Gather round summer children, Zoomers and Alphas alike, for I want to tell of a long ago time when the multiplexes were full and the choice for big screen comedies plentiful. It was a lost age of laughs and tears, and in the best romantic comedies, you’d get both: a feat always promised, too, by the soothing disembodied voice in every trailer that spoke as warmly about a film’s stars as a deacon would be reciting scripture on Sunday morning. It was a time of cinematic glory and stars like Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks and Hugh Grant.…

It is supposed to be difficult making new friends after 30. This is a truism so agreed upon that the New York Times regularly runs the same article about it, wistfully reminiscing about the halcyon days of a youth passed by. But that’s not always the case, especially for guys like Austin (Paul Rudd), that affable dude with the cool-new-kid hair and a rockin’ ‘satche that inexplicably matches the one Rudd sported in Anchorman. This delightful creation in Andrew DeYong’s venom-laced comedy, Friendship, leans heavily on Rudd’s famed charm and eternal youthfulness. Not only is Austin made to deliberately echo…

Breathless anticipation for white smoke or black; seas of men in red gowns and white; enigmatic meetings behind the sealed doors of the Sistine Chapel. There is something defiantly old world about how the Catholic Church still selects its next supreme pontiff—the man said to be ordained by God to sit on the Chair of St. Peter. Like a blast from the medieval world, the papal conclave remains one of the most mysterious and speculated-upon election processes: an event made up of a College of Cardinals casting paper ballots that are subsequently destroyed, but whose weight carries with it the…

This article contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*. Poor Thunderbolts. Nothing ever goes right for them. Within seconds of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine renaming the team the New Avengers, the final credits of Thunderbolts* feature newspaper headlines mocking them as Earth’s Less-Than-Mightiest Heroes. Even worse is the post-credit scene, set 14 months later, the group is revealed griping about Captain America’s Avengers and how Sam Wilson is suing them. We even get hints at a rift between Bucky and Sam Wilson. Bad as that state of affairs may be for the New Avengers, it’s good news for fans. Superhero on superhero fights…

This article contains THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS. Back in 2009, a still-nascent Marvel Studios launched the Marvel Writers Program in which the studio selected a small group of promising new screenwriters to literally sit in the company’s offices for a year and develop different projects based on the vast Marvel canon. Some of the scribes who toiled in the program went on to become successful screenwriters in their own right for Marvel and other properties. One of them is Eric Pearson. Some 15 years after launching his career with Marvel, Pearson has co-written (with Joanna Calo) the latest MCU entry, Thunderbolts* and…

Marvel Studios is in a dark place. They know it; you know it; and they know that you know it. Their latest effort Thunderbolts even appears determined to kind of address this, complete with the studio’s logo in the opening title cards slowly succumbing to a shadow. Despite the rousing Alan Silvestri fanfare, soon the entire storied brand is overcast in a gloom so overwhelming that the metatextual irony writes itself. But is Marvel ready to do something about it? It’s an open and deliberately self-aware question that bleeds into the following scene: an image that succinctly summarizes the studio’s…

Thunderbolts* is a good movie. Full stop. It is refreshing to be able to write that about an MCU effort considering the equivocations, debates, and second-guessing that has circled many recent Marvel projects like Captain America: Brave New World, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and The Marvels. By comparison, Jake Schreier’s Thundebolts* mostly stands on its own while also progressing the future of the MCU in genuinely exciting ways. So what are we to make of this fairly well-received Marvel joint opening in the U.S. at an estimated $76 million, a respectable if muted-by-MCU-standards number? That figure is below all…

Marvel’s Phase Five really ended with a bang in this weekend’s Thunderbolts*. Granted, the phase really ends for real with the much-delayed Ironheart, but in terms of movies, Phase Five has finished up. Ever since Avengers: Endgame brought a climax to the original version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there have been so many projects on TV and movie screens that it has taken on a scattershot appearance. But as shown in the post-credits, things are finally about to get interesting as we approach Avengers: Doomsday. With The Fantastic Four: First Steps kickstarting Phase Six and the MCU Multiverse Saga…

May the 4th be with you. Star Wars Day 2025 is upon us, and the galaxy far, far away is climbing back on top of the world of pop culture. With Andor Season 2 currently enthralling fans on streaming and the rerelease of Episode III setting box office records, Star Wars might be back in the public’s good graces once again. To celebrate the franchise that means so much to fans across the globe, some of the best pieces of Star Wars merchandise available to purchase right now below! And you’re looking for retro Star Wars collectibles and vintage sci-fi…

This article contains Thunderbolts* spoilers. The Thunderbolts are here!! Yes, after many Marvel movies that didn’t hit the mark, our first Marvel movie of the summer has arrived and, as our reviewer put it, “Marvel’s shaggiest movie in ages proves to be a good time.” Another way to put it is this isn’t your daddy’s Avengers. Instead this is a ragtag group of villains and antiheroes trying their best to make amends for the horrors of their past by helping stop their one-time-almost teammate and supernatural mind-f#*k, Bob (Lewis Pullman) A.K.A. The Sentry A.K.A. The Void. It’s intimate, thrilling, and…

This article contains spoilers for Thunderbolts*. Within seconds Thunderbolts* announces itself as a special type of Marvel movie. Instead of the “evolution” style Marvel Studios logo used for the past few years, which begins with comic book panels and transitions from script pages to movie scenes, Thunderbolts* is all comics, just like the logo that first debuted with 2002’s Spider-Man. The throwback imagery fills longtime fans with joy… until they realize that the pages all come from Sentry comics. A certain dread rises in their stomachs, just as the logo turns black and Michael Giacchino’s familiar fanfare becomes muddled. The…

Early in The Surfer, Nicolas Cage‘s character confronts the local toughs who have chased him off the Australian beach he’s come to surf. Worse still, they’ve stolen his board! At first Cage tries to simply and request the return of his gear. But when the hooligans’ leader Scally (Julian McMahon) pretends to not understand the request, our hero loses his cool. “Dude…” Cage says, his voice wavering and his finger wagging. “That’s my board, and I want it back!” Even five years ago, Cage’s line reading would be the stuff of memes, shared in viral videos and turned into kitschy…

This article obviously contains ALL THE THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS! I don’t know it for a fact, but I just feel like Alexi Andreovitch Shostakov—aka David Harbour’s lovable Red Guardian—is a New Coke kind of guy. Like a lot of blokes of a certain age, this Super Santa in too-tight tights has an affinity for all things 1980s from his youth. He’s a walking throwback to the Soviet Union’s final glory days, and an era where ironically many such comrades romanticized American capitalist curios like this first New Coke commercial from McDonald’s; an ad that trumpeted, “Look who’s got the new taste…

This article contains plenty of spoilers for Another Simple Favor. Like most sequels, Another Simple Favor goes bigger than its 2018 predecessor. Gone is the rustic northern Michigan summer camp of A Simple Favor, replaced here by the Italian island of Capri. It’s there that luxurious murderer Emily Nelson (Blake Lively) has been living since the end of the first film. Meanwhile no longer a mommy blogger living a life of quiet upper-middle-class desperation, Stephanie Sommers (Anna Kendrick) has also parlayed her story from the first film into a successful career as a true crime podcaster and author. But perhaps…

This article contains spoilers for Sunrise on the Reaping. Since its inception, the Hunger Games has never been shy about the horrors of war. In fact, Suzanne Collins was inspired to create her blockbuster franchise while flipping through TV late at night where news coverage of the conflict in Iraq clashed with the ever popular reality shows of the time. It was that juxtaposition which sowed the seeds for the televised battle to the death that became the epicenter of the Hunger Games universe. Though death matches are rife in fiction and film—from Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game from…

For some people, the summer months mean beaches and long days outdoors. For Den of Geek readers, the summer means staying inside air conditioned movie theaters and watching big budget spectacles! And boy, does summer 2025 have spectacles. But if superheroes and dinosaurs aren’t your bag, you don’t have to skip cinemas altogether this season. Everything from comedy revivals to existential horrors will be hitting screens over the next couple of months, promising cool entertainment for all. And we got it all here for your viewing pleasure. Another Simple Favor May 1 Paul Feig continues to be one of the…

“We are the Thunderbolts!” shouts Alexei Shostakov the Red Guardian in the trailers for the next MCU entry Thunderbolts*. “We can’t call ourselves that,” responds an exasperated Bucky. It’s a weird exchange, one that goes beyond the usual snarky humor that’s marked the Marvel Studios brand since nearly the beginning. Why, exactly, can’t they call themselves Thunderbolts? Who cares? For most comic book fans, the answer is obvious. What he probably says is “we are the Avengers!” And Bucky, an Avenger in practice if not in name, objects. However, comic book readers know that Red Guardian is onto something. The…

Movies and heists are the perfect pairing. Both require a perfect crew, a ton of charisma, and clockwork precision in an environment where everything is ready to go wrong. Though we’ve been trained to understand that the perfect crime is as rare as the treasures that movie thieves endeavor to steal, few things top the satisfaction of watching it all come together and fall apart. The best heist movies draw us in time and time again to the illusion of it all.  And while we’re here to celebrate the best heist movies, please note that identifying a heist movie can…

This article contains full spoilers for Havoc. For all the blood and guts and general nastiness it contains, Havoc is toughest to watch in its first three minutes. That’s when we watch as Detective Walker sits pensively and thinks about what he’s done. Under a monologue about tough choices made for one’s family intercuts shots of Walker gearing up for duty, pulling out his badge and service revolver, and shots of Walker stealing cash from a drug bust and standing over a bloody victim. Right away, Havoc establishes itself as yet another movie about a morally conflicted cop, a tough…

In half of his scenes in The Accountant 2, Jon Bernthal‘s character Braxton eats something sweet. Sometimes he’s finishing a quart of ice cream. Sometimes he’s sucking on a lolly. But he’s always eating. And yet, during an extended comic scene in which Braxton wears nothing but black undies and black socks, there’s not a single inch of body fat to be seen. Anyone who wants to enjoy The Accountant 2 must be willing to overlook these glaring departures from reality, because the movie outdoes its 2016 predecessor with its absurd portrayal of autism, handling the condition with as much…