In the final seconds of the latest trailer for Godzilla Minus Zero, the humans look on in horror. Not surprisingly before them stands a returned Godzilla, the beast who they thought they destroyed in the previous movie, Godzilla Minus One. In fact, they are witnessing Godzilla fall to the ground, as if dead, despite the fact that they spend the trailer preparing for his reemergence. But instead of relief at the sight of the fallen kaiju, one of the onlookers admits with dread in his voice, “This isn’t Godzilla we are talking about.” So what is the true threat of…

Carry the Darkness recalls a time and place that should be intimately familiar for its writer-director. After all, Douglas Forrester shot much of the film literally in the small Maryland community he grew up in, which while hundreds of miles from West Memphis, Arkansas was nonetheless gripped by the same fears in the 1990s: teenagers in black, teenagers listening to heavy metal, just teenagers. It’s also a great backdrop for a genre indie that inspects incidents like the “West Memphis Three” incident in 1994, wherein kids like Damien Echols were dubiously convicted of murder based largely on charges of alleged…

Some products seem so perfectly suited to their jobs that it is hard to imagine anyone ever using them for something else. Their inventors, however, did not always have the final use in mind. A children’s toy started out cleaning dirty walls, a familiar household spray was developed for aerospace equipment, and one of the most recognizable tissues was originally sold as a beauty product. Sometimes consumers discovered a better use themselves, while other inventions simply failed at their original jobs and found unexpected second lives. A few of those detours eventually created products far more successful than anyone initially…

Not everything that vanishes gets a proper goodbye. Plenty of things that once felt completely ordinary simply became less common year after year, until suddenly it was strange to see someone using them at all. Technology explains some of it, but changing habits, new laws, and different ways of shopping, traveling, and communicating played a part too. Nobody held a farewell ceremony for the phone book or mourned the last handwritten set of driving directions. We just found easier alternatives and moved on, often without noticing what we had stopped doing. Looking back, some of these routines now feel surprisingly…

Human history is so vast and expansive, there’s likely an event we consider our favorite throughout it. Part of the fun of being a history nerd is being able to tell what’s going on in a picture without explanation; therefore, will you rise up to the challenge here? What we have here are several pictures from across human history, and of course, the explanation of where they come from. Not all explanations are exact, since the source of the picture is often vague, but hopefully you’ll be able to grasp the time and place of a photo without every minute…

What would you say embodies the core of the American spirit? This isn’t just about values, it’s about what makes someone as American as it can be, with all the patriotic good and problematic mess that it may mean. For many, it’s about having leadership combined with reckless behaviour, one that defies borders and plants the flag firmly in American soil. People like this are the focus of today’s list: soldiers, explorers, journalists, performers, politicians, and ordinary people who somehow managed extraordinary things. Not all of them were admirable in every respect, but they possessed something historians cannot easily manufacture:…

Video games are a medium with unique strengths and weaknesses when it comes to telling stories, and that’s perfectly fine. They aren’t meant to replace films or books after all. However, when ‘playing’ certain games, it feels like the designers would’ve rather be making a movie instead of something with any interactivity. That is not necessarily a bad thing; some of these games are genuinely fantastic. But when the most memorable parts happen while you are simply watching, it is fair to wonder whether the story might have worked better on a cinema screen. These are the games that make…

With the advent of streaming services, realising the season of a show in its entirety has become more of a norm than a rarity. Add to that the sheer number of things released at any given moment, and come the weekend, you are spoiled for choice when thinking about what to watch. But what if you want to start and finish something in that allotted time? Well, there are several shows that are ideal when it comes to that department. Taste is subjective, and what you might want to marathon isn’t the same thing as someone next to you, so…

Why do we like action movies so much? We know, after all, that the main character will survive, and likely achieve all of their goals; once the opening scene is over, you can pretty much tell where everything is going. So clearly, it’s not the plot we’re here for. We’re here for the action, for the over-the-top scenes and elaborate choreographies that challenge what was possible before. And movies keep getting better and better in that regard. The ones we’ve gathered here aren’t remembered for their stories and character arcs (although some of them still deliver in that department), rather…

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns, season 1, episode 4 Finally, the renegade Green Lantern has arrived. After a brief tease at the end of Lanterns’ second episode, we now see in full the conversation between Hal Jordan and his mentor Sinestro. Despite the gravitas that Ulrich Thomsen brings to the brief exchange, despite the instant power of a The Silence of the Lambs homage used to frame the interaction, Sinestro remains the biggest stumbling block to casual fans brought in by the show’s True Detective approach. We can accept space cops with wishing rings; but why does the bad…

This article contains spoilers for Lanterns season 1 episode 4 It’s been 35 years since Clarice Starling offered quid pro quo with Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. And yet the “evil mastermind in prison” trope hasn’t lost any of its potency. That’s a good thing for Lanterns, as the show has finally brought in the big bad of the franchise, the renegade Green Lantern Sinestro. Sinestro has perhaps been the biggest barrier to expanding Green Lantern’s popularity. He’s obviously evil in his design, from his sinister name to his devilish look, all of which makes it hard…

Early September is traditionally a quiet time at the multiplex. The last holdovers from the dog days of summer movie season—your Spider-Mans and Odysseys, as well as August risks like Coyote vs. Acme—continue to do dwindling business. Meanwhile new and skewed genre films are taking their chances in the off-season. But for everyone else outside the industry, now’s the time to think about schools reopening and vacations ending. In the biz, though? This is among the most important weekends of the year! At last, Oscar season has come. As the cottage industry of year-round awards prognosticators and Oscar bloggers will…

With the announcement of his RoboCop TV series for Prime Video, James Wan effectively told fans, “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.” Okay, maybe that’s overstating it a little, but there’s no question that even the biggest RoboCop devotee has reason to be skeptical about another take on the classic 1987 movie, even from a filmmaker as well liked as Wan. After all, none of the sequels or remakes, or video games have really been able to capture the spirit of the original. Yet a recent observation by star Dan Stevens has us cautiously optimistic that Wan and company…

There are many shows that are set in the past, either distant or recent, using what we know of that era to shape their stories. It can be used as a colorful background, or as a key aspect of the story due to historical events or limitations of the era. If your audience has nostalgia about it, all the better, and a great deal of nostalgia is saved for the 1970s. The best examples don’t simply throw some bell-bottoms and carpeting onto a modern script, they make it part of their identity. From fictional families and ambitious musicians to real-life…

For many of us, the 90s don’t feel that far away, at least not far away enough to justify turning the decade into a setting. And yet, the decade was over almost 30 years ago; you probably have coworkers that were born after 1999. While that alone is a harrowing prospect, it also means there are plenty of shows set in the decade. So we’ve gathered the best of the bunch for your viewing pleasure. Some revisit teenage life, while others explore crime, the AIDS crisis, or any kind of serious ordeal that happened at the time. These shows provide…

Television has always been willing to take a strange turn, but some shows pushed their stories into territory nobody could have predicted. A perfectly normal episode could suddenly involve a bizarre disappearance, an unbelievable secret, a character making an absolutely wild decision, or an entire plot built around an idea that sounds ridiculous when explained out loud. Somehow, viewers kept watching, and the story moved forward as if nothing unusual had happened. These moments are especially fun to revisit because they remind us just how much television can get away with when the characters are compelling enough. Here are 15…

Signs are supposed to make life easier. They tell us where to go, what to avoid, and occasionally what absolutely must not happen. Then there are the signs that leave you standing there for a second, wondering who wrote them and whether following the instructions might somehow make things worse. Some are hilariously specific, others seem to contradict themselves, and a few raise far more questions than they answer. They may have been created with perfectly good intentions, but the wording, placement or combination of instructions turns them into accidental comedy. Here are some signs that deserve a second look…

Avengers: Doomsday is easily the most important movie for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, both in the fictional world and in our own. Within the MCU, Doomsday sees the arrival of Doctor Doom, who will surely use the incursions that threaten to wipe out the multiverse as a means to shore up more power. Within our timeline, Doomsday is an attempt to revive interest in a somewhat 2020s franchise, in part by bringing back favorite actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans. With so much on the line, one would think that Kevin Feige and directors Joe and Anthony Russo…

Martin Scorsese has been making movies since 1967. His filmography currently sits at 26 features, 16 documentaries, and numerous short films. He’s a tireless advocate for film, supporting numerous preservation efforts and sponsoring the world cinema project, which brings attention to filmmakers across the globe. And lately he’s become something of a social media darling, thanks to the efforts of his granddaughter, plus pop star Charli XCX. Yet if you ask the average moviegoer about Martin Scorsese, they’re likely to identify him as just that guy who makes gangster pictures. To a certain degree, it’s a fair assessment. Scorsese did,…

A glowing Rotten Tomatoes score, a pile of awards, and endless praise from critics still can’t guarantee that a movie will work for everyone. Sometimes the performances fall flat, the story feels painfully predictable, or viewers simply spend two hours wondering what everyone else apparently saw that they didn’t. And few things are more confusing than finishing a celebrated movie, checking its reviews, and discovering that critics seemingly watched an entirely different film. When people shared the acclaimed movies they just couldn’t understand the love for, everything from Best Picture winners to animated blockbusters caught some heat. Here are 15…