Even if you don’t know Nosferatu, you know Nosferatu. Part of that knowledge comes from the promotional trailers that Focus Features has been running for the past several months, building excitement for the film’s Dec. 25 release. The latest one, in fact, focuses on Lily-Rose Depp as the story’s Ellen Hutter, a Mina Harker equivalent if you know your Dracula, and her desire for the titular vampire. As her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) and Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz (Willem Dafoe) look on in confusion, Ellen explains the fear mixed with excitment that draws her to the bloodsucker Count Orlok…

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis had a rough opening weekend. A film that reportedly cost $120 million—most of it self-financed by the filmmaker after he sold a portion of his winery business—the epic is estimated to have grossed a mere $4 million in its first three days. That’s not even enough to crack the top five for the weekend.  Ultimately, Megalopolis opened in sixth place, behind movies like Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Speak No Evil, which are in their fourth and third weekends, respectively, as well as The Wild Robot, which opened at number one—a movie that is also, by the by,…

Can you be nostalgic for a moment while you’re living in it? It’s a question posed earnestly and quietly between two characters in Saturday Night, Jason Reitman’s deeply nostalgic film about a time, a place, and a pop culture moment that was simultaneously fleeting and never-ending. The film is, after all, about the birth of a television landmark; a 50-year-old sketch comedy series which proved so popular that it still plays every Saturday night on NBC, whether via new episodes or reruns. It even continues to see Lorne Michaels as its credited and reportedly hands-on executive producer. Yet Reitman’s Saturday…

In Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, there is nothing of greater importance than an artist. As its various characters opine, debate, and brood about to the point of exhaustion, an artist alone has the ability to shape time: a painter freezes it in a moment; an inspired architect conquers it for eternity; and a musician gives it rhythm. Thus in what is most likely Coppola’s final film, as well as a valedictory for a career which helped define cinema as we know it, the central character has the literal ability to pause, rewind, and change time as he sees fit. Like…

We Millennials will forever occupy an awkward space. Born at the turn of the century, and changing of the tide in technology and culture, the oldest among us can vaguely remember a world without the internet—and certainly a childhood without social media. Many of us grew up during the so-called “end of history” good vibes, as per some of our most oblivious Boomer parents, and then lived to see how history changed again, often in horrifying or difficult ways. Coming of age between two global economic disasters and often ridiculed for clinging to our adolescent mess in that wake, Gen-Yers…

This post contains spoilers aplenty for Megalopolis. Megalopolis has become one of the most anticipated movies of the year, and not really because it’s the (likely) final film in director Francis Ford Coppola’s incredible career. From behind the scenes reports about Coppola’s misbehavior on the set to an audacious, unclear epic of a script he wrote himself, Megalopolis has attracted the intention anyone who appreciates a masterpiece and/or a fiasco. Somehow Megalopolis exceeds those expectations, whatever they are. It is a totally insane film, overstuffed with moments brilliant, misjudged, and absurd. A quasi-sci-fi story following the conflict between brilliant architect…

Will Ferrell will do anything for the sake of comedy. Wear basketball shorts that ride up to his junk in Semi-Pro? Yup. Dress in a corny Christmas attire to craft a Yuletide classic? Of course! He’ll race cars, mingle with the dinosaurs, and figure skate in effeminate garb just to get a few laughs from the audience at home or in the theater. And yet, nothing Ferrell has done in his career so far has forced him to get as authentically vulnerable as he is when he hops in a public swimming pool with his lifelong friend, Harper Steele, in…

Nicholas Meyer is perhaps one of the most influential living American writers. To prove it all you have to do is say two things: He saved Star Trek and he made Sherlock Holmes popular again. With his incisive work as the director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982, and his break-out Holmes novel hit The Seven-Per-Cent in 1974, Meyer made a name for himself as the kind of writer who geeks out with characters and historical situations that interest him, and weaves his deep knowledge of adjacent interests to make something entirely new. “These things sort…

Alex Murphy is back. According to Deadline, director James Wan will produce a new RoboCop TV series for Amazon and MGM, with Ladder 49 creator Peter Ocko as showrunner. Some people might roll their eyes at that idea, and not just because every RoboCop entry since the original movie has been various degrees of disappointing. They roll their eyes because they think Alex Murphy’s story came to a natural close at the end of the 1987 film. They see the final conversation as a fairly happy ending, in which Murphy (Peter Weller) recovers his identity and gets to be a…

James Bond’s loss is John Wick’s gain judging by the first trailer of Ana de Armas in Ballerina. Nearly four years after the Cuban actress stole the show in No Time to Die, de Armas will finally be getting her own spinoff… but not in the series you might have expected. Like Daniel Craig’s 007, Keanu Reeves’ beloved John Wick character appears to have been given a permanent dirt nap after the events of John Wick: Chapter 4. Nonetheless, the series lives on with a new lead played by de Armas. And she still appears to kick plenty of ass…

“You’ll believe a man can fly,” boasted the famous tagline for Superman: The Movie. And to its credit, the film pulled it off by delivering state-of-the-art special effects. But as time goes by and technology improves, it’s increasingly clear that the flying scenes aren’t Superman’s true special effect. Rather, it’s star Christopher Reeve, who gives the greatest performance in any superhero movie. Period. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the oft-shared clip from Superman, in which Reeve’s Clark Kent considers revealing his identity to Lois (an equally great Margot Kidder). In one shot, with absolutely no special effects, we…

In HBO miniseries The Penguin, what is the name of Colin Farrell’s character?Oz CobbOswald Chesterfield CobblepotMr. BonifaceOzzie CosbourneWhich of these is NOT one of the Infinity Stones, as collected by Avengers villain Thanos to bedazzle his Infinity Gauntlet?DreamRealityTimeSoulWhich 2022 comic book movie was labelled by critics “ludicrously pointless”, “a heartbreaking work of staggering idiocy” and “a monstrous union of bottom of the barrel intellectual property and fiscal year planning”?MorbiusThe BatmanBlack AdamThor: Love and ThunderBritish actor Nicholas Hoult played Beast in the X-Men franchise. Which famous comic book villain is he due to play in 2025?Lex LuthorGalactusSamuel Sterns aka The LeaderBob…

Megalopolis looks nuts. But anyone following Hollywood news knows that things were pretty nuts behind the scenes of Megalopolis as well. In May 2024, The Guardian reported on director Francis Ford Coppola‘s purported bad behavior while shooting the reality-bending epic, from basic disorganization to allegedly sexually harassing an extra. Ever since a stream of accusations, lawsuits, and competing narratives have clouded the publicity around the film. But in the same way Megalopolis seems to encompass the entirety of Coppola’s six-decade career, behind the scenes stories, legends, and reported craziness is also part and parcel for the director’s work. Here are…

To young and struggling actors hopeful to be taken seriously in the world of American theater, John Houseman was as much a god as an instructor in the 1970s. Before he was 40, Houseman helped mount productions in the Federal Theatre Project opposite Orson Welles, co-founded the Mercury Theatre, and even contributed to the screenplay of Citizen Kane. He also won an Oscar for The Paper Chase (1973), appeared in Seven Days in May (1964), and wrote and produced plays on Broadway. So when he told Christopher Reeve, “Mr. Reeve, it’s very important you become a serious classical actor,” the…

“Be careful who you assemble,” reads the tagline in the first trailer for Thunderbolts. On one hand, the statement tracks with the ramshackle—dare we say “Suicide Squad-esque”—nature of the trailer. The Thunderbolts trailer shows a group of down and out villains and losers, all with red in their ledger and all willing to kill one another, forced to work together. In fact, the entire start of the trailer consists of a comedy scene involving Black Widow standouts Red Guardian (David Harbour) and White Widow (Florence Pugh) having a less than auspicious reunion. Yet, the most compelling part of the trailer…

It was announced Monday that director Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman and Saltburn) will next direct an adaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. The film is set to start shooting in 2025 with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi playing the novel’s iconic lead characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. No further details regarding the film’s cast, release date, or plot have been confirmed at this time.  When it comes to Wuthering Heights, though, the devil is always in the details. While it is generally considered to be a classic of Western literature, the Gothic novel has long divided critics…

Amadeus, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1984, is about as perfect a film as there is. A combination of historical(ish) drama, palace intrigue, psychological tragedy, and bedroom farce, it is a sublime confection that’s anchored by two of the finest performances in modern cinema and scored by some of the greatest music of all time. To this day, director Miloš Forman’s screen adaptation of a Peter Shaffer play by same name remains a monumental piece of work. The movie was largely recognized as such, too, when it was released in September 1984 at a running time…

As a franchise about human progress and the values of cooperation instead of competition, Star Trek is more about its heroes than its villains. We tune in to see how Kirk will inspire his crew or to watch Picard call upon logic and empathy to solve problems. That focus might be why Trek has had some awful villains over the decades, stinkers like the Ferengi in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Armus, or the Kazon. But when Star Trek does introduce a character who truly challenges our heroes, not in terms of might or even cunning, but in terms of…

Waning: contains spoilers for Deep Impact, Moon and Ex Machina. We may be dropping out of the Golden Age of Prestige Television (1999 – 2023, RIP), but while we may mourn the slow decline of mega-budget peak TV, take comfort – there is beauty in lower-budget productions. You might think science fiction would be particularly hard hit by a reduction in the amount of money available for VFX, sets, models, and so on, but over the years there have been plenty of examples of extraordinary science fiction films and television series that have been produced on low (or lower than…

Joaquin Phoenix’s Emperor Commodus from the original Gladiator movie remains one of the most memorable depictions of onscreen villainy this century. A portrait of what happens when immense insecurity meets unchecked power—plus a twisted riff on an Oedipal complex by way of his older sister and the father who never loved him—it was a thrill when this fiend finally entered the arena and faced Maximus. We wanted to see Russell Crowe bloody his toga. Now 24 years later, Gladiator II promises to have its own epic showdown between Paul Mescal as Lucius, our heroic and insubordinate gladiator champion, and Pedro…