Bong Joon-ho has not only never made a bad movie; he has delivered eight feature-length films separated only by degrees of brilliance and your personal preferences. Trying to rank them in any definitive way involves heartbreak and folly, but this is the internet, the home of heartbreak and folly, so here goes. Like many great artists, director Bong Joon-ho’s accomplishments extend beyond the boundaries of his work. He not only helped lead a cinematic revolution in South Korea but inspired audiences across the world to celebrate and engage with “international” films in ways that wonderfully contradict so much else that…

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in which Riverdale star Lili Reinhart plays a content moderator, portray a video so shocking that it leaves her character Daisy visibly shaken? By emphasizing the human aspect. “There’s a shot of my character’s eyes, with the image being burned into her brain and retinas,” Reinhart…

For most older Millennials, your scariest movie theater experience wasn’t seeing Casey Becker get stabbed in Scream, it wasn’t Samara coming out of the TV in The Ring, and it wasn’t even when the Borg came back for Picard in Star Trek: First Contact. It was feeling your parents tense up with shock when Raphael said “Damn” in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After all, you came to the theater in 1990 after falling in love with the cartoon series and toy line that launched in 1987, all kid-friendly adventures in which sais and katanas were mostly for show. Nobody got…

With a career that stretches back to 1984, Keanu Reeves has had many iconic roles. He was the warm-hearted doofus Ted “Theodore” Logan in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He was Neo, the would-be One who knows Kung Fu from The Matrix. He was the Baba Yaga in John Wick. But Reeves’ most defining role was also his most controversial, one for which he seemed wholly unsuited. When he played the towheaded Brit John Constantine in 2005’s Constantine, he finally found a role that fully suited the second half of his career, setting the stage for his transition from spaced-out…

A film festival without documentaries is like a day without sunshine. Thankfully, South by Southwest has always brought the goods when it comes to non-fiction filmmaking. The 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival is filled with compelling documentary features receiving their World, North American, or U.S. premieres. From the pastoral and thought-provoking Arrest the Midwife to the chilling Age of Disclosure to a Marc Maron project that asks Are We Good? – here are the docs to watch this year in Austin. Naiti Gámez Arrest the Midwife What does it fully mean to have the freedom of choice when it…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. In 2016’s The Accountant, Ben Affleck played Christian Wolff, a man on the spectrum whose genius with numbers made him the go-to “accountant” for criminal organizations looking to launder money or find out who’s stealing from them. Hired by a seemingly legitimate company to audit their books, Chris found himself drawn into a web of intrigue that involved an innocent bookkeeper (Anna Kendrick), a U.S. Treasury agent named Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), her own slippery boss (J.K. Simmons), and ultimately Chris’ estranged…

Spring has sprung in Austin, which can mean only one thing: it’s time for the many-hyphenated SXSW Festival! A strange, wonderful, and wholly Austin intersection of music, technology, games, and of course film and television, this festival in many ways kicks off the next year’s itinerary in culture and fun. But there is so much to do down Texas’ way that it can be a bit overwhelming to know what to see and look out for. For that reason, we’ve assembled this preview for some of the films you should probably have on your radar for the festivities. Enjoy! Amazon…

Late last year, it was reported that director Luca Guadagnino is developing a new film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel, American Psycho. Ellis has cast doubts on that report by suggesting it’s more of an idea than a committed project, but the news sparked mixed reactions. Guadagnino tackling this relevant text through a modern lens seems appealing, but many argue that director Mary Harron’s 2000 American Psycho film doesn’t need a companion.  While Harron’s film has aged incredibly well, a strange cloud looms over its legacy. For 25 years, conversations about Harron’s adaptation have been dominated by a…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. Jenna Ortega has a confession to make: she likes blood. The more of it, the better. Already she’s been covered in buckets of the substance throughout her career, which includes a bounty of genre darlings running the gamut from Scream VI to Ti West’s X. And never once in all those chillers has she tired of the red-dyed corn syrup. “Maybe if it’s cold outside and it’s like four in the morning,” Ortega begins while considering the downsides of cinematic gore. But…

Jack Kirby’s influence on comics culture is undeniable. It’s not an understatement to say that he is responsible for much, if not all, of the comics language we read when we look at superhero comics. Even now, 30 years after he passed, we still fawn over his creations, whether it’s when his characters hit the big screen (as with Fantastic Four) or when a new story with his characters are stocked in comic book shops (as with Ram V and Evan Cagle’s brilliant New Gods comic). But a new documentary announced this week seeks to place him alongside titans of…

It began with a song that didn’t come out last year. It began with a song that didn’t come out in this century. But what a song to open the 97th annual Academy Awards: Ariana Grande threading a wilting rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The moment obviously was a nod to the other Oz-centric movie on people’s minds these days—and one that Grande was nominated for—Wicked. And to be sure, there’s powerful, internet-friendly magic in both “Rainbow” and the Wicked song that Cynthia Erivo soon joined Grande on stage to belt, “Defying Gravity.” Yet this didn’t feel only like…

Sidney Prescott is in trouble. The night after two of her classmates get murdered by a masked killer, this Neve Campbell heroine has been summoned to speak with her principal. The Woodsboro Sheriff’s department, it seems, wants to ask Sid about the murders and their similarities with her own mother’s violent end. Unnerved, Sidney enters the office looking for a familiar face. She finds one in her principal (Henry Winkler), and another in the sheriff’s hapless deputy, the older brother of her best friend Tatum (Rose McGowan). “Dewey,” she smiles while greeting him. “That’s Deputy Riley in here, Sid,” the…

After 17 years, 35 movies, and numerous TV series, the Marvel Cinematic Universe remains a Goliath of the entertainment scene. We’re on the cusp of a new era, as the Fox deal will finally add the likes of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men to the MCU, meaning hundreds more characters are on the way. That’s before we get to the multiversal potential of bringing back characters from the colorful past of Marvel Movies.  It was always inevitable that some were going to get lost in the shuffle, but as Captain America: Brave New World proved by bringing back Liv…

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…