Vertical lines and black and white stripes. Sullen expressions and pallid skin tones. Disheveled hair and often handcrafted special effects. There are certain staples and motifs that recur in the works of Tim Burton. So much so that 40 years after his directorial career began, Burton’s films remain instantly recognizable and a good gateway to introducing younger audiences to the concept of auteur theory. The singularity of Burton’s work has also earned its share of critics and detractors; those who see the repetition of his muses and Gothic fixations as cause for caricature. And to be sure, the one-time Hollywood…

While we’re all wringing our hands about the identity of the next James Bond, a new video has resurfaced online showing a potential 007 of the past. The clip from 2006 shows Henry Cavill running through lines from GoldenEye as part of a screen test for Casino Royale. Cavill’s lines recreate the first meeting between Bond, then played by Pierce Brosnan, and the villain Xenia Onatopp, originally portrayed by Famke Janssen, with her lines delivered by an unidentified off-screen performer in the clip. Cavill puts a slightly different spin on each of his readings, sometimes hitting a line with more…

On February 7, 1497, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola and his followers burned objects of art and pieces of literature in the public square of Florence, Italy. Decrying these objects as distractions that turn the people’s attention from God, they called the pyre “the Bonfire of the Vanities.” The phrase has been used time and again throughout history, including the title of a 1987 novel by Tom Wolfe. But never has it been more fitting than when applied to the 1990 film adaptation of that same book, an infamous disaster starring Bruce Willis, Melanie Griffith, Morgan Freeman, and Tom Hanks. The…

Most people watching the first trailer for Jurassic World: Rebirth certainly noticed a shot of a T-rex skeleton in the park visitors center, with a bold banner behind it. The banner, which reads, “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth,” seems to be coming down, which at first seems like a callback to the ending of the first movie. But in an interview with Vanity Fair, producer Frank Marshall provides some context for the image. It’s not an echo of the triumphant scene from the original movie, showing that dinosaurs rule the earth once again. “Well, the banner’s coming down again,” Marshall…

It’s always a big deal when Captain America says, “Avengers Assemble.” It took four Avengers movies before Steve Rogers said it at the end of Endgame, and who knows how long it will be before his successor Sam Wilson gets to utter the famous line, given that he’s just now getting his own film with this month’s Captain America: Brave New World. But Anthony Mackie knows exactly who he wants coming up on his left when his Captain America calls the Avengers together again. “It has to be the Hulk,” Mackie tells Den of Geek of his first pick for…

It has now been two and a half years since Jennifer Waters confronted K.E.V.I.N. in the finale of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and asked, “When are we getting the X-Men?” According to one reliable scooper, the answer is, “2027.” Jeff Sneider, a journalist with a track record of reliable scoops, recently posted on Twitter that he’s hearing that the MCU’s long-awaited X-Men movie “will begin shooting next year for a 2027 release. That means official casting news likely coming in the next few months… along with a director announcement,” suggesting that casting news might arrive as soon at CinemaCon in…

We cannot lie that it is a bit disconcerting that one of the greatest studios in film history is now licensing some of their deeper cut faves to YouTube. But Max’s loss is about to be everyone else’s gain, as some real obscure gems from Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema’s back catalogs have quietly found their way to the most popular video sharing website on the globe. As of press time, more than 30 Warners-owned films have been dropped in full and for free on YouTube, including John Milius’ underrated The Wind and the Lion (a 1975 movie…

It’s safe to say Ariana DeBose knows her way around the American theater. While the multi-hyphenated talent has been mostly focusing on movies as of late (after all, she won an Oscar for Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story in 2022), DeBose’s career began and will forever be linked with the stage. Before film and streaming, DeBose made her acting debut in the original cast of Bring It On: The Musical in 2011, which in turn paved the way for appearing in various Broadway productions throughout the 2010s, including in the original cast of Hamilton and as the title…

In writer/director Drew Hancock’s new film Companion, Sophie Thatcher plays Iris, a young woman who seems almost obsessively devoted to being a perfect mate to her new boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). He’s everything she wants, and it’s not long before we find out why: Iris is a highly advanced robot, manufactured and programmed to Josh’s exact specifications, and controlled by him from a mobile device that looks a lot like an iPad. He can adjust everything from her intelligence to her level of aggression, the latter proving both useful and wildly dangerous as the story unfolds. By the time the…

Slapstick has long remained a staple of the comedy genre, harking back to the early days of silent cinema stars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and a host of other expressive comedy legends. While the introduction of sound film forever changed the landscape of the entertainment industry, slapstick miraculously maintained its tight hold over mainstream pop culture, as evidenced by later comedy programs like Looney Tunes, The Three Stooges, and the wildly successful Jackass franchise. First airing on MTV in the autumn of 2000, Jackass quickly became something of a cultural phenomenon by the close of the decade.…

Welcome… to Jurassic Park! Again! Just a few years after Jurassic World: Dominion flooded the planet with dinosaurs giant locusts, Paramount is sending us back to Isla Nublar, hopefully to recreate some of the magic of the original Steven Spielberg movie with Jurassic World: Rebirth. It’s fitting then that the first trailer for Rebirth isn’t just shots of new heroes played by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. The trailer is also filled with references to the original film, its sequels, and even the Michael Crichton novel that inspired it all. By this point, most fans know the liberties that Spielberg…

Screenwriter Bob Gale knows that people want to see a new Back to the Future movie. In fact, he even has a succinct and definitive answer at the ready. “People always say, ‘When are you going to do Back to the Future 4,‘” Gale said (via Yahoo!). “And we say, ‘F*** you.'” That might sound harsh, but one can imagine that Gale gets that question a lot. After all, Star Wars is on the TV, Indiana Jones is on the Xbox, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made $294,100,435 last year. The ’80s are back, baby, and they have never really gone away.…

Over the course of the last 40 years, Ke Huy Quan has done many things: worked with some of the greatest movie stars of all-time like Harrison Ford and Michelle Yeoh; starred in bonafide classics across multiple decades; studied martial arts with Tan Tao-liang and action stunt choreography under Corey Yeun; and won an Oscar. Still, the thing he’s been consistently asked over all that time, and across so many projects, remains the same: when are we getting a Goonies sequel? Well, 40 years after that original Richard Donner classic was released, Quan still doesn’t have a definite answer, but…

The first trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps brims with 1960s Marvel goodness. We’ve got the Marvel-1, we’ve got H.E.R.B.I.E. with a reel-to-reel for a face, we’ve got Baxter Building in all of its glory. However, we don’t have much of another defining aspect of 1960s Marvel: Cold War politics. Unless, of course, the mystery villain played by John Malkovich is not the Puppet Master, as was initially rumored, but rather Ivan Kragoff, aka the Red Ghost. If Malkovich is indeed the Red Ghost, then First Steps is embracing the ’60s even more than we previously thought. The character also…

It’s Oscar season again in Hollywood, although it can hardly be said that this year has seen a smooth, celebratory homestretch leading to the big event. Between the results of the 2024 election and the horrific fires that swept through Los Angeles almost as soon as 2025 began, it almost seems as if Tinseltown’s biggest, most congratulatory night is more a desperate attempt to pull something, anything, good out of the last year instead of a genuine commemoration of 2024’s cinematic achievements. Which is a shame, since 2024 was in fact a pretty damn good year for film. But even…

The Marvel Age of Heroes is about to begin! Yes, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has existed since 2008, and yes, the Fantastic Four have made three big screen appearances already. But Fantastic Four: First Steps feels like something special, a proper movie version of the team that launched Marvel Comics when Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced them in 1961. The first trailer for Fantastic Four: First Steps only further builds that anticipation, a teaser filled with big reveals and tantalizing omissions, ready for adventurers to explore. Watch it below if you haven’t already. There are tons of things to…

The countdown is on. Our first real look at the upcoming MCU Fantastic Four movie will come at 7 am ET on Tuesday, Feb. 4 (FF, get it?). We’re not getting just a trailer for the movie, but a whole lead-up to the release, complete with a lead spot on the chat show Good Morning America. As is increasingly common, Marvel has announced the big trailer event with a smaller teaser. But this one’s a bit more substantial than the usual quick montage of images that constitute other trailers for trailers. The Fantastic Four: First Steps trailer teaser shows people…

Two elite snipers. One year-long mission in a mysterious, deadly location. No contact. Those are the rules of The Gorge, a new Apple Original high-octane thriller from director Scott Derrickson. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Miles Teller and Sigourney Weaver, The Gorge is headed to Apple TV+ on February 14. As a special treat, Den of Geek readers have the unique opportunity to watch the movie early, for free and in style at our extra-special screening in a premium London location.  From the director of Doctor Strange and The Black Phone, The Gorge follows two highly-trained operatives (Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy)…

In one of the warmest moments during Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, a kindly professor inquires about the ownership of a cat. The feline in question is keeping company with a woman cursed by a vampire’s attention. Even so, she has the good humor and sense to know that a cat is neither owned, or waits on, on any human. “She has no master or mistress,” young Ellen Hutter smiles. One suspects cinematographer Jarin Blaschke can relate. After all, despite earning his second Oscar nod last week for his entrancing work on the vampire epic, not even the afternoon of the Academy…

Leave it to ol’ Steve Rogers to say, “No, I don’t think I will.” Initial reports suggested that Chris Evans would join Robert Downey Jr. and the Russo Brothers for Avengers: Doomsday. But in a new conversation with Esquire, Anthony Mackie stated that Evans downplayed those rumors. “He goes, ‘Oh, you know, I’m happily retired,'” Mackie explained, a comment that Esquire later confirmed with Evans himself, getting a word-for-word response: “Yeah, no—happily retired.” Between the awkward way of stating his intentions, and the long history of Marvel actors such as Andrew Garfield giving misleading statements about their upcoming MCU projects,…