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In "A Complete Unknown," the great Bob Dylan is rendered as a singular force who takes the Greenwich Village folk scene by storm before becoming an international rock star. But his singularity itself isn't enough to propel him to such heights. As James Mangold's movie shows, his ascent was aided by some pretty important friends and supporters. From Edward Norton's Pete Seeger (originally set to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch), who champions Timothée Chalamet's Dylan from the moment he arrives in New York, to Elle Fanning's Sylvie Russo (a renamed version of Dylan's then-girlfriend Suze Rutolo), the film is full of supporters who help the burgeoning talent realize his full potential.

Though the movie is ostensibly a Bob Dylan biopic of sorts (it only covers about five years in the musician's life), if you listen to any interviews with the cast or Mangold himself, you'll hear...

With Christmas firmly in the rearview mirror, 2024 is nearly in the books. But this year's holiday frame was particularly good for the box office, as both "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" and "Mufasa: The Lion King" continued their big runs atop the charts. More importantly, several new releases also found their footing to help close out the year on a high note, with director Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu," in particular, having a stellar opening. The long-awaited new take on the vampire classic absolutely blew by expectations, delivering a big win for horror as the new year approaches.

"Nosferatu" pulled in $21.1 million over the weekend, but since the movie hit theaters on Wednesday to get in on the Christmas action, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Eggers' latest pulled in a whopping $40.3 million across the full holiday stretch, which was good enough for third on the charts. Even against a sizable $50 million budget,...

Since breaking through with his second feature "Memento" in 2001, Christopher Nolan has been one of the most critically celebrated and commercially popular filmmakers on the planet. He's been nominated for eight Academy Awards (winning Best Picture and Best Director in 2024 with "Oppenheimer") and currently ranks seventh on the list of highest-grossing directors of all time (not adjusted for inflation). Career-wise, you can't do it much better than Nolan: he kicked off with two indies, dipped his toe in the studio waters before tackling a major franchise with "Batman Begins," didn't overstay his welcome with said franchise, and is now a brand name himself à la Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. With his track record, he can make just about any film he wants at the studio of his choosing.

Now that he's about to embark on feature number 13, you'd think we could look back over his 26-year career...

Once upon a time, a major box office smash like Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II" would move off to the second-run theaters for a lengthy discount run ahead of its eventual home video release. Not in today's front-loaded commercial climate. It's a smash-and-grab world, where a $210 million epic is expected to strike fast and hard, and, once it's squeezed out of theaters by the onslaught of low-aiming family fare like "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" and "Mufasa," find its adult audience on streaming. So, if you were waiting for a film intended to be seen on the biggest screen possible to be available for home viewing, your bread-and-circuses will be start getting served up the day before Christmas. 

Paramount Pictures has just announced that "Gladiator II" will hit digital on December 24. The generally well-received sequel (/Film's Chris Evangelista was a fan) to the 2001 Oscars' Best Picture winner is expected to be...

This article contains spoilers for "Mufasa: The Lion King."

Making a prequel to any story can be a challenge. It's a true double-edged sword. On the one hand, if you're being tasked with telling the story before the events of an earlier one, it means that audiences responded well to the latter. It's rare, at least, for an ill-liked or financially unsuccessful film to get a prequel, so audiences must have liked the first film enough. But the downside is that because audiences like the first story, it means that they kind of know where any prequel has to end. Even the best types of prequels struggle against this. 

If you watch "The Godfather Part II," for example, you inherently know that Vito Corleone will rise up through the ranks of the Mob to become the eponymous character of the original 1972 classic from director Francis Ford Coppola. That doesn't mean...

Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" is the holiday gift horror fans (and cinephiles in general) can't wait to unwrap this upcoming Christmas Day. Starring today's preeminent monster portrayer Bill Skarsgärd as Count Orlok, the film has critics raving (/Film's Chris Evangelista gave it a glowing review) and awards groups awardin' (the National Board of Review recognized Jarin Blaschke for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography). We'll have to wait until January to find out if the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deem it worthy of Oscar nominations, but we do know at least one voter, three-time-Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, believes it's one of the year's very best (he recently moderated a Q&a with director Robert Eggers).

With so much hype surrounding what purports to be an old-school fright flick rich with atmospheric design work across the board, you're probably wondering, "How can I spend top dollar to refurnish...

It's a horse! It's a frog! No, it's Eddie Brock and his ever-hungry symbiote tumbling out of the skies after doing battle from atop an airplane. As most normal people look forward to more, ah, traditional comic book movies coming down the pipeline in 2025, the weirdest people you know (complimentary) have yet to move on from the trilogy-capping phenomenon known as "Venom: The Last Dance." The threequel sure lived up to its subtitle, giving fans of the bromance between Tom Hardy's Eddie and his black-goo alter ego Venom a final swan song to wrap up the pair's bizarre, head-chomping, animal-hybrid adventures.

And what a journey it was. Originally conceived as a standalone series, viewers got to experience these movies abruptly dipping into the Marvel Cinematic Universe before getting pulled right back out of the MCU. The films made a killing at the box office, though, seemingly impervious to any...

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for both "Gladiator II" and "Moana 2."

Two major blockbuster sequels are barreling into theaters this Thanksgiving weekend that, to most normal people, might not seem to have much in common. Sure, both "Gladiator II" and "Moana 2" (with more than a little help from "Wicked") are about to super-charge the box office in a late-year push that theaters sorely need. But beyond the fact that both are bringing in boatloads of fans and both happen to feature curly-haired, shirtless warriors who return years after their first appearance in defiance of gods and men -- okay, yeah, even typing that out makes the latter feel like a serious stretch -- there's not much else to link them together. One is a swords-and-sandals drama set amid the dust of the Colosseum, and the other's an animated Disney movie about a Polynesian-influenced wayfinder who's most at home on water.

The biggest box office showdown of the year is in the books. Paramount's big-budget historical epic "Gladiator II" went up against Universal's musical Broadway adaptation "Wicked," making for a huge double bill, the likes of which we just don't see all that often. It's easily the biggest one-two-punch since "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" both hit theaters on the same weekend last year. This time around, things played out similarly, as "Gladiator II" had to settle for second place at the domestic box office. However, life is still looking pretty darn good for the blockbuster, all things considered.

Director Ridley Scott's long-awaited "Gladiator" sequel opened to an estimated $55.5 million domestically. "Wicked," meanwhile, absolutely decimated expectations with a $114 million opening. But context is important here. Second place be damned, this still ranks as the second-best opening of Scott's huge career, trailing only "Hannibal" ($58 million) more than 20 years ago. It's also...

Director Ridley Scott hasn't built such a legacy over his career by doing things halfway, as shown by the early reactions to his latest epic "Gladiator II" (you can check out /Film's review by Chris Evangelista here for more on that). Still, the long-awaited sequel might be making more headlines these days for what's not in it than what actually is. We recently heard it straight from star Denzel Washington that the blockbuster cut a gay kiss between his character and another. Of course, it wouldn't be out of character in the least for Scott to resort to an extended director's cut of the movie sometime down the line and restore even more deleted footage that ended up on the cutting room floor. Now, overseas audiences who've seen "Gladiator II" a smidge earlier than the rest of us are noticing that an actor best known for her Marvel work also...

It's been a quiet few weekends at the box office, relatively speaking, as Hollywood is waiting for the pre-Thanksgiving window to drop a potential Barbenheimer sized bomb on the industry with the release of "Wicked" and "Gladiator II." Both films are expected to do big business and both could be in the awards season mix here in the coming weeks/months, which only serves to give them a longer life in theaters. Fortunately for Paramount and director Ridley Scott, his blockbuster sequel is already off to a great start overseas.

Even though Amazon's holiday movie "Red One" opened atop the charts domestically, it was "Gladiator II" coming in at number one internationally. The sequel took in $87 million around the world over the weekend, with the film rolling out in 67 different markets. That represents the biggest R-rated opening ever for a Paramount release worldwide. It's also, amazingly enough, the biggest international...

More than two decades after the fall of Maximus Decimus Meridius in the arena in "Gladiator," director Ridley Scott is back with a sequel to his Best Picture-winning epic. "Gladiator II" picks up decades after the events of the first film, with Paul Mescal ("All of Us Strangers") now tasked with fighting his way through a series of insane challenges for the Emperors of Rome. But does it end there? Or is there more on the way?

Scott isn't a director known for teasing sequels, save for perhaps the ending of "Prometheus," but credits scenes have become all the rage in recent years. So, we must at least ask the question, does "Gladiator II" have a credits scene that audiences need to be aware of? We're here to answer that question in spoiler-free fashion. Seriously, there will be no spoilers of any kind here, so proceed without fear of having anything ruined.

You've seen "Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour" on Netflix, Olivia Rodrigo's Guts World Tour (also made available on Netflix), and, most importantly of all, Lady Raven doing her thing on stage and saving the day afterward in M. Night Shyamalan's "Trap." But if you thought that was the last pop star performance you'd get to enjoy from the comfort of your own home this year, think again! 2024 kept this unexpected -- though certainly not unwelcome -- trend going with "Smile 2," starring a new main character who also happens to be the target of that unbearably creepy curse that causes everyone to unleash their best and most unsettling Cheshire grins at you ... before all the jump scares and violence truly starts. Good times!

Now, it's singing sensation Skye Riley's (Naomi Scott) turn to make an encore appearance as the horror sequel makes its way to its home release.

Death has always been on Stephen King's macabre mind, so it's difficult to say whether, at the age of 77, he's more engaged with the subject than usual. The author has stared the Reaper down at least a couple of times in his life, via the stranglehold of addiction earlier in his career and, in 1999, the car accident that left him in a Maine hospital for a month with life-threatening injuries (and gave us the delirious howl that is "Dreamcatcher"). If nothing else, he respects the notion of dying to know he doesn't want to do it, but that he will and there's no guarantee it'll go down peacefully.

When he was interviewed in 2013 while writing "Joyland" for the Hard Case Crime imprint, King was asked if he'd planned for his death as an author -- by which his questioner meant had he socked away a finished book or two...

Ridley Scott, who is now closer to 90 than he is 80, continues to fire on all cylinders. Not only is he still making movies, but he's also making them on the biggest scale imaginable. To that end, his latest film, "Gladiator II," is a blockbuster epic and a sequel to one of his most beloved films. It's also on the highest end of expensive for a Hollywood film. Is that going to prohibit Paramount from turning a profit on this one? Or can Scott deliver a global hit that manages to outdo his original Best Picture winning classic?

Early projections had "Gladiator II" taking in roughly $65 million during its domestic opening. For what it's worth, those numbers have largely held in recent weeks, with the folks at Box Office Theory suggesting a gross between $58 and $72 million when it arrives next weekend. That would be a very solid debut for this kind of film,...

By all accounts, the early reactions to "Gladiator II" paint a picture of an historical epic that isn't afraid to push boundaries in terms of violence, melodrama, and gladiatorial sharks prowling the waters of the Colosseum. For Ridley Scott, all the over-the-top action and exuberant performances feel perfectly in line with the legendary director whose recent work includes "House of Gucci" and "Napoleon." Ultimately, it appears a little smoochin' was just a bridge too far.

In the latest example of the highly-anticipated "Gladiator" sequel flouting historical accuracy, it appears that "Gladiator II" is shying away from depicting the famously queer Roman culture. Star Denzel Washington plays a shady character named Macrinus who's described as a "Roman businessman who has amassed enormous wealth thanks to his acumen and brutal ambition." Washington's committed performance is already creating buzz as a clear highlight of the sequel (read /Film's review by Chris Evangelista...

What if Francis Ford Coppola made a new movie and no one showed up? It happened once before in 1982 with the backlot musical "One from the Heart," and, lamentably, it happened again this year with the maestro's "Megalopolis," which will become available on digital starting November 12, 2024.

A self-funded, $100 million-plus epic vision of an alternate American reality, "Megalopolis" has grossed just under $14 million globally in theaters at the time of writing. True, its reviews were as dismal as those for "One from the Heart," but knowing that the latter went on to be reassessed as a misunderstood triumph should've at least encouraged critics to stay thy blades for fear of looking like a pack of Bosley Crowthers 20 or so years from now.

As a full-throated admirer of "One from the Heart," I've tried not to come down too hard on "Megalopolis," even though I feel fairly certain the film, short of a narrative-clarifying director's cut,...

Move over, "Back to the Future," because there's another time-travel movie currently tearing it up on streaming that's making an entire generation of moviegoers feel their age. Marty McFly famously took that classic DeLorean for a spin in 1985 and transported himself 30 years into the past to the age of "The Honeymooners," Enchantment Under the Sea dances, and other throwback details ripped straight out of the '50s. This time around, well, the year 2003 is apparently considered long enough ago to merit an entire movie aimed towards Gen Z, where teenaged characters travel back a whopping 20 years to a long-ago time of low-rise jeans, Walkmans, and needle drops of Hilary Duff's "So Yesterday." Every Millennial reading this probably just felt a chill go up their spine.

"Time Cut" is the latest Netflix movie that has found its audience on the major streaming platform, thanks in no small part to stars Madison Bailey,...

Stephen King is one of the most celebrated and iconic horror writers of all time, but he's also a storyteller whose work has been adapted into dozens of movies and TV shows with, shall we say, mixed results. While some of the very best films of all time are based on King's work like "The Shining" and "The Shawshank Redemption," there are plenty of utter trash movies that have a "based on the novel by Stephen King" credit. Still, even if they may be a toss coin in terms of quality a lot of the time, any new Stephen King adaptation is at least worth paying attention to.

With Halloween finally upon us, spooky movies and shows are dominating the streaming charts for every platform out there, including Max. Indeed, the streamer formerly known as HBO Max has a variety of creepy titles residing in its current top 10, ranging from...

Moviegoers, get ready. This November promises to be one of the most competitive months at the multiplex since the summer, with a handful of big-ticket event films getting ultra-wide releases as the Thanksgiving holiday approaches. As for whether these movies will be worth your time, we've already heard some enthusiastic reactions to Ridley Scott's "Gladiator II," and been duly warned that Robert Zemeckis' "Here" is not where it's at. We should also be getting social media reactions to "Red One" and "Moana 2" any day now, but today is "Wicked" day on Twitter.

Before we check the tweets, keep in mind that John M. Chu's adaptation of the beloved, long-running Broadway musical riff on "The Wizard of Oz" has been viewed, sight-unseen, with tremendous skepticism due to its 160-minute runtime. Given that Chu's first "Wicked" film is just half of the story (with "Wicked Part Two" due to...

Sony has continued to do what it can with the "Spider-Man" franchise by making movies featuring characters not named Spider-Man. That started with 2018's "Venom," which was an unexpectedly huge hit, taking in an astonishing $856 million worldwide. That success paved the way for an entire trilogy, which has now come to a close. Tom Hardy returned as Eddie Brock for one last ride with Marvel's symbiote in "Venom: The Last Dance," which hit theaters over the weekend. Unfortunately, the franchise is going out on a low note.

Director Kelly Marcel's "The Last Dance" opened to an estimated $51 million domestically, which is a new low for the franchise. "Venom" opened to $80.2 million, while 2021's "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" opened to $90 million on its way to more than $500 million worldwide, even at a time when the pandemic was impacting theaters in a major way. This opening haul was well below expectations,...

No chocolates or human heads to snack on here, only major spoilers for "Venom: The Last Dance."

However you thought the torrid love story between Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) and Venom (also Tom Hardy) would end, it's safe to say even the biggest fans never imagined that "Venom: The Last Dance" (which /Film's Chris Evangelista reviewed here) would end things as definitively as it does. The brutish symbiote sacrifices himself to save the world in a blaze of glory, Eddie finally finds some measure of peace, and it all wraps up in a neat and tidy bow. Over the last six years, the "Venom" trilogy has defied expectations and everyday logic to become one of the more successful comic book franchises out there -- despite never once actually pitting Spider-Man supervillain Venom against, you know, Spider-Man himself. But when "Spider-Man: No Way Home" opened up a multiverse of possibilities with all sorts of crossover potential,...

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The worst thing that ever happened to M. Night Shyamalan's was the August 5, 2002 cover of Newsweek magazine. The filmmaker was red hot coming off the surprise box office success of "The Sixth Sense" and a solid double of a hit in "Unbreakable," and about to pack theaters once again with his blockbuster sci-fi/horror opus "Signs." He was the toast of Hollywood, seemingly on the cusp of becoming a smash-crafting industry unto himself. It was a lot for one guy to deal with before the then prominent publication got completely carried away and declared the then 32-year-old director "The Next Steven Spielberg." Afterwards? It dogged him like a curse.

Shyamalan didn't handle this particularly well. Leaving aside how you feel about M. Night's movies, he followed up the mild disappointment of "The Village" with the strangely hostile "Lady in the Water,...

The honor of the bloodiest, most disturbing, and funniest body horror movie of the year easily goes to "The Substance," writer/director Coralie Fargeat's satirical fairy tale that cuts right to the heart (almost literally) of the unfair beauty standards that society places on women. Starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley as Elisabeth and Sue, respectively, the movie takes its body-swapping narrative as far as it can possibly go -- and then some -- and delivers what has gone down as 2024's most macabre and provocative theatrical experience. In his review, /Film's Chris Evangelista praised the chaos on display for taking "the biggest possible swings, with unforgettable results. There's an audacity to 'The Substance' that's downright infectious — you cannot help but embrace a film willing to go to these extremes." Now, after cutting a bloody path through theaters everywhere, "The Substance" is gearing up for viewers to...

In a much-needed win for theaters, "Smile 2" opened right in line with expectations at the box office this past weekend. Director Parker Finn's sequel to 2022's surprise original hit "Smile" picked up right where that movie left off. Audiences were ready for more and they turned out to see the next chapter in this budding horror franchise.

Paramount's sequel opened with an estimated $23 million domestically to go with another $23 million overseas for a $46 million global start. "Smile 2" had been looking at a debut in the $25 million range so this was pretty much on the money. It's also almost exactly as much as the previous film made when it debuted in October 2022 to $22.6 million, before finishing with $106 million domestically and $111 million overseas for a grand total of $217 million. The good news here is that the sequel opened better than the original internationally, with the first film only...

Director Parker Finn is back with a sequel to one of the biggest horror movies of the 2020s thus far, with "Smile 2" now upon us. Finn was a virtually unknown director just a couple of years ago but when "Smile" hit theaters in 2022, he made himself known in a big way. The film was originally supposed to go directly to Paramount+ but the studio wisely decided to give it a theatrical release. "Smile" went on to become one of the biggest original movies of the pandemic era, paving the way for a sequel that will also, rather obviously, be going to theaters. Many viewers are probably wondering, will the scares end when the credits roll? Or is there more to this one?

Credits scenes have become a pretty common practice in the realm of franchise filmmaking, mostly thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But horror is not exempt. So,...

"Deadpool & Wolverine" just keeps breaking records. The profane Marvel team-up had already become the all-time highest-grossing R-rated film at the box office earlier this year, and now it's broken the first-week sales record for an R-rated movie in American markets on digital (per an official press release). All of this is to say: lots and lots of people are buying and renting the movie digitally on sites like Apple TV and Prime Video, with its home media release still to come.

The Shawn Levy-directed superhero flick hit digital platforms on October 1, 2024, and apparently outsold previous record holder "John Wick: Chapter 4." At the box office, meanwhile, it continues to hold strong in the top 10 despite having been in theaters for nearly three months at this point. In August, the film crossed the $1 billion dollar mark theatrically, and subsequently passed 2019's "Joker" to become the record holder for the...

Even though /Film's own Chris Evangelista dubbed 2016's "Terrifier" "crap," he did at least acknowledge that Damien Leone's ultra-low-budget slasher was "loaded with some incredibly practical gore." This has arguably been Leone's strongest suit across the ensuing sequels, with both 2022's "Terrifier 2" and 2024's "Terrifier 3" ratcheting the gore up to levels that defy explanation. As /FIlm's Jacob Hall wrote in his review of "Terrifier 3," "The biggest credit one can give the 'Terrifier 3' effects team is that it's frequently not at all clear how they're pulling these sequences off."

While the merits of Leone's brand of ultra-violence can be debated, his talent for creating practical effects simply can not. The man knows how to craft a sickeningly gory sequence and seemingly hasn't lost a step since his first "Terrifier" movie depicted a woman being sawn in half from the pelvis up. With "Terrifier 2,...

The latest take on "Salem's Lot," directed by Gary Dauberman and dropped on Max on October 3, is one of the many Stephen King adaptations that struggles to fit the massive story into a two-hour film. 

"My first cut was about three hours," Dauberman explained in a recent Den of Geek interview. "There's a lot left out. My first draft of the script is 180-odd pages or something because you're trying to include everything. And a lot of it has to do with a lot of the secondary characters and stuff ... So it was sad to see that stuff go, but it's like a necessary evil."

One of the hardest scenes to cut for Dauberman was from the backstory of main character Ben Mears (Lewis Pullman): he sneaks into the spooky old place known as the Marsten House as a kid and sees what seems to be a ghost. It...

The cinematic event of the year is finally upon us now that Francis Ford Coppola's (presumable) swan song "Megalopolis" is playing in theaters, although the overall reactions couldn't be more mixed. In terms of pure drama, the months-long lead up to its release might go down as something just as shocking and over the top as the film itself has been described. Long before the general public ever set eyes upon this passion project about the rise and fall of an empire, the internet has been packed with headlines about behind-the-scenes troubles, alleged sexual harassment, and even a bizarre controversy resulting from AI-generated review pull-quotes.

It's been a wild saga to get to this point, and that's without even getting into the actual reviews of the film. /Film's Chris Evangelista ended up more on the mixed-positive side of the debate in his "Megalopolis" review, calling it a "sprawling, confusing,...

Ridley Scott's "Alien" requires no introduction, having injected new life into the sci-fi space horror genre that aggressively centers on an otherworldly species with an ever-evolving lore. The equally effective, blockbuster-coded "Aliens" was followed by a string of sequels of varying quality, but I don't deem any of these flawed entries as terrible or unworthy, as they bring their unique quirks to the table. Fede Álvarez got all our hopes up with his recently-released "Alien: Romulus," which reiterates some of the best aspects of the franchise in an amalgamation of effective scares and tense sequences, but lacks severely in the originality department, for better or worse.

Of course, "Alien: Romulus" is not a weak entry when evaluated on its own merits, but it is impossible to detangle the influences it wears on its sleeve from its core identity, which feels like the muted beating of a feeble heart. /Film's...

America's long wait -- nay, make that the world's long wait -- is finally over, because Dogpool is finally coming home. "Deadpool & Wolverine" certainly lived up to all those sky-high expectations as a cameo-laden, multiversal romp, but it also proved to be exactly the hit at the box office that theaters so desperately needed. That record-smashing success explains why the blockbuster remained exclusively on the big screen for as long as it has. Well, even the most profitable things must come to an end at some point, as the saying (kind of) goes, and that includes billion-dollar grossing superhero movies too.

That's not to say that "Deadpool & Wolverine" and its money-making days are behind it, mind you. Far from it! The Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman team-up extravaganza is merely headed for the next stage of its capitalist journey, and that is its impending release on home media.

Among the barrage of true crime stories available across pretty much every medium of entertainment, from film to television and especially podcasts, "Only Murders in the Building" stood out as a breath of fresh air. Thanks to the dynamic, hilarious duo of Steve Martin and Martin Short finding an unlikely but supremely satisfying third with Selena Gomez, the series offers a simultaneously satirical and earnest approach to the world of true crime podcasts with just the right amount of drama and heart to keep the stakes engaging without losing any of the hilarity in the process. The playful showbiz snark between the near-has-been actor Charles-Haden Savage (Martin) and grandiose, self-inflated Broadway director Oliver Putnam (Short), combined with the young, hip, and deadpan indifference of Mabel Mora (Gomez) provides an endlessly entertaining trio of investigators/podcast hosts. 

While the second season of "Only Murders" was somewhat of a step down in...

You know the drill: Here's your warning that this article contains major spoilers for "Deadpool & Wolverine."

Those mad men really did it. It was always obvious that the various trailers for "Deadpool & Wolverine" were holding back in a big way -- but few of us could've guessed just how many surprises were laying in wait for us. Once Hugh Jackman officially boarded the threequel, director Shawn Levy and star (and co-writer) Ryan Reynolds went full steam ahead in packing the script with every zany idea they possibly could. According to /Film's review by Chris Evangelista, that leaves us with a joke-riddled, cameo-heavy experience that's less than the sum of its parts. But, chances are, those of you who clicked this particular headline (sorry Deadpool, but you're not the only one here capable of breaking the fourth wall!) are more interested in digging deep into the most fanboy-friendly and...

It's a two-part question that's been hanging over the head of "Deadpool & Wolverine" since the marketing cycle first kicked off: What cameos are going to be included and which name-brand celebrities are going to play them? As the crossover film finally begins to make its way into theaters, at least one major surprise has already been provided with an answer -- and it's not what anyone thinks.

Critics have weighed in with their takes on the movie that will officially bring Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (/Film's own Chris Evangelista called it a "disappointing cameo fest") and moviegoers are about to flock into theaters at a record-breaking pace to see it for themselves, which means that the internet is about to be filled to the brim with all the biggest spoilers and twists that the film throws at audiences. And, believe us, there are a lot of them.

Like horror, science fiction lends itself well to serialization. Fans of the genre love the chance to explore fantastical worlds far from our own, and once storytellers have developed a brand-new universe, those fans love having a reason to come back. From "Star Trek" to "Star Wars" (which are quite similar), from "The Terminator" to "The Thing," sci-fi franchises can spawn from anything given a strong enough premise.

Moviemaking takes time, though, and we also live in a world where projects are announced many years in advance. This can all make it frustrating to be a fan of sci-fi, often having to wait years to be able to return to a series that you love, even though new installments are constantly dangled over your head. While we're waiting for the next great sci-fi original to spark a new franchise, we've rounded up some of the sci-fi sequels that we simply...

Just for some perspective, Danny Glover was only 40 years old when he delivered the classic line as Roger Murtaugh in the original "Lethal Weapon," "I'm too old for this s**t." That was in 1987 and, well, here we are all these years later as the buddy-cop franchise just refuses to go silently into that good night. We've received three sequels over the years with varying degrees of diminishing returns This latest update, however, might just have you wishing that it did end up retiring for good.

Rumors of "Lethal Weapon 5" have been swirling around for decades -- at one point, the original creative trio of Glover, Mel Gibson, and director Richard Donner were eager to take a crack at a fifth film back in 2017. By the next year, Donner had indicated that the project was dead in the water. Last we heard, though, franchise producer Dan Lin indicated in 2020 that...

Netflix and Richard Linklater certainly make for peculiar bedfellows. Where every other Netflix exclusive feels like it was concocted by an algorithm and designed to have maximum appeal, Linklater has been perfectly happy to direct films for a niche market these past 30-plus years. Even at his most commercial, with a film like "School of Rock," you get the sense the eccentric Texan auteur is making movies that speaks to his interests first and foremost.

Yet, somehow, Linklater has now found himself releasing back-to-back films for the streaming giant. The first of them, 2022's "Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood" — a rotoscope-style animated feature where segments inspired by the filmmaker's real childhood in 1960s Houston are seamlessly integrated with a fictional story about a young boy being recruited by NASA for an off-the-books space mission — reads like the opposite of what studios feel constitutes an easy sell. It plays that way,...

Movies these days are more of a production than a simple story led by a cast. If there is no pomp and circus around it, chances are, it won’t do much business. Even with some really popular names attached to projects, sometimes that is not enough. And Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt starrer The Fall Guy is a prime example of that.

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy

Sometimes, even if a movie has good reviews and high critic scores, people tend to wait for it to get to streaming services to watch it, rather than buying tickets for the theaters. And this is the biggest issue with today’s industry. Most movies go to streaming, even if it is a year later, and people are willing to wait for them. Unless the production around a movie is so hyped that watching it in theaters on...

Russell Crowe will save souls and ride Lambrettas again: "The Pope's Exorcist" is officially getting a sequel! Producer Jeff Katz took to Twitter on Wednesday evening to announce the news, posting, "Amorth Nation -- I just got the call...It's Officially Happening!!!" Katz followed up with an Italian phrase, "È un seguito, amici miei," which translates to "It's a sequel, my friends." 

Never one to miss a chance to reference Crowe's character's motorized scooter (aren't we all?), Katz also wrote, "Thank you to the amazing #ThePopesExorcist fans. You made this happen. Gas up your Lambretta - and get ready to ride."

"The Pope's Exorcist" was both a slightly campy novelty and a surprise box office success when it dropped in April 2023, earning nearly $77 million worldwide against a comparatively slim budget of just $18 million (per Variety). The film blew past initial expectations -- the Variety article cited above guessed it would earn $10 million in U.

With things being so slow at the box office in the early going of 2024, you would half expect to hear people reporting sightings of tumbleweeds rolling across the floors of their local movie theaters. Praise to the cinema gods, May is finally arriving with a promising crop of tentpoles to help rejuvenate the marketplace, starting with director David Leitch's much-buzzed-about '80s series turned contemporary action-comedy "The Fall Guy" (you can read our own Jacob Hall's glowing review of the picture here). But never fear! If you're searching for something to watch at home, too, Netflix will provide in bountiful amounts.

Well, sort of.

Truth be told, next month is looking kind of sparse when it comes to Netflix exclusives outside the purview of shows with firmly established fandoms (see: the latest season of "Bridgerton") or the service's usual smattering of specialty offerings, including live comedy events and ongoing anime series.

As anyone who's seen it will attest, 1989's "Road House" is an odd movie. Starring the inimitable Patrick Swayze as a "cooler" named Dalton who's hired to run security for a small town bar, the film feels so niche, so specific, so delightfully bonkers that you almost can't believe people signed off on pumping millions of dollars into making it. There's an inherent goofiness to that version, even if the characters aren't winking at the audience. In many ways, it's a relic from a different era, and a modern remake of "Road House," like the one now available on Prime Video from director Doug Liman and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, was never going to be able to recapture the original's ineffable magic. I had some fun with the new version, but tonally, it's much darker than the first film.

The reason it feels darker is because the new film falls into...

At the risk of barging too hot out the gate, I'm going to co-sign Chris Evangelista's argument for /Film that there are no bad "Alien" movies. Sure, the various follow-ups to Ridley Scott's classic 1979 original can be polarizing -- especially Scott's gothic prequel films "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant" -- but they're never boring, and "Alien" itself remains the rare IP where each individual entry retains the hallmarks of the directors who made them. As though any other franchise would ever let Jean-Pierre Jeunet come in and make a no-holds-barred Jean-Pierre Jeunet sci-fi horror film like "Alien: Resurrection." Just sayin'.

For as much as I would've liked it if Scott got to finish telling the story of the beloved homicidal android David (Michael Fassbender) with his intended prequel trilogy finale "Alien: Awakening," I'm curious to see what Fede Álvarez comes up with playing in this particular sandbox. The "Evil Dead...

This article contains major spoilers for the finale of "True Detective: Night Country."

In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) accused the police in Nome, Alaska of "a systemic and disastrous failure" to protect Native women. The accusation came in the aftermath of the rape of an Inupiaq woman named Clarice Hardy, a case she claimed was not investigated thoroughly by law enforcement. The accusation came less than two weeks after an AP investigation was released following multiple complaints from Alaska Native women from Nome and the surrounding villages, all claiming that their reports of sexual assault were not "investigated aggressively."

A cursory Google search will bring similar reports from Indigenous communities across the globe. The National Crime Information Center reported that, in 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls. However, the US Department of Justice's federal missing person database, NamUs, only logged...

Are we officially at the point where we can say that, other than maybe the great Giancarlo Esposito, no other actor is enjoying a better post-"Breaking Bad"/"Better Call Saul" universe career than Bob Odenkirk? Best known for playing the criminal lawyer Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill, Odenkirk could've easily taken his foot off the gas pedal and coasted on the good will (and residual checks!) from starring in two of the best shows of the 21st Century. Instead, the talented actor has made a point to go with the exact opposite approach.

After making time for fantastic supporting turns in Steven Spielberg's "The Post" and Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" followed by his unexpected swerve into action leading man territory in 2021's "Nobody," Odenkirk is now setting his sights on an even more attention-grabbing collaboration. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the actor will join forces with director Ben Wheatley ("High-Rise,...

In 1950, French author Georges Arnaud wrote a novel with the translated title of "The Wages of Fear," and three years later, director Henri-Georges Clouzot adapted it into one of the most tense films ever made. When a gargantuan fire breaks out at an isolated oil derrick in the middle of nowhere, the only way to stop the problem is to literally blow up the entire site. The problem is, it will take a hell of a lot of nitroglycerin to do that. Naturally, that compound is highly combustible and incredibly sensitive. If you jostle it around, it explodes. It turns out the only way to transport it is to pack it into the back of trucks, physically drive it across incredibly rough terrain, and hope for the best. The drivers, broke and trapped in a dead-end town with no prospects, are offered astronomical sums of money to make the trek,...

Director Damien Leone has established a new slasher mainstay with his "Terrifier" series. After taking his Art the Clown character, who'd previously appeared in several short films, and putting him at the center of 2016's "Terrifier," the director followed up that lackluster effort with 2021's "Terrifier 2" — a movie too brutal for some horror fans. While "Terrifier" had been, in the words of /Film's Chris Evangelista, "crap," the sequel had more narrative and lore-building. As such, it amounted to not only a surprise box office hit, but a markedly better movie.

After the release of "Terrifier 2," audiences — many of which reportedly fainted at screenings — were excited to see more of Art, the bloodthirsty harlequin who had started to gain some pop cultural recognition. His nightmarish visage could be seen cropping up in "Bupkis" cameos and generally seemed to be transcending the niche horror genre from which he came.

All...

The Sundance Film Festival returned to Park City this year, bringing with it a cavalcade of new films, many of which we'll probably be talking about throughout the rest of 2024. We've rounded up looks at every film we watched at Sundance this year, bringing you insight into the best, the worst, and everything in between. As always, we urge you to seek out these films for yourself. Movies live and die by their audience, and many of the films at Sundance are small affairs that need to find viewers in order to thrive. So don't just take our word for it — give yourself over to a new movie, one you might not even have noticed. There are more than big studio blockbusters in the film world, and they need your help. Our list below is merely a guide, it's up to you to take the journey.

Read more: These Are...

Another Russell Crowe and Liam Hemsworth collaboration was not a square on our 2024 pop culture Bingo card, yet it looks like we're about to check it off. Moviegoers are due to see the pair of Aussies team up for the second time in as many years in February's military action thriller "Land of Bad." The pair recently co-starred in the 2022 movie "Poker Face" (no relation to the TV show of the same name), a thriller about a high stakes poker game gone wrong that was directed by Crowe himself.

This time around it's not a card game that goes wrong, but a mission. "Land of Bad" follows a group of military men on an extraction assignment in the Philippines that takes a bloody turn, leaving one young officer at the mercy of the elements and local militia. Fortunately, he's not alone: he's got Russell Crowe's drone pilot droning in his ear,...

This article contains spoilers for the latest episode of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters."

Ever since it was announced that the Monster-Verse would expand to television with (the somewhat clunkily-titled) "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," it felt clear that the series would have to balance kaiju action with human drama in a way none of the big-screen efforts have quite managed to accomplish so far. The early returns have been promising enough, with last week's episode "Terrifying Miracles" perhaps finding the best of both worlds. That storyline, involving our present-day characters searching for Cate and Kentaro's long-lost father Hiroshi (Takehiro Hira), intersected dramatically with the (re)discovery of Godzilla.

By comparison, this week's "Will the Real May Please Stand Up?" dives right back to its human-sized concerns ... but, in the process, includes some major Easter eggs that further connect the two most recent "Godzilla" movies while also hinting at the long-term stakes of the series.