Is it safe to say the movies are back? Admittedly, they never really left. But it seems in this decade where every year throws up new challenges and hiccups in the industry, folks become convinced the sky is falling and cinema’s days are numbered. Still, here we are back at the end of the year. And once again, there seems plenty to be thankful for as new cinematic images burrow their way into the collective subconscious for years to come. Whether it’s the sight of Muad’Dib standing before a nation of radicalized disciples as if he were a space-aged T.E.…

A Clayface movie is on its way. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. Variety reports that a Clayface movie will begin production next year, produced by The Batman director Matt Reeves and written by Mike Flanagan, creator of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass. The news comes just before the release of Kraven the Hunter, the last in Sony‘s ill-fated attempts to build a shared universe around Spider-Man villains. Which begs the question: why would DC try to follow in Sony’s shameful footsteps with its own Batman rogues? The obvious answer is that Reeves and company…

It’s official. Knull has destroyed Sony’s Spider-Man villain universe. Morbin’ time is over. Ezekiel Sims has prevented the future. Kraven’s last hunt has commenced. Or so a cynic might say! (Ahem.) Be that as it may, The Wrap is indeed reporting this weekend’s Kraven the Hunter will bring an end to the shared universe Sony has built around Spider-Man villains. Honestly, it’s about time. Look, we’ve all had our fun. Tom Hardy’s sweaty take on Eddie Brock made the Venom movies into unlikely and enjoyable rom-coms. Morbius spawned hilarious memes, which in turn spawned major studio blunders. And apparently, people…

Poor Aaron Taylor-Johnson. We admit that as a preternaturally handsome man and talented actor who in the right role can smolder, he doesn’t need our sympathies. (Seriously check out his sinister good ol’ boy on the Texan frontier in Nocturnal Animals and realize that’s the same English chap who played a perfect American zero in Kick-Ass.) Even so, here is a guy who’s got rizz for days, yet every time he is plugged into an American blockbuster, it’s in one of the most insipid and bleakly impersonal of studio products. And as Kraven the Hunter is the latest Spider-Man-less Spidey…

Marvel’s Civil War continues! Just months after Robert Downey Jr. announced his return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Avengers: Doomsday, his on-screen one-time rival is following suit. The Wrap reports that Chris Evans will be back for the next Avengers film, along with directors Joe and Anthony Russo. But who, exactly, will he be? You might be quick to answer “Captain America, duh!” but there are actually a surprising amount of options here, especially when you consider Downey’s own return to the MCU as baddie Doctor Doom and the multiversal shenanigans that have been the focal point of this…

Not quite 28 years later, filmmakers Danny Boyle and Alex Garland are returning to the zombie tale that revitalized and evolved the zombie genre. The horror story that kicked off with 2001’s 28 Days Later and continued in 2007’s 28 Weeks Later jumps forward almost three decades to a world completely changed by the Rage Virus. In fact, the first trailer for the long-awaited third installment reveals an England where survivors armed with bows and arrows live in primitive settlements and a filthy Ralph Fiennes stalks around a temple-like structure made of human skulls. But the trailer may not just…

Well, this is unexpected: Jeremy Allen White, who stars in The Bear as a tortured chef with anger issues named Carmy, is set to voice Jabba the Hutt’s son, Rotta the Hutt, in The Mandalorian & Grogu. This was first reported by industry scooper Jeff Sneider on The Kristian Harloff Show before being corroborated by several trades, including Variety. We highly doubt anyone had this latest casting on their 2024 Star Wars bingo board. While Rotta the Hutt, canonically nicknamed “Stinky,” isn’t exactly a household name these days, he is technically a blast from the franchise’s big-screen past, specifically from…

Midway through James Mangold’s often hushed and occasionally deafening A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan comes as close as he ever will to lowering his defenses. Which is not to say the man who defined a generation’s counterculture verbalizes much in the way of his wants or dreams. Rather, in that classic Hollywood biopic style, he cries out his essence with a pained lamentation. “When people ask me where the songs come from, they don’t want to know,” Timothée Chalamet’s elfin folk singer broods. “They only want to know why they didn’t come to them!” That may be, but the essence…

It’s still impressive how evocative Howard Shore’s Middle-earth music can be 21 years after The Lord of the Rings trilogy ran its course. While the composer is most celebrated in fan communities for his rousing “Fellowship” theme, or the provincial beauty (and flutes!) of “The Shire” leitmotif, I’ve always felt like the vaguely Nordic ditty he wrote to signal the Riders of Rohan is its own little wonder. One might assume anime artist and director Kenji Kamiyama agrees since the opening prelude to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim also basks in the sounds of Shore’s…

This post contains spoilers for Dune: Prophecy episode 4 and details from the book Dune Messiah. In the final minutes of Dune: Prophecy‘s fourth episode “Twice Born,” Valya Harkonnen (Emily Watson) feels a twinge of doubt about her mission. However, she recovers her resolve when she faces her beloved older brother Griffin, whose death decades earlier inspired her revenge quest. Griffin speaks words of reassurance, even when Valya asks if she pushed her brother too far. As the conversation reaches its conclusion, Griffin’s face begins to crack. “Thank you, Theo,” says Valya, who then watches what appeared to be her…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. If the past year has proven anything, it’s that folks in the film industry can grow accustomed to waiting on tenterhooks. After all, 2024 has been a good news/bad news situation for studios and theater owners who spent 12 months recovering from last year’s production delays and the pressures they placed on the release schedule. Yet while much of Hollywood can cautiously breathe a sigh of relief after the past summer slump shrank by August, much of the horror genre has proven…

While 1984’s Supergirl is very much a low-budget attempt to cash in on the majesty of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, it does maintain the world that Richard Donner established in one regard. Midway through the film, Supergirl (Helen Slater) strikes a classic hero pose to face off against two baddies. “I am Kara of Argo City, daughter of Alura and Zor-El,” she says with confidence. “And I don’t scare easily.” Unfortunately, she says those words to a witch called Selena, portrayed by Faye Dunaway at her hammiest. With just a flick of her finger, Selena flings Supergirl into an…

It’s almost the Christmas season, and once again Netflix merely teases us with in-jokes alluding to the Christmas Prince movies instead of providing a new installment from that cherished cinematic universe. However, the streamer has still come through with a half-dozen new holiday rom-coms and a heartwarming family tale. This year’s Christmas movies are a mix of riffs on existing stories (you’ll see some inspiration drawn from Serendipity and Magic Mike), and unique hooks that may or may not fulfill expectations. Regardless we’ve got hunky snowmen and shirtless dancers, winking nods to Mean Girls and Love Actually, and quite the…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. “I like to have fun, you know?” Steven Soderbergh has clearly been having a ball directing over 30 feature films (averaging one per year) since his auspicious 1989 Palme d’Or-winning debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape. That body of work has been anything but predictable, from pulpy crime movies (Out of Sight, The Limey) to sci-fi (Solaris) to comedies (Let Them All Talk) to sports flicks (High Flying Bird) to eccentric biopics (Che, Behind the Candelabra). Arguably, the only genres he hasn’t tackled are…

Kyle Mooney still vividly remembers New Year’s Eve 1999. At age 15 he was sitting on his couch with a friend watching MTV and waiting (hoping?) for the world to end. It didn’t happen. Looking back on the evening, the SNL alum smirks and then points out that it was like the “opposite of COVID-19. So many people thought it would be nothing and it turned out to be one of the worst things to happen.” Nonetheless, the memory of the infamous Y2K panic that led to nowhere—and that New York minute where folks were confident the end was nigh…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. One of Stanley Tucci’s earliest memories is from the 1964 World’s Fair. “I remember very clearly going to the 1964 World’s Fair in Queens when they built that whole thing,” Tucci tells Den of Geek magazine in an exclusive interview. “I was three, seeing this robot talking, and I remember thinking, ‘That’s incredible, that is the future. I have it so clearly in my mind.” Those animatronics, made by Walt Disney, are a matter of public record. However, there are events following…

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here. Occasionally there is a movie where the plot, the direction, and the special-effects magic all fall by the wayside, and people have just one question: “What was it like working with the star?” It is one of our first questions. “Well, he’s very demanding,” says the film’s director Dougal Wilson. Then, perhaps fearing retaliation, he corrects himself. “No, he’s very reasonable, very hardworking, and very professional.” He is talking about Paddington Bear, the star of Paddington, Paddington 2, and, of course, the…

It is often a function for any awards prognosticator to suggest that this year, whichever it might be, is the most competitive we’ve seen in ages. Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it amounts to a bit of creative fiction, with industry watchers straining to imagine a scenario where anyone could seriously challenge Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for Best Picture, Director, and the whole slew of other awards it inevitably won last March. Still, with all that being said, we can say in complete honesty and without a sense of hyperbole that this year, 2024, might indeed be the most competitive…

Margot Robbie is still befuddled about why Babylon flopped two Christmases ago. For some it might be a strange thing to linger on. The Oscar-nominated actress and producer found immediate mega-success afterward courtesy of the cultural juggernaut that was Barbie (as well as her work as producer on smaller streaming hits like Saltburn and My Old Ass). Yet for Robbie, who recently sat down with Ben Mankiewicz for the Talking Pictures podcast, Damien Chazelle’s epic about the bygone era of Golden Age Hollywood during the height and demise of the silent movie feels like unfinished business. “I love it, I…

A man walks alone in the snow. Hours earlier on this frigid morning, local Romani took his horse and left him stranded—a cruelty or a comfort, depending how you read their warning not to seek out the desolate castle on a hill. There, he is told, awaits only shadow and demons; a nightmare without end. For anyone who has seen F.W. Murnau’s original Nosferatu from more than a century ago, as well as many of the other films that have played in Bram Stoker’s crypt, this all has the unmistakable air of familiarity. Yet in rarefied moments, Robert Eggers’ 2024…