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…

On Oct. 15, 2004, comedian Jon Stewart visited the CNN debate show Crossfire. Then hosted by conservative Tucker Carlson and liberal Paul Begala, Crossfire purported to examine issues from two opposing perspectives, giving viewers a more objective look at complex concerns and offering middle ground. But Stewart wasn’t interested in playing the show’s usual game. “I’m here to ask you to stop… stop hurting America,” he said with just a little of his trademark sarcasm under his plea. “And come work for America.” When the hosts tried to play off his comment by joking and asking about the pay, Stewart…

When the UK Department for Public Prosecutions published in 1983 a list of “video nasty” titles which could result in prosecution for distributors, it didn’t know that it was setting horror fans a Pokémon-style “gotta catch ‘em all” challenge. The films that appeared on the list became the DPP 72, an infamous collection of cult horror movies curated by moral outrage. In new 1980s-set Irish comedy-drama Video Nasty on BBC Three, Dublin teenagers Billy (Justin Daniels Anene) and Con (Cal O’Driscoll) are one title away from completing their illicit DPP 72 collection. Through underground deals, back-of-a-van trades and overseas pen…

While the New Year’s barely begun, the contours of its awards race are rapidly coming into focus. Sunday night marked the first major televised awards show of the year with the (surprisingly) re-embraced Golden Globes declaring The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez the Best Pictures of the year in separate genres. However, the Golden Globe Foundation consists of fewer than 70 members, nearly all of whom are journalists. Conversely, the Oscars’ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is made up of roughly 10,000 people who work within the film industry itself. Which makes organizations like the Screen Actors Guild and…

It is 2025. Heaven help us. A year that not long ago sounded like science fiction—and well beyond even Stanley Kubrick’s musings for the world of  tomorrow—has come. And with it is a film and television industry in a state of upheaval… or perhaps dawning opportunity. After spending the first half of this decade recovering from one crisis after another, be it COVID, self-inflicted delays in negotiating the 2023 strikes, or just the continued fallout from streaming’s ascent (and more recent bumpy plateauing), many in Hollywood and beyond are hoping 2025 marks a fresh start. “Survive until 2025” was a…

The sight gags in Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit films are all part of their charm, from Gromit’s vinyl collection (mostly Bach) to his highbrow reading matter (Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky, The Republic by Pluto…) to his alma mater (where else would a clever canine graduate from but Dogwarts University?). The background details invite multiple rewatches as well as giving Aardman Animations a chance to nod towards their wider world and company history. Shaun the Sheep fans will have enjoyed spotting a cameo from the farmer of Mossy Bottom Farm in recent outing Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most…

With Immaculate, Nosferatu, The Substance, Longlegs, and more, 2024 set a high bar for spooky stuff. But 2025 looks set to keep the scares going for another year. From big studio blockbusters to grimy little indies to interesting art films (don’t call it elevated), 2025 has something for everyone who needs a good scare in the new year. Wolf Man (January 17) Scary 2025 starts on a strong note with Leigh Whannell‘s return to the world of Universal Monsters. As he did with Invisible Man from 2020, Whannell promises to bring a kinetic visual style and social relevance to the…

Twenty years ago, Bill Murray sat perfectly center of frame in an ornate Italian theater near the Mediterranean. In the reality of this shot, he was portraying a storyteller within a story—a filmmaker named Steve Zissou, who after enjoying decades at the top of the international film scene has entered a fallow period. We later learn it’s been nine years since his last “hit documentary” and his reputation as a Jacques Cousteau-like oceanographer-turned-director died at roughly the same time as disco. Yet there he was still in the gilded halls that a filmmaker like Wes Anderson would recognize fresh off…

Happy New Year! Yep, it is again that time when the culture wakes back to life, groggily wiping away the mist left by another long (and hopefully restful) holiday season. Yet if you’re in the awards season game, either as a voter, prognosticator, or (Thalberg help you) a hopeful for nomination, it’s been anything but quiet. In fact, Oscars buzz has been burning bright for months and is now about to grow into a roaring fire. As miraculous as it sounds, the Golden Globes have survived their PR nightmares of a few years ago and are back to their weekend…

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew may have just given us another terrifying space creature to haunt our nightmares, but there’s more than meets the eye to the giant crab monster that Wim (Ravi Cabot-Conyers) and KB (Kyriana Kratter) run into on the outskirts of Lanupa in episode 6 “Zero Friends Again.” It turns out that this giant crab, named Tet’niss according to Art Director and Fabrication Supervisor Mark Dubeau, doesn’t just have a bunch of junk in its trunk – some of the pieces of trash stuffed in its shell are deliberate callbacks to the greater Star Wars universe and the…

This article contains spoilers for season 3 of Marvel’s What If…? The third and final season of Marvel’s What If…? is full of new and exciting peeks at worlds that exist outside of the MCU’s “Sacred Timeline.” From old Hollywood glamour to Russian buddy comedy hijinks to old West shootouts, this season certainly has fun playing in the Marvel sandbox. But despite the fact that the majority of these stories are pretty significant deviations from the characters we know in the MCU, this season does do a good job of setting up important parts of upcoming movies Thunderbolts* and Captain…

It’s official: Aquaman and Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa has been tapped to play Lobo in the new cinematic DC Universe. After years of speculation, the actor confirmed his casting as the intergalactic bounty hunter via an Instagram post, with a simple caption reading, “They called.” DCU-head James Gunn validated this with his own post, a picture of Lobo smoking a cigar. The character is now set to make his debut in 2026’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, opposite fellow Westeros-performer Milly Alcock as the eponymous hero with Cruella (2021) and I, Tonya (2017) director Craig Gillespie at the helm. …

Should old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind? Frankly, we’re not certain of that any more than we are about the rest of the “Auld Lang Syne” lyrics. But as fun as it is to dwell on the year that was in cinema during this season—with awards voting at a full roar and everyone’s best-of lists flooding the internet (including ours!)—it’s also good to look ahead. 2024 indeed marked an odd time for movies with delays caused by last year’s strikes turning the Hollywood spigot down to a trickle. But things promise to be running full steam ahead…