBC and PBS television miniseries starring Dominic Cooper and Charity Wakefield.  This Sense and Sensibility stands out from the other recent period adaptations of Austen’s works, however, as…

As a musical unit, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr enjoyed the most unique experience in popular entertainment. While Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra similarly spent the most exciting periods of their careers circumnavigating hordes of rabid fans, persistent, compulsory photo-ops, and suitcases of ticket sales cash, they still broke through as solo song interpreters. The Beatles, by contrast, became a global phenomenon as a group, and a very busy one, in and out of the studio, mostly writing their own music. In keeping with the musical unit’s consistent commitment to innovation, Apple Corps. and Sony Pictures…

Even the most die-hard 007 fans know that James Bond movies don’t always hit. There’s the yellow face of You Only Live Twice, the pigeon double-take in Moonraker, the surfing in Die Another Day. But never has the franchise done worse than when a certain Louisiana police officer bumbles into the otherwise solid Live and Let Die. Yes, I’m talking about Sheriff J.W. Pepper, a loudmouth distraction who sort of makes sense in the American-set Live and Let Die, but then he somehow also shows up in Thailand to further drag down The Man With the Golden Gun. Modern viewers…

This article contains Priscilla spoilers. Director Sofia Coppola scrubs at tarnished memories for the biopic Priscilla. It’s a bold choice since Elvis Presley disciples prefer admiring unvarnished relics in a still-flourishing golden hue. The film’s primary source and title character, Priscilla Presley, has offered no apologies for her time with the mythological musician, just the facts as she remembers them. These recollections do not diminish her love of the man who came to define her existence, but they cloud his legacy to this day. “Why are you coming for my dad and my family?” Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley wrote…

The last American movie star. The savior of cinema. Maverick. There are plenty of superlatives thrown around Tom Cruise these days—including by us—and for good reason. In an era where audiences increasingly only venture to the theater for familiar intellectual property (if at all), Tom Cruise remains one of the last old school marquee names people turn out for in order to watch the actor. And more often than not, they’re justified in that trust, because Cruise has spent his middle-age proving that like his most popular alter-ego—Navy pilot Pete Mitchell—he has no intention of turning in his wings. It’s…

For a guy who writes about awful stuff happening to people, Stephen King sure likes liking things. Just think about how many times he’s used his position to praise other creatives and projects. “I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker,” declared his blurb for the American release of Books of Blood. “Tight, terrific, and very, very scary. Reminded me a bit of Duel,” he said of The Fall on Twitter in 2022. “Wish I’d written it.” Heck, his horror history book Danse Macabre ends with an appendix recommending over 100 books and nearly 100…

Lionsgate has finally released the first trailer for Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie nearly 10 years after the project was announced. While the preview is relatively light on plot details, it certainly emphasizes the “edgy” style of humor that has helped make the Borderlands game franchise so notable and sometimes divisive.  The Borderlands franchise has only grown since the original Borderlands game was launched way back in 2009, but the series has remained remarkably consistent during that time. Most of the Borderlands games feature a group of treasure hunters navigating cel-shaded wasteland environments, a ton of loot to collect, and an…

When the first trailer for Alex Garland’s Civil War dropped several months ago, many viewers were immediately put on edge by visions of war-torn cityscapes, or clouds of smoke billowing above small towns. Mind you, this sadly looks like the nightly news on nearly any given Tuesday. However, in Garland’s hands, these “reports” were occurring in the good ol’ US of A. The call was coming from inside the house. Others, however, were somewhat bemused by the first trailer, at least as judged by social media posts or our comments section. Skeptics decried the incredulity of the film’s so-called “Western…

This Madame Web article contains spoilers. “With great power comes great responsibility” might be the most important line in superhero fiction. It crystalizes a theme present in the best superhero stories even before Spider-Man‘s debut in 1962’s Amazing Fantasy #15, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman tales and Bill Parker, and C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel adventures. The line transforms superhero stories from mere power fantasies to stories about service and care, about empowering others instead of consolidating power for yourself. So when a member of Las Arañas, Madame Web‘s ill-advised magical natives, tells Cass Webb (Dakota Johnson), “When you take…

As attention turns to the Oscars around this time every year, it’s easy to get caught up remembering some of the big winners. One of the most notable champs was The Silence of the Lambs, which took home the “Big Five” awards in 1992: Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Jonathan Demme), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally), as well as Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing to round it out.  And despite owning the film rights to works of author Thomas Harris, super-producer Dino De Laurentiis saw none of that windfall, be…

The 1980s was a seminal period in the development of what we now define as the action movie. This was the decade that cemented the statuses of both Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as the muscle-bound box office behemoths eating the competition for breakfast. Having emerged off the back of critically acclaimed efforts like Rocky and The Terminator, the years that followed saw the pair hone their greased-up on-screen personas to fine effect. It wasn’t all about the muscles though. The 1980s also ushered in the era of the everyman action star with Bruce Willis in Die Hard and Eddie…

This post contains spoilers for Madame Web. There are exactly two good things in Madame Web. No, it’s not the meme-worthy line about moms and Amazons, which doesn’t even appear in the movie. Neither is it all of the winks toward Peter Parker nor the young female Spider-heroes who (spoiler) have only two brief scenes in costume. No, one good thing in Madame Web is the old-school Marvel logo that opens the film. The simple flipping of comics pages that dissolves into the big red block with the word “Marvel” in white font, before MCU movies replaced it with their…