The second act of the 2024 remake of Road House climaxes with a nasty knockdown fight between UFC fighter turned bouncer Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Knox (UFC fighter turned actor Conor McGregor). Squishy sounds of smacked meat mix with a thumping rock song, like a second rhythm track every time the two ruffians punch each other. Early in the fight, the camera switches to first-person view as Knox batters his opponent before swinging around as Dalton takes his turn. It’s all bathed in yellow light, with the sickly glow cut only by neon beer signs hanging on the walls. In…

Alien is returning to the big screen, this time sans Ridley Scott in the director’s chair or Michael Fassbender’s android with a God complex. Shepherding the franchise forward into a new era is Fede Alvarez, the director behind the 2013 remake of Evil Dead and the 2016 slasher Don’t Breathe. As revealed in the first trailer for the film, Alien: Romulus looks like a return to the roots of the series: a space station and its crew, including star Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla), run afoul of a swarm of facehuggers and all hell breaks loose. The situation is very reminiscent of…

Things were going badly on Saturday Night Live‘s 1980-1981 season, even before producer Jean Doumanian realized than the January 10, 1981 episode was headed towards disaster. The previous season had seen the departure of Lorne Michaels and the entire cast, including founders Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, and Laraine Newman, as well as Bill Murray and Harry Shearer. Doumanian had tried to pitch her incoming group of comedians as the next generation for the hit series, but the performers quickly gained reputations as also-rans. Charlie Rocket was a less funny Chevy Chase, Gail Matthius an off-brand Jane Curtin, and…

Ghostbusters movies stretch credulity, but this is ridiculous. At the start of Ghostbusters II, Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) perform for bored kids at a birthday party. It’s only been five years since they blew up the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in downtown New York and destroyed Gozer’s portal atop a city high rise. And yet, no one remembers the work the boys did to save the city. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the Ghostbusters are completely unknown to Gen Z, even to the grandchildren of Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), even to a kid so into podcasts that he…

“How can a short, blond actor with the rough face of a professional boxer and a penchant for playing villains, killers, cranks, and cads pull off the role of a tall, dark, handsome, and suave secret agent?” So asks the front page of the website Daniel Craig is Not Bond, one of many fan-sites launched in the wake of the actor getting cast as James Bond for Casino Royale back in 2005. Nearly two decades later, the question seems laughable, as Craig elevated the franchise into something rich and emotionally dense, touching on qualities the series rarely attempted. The 20/20…

Every year, SXSW seems to grow in size and breadth. The opportunities to glimpse the future and connect with its architects in an intersection of disciplines—music, technology, television, and cinema included—can be overwhelming. And in 2024 alone, there were more than 115 films and 80 short features at the fest. It is impossible to see everything, yet our team of critics and journalists made a concerted effort to give it the old college try. Of the more than 40 projects we did glean between us, here were the ones that stood out most and we think should probably be on…

Inspector Dave Toschi needs a night off. After years of chasing the so-called Zodiac Killer, Toschi thought he had found his man, only for his captain to shoot him down, citing insufficient evidence to make an arrest. At the movie theater later on, the picture Toschi watches with his wife doesn’t make him feel any better. It’s Dirty Harry, the 1971 movie in which Clint Eastwood‘s Inspector Harry Callahan does battle with a killer called Scorpio. Frustrated by what he’s seeing, Toschi heads to the lobby for a smoke. As viewers shuffle out after him, one remarks, “Dave, that Harry…

After a long wait, the U.S.S. Enterprise has received a response from the planet Eminiar VII. They had hoped to contact the planet and establish diplomatic relations with the inhabitants in the star cluster. But the message they receive in return is simple: stay away. When Kirk gets that reply, he intends to respects their wishes. But no sooner does he order the Enterprise to change course than a man arrives on the bridge and overrides Kirk. This moment must have shocked the first viewers of “A Taste of Armageddon” from the first season of The Original Series of Star…

This article appears in the SXSW 2024 issue of Den of Geek magazine. Check out all of our SXSW coverage here. There are meet cutes, and there are meet cutes. And then there is the ballad of Solène Marchand and Hayes Campbell: the fortysomething single mother chaperoning her daughter at this year’s Coachella and the boy band superstar who’s headlining the show. Such are the twists and quirks of the heart, as well as The Idea of You, a beloved romance novel by Robinne Lee turned one of the buzziest new comedies at this year’s fest. Arriving with no less than Anne Hathaway…

There is something innate in the American character which inspires and deludes us of our place in history, past and present. Call it a devotion to American exceptionalism, cynicism, or opportunism, but even Senator Josh Hawley—the Missouri politician who spent months fermenting discontent and conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, and who on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021 raised his fist in solidarity with a crowd of insurrectionists—seemed bewildered when the mob he played to actually stormed the barricades. There is footage of him fleeing for his life while Capitol Police officers like Brian Sicknick died defending the…

As Christopher Nolan basks in the afterglow of Oppenheimer’s dominant performance at the 96th annual Academy Awards – including a best picture win for the film and a long-overdue best director nod for Nolan himself – speculation is growing about what the British filmmaker will tackle next for his 13th feature. Nolan is typically reticent to speak about future projects; with the director working on a more or less three-year cycle for his last several films, he might not even officially say anything about his new movie until later in 2024 or early in 2025. But according to rumors that…

Shaun and his best mate Ed are in trouble. They’ve discovered two zombies in their garden, and the lumbering flesh-eaters show no signs of stopping. However, Shaun and Ed have found one way of slowing the approach: throwing records. And so, as the two zombies grow closer, Ed and Shaun rustle through the latter’s collection. “Sign o’ the Times … Purple Rain,” Ed suggests as projectiles, only to have Shaun tell him no. That is until Ed reaches a low point in Prince’s discography, the Batman soundtrack. “Throw it,” Shaun commands, striking a blow against the living dead. The above…

In the new horror movie Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney plays a devout nun named Cecilia, who, after learning that she is somehow with child, is pursued by both the manipulative clergy inside her convent in Italy and servants of darkness. But before she became the young blonde prey in this “nunsploitation” flick, Sweeney was the one doing the chasing. Sweeney first heard of Immaculate many years ago, when she was just 16 years old. “I auditioned for it, was obsessed with it, and didn’t get it,” she tells Den of Geek while promoting the film at SXSW 2024. “And then I…

Everything about the first trailer for the reboot of The Crow looks familiar. Sure, some of that is to be expected, as the 2024 movie retells the story from the 1994 cut classic. And yes, The Crow 2024 does make some obvious choices, casting Bill Skarsgård as a weird tall skinny guy and Danny Huston as a bad guy. But besides the paint-by-numbers approach that director Rupert Sanders seems to be taking with the property, the really familiar part is The Crow‘s approach to comic book adaptations. Those young enough to have listened to the soundtrack to The Crow back…

“I wanted to experiment: can I develop a family which was not unlike my own upbringing?” says Nicolas Cage, while talking to Den of Geek about his new movie Arcadian, which premiered at SXSW 2024. “My dad did most of the heavy lifting, he did the raising because my mom sadly couldn’t be around. So it was just my father, and in this case, myself and my older brother. I saw that family dynamic in the [Elia] Kazan picture, East of Eden.” From that description, you might imagine Arcadian to be an austere drama, something that takes place in a…

Ryan Gosling is probably one of the best physical comedians of his generation. Writing these words a handful of days after the Oscars where, even though he didn’t take home a prize, Gosling won the night by belting “I’m Just Ken” in Margot Robbie’s ear, is to state the obvious. But it wasn’t that long ago when the actor was mostly renowned for playing remote and aloof characters. Think First Man’s Neil Armstrong, Blade Runner 2049’s K, and Drive’s, um, Driver. It’s thus satisfying to see audiences finally come around to recognizing the star’s stealthily hilarious comic timing. (Alas, the…

Doctor Octopus! Green Goblin! Mysterio! Spider-Man has a baddie line-up to rival that of any other superhero. Even better, the best of the worst regularly get together to form a supervillain team, the Sinister Six. Why the very idea is enough to send any superhero fan’s heart aflutter. And make a Sony executive’s bank account howl in hunger. That’s undoubtedly why Sony has tried so hard to make a Sinister Six movie happen, first in The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel, and then in its Spidey-less Spider-Verse with Venom, Morbius, and Madame Web. But before both of these disastrous failures,…

It is not original to observe that despite being about salvation, much of traditional Roman Catholicism seems rooted in pain and agony. Like many children before me, I recall vividly the first shudder that accompanied seeing an idol of Christ graphically bleeding on the cross; and when fundamentalist filmmaker Mel Gibson made his movie about Jesus, it was entirely fixated on the passion (read: torture) this messiah endured. The actual resurrection and salvation, meanwhile, was not even deigned a footnote. Folks should believe what they want to believe—and there are many beliefs, indeed, in a religion with 1.4 billion souls…

The highly-anticipated sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman has been pushed back from its original Oct. 3, 2025 release date on the Warner Bros. slate. The movie will now release Oct. 2, 2026. That means there will now be an over four-year gap between the first film, which saw Robert Pattinson don the cape and cowl, and Part II. This will of course come as disappointing news for DC fans who have been awaiting the second installment in what’s meant to be a whole trilogy of Batman movies from Reeves and Pattinson. But it isn’t all bad news for Batfans,…

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour has taken the world by storm for the past year, and doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. For fans who haven’t been able to score tickets to the live shows, or simply for those who wish to relive the experience at their leisure, the show has also received theatrical release, for purchase digitally and soon will be available to stream on Disney+. But each version of The Eras Tour concert movie has its differences, with the Disney+ edition touting itself as being “the concert film in its entirety for the first time,” according to…