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Steven Spielberg is inarguably one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but, being human (as far as we know), he is fallible. He's made one thoroughly lousy movie ("Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"), a strangely inert one ("The Bfg"), and must answer for the bizarre backlot debacle that is "Hook."

These misfires are rare for a director like Spielberg, who doesn't have to move forward on a project until he's good and ready. He's known for shooting quickly and confidently, intuitively placing the camera exactly where it needs to be, and delivering a finished film that is narratively concise and thematically rich. The only thing better than watching a Steven Spielberg movie for the first time is knowing that it's going to open up in new and surprising ways on subsequent viewings. There isn't a single filmmaker working today who can top Spielberg as a visual storyteller.

I'll be the first to admit that, when it comes to horror movies, I'm a bit of a wimp. When I was a kid, "The Exorcist" was re-released, and the TV commercials gave me nightmares for several weeks. With that said, a movie like Josh Ruben's "Heart Eyes" is approachable even for scared little babies like me, which makes it utterly unsurprising that the movie is performing quite well on Netflix, according to FlixPatrol.

"Heart Eyes" came out on February 7, 2025 — and now that its theatrical release is finished, it's found a home on Netflix and is getting a lot of attention ... as it should! The horror-romance hybrid centers on Ally McCabe (Olivia Holt), a young woman who works for a jewelry company and, fresh off a breakup, ends up meeting consulting advertiser Jay Simmons (Mason Gooding) in a professional context ... only for sparks to quickly fly. However, things go...

Netflix is known for many things, be they alarmingly bingeable true crime documentaries or generic action thrillers that are just as alarming but in a very different, death-of-the-culture kind of way. There was also Kevin Hart's "Lift," which hit number one on Netflix back in 2023 — for which we're still awaiting a formal apology. But if there's one other thing the king of the streamers is known for, it would have to be crime thriller series (that and dodgy dating shows).

Netflix has given us some truly memorable crime series, including the new chart-busting murder mystery show "The Residence." But it's also known for exposing Western audiences to more diverse offerings of the genre. Specifically, there has been no shortage of European crime thrillers that have managed to capture worldwide attention on the platform. Germany seems to have cornered this particular Netflix market. There was the crime thriller series "Schlafende...

In 2022, Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup delivered one of the most disturbing horror films of modern times with "Speak No Evil." Tafdrup, who co-wrote the movie with his brother, Mads, didn't want to rely on gore to upset audiences. In fact, he didn't want to rely on any established tropes of the horror genre in order to achieve his desired effect, instead constructing a truly unique and deeply troubling film that haunted viewers not only for the bleak events contained therein, but for its social commentary. Specifically, Tafdrup wanted to interrogate humanity's widespread aversion to interpersonal conflict and show how a dogged commitment to maintaining a polite social manner can have disastrous consequences.

Of course, the consequences depicted in "Speak No Evil" were a tad more disastrous than any of us will ever experience. One notorious scene actually managed to speak so much evil that it immediately became an unpleasant core...

Gerard Butler might not be what you'd call an A-list star these days, but he's actually appeared in some solid stuff in recent years. The Scottish actor's '90s throwback "Plane" was a breath of fresh air in 2023, and /Film's Chris Evangelista dubbed 2025's "Den of Thieves 2: Pantera" a "triumph of dudes rock cinema." But none of this can erase the fact that Butler has starred in his fair share of duds, though if it's any consolation for him, the Netflix subscribers aren't letting something as bothersome as quality get in the way of streaming his films.

Back in 2017, Butler starred in "Geostorm," which on its surface was a generic disaster movie offering very little to entice audiences. But in reality it was even worse. The film was directed, co-written, and co-produced by "Independence Day" and "Godzilla" (1998) producer Dean Devlin, which you might think would work in its favor.

For most people, horror is an acquired taste. The genre explores the darkest, most disturbing parts of ourselves and our psyches, making for stories that can range from grotesque and gory to just downright disturbing. For critics, that may not necessarily be what they look for in a movie, but for horror fans, it is the precise reason they adore the genre. As such, in the ongoing (and endlessly tiresome) culture war between critics and audiences, horror tends to be more divisive than not. Despite the site's questionable operations and easily-manipulated review system, Rotten Tomatoes continues to be the battleground in which this war is waged.

Each case is different: Some films have ardent fandoms behind them, others garner cult followings over time, and some premiere to critical fanfare but simply do not age with audiences. Whatever the case may be, these 12 horror films feature significant enough gaps in their...

It was another bleak weekend at the box office, and not even a couple of cinematic legends could help lift the tide. Robert De Niro may be one of the greatest actors ever, but he's no longer an automatic "butts in seats" movie star. Audience turnout is very much dependent on the movie he's in. So, even though he's playing dual roles in director Barry Levinson's "The Alto Knights," the mob drama unfolding on screen wasn't interesting enough for that De Niro vs. De Niro hook to matter all that much.

Hailing from Warner Bros., "The Alto Knights" opened to just $3.1 million domestically this past weekend, landing at number six on the charts and making for a disastrous start. The movie reportedly carries a $50 million production budget before marketing costs and mob movies tend to have limited appeal overseas, so things aren't looking good as far as this one's long-term prospects are concerned.

Gerard Butler's Nick "Big Nick" O'Brien has one of the best entrances in film history in "Den of Thieves." Upon rolling up to the aftermath of a deadly shoot-out at a local breakfast joint, the profoundly ethically-questionable Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Detective then proceeds to casually pick up and munch down on a frosted donut from a blood-splattered box on the ground.

Big Nick is a lot like the movie around him. Written and directed by Christian Gudegast, 2018's "Den of Thieves" is a sleazy, booze-soaked tale of badly-behaved cops and charismatic robbers that's both extremely derivative (it's "Heat" with a hangover) and so aggressively heterosexual (between all the machismo and gun fetishizing on display) it comes off as homoerotic, but that's also part of the charm. It was an unexpected hit to boot, pulling in more than $80 million at the box office on a $30 million budget in theaters.

In Stephen King's "Firestarter," a child develops the ability to harness pyrokinesis. This kid, Charlie, is soon hounded by a government agency known as The Shop, who had conducted drug trials on her parents, Andy and Vicky, when they were young. Nefarious without limits, the Shop kills Vicky and kidnaps Charlie, but Andy is able to use his limited powers (known as The Push) to search for his daughter and flee with her. "Firestarter" fleshes out this perilous journey, honing in on Charlie's inner struggle and how everyone around her wants to control her powers one way or another. It's a novel about cultivating autonomy, which often takes root when one faces the brutality of the world firsthand. Although "Firestarter" isn't as thematically dense as, say, "Carrie" or "The Stand," it examines the making and unmaking of identity, with society forever ready to intrude if someone dares to stray from the norm.

If you've been hearing a lot about the new Netflix original series "Adolescence" recently, I'm not surprised. This dark, troubling, and gripping story of a young boy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who's accused of a grievous crime features four episodes — all of which are shot in a single take — making this limited series a technical marvel by any standard. /Film's own Chris Evangelista declared, upon its release, that "Adolescence" might just be the best original Netflix series in the entire history of the streaming service, and frankly, I'm not inclined to argue with him. Across those four episodes, "Adolescence" explores Jamie's disturbed psyche and, stunningly, makes a huge reveal right at the start: at the end of the very first episode, we see video proof of Jamie murdering a young girl from his class.

Thanks to this, the series is able to explore the motivations behind Jamie's brutal attack,...

Maika Monroe raised her profile significantly with what was arguably 2024's most terrifying horror movie "Longlegs." The film from director Osgood Perkins, who's just now delivered the Stephen King adaptation "The Monkey," was a modest sensation when it arrived last summer, propelled in part by a marketing campaign that did everything right to make "Longlegs" a hit. Though the film didn't quite live up to the frankly unreasonable amount of hype this marketing campaign built, it was a big enough hit that it not only made distributor Neon feel like an emerging A24 rival worthy of the label, it introduced wider audiences to both Perkins and Monroe, both of whom had been toiling away for years before "Longlegs" captured the public's attention.

In Monroe's case, the Australian actress gained some notoriety for her role in 2014's "It Follows," one of the best horror movies of the 2000s — even if it...

For whatever reason, Sony became convinced that crafting an entire franchise set in the Spider-Man universe without featuring the webslinger himself was a good idea. In fairness, Kevin Feige and the folks at Marvel Studios did create the most successful box office franchise in history by taking lesser-known characters and giving them the A-list character treatment. But the key thing there was that those early Marvel Cinematic Universe films were actually pretty good. At the least, they were solid blockbuster entertainment. Sony, on the other hand, has pumped out a string of truly bewildering films based on the Marvel characters to which it owns the rights.

"Morbius," for example, became nothing short of a joke upon its 2022 release, with Sony then trying to double down on that joke with a theatrical re-release that also flopped. Just in case the studio hadn't already doomed its then lamentably-titled "Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters (Spumc)," Sony delivered,...

"Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning" was a bit of a disappointment. As Chris Evangelista put it in his /Film review, the film felt like it was "cobbled together in between big set pieces." Its biggest sin (other than killing off a certain fan-favorite character) was making the story come across as barely stitched together between set pieces, which is never a good sign.

Now, whether it is the actual final film in the franchise or not, "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning" is at the very least a movie with higher stakes than any "Mission: Impossible" movie before it. In case you need a reminder, "Dead Reckoning" ended on a big cliffhanger. The human villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) got away, leaving Ethan Hunt and his team scrambling and on a race against the clock to find a sunken submarine and use a mysterious and convoluted key to stop the evil A.

This post contains major spoilers for "Heart Eyes."

One part rom-com, one part slasher movie, all bloody good fun, "Heart Eyes" is in many ways the perfect Valentine's Day entertainment. It's got a masked killer themed around the holiday, a genuinely fun "will they, won't they" romance at the center of it between Olivia Holt's Ally and Mason Gooding's Jay, and it plays expertly with two well-trodden genres. Credit to director Josh Ruben, who previously helmed the acclaimed video game movie "Werewolves Within," and screenwriters Phillip Murphy, Christopher Landon ("Happy Death Day"), and Michael Kennedy ("Freaky"). 

/Film's Chris Evangelista called "Heart Eyes" a "stylish and sweet" ride in his review, and the fun doesn't stop when the credits roll either, as the flick included a pretty fun post-credits scene that plays with a very common slasher movie trope. The film centers on a serial killer who has been...

The "Terrifier" films aren't exactly known for being indirect. Creator Damien Leone has created a saga of unrelenting barbarity, with burgeoning horror icon Art the Clown slashing his way across a handful of short films and three features. Indeed, 2022's "Terrifier 2" proved too brutal for even some seasoned horror fans, with reports of walk-outs helping propel the film to relatively impressive box office success. In 2024, Leone continued his mission to depict the most upsettingly graphic kills possible with "Terrifier 3," itself a film that prompted walkouts simply due to a stomach-churning opening sequence.

This a film series that has seen Art the Clown sever a woman in half from the pelvis up, whip a victim with their own intestines, and absolutely decimate the body of a young girl in a scene that happens to represent Leone's favorite kill and which has become the high watermark for unadulterated gore in the "Terrifier" saga.

The writer, director, and stars of "Forrest Gump" regroup after 30 years for a new high-concept drama. You can imagine this premise being easily sold to salivating studio execs. And yet, Robert Zemeckis' "Here" was an abject critical and commercial dud when it debuted in November 2024. What happened? Well, according to critics, the movie is just bad. More specifically it is, according to The Times' Kevin Maher, "like watching the Sims get dementia." What does that mean? You'll have to watch the movie to find out, which you can now readily do over on Netflix.

If, out of pure curiosity, you do decide to stream Zemeckis' misfire, you won't be the only one. Netflixers are currently giving the ill-fated drama a modest reprieve over on the streamer, with "Here" working its way up the most-watched charts. The film's streaming success caps off a month that saw the similarly sentimental sports drama...

Audiences will soon be wired into the brand-new horror film "Companion" by director Drew Hancock. The film follows a young couple whose weekend turns south when they get caught up in a murder. Josh thinks things are on lockdown until his girlfriend Iris begins spiraling out of control. The chaos forces the rest of the group to choose the best course of action in how to deal with Iris involving as little bloodshed as possible, but they fail miserably.

To go into further detail might spoil what the trailers for this clever little film have already revealed. Thankfully, it doesn't stop the movie from being a grand old time and what /Film's Chris Evangelista deemed "the first great film of 2025." Most of the credit goes to its lead, Sophie Thatcher, who perfectly sells "Companion's" biggest trick, which would be a tough task for other actors. Thankfully, Thatcher has enough...

This article contains major spoilers for "Companion."

Warner Bros. has delivered perhaps the first truly great conversation piece movie of 2025 with "Companion." Directed by Drew Hancock and produced by the same sickos who brought us "Barbarian," the tale of a woman realizing that she's actually a robot built to serve is not only very entertaining, but leaves viewers with much to think about. It also works as a pretty unexpected companion piece (no pun intended) to Spike Jonze's 2013 sci-fi gem "Her." While the latter maintains at least some optimism regarding our tech-dominated future, the former is not interested in such hopeful concepts. It's amazing how much can change in a decade.

Hancock's film takes place during a weekend getaway with Josh (Jack Quaid) bringing his companion robot Iris (Sophie Thatcher) to get better acquainted with his friends. Things turn bloody when Iris goes haywire. When she is informed that she's a robot,...

Taylor Sheridan does not lack for chutzpah. The Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of "Hell or High Water" kicked his career into overdrive seven years ago when he launched the new-Western sensation "Yellowstone" on the Paramount Network. Since then, he's been a one-man television hit machine with "Yellowstone" spinoffs "1883" and "1923," as well as "Mayor of Kingstown," "Tulsa King," "Lioness" and "Landman." He is not a man to whom you say "no." I mean, you can say it, but you do so at your peril because the project you just shot down will likely wind up being a smash hit for a competitor.

Sheridan was just a year into building his "Yellowstone" empire when, being one of the busier bees in Hollywood, he hired himself out to rewrite the screenplay for an adaptation of Michael Koryta's thriller novel "Those Who Wish Me Dead." The tale of a reclusive smokejumper who finds herself...

The following contains mild spoilers for "Companion."

"Companion" is the first big surprise of the movie year, a funny, thrilling film with a great cast and an even better twist. As Chris Evangelista wrote in his review for /Film, "'Companion' is the first great film of 2025 — a funny, fast-moving, meticulously crafted horror-thriller with a killer performance from lead Sophie Thatcher."

The film follows Iris (Thatcher), who goes on a weekend getaway trip with her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) to visit a group of his friends at a remote cabin that quickly turns into a chaotic bloodbath. The film also stars Lukas Gage, Harvey Guillén, Megan Suri, and Ruper Friend.

This is a notoriously hard movie to talk about without talking about its premise and the first-act twist, which the second trailer already openly revealed. Still, if you don't want to know anything about what "Companion" is actually about,...

2024's tour de force "The Brutalist" has finally opened wide in the new year, letting audiences see the movie that /Film's Chris Evangelista called an "overwhelming triumph." (The film earns every syllable of that praise and more.) "They don't make movies like this anymore" is trite criticism but "The Brutalist" truly feels like something pulled out of the New Hollywood era; a sprawling epic about American identity and assimilation, like "The Godfather" if Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone was a Jewish architect instead of a mobster. There's even an intermission, a practice long discarded in most modern films.

Adrien Brody leads "The Brutalist" as László Tóth, a Holocaust survivor who comes to America. In the new world, László again finds work as an architect — specifically, in designing a custom community envisioned by an old-money industrialist (Guy Pearce). Brody, who has retreated from the A-list outside of his consistent work with Wes Anderson,...

2025 is off to a slow start at the box office, but that's true of most years. January isn't exactly a marquee month; in fact, it's usually a window for studios to dump movies that they have less faith in. Sure, we get the occasional breakout hit like Liam Neeson's "Taken," but those are more of an exception rather than the rule. As January gives way to February, though, we should be looking at greener pastures. Leading the way will be the new sci-fi horror flick "Companion," which looks to close out this year's crop of January releases on a high note.

Hailing from Warner Bros., first time feature director Drew Hancock's "Companion" is currently looking at an opening in the $10 to $15 million range when it arrives next weekend, per Box Office Theory. WB was thrifty with this one, which carries a mere $10 million price tag. Even with a sizable marketing spend,...

Another day, and another pernicious movie-related rumor has been making the rounds. This time, word began to buzz that 20th Century Studios was "considering" the idea of bringing back acclaimed actor and franchise star Sigourney Weaver to reprise her legendary role as Ellen Ripley in the still-unconfirmed sequel to "Alien: Romulus." This latest report came courtesy of scooper Daniel Richtman (also known by his social media handle DanielRPK) in a recent Patreon post exclusively available to subscribers, claiming that the powers that be were looking into the use of widely prevalent de-aging technology in order to make this version of Ripley period-accurate, as "Romulus" took place roughly 20 years after the events of the original "Alien" movie.

Well, consider this rumor squashed. No less an authority than "Romulus" director and co-writer Fede Álvarez confirmed as much in a post made on X (the website/app formerly and still popularly known as...

What's your favorite season? Why, Awards, of course! Yes, the time has come yet again for everyone to treat movies like sports. Who will win? Who will lose? We'll find out when the 97th Academy Awards are held on March 2, 2025! For now, though, we have the full list of Best Picture nominees to grapple with. As always, there are snubs and surprises, and I'm sure everyone has an opinion about what landed a nom and what got overlooked. For the purposes of this post, though, we're only looking at what we've been given: ten films from the year 2024. In the spirit of the season, we're ranking all ten Best Picture nominees from worst to best.

Read more: The 19 Greatest Movie Couples Of All Time Ranked

10. Emilia Pérez

If you've seen the viral clip of the song "La Vaginoplastia" making the rounds on social media, you already know that no other...

The days of controlling Iris (Sophie Thatcher) are over, and the critics love it. The first reviews for the new AI horror film Companion are beginning to pour in, and director Drew Hancock’s thought-provoking flick currently registers an impressive 96% on the Tomatometer with 23 reviews posted to Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, MovieWeb’s own review of Companion (4.5/5 stars) declares that “the first great film of 2025 stuns in every regard.”

Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting didn't enjoy the sci-fi thriller quite as much (3.5/5 stars), but the writer openly praises the film’s actors: “It’s not the plot that keeps you guessing, but the vibrant ensemble cast committed to Hancock’s zany break-up movie.” Patrick Cavanaugh specifically singles out Thatcher’s performance as the jilted AI companion, Iris, in his review for ComicBook.com:

"[Companion] puts an entirely fresh spin on the well-worn ‘robot gains sentience’ premise, as Sophie Thatcher's empathetic Iris...

After putting his own spin on one of the most famous vampire stories of all time, horror's biggest history nerd is about to go even further into the annals of the past: The Hollywood Reporter has just revealed that Robert Eggers' next project is going to be set in the 13th century, and is due out around Christmas 2026. Naturally, this one will be about werewolves.

The movie is set to be called "Werwulf," and in addition to directing it, "Nosferatu" and "The Witch" filmmaker Eggers is also co-writing the script with Sjón, the Icelandic poet, author, and screenwriter who helped pen "The Northman" in 2022. Despite exploring a more monochromatic color palette with last year's "Nosferatu," THR reports that Eggers has decided to shoot the upcoming film in color after initially planning a black-and-white shoot. He also appears to be getting back to his deeply geeky historically-informed roots, as the outlet's...

Like Rome, no architectural wonder was ever built in a day ... but an AI controversy currently embroiling social media needed only a few hours to imperil one of the year's biggest Oscars frontrunners. "The Brutalist" easily stands as one of 2024's best movies, as /Film's Chris Evangelista reviewed for us. Directed by Brady Corbet from a script by himself and Mona Fastvold, the 215-minute epic tells the story of fictional Jewish architect László Tóth as he emigrates from Hungary in the aftermath of the Holocaust to the United States. Hopelessly separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and left almost entirely on his own in a strange and hostile country, he embarks on a grueling odyssey to make a living as one of the most brilliant architects of his time ... if he can only find someone who recognizes his talents and plucks him from obscurity.

"The Brutalist" is nothing short of a towering,...

January is a historically slow month at the box office. Aside from awards season movies expanding into wider release, there usually aren't too many big films to draw sizable crowds. Of course, that can open the door for the occasional underdog to win the day. Case in point, "Den of Thieves 2: Pantera" is the first new hit of 2025, as the sequel topped the charts this past weekend. Gerard Butler's Big Nick and O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s Donnie still have the juice, it turns out.

The sequel, which was written and directed by Christian Gudegast, opened to $15.5 million domestically, essentially matching the opening of the original "Den of Thieves" ($15.2 million). That's a pretty impressive audience retention, considering that the first film reached theaters in 2018, a full seven years ago. That was also a very different time for the industry, pre-pandemic. Hence, it's nice to see that a mid-budget action...

After the original "Alien" in 1979, every subsequent film seems to have featured certain elements that immediately resulted in backlash among audiences. James Cameron's sequel was criticized for stripping away the horror and replacing it with dumbed-down action, while "Alien 3" represented fan discontentment on a grand scale by killing off beloved heroes Newt and Hicks ... before doing the same with its own leading lady, Ripley. Both of Ridley Scott's prequel films rubbed many viewers the wrong way, despite gaining more and more appreciators over the years, but it's safe to say that last year's "Alien: Romulus" was meant as a much-needed return to form.

In many ways, it did exactly that -- perhaps a little too well, as /Film's Chris Evangelista wrote about in his review -- but it also continued the franchise's grand tradition of alienating (pun most definitely intended) audiences with another divisive creative choice.

This time around,...

Daniel Day-Lewis as Count Dracula? In another world, director Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" could've given us just that.

"Nosferatu" evokes images of silent movie actor Max Shreck in a bald cap and pointed ears as he played the vampire Count Orlok. But in Eggers' new "Nosferatu," Orlok actor Bill Skarsgård looks nothing like that — or himself, even.

Similar to Skarsgård's performance as Pennywise in "It," he totally submits himself over to the character, disappearing behind make-up and (in "Nosferatu") an echo effect on his voice. I agree wholeheartedly with /Film's Chris Evangelista that when you watch Skarsgård's Orlok, you don't feel as if you're seeing a performance, but a true evil walking on screen. In that way, it's the most fully inhabited villain performance I can recall since Heath Ledger's Joker in "The Dark Knight."

Now, this can all sound like a backhanded compliment, treating Skarsgård as a mere stand-in...

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...

The first reactions to the Gerard Butler action sequel, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, are now in. So, how does this fare against the actor’s previous outings as an action hero? Could this long-awaited heist thriller follow-up make the perfect start to the new year when it lands in theaters on January 10? Fortunately, it sounds very much like the action flick will leave both Butler and genre fans ecstatic. Let's dig in...

Chris Evangelista of Slashfilm found so much to love about Den of Thieves 2: Pantera and Butler’s return as Nicholas "Big Nick" O'Brien, and now hopes for many, many more installments in the franchise.

“Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera rips. Takes the dirtbag action charms of the first and adds a buddy comedy angle. I genuinely can’t get enough of the perpetually hungover Big Nick O’Brien. Keep making these movies and I will keep watching them.

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...