There’s no shortage of rumors circulating about Natalie Portman’s potential return to Star Wars. Now that Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor have returned as their Prequel era characters Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, there seems to be an even greater desire from fans to see Portman to reprise her role as Padmé Amidala in a future Star Wars project. While most of the current rumors revolve around her making an appearance in Ahsoka season 2 as Christensen did in the first season, a new rumor suggests Portman was actually originally slated to appear in another Disney+ series in 2022.…

The nominations are in, the predictions have begun, and a whole lot of folks are probably just looking for where they can see the 10 films nominated for Best Picture (we got you covered on that as well). Still, all the prognostication, horse race reporting, and second-guessing over the snubs and surprises has a bad habit of obscuring why folks care about these things in the first place. The movies. If you’ve ever cared about the Academy Awards, or simply felt the urge to express your lack of care for their selections, it is because deep down we all share…

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31. A quick scan of the internet finds that Den of Geek was hardly the only outlet to set phasers to kill on Star Trek: Section 31. Fans and critics alike have thoroughly rejected the movie, dismissing it as unfunny, unexciting, and largely derivative. It even ranks at the very bottom of our updated Star Trek movie ranking and it’s deserved. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of people ion the internet saying that Section 31 isn’t “real Trek” or, more directly, that the franchise needs to course correct by going back to the…

You’d think there wouldn’t be all that many surprises in a ranking of the various Star Trek movies. Official fan doctrine tends to elevate a select handful of them to the very top (and rightfully so, because when this franchise is great, it’s really great) while dismissing, fairly or unfairly, others. But the reality is, there’s such a wide array of tones across Star Trek films that one fan’s skippable entry is another fan’s favorite (well…most of the time). We chose a panel of our most decorated Starfleet experts to vote on the highs and lows of the Star Trek…

It might seem strange to say that Conclave, a movie nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, is becoming something of a Best Picture long shot… but conventional wisdom suggests Conclave is now something of a Best Picture long shot. While the Vatican thriller received a host of nominations, including a Best Adapted Screenplay nod for Peter Straughan and Best Film Editing for Nick Emerson, the film’s absence was conspicuously noted in the Best Director race where James Mangold got in for A Complete Unknown over Edward Berger. It was also snubbed in Best Cinematography where, to…

This Star Trek article contains spoilers for Section 31. After an extremely long wait, which has seen it truncated from a spin-off show into a TV movie while Michelle Yeoh has gone and become an Oscar winner, Star Trek: Section 31 is finally here. We have reviewed it. We got the man who wrote a defense of “Sub Rosa” to review it. This article will not add anything to his assessment of its quality (or absolute lack thereof). But whatever your opinion of Section 31’s execution, from the outset the film faced some pretty big hurdles in terms of its…

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Section 31. At the climax of Star Trek: Section 31, Philippa Georgiou has succeeded. She and her newfound teammates in the black ops division Section 31 have returned a massive bomb to the Mirror Universe where it originated, saving the Prime Universe. Never the type to let anything keep them from cackling loudly at a bar, the team reconvenes in a bar in the movie’s final scene, where they get information about their next mission. What is that mission, you ask? Let’s take a look at all of the teases in the ending…

The new movie Star Trek: Section 31 takes its heroes deep outside of Federation space. But in the Star Trek universe, you can’t go anywhere without hearing the word, “KHAN!” No one in Section 31 actually names Khan Noonien Singh, but the 20th century warlord’s presence hangs over one of the main characters. The black ops team is led by Alok (Omari Hardwick), a no-nonsense tough guy tasked with holding together the rag-tag band. We don’t know how Alok holds his own against the outrageous threats they face, at least not until late in the film, when he reveals his…

This article contains Emilia Pérez spoilers. The first time I saw Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, I knew nothing going in other than who was in the cast and that it was a musical set in Mexico. Even the revelation that Karla Sofía Gascón would be introduced as a Mexican drug cartel leader who would simultaneously bribe and threaten Zoe Saldaña into helping her gender transition was a surprise. I imagine many such folks who discovered the film on the festival circuit last summer or in early fall—mine was at the New York Film Festival—had similar reactions to a movie which…

From his very first movie The Witch, Robert Eggers taught us a simple but important equation: Robert Eggers + Monster + Archaic Spelling Conventions = Good Movie. So while we’ve loved The Lighthouse, The Northman, and Nosferatu, we’re even more excited about his announced next project: Werwulf. More than just a stylistic flourish, the title of Eggers’ latest, rooted in the Old English spelling of “werewolf,” indicates the approach he’ll likely take. As when he borrowed from Puritan sermons, court documents, and journals for The Witch, and the ur-Hamlet poem with Norse roots in The Northman, Eggers will probably look…

Two years after SXSW updated the name of its film festival to the “SXSW Film & TV Festival,” the winds of change are on full display in Austin. Ever a forward-looking fest—with SXSW long being the omnibus intersection of where film, music, tech, gaming, and more meet—this fest seems to perpetually keep one eye on the future. Which might explain why 2025 will see the film/TV side’s big opening project be not a motion picture, but the premiere of an eagerly anticipated new television series on Apple TV+. The Studio, an ambitious comedy show from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg,…

The Oscar nominations are at last here. After painful and necessary delays due to the wildfires in California, we now know who the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have deemed to be the best films of 2025. All 10 of them. It’s still a bit surreal after months of speculation and prognostication that the envelope is in for the 10 films nominated for Oscar’s shiniest prize. There have been snubs and surprises along the way, but below we have gathered all chosen few for your perusal. If you need a chance to catch up on some of them,…

Each and every year’s Oscars lineup brings its fair share of snubs and surprises, twists and turns. Still, it’s fair to say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2025 was filled with some stunners, including Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here shocking many prognosticators when it ended up in both the Best Picture and Best Actress races. Indeed, the Brazilian film that is also nominated for Best International Feature saw Fernada Torres get into the Best Actress category (likely at the expense of Nicole Kidman or Angelina Jolie) while the film ended up on the shortlist for the…

Anyone worried that Star Trek: Section 31 would completely undermine the central ethos of Star Trek as a franchise has those fears confirmed within the first 10 minutes of the movie. Section 31 opens in the Mirror Universe, where we see a teenaged Phillipa Georgiou (portrayed here by Miku Martineau) give an arch, sub-Game of Thrones monologue before committing an atrocity, the final step in securing her role as Terran Emperor. The scenes of course lack any of the hope and optimism that define Trek, the belief in fundamental good of collaboration and understanding that the Mirror Universe (and Section…

It’s fair to say that Netflix had pretty high expectations for itself in the fourth and final financial quarter of 2024. Bolstered by the December 26 premiere of Squid Game season 2, the livestream double whammy of two NFL Christmas Day games and the Jake Paul/Mike Tyson fight, and the impending arrival of WWE Raw in January 2025, the streamer was expected to add around 9 million new paid subscribers during the observed October-December timeframe. Still, even that ambitious estimate fell well short of the reality of Netflix’s success to close out the year. In reporting its 2024 Q4 earnings…

“Nothing is of its own explanation,” Adrien Brody’s Lázló Tóth muses in The Brutalist when asked why he became an architect. It’s a cryptic comment, but Tóth gives a slightly fuller context when he adds, “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of [my buildings] remain there, still in the city… my buildings were devised to endure such erosion.” It is safe to say director and co-writer Brady Corbet feels some affinity with Tóth given the monumental nature of The Brutalist,…

“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” So finished the party to end all parties in “The Masque of the Red Death,” one of Edgar Allan Poe’s…

Edward Lemuel is a kind, timid man. Or so it seems. For the first act of the 2024 black comedy, A Different Man, Edward tries his best to avoid attention. He sheepishly slides past the couch blocking his apartment door as new neighbor, the aspiring playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moves in. He moves through the city with his body bent forward and his arms crossed in front of him, as if shielding himself from some unseen attack. Even when he tries out for various acting gigs, he falls back and gets embarrassed, a quality that only earns him parts in…

While 2025 might be a new year, it will have plenty of familiar names. Reboots and remakes will fill the screen, with filmmakers taking a different look at properties and stories told before. That might sound dire. But before you start complaining about Hollywood’s lack of ideas, just take a look at this list. Sure, there are a few obvious plays for IP dollars, but for the most part, the 2025 reboot and remake slate is full of exciting updates to Superman and the Fantastic Four, as well as compelling updates to classic Universal monsters. The names might be familiar,…

When we first saw Cameron Diaz’s film debut in The Mask, audiences had a response not unlike that of Jim Carrey’s green-skinned protagonist. Okay, maybe we weren’t quite so aroused, but our eyes did practically pop out of our sockets. And with good reason. After all, Diaz is a tall, striking blonde who looked every bit like the model turned actress she was. Given her high profile beginning, it might sound weird to describe any Cameron Diaz performance as overlooked. Not only does Diaz fit well within traditional leading lady roles, but she has a knack for comic timing and…