… But why is he a monkey? It’s the inevitable question asked by any person who has seen the trailer, or for that matter a TikTok reel, of Better Man, the new left-handed biopic about British pop star Robbie Williams. And even as one begins watching this sardonic portrait of the ‘90s pop music scene in the UK, it’s still not immediately clear why the creative choice was made. Director Michael Gracey has told the press it’s simply due to recognizing how Williams sees himself: a dancing monkey bounding around the stage for our entertainment. Yet there is more at…

Yes, yes, it’s better to give than to receive, but in these few, special cases, receiving wins out. That’s because the below are a different class of givers – they’re fictional for a start, some of them have magical powers, and at least one of them is a bear.  These are the movie or TV characters we hope would pick our names out of the hat in the annual Secret Santa draw because we imagine that their choice of gift would suit us down to the ground. Maybe they’re extra thoughtful, or extra loaded, or extra in tune with our…

The Warriors is incredibly cinematic material. After all, the 1965 novel by Sol Yurick about a New York City street gang attempting to survive the night while traveling from the Bronx to Coney Island was turned into a great movie in 1979; a seedy cult classic directed by Walter Hill and which made phrases like, “Warriors, come out and play-yay,” into all-time bangers to a generation of moviegoers. Lin-Manuel Miranda would know, he grew up loving that line and the movie as a child. So much so he adapted the material alongside playwright and musician Eisa Davis into the first (possibly)…

Everybody loves Jason Nesmith. At least, that’s what Jason Nesmith thinks. As the star of the long canceled sci-fi show, Galaxy Quest, Jason regularly enters to cheers from crowds of admirers, even if they’re really cheering for his character, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart of the NSEA Protector. But behind the closed door of a men’s room stall, Nesmith learns the truth. In a convention hall bathroom, Jason overhears two guys mock their fellow attendees, the Galaxy Quest cast, and especially Nesmith. Actor Tim Allen lets the sadness mix with the dawning on his face, the first of many realizations that…

I’ll admit it, I would probably watch an entire TV series that was just about James Bond’s housekeeper. Did you not know he has one? Oh, well, let me tell you about May, this funny lady who looks after Bond’s apartment in the original novels. She’s Scottish. She’s old. She knows how to cook an egg. Aren’t you riveted? Don’t you want an entire show just about May? Here’s the thing, as a Bond nerd I do want a show about May, Miss Moneypenny, or M’s random friends. I also love Kim Sherwood’s Double-O books, all about agents in the…

Want more exclusive breakdowns as we publish them? Be the first to receive them directly in your inbox by signing up for our FREE newsletter. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the emotionally packed first trailer for James Gunn‘s highly anticipated Superman film, which hits theaters on July 11, 2025. The wordless teaser quickly establishes the grounded yet fantastical world that Gunn has been promising.  The first teaser trailer is filled with exciting moments, rad character reveals, and surprisingly it begins with an injured Superman being thrown into the snowy wastelands that hide the Fortress of…

This article contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Ow! The edge! Sonic the Hedgehog 3 brings another fan-favorite character to the big screen series, a character that may be baffling to those not steeped in Sonic love. In addition to dealing with two Robotniks, regular nemesis Ivo and now grandfather Gerald (both played by Jim Carrey), Sonic must match wits with Shadow the Hedgehog (voiced by Keanu Reeves). Shadow might look like Sonic, but he has a very different attitude. Sullen and harsh, Shadow focuses only on his mission of revenge. Over the course of the movie, we get…

Only a single tear rolls down his cheek. In perhaps the most emotionally harrowing and poignant moment of Edward Zwick’s Glory (at least this side of Fort Wagner), it is this lonely drop of water descending Denzel Washington’s face that breaks viewers. It is even easy to mistake the tear as what won Washington his first of two Oscars (so far). Hence why some have dubbed the moment his “signature move,” a claim Washington has forcefully and rightly dismissed. And yet, it isn’t the tear that makes the scene of Private Silas Trip’s flogging so heartbreaking; it’s everything else Washington…

This article contains spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Sonic saves the day. Even if you keep drowning in Chemical Zone and throwing your old Sega Genesis controller across the room, you know that every Sonic the Hedgehog story ends with the Blue Blur triumphant and Robotnik defeated. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is no different. By the end of his third big screen outing, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) befriends new antagonist Shadow the Hedgehog (Keanu Reeves) and stops Gerald Robotnik and his grandson Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik (both played by Jim Carrey, hammy as ever) from blowing up the world. Sonic even…

Jack Huston knew if he ever directed a movie, it would not simply be something he wanted to make. It would be something he needed to pursue. An idea which loomed so large and for so long in his mind’s eye that only he could bring it to life. And, perhaps fittingly, it might have begun with an image that never left him in all the years and days which passed since he played the soulful hitman Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire. It began on a New Jersey set and with a co-star pounding away on a sack filled with…

Lin-Manuel Miranda has heard the criticism before. As some cynics on the internet have repeated, the songwriter and actor who gave the world In the Heights and Hamilton supposedly cannot write a villain song. It’s an odd take since he previously submitted the delightfully decadent “Shiny” in Moana—and we’d argue Aaron Burr’s jazzy barnburner, “The Room Where It Happens,” isn’t exactly an epiphany for good deeds—yet the critique persists. And like a certain North Carolina basketball player, Miranda chose to take that personally. And in Mufasa: The Lion King, the Tony winner might just have his slam dunk of a baddie…

There are two kinds of Lord of the Rings fans. Those who have seen the Rankin and Bass version of The Return of the King, and everybody else. It’s okay. I get it. Peter Jackson delivered a near-perfect version of Return of the King in 2003, so, why would you watch the 1980 animated version, complete with singing orcs who are complaining about getting whipped all the time? Yes, most serious Tolkien-heads have seen the classic 1977 Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit, but it’s in the beautiful strangeness of the 1980 Return of the King that the best and weirdest…

It’s the moment that DC fans all over the world have been waiting for: the first trailer for James Gunn‘s Superman is here and we were lucky enough to get a sneak peek at it earlier this week on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles, California. As part of the first group to ever see the trailer we also got to take part in an extensive Q&A with writer/director Gunn and stars David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult. The in depth chat revealed many interesting tidbits about the highly anticipated film, from flying dogs to the immense size…

“Ah, there it is,” the adult Ralphie intones in the opening scene of the holiday staple A Christmas Story. “My old house. How could I ever forget it?” Narrator Jean Shepherd, the author whose stories inspired the film, imbues the lines with innocent warmth. Matched with the sumptuous version of “Deck the Halls” that opens the movie, this beginning sets the stage for a nostalgic look at an innocent time in a WASP American boy’s life. So sweet, so welcoming is the music and narration that we almost fail to realize what, exactly, we’re looking at. Accompanying the words and…

Mythical creatures. Movie stars. And the studio that recently gave the world The Brutalist and Sing Sing. We probably were always going to be at least a little intrigued by Death of a Unicorn, the upcoming dark comedy starring Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd that’s oh, so A24 that it even intentionally misspelled “unicorn” by way of old-timey early modern English when it was first announced. (Its original title was Death of a Unicorne, which might be fitting when one knows the writer-director Alex Scharfman previously worked on Robert Eggers’ The Witch.) Still, when this morning’s gloriously batshit trailer came…

Despite the singular event suggested by its title, Day of the Fight features a lower stakes match earlier in the film, hours before prizefighter “Irish” Mike Flannigan (Michael Pitt) has his title bout. Visiting the gym to check in with his trainer, Mike overhears a young fighter mocking the sparring partner he just trounced. Mike, who has spent the past several years in prison for reasons not immediately clear, is a man who’s visibly lived with shame, guilt, and the loss of his once illustrious acclaim. So the cocky contender running his mouth doesn’t object when Mike climbs into the…

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is an awesome movie. No, it’s not as whiz-bang as its immediate successor Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, nor as spectacular as the 2009 reboot film Star Trek. But what word can better describe a movie that spends so much time on loving shots of all things Trek—the crew, the starbases, and especially the USS Enterprise. The movie strives to evoke a sense of awe. But if there’s one aspect of The Motion Picture that doesn’t get enough recognition, it’s the redesigned Starfleet uniforms. The Motion Picture introduces a full new set of…

I am old enough to remember when Wicked opened on Broadway. I was still in high school and what felt like a million miles away from New York City. Still, even from the relatively provincial wilds of North Carolina, I was aware something big had landed on the Great White Way; an event so extraordinary to my generation that virtually overnight every theater kid was singing “Defying Gravity” and “Popular” in the halls of Green Hope High, whether their classmates wanted to hear it or not. While there had been other hit musicals in my pint-sized life up to that…

Five and a half minutes into Nickel Boys, young Elwood stops to watch Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “How Long, Not Long” speech. It is broadcast on a stack of televisions in a storefront window. As the TVs click on and the picture comes into focus, Elwood’s grandmother, her friends, and other passersby stop and watch the face on the screen, to listen to his faithful claims that the injustice America inflicts upon its Black citizens will soon come to an end. We see this crowd gather not directly, but in the reflection of the storefront window where the…

If you grew up with 8-bit consoles like the Nintendo Entertainment System or home computer of the time, I’d wager you’ll probably remember the painful attempts gaming companies such as serial movie tie-in murderer, LJN, made to bring the classic temporal sci-fi flick Back to the Future to our screens. These games were some of the worst, defecated out onto the market, and bore little to no relation to the events that took place on the silver screen. Often, they were made up of levels that had the smallest, most tenuous link you can imagine to the source material, and they were…