By the time Sam and Frodo finished their 14th and final ending in 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the movie business had changed forever. Fantasy films went from the domain of bookish nerds who debated the merits of Tom Bombadil’s dancing to something with mass appeal. The same was true of Harry Potter, back when J.K. Rowling was credited with saving the literacy of Western youth and not persecuting trans folks, and even Shrek, with its winking approach to fairy tales. The success of these franchises taught Hollywood that fantasy was a profitable genre…

A frustrated performer. Nice, if pushy, elderly neighbors. A stately old building filled with amazing apartments. Of course these images would show up in Apartment 7A, the upcoming Rosemary’s Baby prequel on Paramount+. But what really stands out are the specific echoes and reverberations of the 1968 Rosemary’s Baby‘s very aesthetic in the Apartment 7A trailer. Dianne Wiest does a brassy impression of Ruth Gordon, stepping into the late actor’s Oscar-winning role as Minnie Castevet. Conversely, where Mia Farrow played the titular Rosemary as as a vulnerable waif, and Angela Dorian played dancer-turned-drug addict Terry Gionoffrio as a woman at…

It may not yet feel like it in your neck of the woods, but fall really is just around the corner. In not too much time at all, the air will be getting crisp, the days short, and your drinks pumpkin-spiced. And as we transition into that autumnal season, one question remains on movie lovers’ minds: will our upbeat feeling toward cinema change too? The summer was certainly a rollercoaster. A bleak May where several quality Hollywood tentpoles flopped caused much soul-searching in the industry about what would come next. Yet what did come turned out to be, surprisingly, pretty…

This article contains spoilers for both versions of The Crow. The Crow (1994) is one of those seminal touchstones that help define a generation. Gothic, mournful, and haunted by the nigh literal ghost of Brandon Lee, every frame of the film can feel like it’s projected from another world. So it has always been a bit of a mystery why anyone would dare remake the cult classic, including in the mind of the original’s director, Alex Proyas. Yet since about 2008, the redo has experienced starts and stops, and seen interesting directors and castings come and go, from Norman Reedus…

Goofy, caricature-led, stoner comedies and rom-com reworkings of classic literature… We know what to expect from movies set in schools. There’ll be a prom, a herd of cheerleaders, scenes set in cafeterias, detention and in the gymnasium, as well as at least one and possibly several song-and-dance sequences. These movies aren’t that. They’re not Grease or High School Musical or The Breakfast Club or even Clueless, Carrie, Easy A, Mean Girls, Dead Poets Society, or School of Rock. They’re not 10 Things I Hate About You or the Harry Potter franchise. Solid as all those films are, they’re the popular…

“You know my name,” sings Chris Cornell at the start of 2006’s Casino Royale. The song, of course, is a cheeky reference to the way that Casino Royale reboots the Bond franchise with Daniel Craig as the lead. However, it might also refer to the man behind the camera for Craig’s debut. After all, Casino Royale director Martin Campbell also helmed 1995’s GoldenEye, which itself kicked off a new era and post-Cold War status quo for Pierce Brosnan. Thanks to Campbell’s tight action direction, GoldenEye and Casino Royale rank not only at the top of Brosnan and Craig’s tenure, but…

When Ebon Moss-Bachrach appeared on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show about six months ago, The Bear and future Ben Grimm actor was coy about how the Fantastic Four’s beloved Ol’ Blue Eyes would be realized on the screen next year. Back then, the man who would be Marvel Studios’ The Thing said, “I don’t think it’s a suit. Michael Chiklis wore a suit. Apparently the suit was really uncomfortable, we’re past that, I think. It’s a little cosplay and amateur now with technology. It’s mostly performance capture.” Whether Moss-Bachrach was telling the truth and plans changed, or he’s just…

Who played the original monster-created-by-science in the first movie adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein?Charles Stanton OgleBela LugosiBoris KarloffChristian BaleWhich movie was originally known as Star Beast?Alien (1979)The Thing (1981)Predator (1987)Species (1995)In Godzilla (1954) what is the name of the first ship destroyed by Godzilla?Elko MaruKobayashi MaruHakudo MaruNippon MaruWhat kind of sharks do they genetically modify in Deep Blue Sea (1999)?MakosGreat WhitesTiger SharksHammerheadsIn The Thing (1982), what do the characters apply to blood samples to tell if they are from a human?Extreme HeatWaterLitmus PaperAcidScott Beck and Adam Woods, the writing duo behind killer dinosaur movie 65 (2023), also co-wrote which other…

In a franchise with as long a history as Sonic the Hedgehog it’s no surprise nostalgia plays a huge part in what certain segments of the fanbase want to see in new entries. Some long for more 2D Sonic in the style of his earliest games. Others cling to the hope that characters from the various ‘90s animated series will turn up again one of these days.The loudest and most persistent request though hails from fans of the Sonic Adventure games. Originally debuting on the Sega Dreamcast in 1998, with a sequel following in 2001, these two games are the…

It was the scene I could never watch again while growing up. Yet I did, every time, through cracked fingers and squinted eyes. Like countless children of the ‘90s and ‘80s, it was agonizing to watch Artax, that gallant white horse, sink into literal darkness. But I also never fully looked away. Like Artax, we were drawn toward staring at the abyss and feeling it looking back. The gaze would intensify, too, as the beautiful steed descended further into the murk. “Everyone knew that whoever let the sadness overtake him would sink into the swamp,” the narrator Bastian (Barret Oliver)…

This post contains spoilers for X-Men ’97 and Deadpool & Wolverine. “The name is Gambit,” the Ragin’ Cajun tells an massive Sentinel in X-Men ’97. “Remember it.” With that declaration, Gambit won over even the most skeptical fans of the revived animated series, sacrificing himself to take out a major threat and doing it with style. At first, it seemed like Deadpool & Wolverine gave Gambit a similar fate, as he and his fellow multiversal escapees in the Void fell during their assault on Cassandra Nova’s stronghold. But Ryan Reynolds just shared a deleted scene from the movie, which gives…

“There’s no crying in baseball!” “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” “Forget, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” Film isn’t really a writer’s medium, but that doesn’t mean that writing doesn’t matter. The perfect line, delivered by the right actor, can elevate even a bad shot into something powerful. That said, the opposite isn’t always true. The best movies can survive some clunky writing, if the acting and cinematography are good enough. Still, some of these clunkers deserve a bit more attention if only to praise the rest of the film for overcoming a real stinker. “It was an…

Ultron’s coming back, just like he always does. Any good Marvel Zombie knows that the Avengers can never defeat Ultron for good. He always makes a comeback, upgrading himself to fight his “father” Hank Pym in a different way each time. So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Ultron’s reportedly slated to return for Vision, an upcoming Disney+ series from Picard season three showrunner Terry Matalas. To be sure, some fans didn’t love James Spader’s snarky take on the domineering robot in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. But after nearly a decade since his big-screen, it’s time…

Fictional horror movies scare us until we leave the theater. True crime dramas follow us home because they happened once to someone—or so they say. Heists, abuses of power, murders, and multiple murders. Hollywood loves crime and all the ill-gotten bootie it brings. From 1907’s The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Case to the upcoming Roofman, films inspired by true crime capture a special kind of imagination. They are cautionary tales with real-life consequences, and dramas too sordid for mixed company. In the Golden Age, stories of gangland thugs came with promises of being “ripped from…

Contains spoilers for Blink Twice If you were armed with the knowledge that Zoë Kravitz confident directorial debut was originally going to be called ‘Pussy Island’ then you might have had a sense of where this paradise-turned-nightmare tale was going to go. But could you have predicted that ending? This is the story of best friends Frida (Naomi Ackie) and Jess (Ali Shawkat) who are strapped for cash, working as silver service waitresses for a horrible boss and unsure where their lives will lead them.  Then there’s Slater King (Channing Tatum) the handsome billionaire who, after he had committed some…

In the quiet before the storm in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, a man who would be king meets a daughter who can never wear such a crown. The man is Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), son of Arathorn, and the lady is Éowyn (Miranda Otto), niece of the Rohan’s aged and infuriated monarch. They both come from great lineage, with Aragorn even praising Éowyn as being “a daughter of kings” and a shieldmaiden of Rohan. But as the hour grows late, and a foul threat blows from the south, Éowyn’s pride knows no joy. “Women of this country…

The whispers and, if you’ll pardon the pun, sniping around Marvel Studios’ long-gestating Blade reboot have reached a level of farce with MCU fans. As someone who was actually in Hall H when two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali walked on stage to don a hat emblazoned with the famous vampire hunter’s name, I can attest excitement for the project was electric in 2019. However, after more than five years of false starts, emerging and exiting director hires, and plenty of rewrites, the movie still seems no closer to fruition. It was in fact only a few months ago that THR reported…

Fifty years after his debut novel Carrie, Stephen King remains a major name in horror. So when writer/director Gary Dauberman signed on to adapt King’s second novel Salem’s Lot, he made sure to stay faithful to the source. And that fidelity. included keeping the movie in the same decade as the 1975 book. Turns out, that wasn’t much of a challenge. “Most of my stuff is set in the ’70s,” Dauberman told Vanity Fair. “I love the music. I do love the costumes. I just love the vibe of it.” Salem’s Lot tells the story of writer Ben Mears (Lewis…

Gen X are a funny lot. Generally acknowledged to be made up of folks born between 1965 and 1980. This means Gen Xers were teenagers between the ’80s and the late ’90s. Crucially this also means it’s a generation that grew up without any meaningful internet and no mobile phones, who were used to relying on cinema trips to watch trailers, Blockbuster Video for our weekend viewing and highlighting the TV guide at Christmas. Streaming services, of course, did not exist so movies we watched at the cinema, recorded off the telly and even potentially owned on VHS (if you…

The Immortan, the man who every War Pup and wretch in the Citadel was raised to worship, is dead. Less a warlord than a god among insects prior to this moment, Hugh Keays-Byrne’s villain ruled the Citadel with an iron fist. Yet when instead of Joe’s hulking figure, it is the silhouettes of Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) and the Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) who emerge from his car, screams of delight rush through the throngs of unwashed masses. The king is dead. Long live the queen. Maybe. It would seem Furiosa will at least have an opportunity to rule as…