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This piece was occasioned by Issue 7 of Notebook magazine as part of a broader exploration of the unfilmable. The magazine is available via direct subscription or in select stores around the world.Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends.Unlike the wuxia warrior who soars to rafters and treetops, the fighters in the Rurouni Kenshin films (2012–21) move low and fast. Rather than immaculate choreography immaculately framed—the meat and potatoes of golden-age Hong Kong martial arts cinema—their swordplay is less studied, a quicksilver flow of action and reactions. And unlike the conventional samurai standoff, in which opponents take their time sizing each other up from a distance, the action is pure, intimate bedlam. Blades clash everywhere, from tip to hilt, bringing combatants up close; when an attack is dodged, it misses by mere inches. Some of the most iconic moments involve the hero, Himura Kenshin (Takeru Satoh), weaving tightly through a throng of opponents,...

Charlie Kaufman is preparing to take his new short film “How to Shoot a Ghost” to the Venice International Film Festival next month, but it won’t be long before cinephiles with public library cards get a chance to watch it. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that Kanopy — the ad-free streaming service free for many library cardholders to use — has signed on as a producer and the exclusive library and educational distributor of the film.

“How to Shoot a Ghost” is directed by Kaufman and written by the poet Eva H.D., who previously wrote Kaufman’s 2023 short “Jackals & Fireflies.” Per an official synopsis, the film follows “two newly dead young people meet in the streets of Athens, amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of history. One a translator, the other a photographer, they were outsiders in life; in death they struggle with the residue of their longings and mistakes. They wander the city together,...

With Liam Neeson about to step into a role nobody thought could—or should—be rebooted, there’s never been a better time to revisit The Naked Gun trilogy. Fortunately, you can do just that for the grand total of zero dollars. Beginning August 1, Paramount will make all three original Naked Gun films available for free streaming on Pluto TV. That’s right: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!(1988), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994) will all be rolling out across Pluto’s on-demand comedy catalog — just in time for the theatrical debut of the rebooted Naked Gun starring Big Liam.

To many, the original trilogy is sacred comedy ground. Anchored by Leslie Nielsen’s stone-faced brilliance as Lt. Frank Drebin, these films set a high watermark for parody that few — if any — have matched. Nearly 40 years later,...

Jenna Ortega's Wednesday role launched the actress into the public eye. Wednesday is the number one English-language show on Netflix, but Ortega was initially terrified about playing such an iconic character.

Ortega spoke to Radio Times about her feelings. “I was scared s***less," she said. "I didn’t know what I was doing, I met Tim once before starting to create the character. There was just an obscene amount of pressure and worry and I wasn’t sleeping… We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it.”

She used that fear to her own advantage. “I mean that in an exciting way. I love being able to sink my teeth into something and give it my all," she clarified.

Ortega took cello lessons, learned German for the sake of just a few lines, and did extensive research on Wednesday Addams. “Because a lot of what...

Although he never loomed quite as large as Will Ferrell or Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan was a major player on "Saturday Night Live" from the moment he signed on. He was famous for playing jittery characters, perhaps most of all for the monkey Mr. Peepers. It's a character that's aggressive, weird, and brimming with confidence. If Kattan faltered for even a moment here, if he'd shown even the tiniest sign of self-doubt, the sketch wouldn't have worked. Instead, it became one of the most famous "SNL" characters to come out of the '90s: 

But despite how popular Kattan was in the late '90s and early '00s, he rarely returns for "SNL" cameos these days, nor does he seem to be in many TV shows or movies lately. How could the guy behind Mango and Gay Hitler become such an afterthought in "SNL" history? Officially, Chris Kattan left...

Bob Odenkirk is only a few short weeks away from finally stepping back into the ass-kicking shoes of Hutch Mansell for Nobody 2. Before he sets off for his violent vacation in theaters, however, he swung by San Diego Comic-Con for a conversation with Steve Weintraub at Collider's Inside Hollywood panel. While the Better Call Saul star was there delivering some behind-the-scenes stories from his impressive career, we were also able to debut a convention-exclusive sneak peek at the carnage his workaholic assassin will be caught in during his attempts to have a normal family outing. Collider's Samantha Coley was in attendance, describing an action-packed and hilarious homage to the movies of Jackie Chan that's filled to the brim with fun gags.

In the lengthy sequence, Hutch sends his family off on a duck boat ride before a few suspicious individuals arrive with bad intentions. With a clearly fake story about a tummy ache,...

Nonlinear storytelling wasn’t invented by Christopher Nolan; it’s a tool that’s as old as the medium of literature and motion pictures itself. Among the earliest examples are apparently Homer’s Iliad, Vyasa’s Mahabharata, and several stories in The Arabian Nights. When it comes to cinema, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane can be credited for both perfecting this gimmick and making it palatable to the general public. As for television, shows like True Detective (the first season), Pachinko, Sharp Objects, Dark, and The Haunting of Hill House are the pinnacle of nonlinear narratives, at least for me, primarily because the timeline jumps gave the themes a lot of depth and fleshed out the characters in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if it was given to us straight. However, much like anything that’s popular, talentless...

Easterseals Southern California is collaborating with IMDb and IMDbPro to highlight disability representation in honor of Disability Pride Month and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July. The partnership will last until the end of August.

“To see the disability community featured so prominently on IMDb, our longtime partner, is incredibly impactful,” Nancy Weintraub, chief advancement officer of Essc, said. “It helps us truly reflect the spirit of disability pride, recognizing the influence, voice and achievements of people with disabilities across industries, especially media.”

According to the CDC, 25% of U.S. residents or more than 70 million people across the country reported having a disability in 2022. The longtime partnership between IMDb and IMDbPro for their annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge acknowledges professionals from the disability community who have also worked closely with IMDb. The collaboration features curated content in the IMDb Spotlight special section, including exclusive video interviews,...

The Misquote Heard 'Round the Web Back in 2022, during Variety’s 'Actors on Actors' series, Jennifer Lawrence added a bold- if inaccurate- claim to her résumé: that she was the first woman to lead an action movie. “Nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie,” she said, seated across from Viola Davis. She was swiftly dragged across the internet, from Fox News segments to YouTube takedowns, with seemingly every outlet eager to remind her just how wrong she was. In a follow-up with 'The Hollywood Reporter', Lawrence clarified she had simply misspoken- nervous in the presence of a “living legend,” Viola Davis. Honestly, fair. I wouldn’t be able to string two words together if I was sitting across from arguably the greatest actress of her generation. And in a way, something positive did come out of the backlash: a renewed spotlight on...

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival has announced its full lineup, which will see Radu Jude, Abdellatif Kechiche and Ben Rivers competing for its prestigious Golden Leopard.

Jude, who won the Special Jury Prize only two years ago – for “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” – will bring the much-anticipated “Dracula.” In a conversation with Variety, the Romanian director said: “If ‘Kontinental’ 25’ is my answer to Roberto Rossellini, let’s say that ‘Dracula’ is my love letter to Ed Wood.”

“There’s a lot of talk about A.I. these days, but after this film, you won’t talk about it in the same way. It’s a very radical film, a crazy political comedy,” said Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro.

Among all the 17 world premieres in Locarno’s main International Competition, Abdellatif Kechiche will continue his controversial saga with “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due” – a...

Although they don’t advertise it, action thrillers like Prime Video’s Heads Of State and Netflix’s The Old Guard 2 owe a clear debt to the martial arts films of the previous century…

On a farm in a remote part of Belarus, the British Prime Minister and the United States of America are in the middle of a punch-up with a gang of young-ish thugs wearing tracksuits. Both leaders are big chaps, but they’re outnumbered and older than their opponents; their victory ultimately comes as much from pure luck as their strength. The fight reaches its comedic zenith with one goon left hopelessly coiled up in barbed wire while another’s set on fire by a stray cigarette.

This is Heads Of State, director Ilya Naishuller’s enjoyably daft action thriller which emerged on Prime Video on the 2nd July (you can listen to our extended interview...

What is a classic? It's hard to define, and definitely overused. How many new things claim to be a "classic," yet fall from favor once the hype train moves on? Classics take time. Once the initial praise has passed and moved onto something shiny and new, we're left with the movies that people still talk about years or even decades later. Sure, many Academy Award winners are now considered classics, but many more are not (check out the worst Best Picture Oscar Winners here). Meanwhile, some certifiable classics never won Best Picture or were even nominated.

For this list we're defining "classic movie" as a film that was made before 1990. Not to make you feel old, but that gives the movie more than three decades to make its case for being a classic. I'll also only be including one director's best movie, lest this list become exclusively Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford,...

Combine the three streaming platforms listed below to get access to a wonderful selection of silent films.

Movies today can be awfully…well, loud. Even if the particular movie you’re watching doesn’t drown out the dialogue with sound effects and music as so many seem to, many may yearn to return to a simpler time in cinema when movies weren’t only quieter, they were silent.

If you’re looking to watch silent movies at a price that won’t ruin your monthly entertainment budget, we’ve got the perfect solution for you. Check out our budget-friendly bundle of three services to let you watch a wide range of silent films at a great price.

What’s the best budget streaming bundle for watching silent movies?

HBO Max

Kanopy

YouTube

HBO Max

There’s only one paid streaming service in this bundle to begin with: the Warner Bros. Discovery...

Jeffrey Doe’s documentary, “Wick Is Pain,” arrives not as a simple behind-the-scenes featurette, but as an essential autopsy of a cultural phenomenon that, by all logic, should never have happened. It meticulously chronicles how the John Wick saga, now a monolithic titan of modern action cinema, began its life as a precarious, almost stillborn independent film.

The series that projects such effortless, hermetically-sealed cool was, in reality, born from absolute chaos and desperation. This is the central, delicious irony the film explores with candid insight. It peels back the curtain on a mythology we take for granted to reveal a production teetering on the brink of collapse, a high-wire act performed without a net over a canyon of debt.

We learn that hours before filming was to commence, the entire enterprise was short millions of dollars and destined for the scrapheap of cinematic history. This wasn’t just a...

When Spider-Man: No Way Home was still being made, Marvel had one of its biggest secrets to keep—Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back as their versions of Spider-Man.

Fans had been guessing it for months, with theories and leaks flying around the internet, especially on Reddit. But nothing was ever confirmed before the movie hit theaters. Marvel made sure not to show Tobey or Andrew in any trailer, promo, or poster.

Now, director Jon Watts has revealed that a Reddit post actually changed how those two characters were introduced in the movie. During a panel at the Mediterrane Film Festival, hosted by Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Watts explained what happened behind the scenes.

Related: ‘Savage Hulk’ Will Reportedly Appear in ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ According to a Suprising Leak

He said that the pandemic helped them keep things quiet because everything was shot on closed stages and...

It’s hard to imagine now, but back when Spider-Man: No Way Home was still being made, one of Marvel’s biggest secrets was that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back.

Fans had been talking about it nonstop online, and by the time the movie hit theaters, most people had a strong feeling it was happening, even though Marvel kept both of them completely out of all the trailers and posters.

Now, director Jon Watts is explaining how one Reddit post actually changed the way those two Spider-Men were introduced in the movie.

Watts recently spoke at the Mediterrane Film Festival during a panel hosted by Collider’s Steve Weintraub. When asked how the team kept things so secret, Watts said that the pandemic actually helped. “It was in the middle of the pandemic. So it was actually much easier to keep things a secret because we couldn’t really leave the stage…...

The Empire.The recent release of Bruno Dumont’s The Empire (2024), an absurdist space opera focalized around the inhabitants of a small fishing village in northern France, confirms that the past decade inaugurated a distinct period in the French director’s career. With their unblinking treatment of spiritual subject matter, Dumont’s first two features, La Vie de Jésus (1997) and L’humanité (1999), led many to declare him an heir to Robert Bresson. And while the outsized violence of his next film, Twentynine Palms (2003), drew worries that Dumont might be succumbing to a “tendency to the willfully transgressive,” as James Quandt wrote in his polemic against the New French Extremity, his subsequent work undercut such charges: Flanders (2006) and Hadewijch (2009), both unsparing but more restrained, returned to more familiar terrain, with the latter even featuring a direct homage to the swamp-water conclusion of Bresson’s Mouchette (1967). The appearance of Li’l Quinquin in 2014, however,...

There are not many franchises that have maintained the same high level of pulse-pounding quality that the “John Wick” series has. Across its five film installments, the franchise has delivered one breathtaking action set piece after another. Even “Ballerina,” the franchise’s new, Ana de Armas-led spinoff, has a second half that is practically overflowing with some of the most astonishing fights and moments of pure action mayhem that you will likely ever see on the big screen.

“John Wick” set a high bar for itself early on, and yet it has continued to hit and surpass it. In honor of “Ballerina,” here are the franchise’s seven best action scenes, ranked.

“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (Lionsgate) 7. Knives Out (“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum”)

This standout scene from 2019’s “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” follows Keanu Reeves’ John as he ends up in a fight against multiple assassins in...

It's very strange that it took so long for Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan to break out in North America. He was a massive star in Hong Kong throughout the 1970s, and his films are exciting and fun. For some reason, though, that success didn't translate very well to American audiences, despite a few tries by major American studios.

In 1980, for instance, Warner Bros. and Golden Harvest teamed up to make "The Big Brawl," a.k.a. "Battle Creek Brawl," an American production that was meant to bring Jackie Chan stateside. "The Big Brawl" starred Chan, playing a gentle restaurateur in 1930s Chicago, who runs afoul of the mob. It co-starred Kristine DeBell, José Ferrer, Mako, Rosalind Chao, and wrestler Hard-Boiled Haggerty. The film was actually a hit, but Warner Bros. was disappointed that it wasn't as big as the recent Bruce Lee film "Enter the Dragon." Chan was...

Tom Cruise did his first underwater scene for “Legend” (1985), followed by executing far more demanding scenes in “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) and most famously “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015), where he held his breath for six-and-a-half minutes. But when writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, who has made eleven films with Cruise, was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, he made clear the duo walked away from “Rogue Nation” deeply dissatisfied with the underwater set piece.

“Shooting in water is extremely challenging and very frustrating,” said McQuarrie, who at one point swore never to do another underwater scene.

According the McQuarrie, the biggest problem is how time-consuming these scenes can be to shoot, having been limited to only six setups a day working in the tank on “Rogue Nation.” He also said there were a number of mistakes made in how the underwater scenes had been designed for the 2015 “M:i” movie, including its over-reliance on visual effects.

If Keanu Reeves’ John Wick is modern action’s heir apparent to Buster Keaton, then Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro may be its Jackie Chan.

Series creator and mastermind Chad Stahelski has been anything but shy in sharing his affinity for Old Stone Face, with all four Wick films positively packed with references to the action genre’s first great star, and Len Wiseman’s From the World of John Wick: Ballerina does not break from that mold. But Macarro is no Wick, and where Reeves attacks with a stoic, nearly tranquilized delivery, barreling through a crumbling world teeming with inveterate assassins, de Armas is both brasher and more human. Perhaps it is the difference between a relative novice in this world and a legendary veteran, but she is a teary-eyed killer whose trail is marked with sensitivity. Wick wants solace; Macarro wants justice.

That does seem to be part...

Four years before Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” premiered at Cannes on May 18, the idea for the film was born at the festival as the visionary director presented “The French Dispatch.” Benicio del Toro had a small yet memorable role in the movie as an imprisoned artist, but Anderson wanted more for the Oscar-winning actor.

“I had a sort of image in my mind of Benicio playing a Euro business tycoon,” Anderson told Variety via email. “As if he has walked out of an Antonioni movie with his sunglasses.”

At first, del Toro thought his part would be a similar size to “The French Dispatch,” and didn’t get his hopes up. But then he read the script. “[Anderson] sent me the next 20 pages and I’m still in it and then the next 20 pages and I’m still in it,” del Toro said in an interview with Variety at Cannes.

Keanu Reeves found a second life in his career thanks to the John Wick franchise, an over-the-top smorgasbord of violence utilizing gun-fu and various weapon-based action scenes. In the franchise, Reeves plays the titular character, a former assassin for the High Table who finds himself targeted by his former employers for breaking one of their only rules. By John Wick: Chapter 4, the franchise had developed an almost Buster Keaton-styled action format, making some people wonder if anything in the film was realistic.

Reeves worked hard to ensure that he performed many of his own choreographed fight scenes and trained to pull off the moves as best he could. It also helped that director Chad Stahelski is a former stunt double, so he knows what is and isn't possible for these movies' giant action sequences, making it one of the most exciting experiences in film today. However, a former Navy...

If Mia Threapleton had to pick an avatar for her creative awakening as a kid, she might choose a fox. She could have gone with a lion, the animal she’d pretended to be during summer camps and after-school “acting clubs” with her friends, and which gave her an early peek at the thrill of performing for others. Or maybe a 1930s gangster, courtesy of the childhood viewings of Bugsy Malone; Threapleton vividly remembers seeing a very young Jodie Foster, along with dozens of other kid actors pretending to be...

Hayley Atwell disclosed on The Tonight Show that she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant while filming a hand-to-hand sequence for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, prompting new discussion about stunt safety for expectant performers. Interviews, trade reports and medical guidelines indicate the production built additional safety measures around the actor, whose insistence on doing her own fight work coincided with a film already distinguished by an outsized budget and headline-grabbing stunts.

Hayley Atwell surprised audiences when she told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that a clip from Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning shows her “eight-and-a-half months pregnant” yet still throwing punches beside Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. Speaking later with online outlet CinemaExpress, the 43-year-old actor added that producers offered a stunt double, “but I’d worked too hard—let me do it,” crediting the crew for “taking such good care” of her during repeated reshoots.

Atwell joined...

Freak accidents are inevitable in the Final Destination franchise because they're all part of death's design. However, close calls also happened behind the scenes in the original movie, with one stunt causing serious injury.

Final Destination set the template for every film in the franchise; Death comes via freak accidents. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, producer Craig Perry recalled how one stunt led to a serious injury. In the film's final sequence, Alex (Devon Sawa) is almost hit by a bus, which swerves and hits a utility pole. The pole's fastening popped, ricocheted off a building, and hit a stunt person. "He had 47 stitches and his skin flapped over his face," Perry said. "The shot is in the movie, but he stood up, and he goes, 'Uh, medic?'"

It was all in a day's work for the stunt person, who just shrugged off the mishap. "He wound up coming back to set later that night,...

Editor's note: This article contains mild spoilers for Final Destination: Bloodlines as seen in the trailer.

Over six films, the Final Destination franchise has given us some absolutely wild, jaw-dropping kills — but that’s kind of the point. Unlike other horror favorites that hinge on a killer who just won’t seem to die, the villain in these movies is faceless. And, when the all-knowing presence of death is your villain, you’ve got to get creative. If following a log truck gives you an extreme sense of dread, or if you triple-check before you cross the street, we’ve finally got someone for you to blame — Craig Perry. Since the very first Final Destination followed Devon Sawa’s visionary, Alex Browning, as he attempted to save his life and the lives of others aboard that doomed aircraft, Perry has served as a producer on the franchise. Like death’s design,...

Nearly 75 years have passed since the release of arguably one of the greatest movies ever made, and a stone-cold classic of film noir — Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, who would go on to helm other Oscar winners like Marilyn Monroe's Some Like it Hot and the Jack Lemmon rom-com The Apartment, the feature was a sensation from the moment of its release in 1950, earning 11 Academy Award nominations, three wins, and, eventually, was among the first films to be preserved in the National Film Registry. Yet, one thing the cinematic masterpiece has lacked is a proper restoration in 4K Ultra HD for modern viewers. That's about to change this summer with a new physical and digital release. Collider can exclusively share the official trailer made from restored footage of the Paramount classic.

Immediately, the trailer whisks viewers back to Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, which is looking crisper than ever.

London, England – May 12: (L to R) Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer and Christopher McQuarrie attend the BFI Chair’s dinner where Tom Cruise was awarded a BFI Fellowship at The Rosewood on May 12, 2025 in London, England.

Photo by Dave Benett In London, the British Film Institute (BFI) bestowed its highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, upon the one and only Tom Cruise. The prestigious award was presented at the annual BFI Chair’s Dinner, hosted by BFI Chair Jay Hunt at the elegant Rosewood Hotel. Christopher McQuarrie, a close friend and longtime collaborator London, England – May 12: Tom Cruise attends the BFI Chair’s dinner where he was awarded a BFI Fellowship at The Rosewood on May 12, 2025 in London, England.

Photo by Dave Benett of Tom Cruise, presented him with the Fellowship in a heartfelt tribute. After working together on cinematic landmarks for almost two decades, McQuarrie expressed his admiration for...

The universe, it seems, possesses a rather grim accountant, one with an unyielding penchant for balancing the books on human existence, especially for those audacious enough to smudge an entry. This meticulous, if macabre, ledger-keeper makes a grand re-entry after what feels like an eon in the rapidly decaying memory of pop culture with Final Destination: Bloodlines.

This is the sixth chapter in a saga dedicated to the proposition that Death is not merely an event but an artist of baroque, Rube-Goldbergian catastrophe. This time, the unseen force’s attention narrows, with an almost aristocratic focus, from the randomly fortunate to a specific lineage, a family tree whose every branch is marked for an exceptionally creative pruning. One anticipates a familiar canvas of visceral terror, splashes of uncomfortable mirth, and fatality sequences of a truly… imaginative bent.

The film arrives not as a mere echo of its forebears but with aspirations to graft new,...

Wamg’s St. Louis and Los Angeles teams attended the screening of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on Monday evening. Starring Tom Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the last film ended on a literal cliffhanger, having just survived a vast locomotive plunging off a bridge, Ethan Hunt and his fellow Imf team members – Ving Rhames’ Luther, Simon Pegg’s Benji, and converts to the cause, Grace, played by Hayley Atwell – face an uncertain future.

St. Louis writer Jim Batts first reaction out of the early preview was “Tom Cruise and his cast, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, along with a talented behind-the-camera crew, once again take movie audiences on a spectacular around-the-globe “thrill-ride”, combining a “ripped-from-the-headlines” plot with some of the most amazing action stunt sequences ever committed to film. From a sunken submarine search to a breathtaking bi-plane battle, this fantastic film is a superior entry in the nearly thirty-year-old franchise.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning could be the last time fans see Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt risk life and limb to save humanity against various threats. If this is the final Mission: Impossible movie, critics are divided on whether the franchise is going out with a bang or a whimper, as reflected in the first critical reactions before its release.

Per X (formerly Twitter), several critics offered their thoughts about The Final Reckoning following advanced screenings, sharing mixed responses to the eighth Mission: Impossible film. Gizmodo critic Germain Lussier praised The Final Reckoning's action sequences, but lamented how "long" and "repetitive" the film is. Discussing Film's Andrew Salazar went further, suggesting it "comes nowhere near" the most recent installments and "felt nothing" by the end. Additionally, freelance writer Reyna Cervantes claimed the film committed some of "the biggest sins that modern blockbusters can have."

#MissionImpossible: The Final Reckoning...

It's all been leading to this. For the eighth and (potentially) final time, Tom Cruise has put his life on the line to bring pure cinema to the masses with "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning." This latest installment of the action franchise has been a long time coming, especially after 2023's "Dead Reckoning" ended on a fairly literal cliffhanger. Ethan Hunt came up against the greatest foe he's ever encountered in decades while working for the Impossible Mission Force -- relevantly enough, a nefarious artificial intelligence known only as "The Entity." With every country's intelligence community looking for ways to turn such a superpower to their own agendas, Hunt and his tight-knit team of agents had to go rogue (of course) and do everything they could to stop this Entity and its human ally, the mysterious Gabriel (Esai Morales), from essentially taking over the world.

Where "Dead Reckoning" (formerly...

They’ve chosen to accept it with some caveats.

Paramount lifted the social embargo on Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning late Monday night, two days before the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The early response from critics and influencers suggests that reviews will be mixed.

“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is dull and dysfunctional in a way I didn't think this franchise was capable of,” Indiewire critic David Ehrlich, a longtime fan of the series, wrote on Twitter/X. “Setpieces are obviously incredible, but as someone so supportive of Tom Cruise's crusade to save the movies and whatnot, this was a massive heartbreaker.”

“Director Chris McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise truly take Mission: Impossible to the next level with The Final Reckoning. Absolutely astonishing action moments meet a sprawling story with many nods to past M:i films. It's the biggest, wildest and most consequential Mission movie yet,...

In James Mangold's safe but enjoyable "A Complete Unknown," Bob Dylan, as played by Timothée Chalamet (who just missed out on the Best Actor Oscar) tells his girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), "People make up their past. They remember what they want, they forget the rest." The legendary musician is notorious for doing just that, spinning questionable tales about his own life in a tradition he's very much kept alive throughout his career. His 2019 "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story," for example, was ostensibly a documentary but came packed with tall tales and fictionalized accounts of non-events, all presented as if they were incontrovertible fact.

This penchant for elaboration and misdirection, combined with his massive success and prolific output, has helped Dylan attain a kind of mythical status in pop culture. As such, you're never really sure which stories about the man are actually true — and there are many of them.

The Museum of Modern Art is spring cleaning its archives for a special ode to Old Hollywood. The exhibit “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography,” which will open June 28, 2025 and be on display through June 21, 2026, features the best studio shots of iconic stars such as Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Harry Belafonte, and more.

This is the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be showcased from the Museum Department of Film’s film stills archive since 1993. “Face Value” will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, with studio photography of Joan Crawford, Louis Armstrong, Carole Lombard, Louise Brooks, Mia Farrow, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Buster Keaton, Anna May Wong, W. C. Fields, Hattie McDaniel, Lupe Velez, Mae West, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Spencer Tracy, and Oprah Winfrey, in addition to the aforementioned stars. Historical figures such as Jackie Robinson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,...

Tom Cruise is going all-out in what could be his final Mission: Impossible film; the trailers offered a glimpse of his latest stunt scene. Other actors might throw up while wing-walking on a plane, but for Cruise, it's just another day of filming.

Tom Cruise one-ups himself with every Mission: Impossible sequel, but he reached new heights (literally) in The Final Reckoning. The trailer teased the film's key stunt: Cruise dead-hanging from the wing of a biplane. Others might shirk at the prospect of doing that stunt for real, but the actor confirmed it was a childhood dream fulfilled. "I remember seeing old footage of wing-walking," he told People. "Those aircraft were only traveling at, I don't know, 40, 50 miles an hour. This aircraft is up to over 120 miles an hour. Going out there, I was realizing that it takes your breath away."

Cruise has a knack for death-defying stunt scenes.

The Locarno Film Festival will hand its Pardo alla Carriera career achievement award to veteran actor Jackie Chan during this year’s edition, which runs August 6-16.

Chan will pick up the award on Aug 6. The actor will also introduce his films Project A (1983) and Police Story (1985) as part of the tribute and take part in a Q&a session on August 10.

“Director, producer, actor, screenwriter, choreographer, singer, athlete, and daredevil stuntman, Jackie Chan is both a key figure in contemporary Asian cinema and one whose influence has rewritten the rules of Hollywood cinema,” Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said in a statement.

“From his years at the China Drama Academy under Master Yu Jim-Yuen, working at a very young age as a stuntman in King Hu’s masterpiece A Touch of Zen, Chan has continually reinvented martial arts cinema and much beyond it. A pure comic talent,...

Hong Kong star Jackie Chan is to be honoured with the Pardo Alla Carriera award at the 78th Locarno Film Festival (August 6-16).

The award will recognise Chan’s career to date, which spans more than 150 films over six decades as an actor, martial arts stuntman and filmmaker. He will receive the honour on August 9 on Locarno’s Piazza Grande.

Chan will also introduce 1983 action-comedy Project A and 1985 classic Police Story, which he both directed and starred in, at the festival. He will also take part in an on-stage conversation that is open to the public on August 10.

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The Locarno Film Festival will honor Jackie Chan with a lifetime career award honoring the martial arts master who helped define Hong Kong action cinema before becoming a Hollywood mainstay.

Chan is “beloved for action films that bridged the gap between East and West,” the Swiss event dedicated to indie cinema noted in a statement.

Chan, who made his name in martial-arts films in his native Hong Kong before establishing himself in Hollywood with 1995’s “Rumble in the Bronx” and then achieving global attention in the wildly popular “Rush Hour” films, will be making the trek to the Swiss fest where he will introduce his early films “Project A” (1983) and “Police Story” (1985) – both of which he directed and starring in – as part of the tribute.

Chan will hold an onstage conversation in Locarno on Aug. 10.

A far more complete filmmaker than is widely appreciated, Chan has co-directed, stunt-directed, financed or...

Oh, for the life of a movie star! To be able to pretend for a living, and in return face the adulation of an adoring public! Except, of course, when one doesn't.

No actor sets out to make a failure, and few seek to be hated, but many over the years have taken on roles that showered them in backlash. Whether it was the role itself that was deemed inappropriate or their particular performance of it, some actors have been associated with roles that risked alienating huge chunks of the public. Some dealt with it better than others: it comes with the territory for veterans but can be devastating for newcomers every so often, though the scorn is deserved.

Some of the names listed below managed to turn things around and prove the haters wrong. Others dug in and made things worse. However they took it, here are 15 of the...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

Tom Gunning is celebrated in a weekend-long series featuring M on 35mm, Hal Hartley’s Flirt, and an avant-garde program; films by Buster Keaton and Renny Harlin play in See It Big: Stunts!

Nitehawk Cinema

A print of Josef von Sternberg’s The Devil is a Woman screens early on Saturday and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Films by Charles Burnett, Ousmane Sembène, and more screen in L.A. Rebellion.

Museum of Modern Art

Films by Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, and Dorothy Arzner play in The Lady at 100.

Film Forum

A new 35mm print of 8½ begins playing, while Mort Rifkin favorite A Man and a Woman continues in a new restoration.

Bam

A retrospective of Sudanese cinema begins.

Roxy Cinema

The French Connection and City Dudes screen this Saturday; The Little Rascals plays for free on Sunday,...

Exclusive: Rediance has acquired Chechen director Déni Oumar Pitsaev’s documentary Imago, ahead of its world premiere at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, further enhancing the international slate of the China-based sales agent.

Filmed in Georgia last summer, it marks the first-ever feature-length Chechen film selected for Cannes and sheds light on a community that has almost never been represented in cinema.

Chechnya-born Pitsaev also grew up in Kazakhstan and Russia before arriving in Paris aged 17. He is now one of very few Chechen filmmakers.

The project came about when he inherited land in Pankisi, Georgia, a valley at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.

Exclusive: Rediance has acquired Chechen director Déni Oumar Pitsaev’s hybrid documentary Imago, ahead of its world premiere at Cannes’ Critics’ Week, further enhancing the international slate of the China-based sales agent.

Filmed in Georgia last summer, it marks the first-ever feature-length Chechen film, shedding light on a community that has almost never been represented in cinema.

Chechnya-born Pitsaev also grew up in Kazakhstan and Russia before arriving in Paris as a refugee aged 17. He is now one of very few Chechen filmmakers.

The project came about when he inherited land in Pankisi, Georgia, a valley at the foot of the Caucasus Mountains.

Shot in Nashik, Reema Kagti’s “Superboys of Malegaon” opens with a wistful ode to Malegaon—a town steeped in nostalgia. Its narrow lanes stir with morning chatter, while sunlit ’90s architecture, softened by dust-laden interiors, bears witness to time’s passage. Chai thelas dot the street corners, anchoring the film in the quiet, unhurried rhythm of daily life. The primary intent of this article—perhaps more aptly characterised as an opinion piece or reflective essay—is directed more toward Faiza Ahmad Khan, Nasir Shaikh, and their team than Reema Kagti and hers.

This is not to understate Kagti’s achievement, as “Superboys of Malegaon” carries an undeniable sincerity, a testament to the fact that it was crafted with genuine care rather than mere commercial ambition. Rather, my focus here is to illuminate the phenomenon of Mollywood, a world both Kagti and Khan seek to honour in their work. As...

Dick Van Dyke says he isn't giving up hope of winning an Oscar at age 99. The Mary Poppins actor has never received an Oscar nomination in his incredible 78-year career.

Van Dyke and his wife Arlene Silver gave an interview to People where they addressed the actor's ambitions as he nears his 100th birthday in December 2025. He noted that he's won every major Hollywood award "except an Oscar."

Dick Van Dyke Reveals His Hopes for an Oscar Win at 99

"Nobody would give me an Oscar," he joked, before adding: "My buddy, I was a friend of Stan Laurel's and he got one. Not posthumously."

Silver mentioned that all of Van Dyke's "idols" — Gene Kelly, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton— won Oscars throughout their careers, before predicting: "[Dick] will get one."

Van Dyke is one Oscar away from completing the prestigious Egot — an entertainment industry nickname for those who have won an Emmy Award,...

Seth Rogen has mainly been known as that pot-smokin' fella with a peculiar laugh, despite his immense talent and hard work (and impressive efforts for Alzheimer's awareness). His public perception is beginning to change a bit, though, ever since his Apple TV+ series The Studio was released to massive acclaim. In fact, Rogen is being accepted as an all-out auteur, thanks to the brilliance of that show and its deep knowledge of cinema. Perhaps that's why he and Goldberg were invited into the Criterion Closet, the small, coveted room lined wall-to-wall with perfect films.

If you're not a cinephile, The Criterion Collection is a home media distribution company that is massively respected among film fans for its reverent restorations and celebration of the greatest movies ever made. Along with a remastering, each release comes with beautiful art, a booklet of writing, and a treasure trove of special features, with the...

The second season of “Light & Magic,” about the history of VFX giant Industrial Light & Magic (helmed by “Jumanji” director and former Ilm vet Joe Johnston), kicks off with a fascinating glimpse into the making of Jar Jar Binks in the first of three episodes.

The initial fan response to the character was decidedly negative, whether for Jar Jar’s slapstick humor tone clashing with the other stories within “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace” or for the Gungan’s broad characterization that some critics and audiences found reflected racist stereotypes. Jar Jar hate has softened a little over time, particularly concerning the work of performer Ahmed Best, who beat out both Robin Williams and Michael Jackson for the role of Binks and has now gotten to save Baby Yoda in the guise of Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in “The Mandalorian.” But Best was the first to step into a mocap suit,...

Love knows no bounds. Be it your love for a person, an actor, a movie, or portraying a role in that movie, love takes you to places you wouldn’t go even with a gun.

That’s where Andrew Garfield went while filming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 back in the early 2010s. The actor reportedly almost lost a limb because he was too busy with his love for acting.

Andrew Garfield in a still from Spider-Man: No Way Home | Credits: Marvel Studios When Andrew Garfield almost lost a limb

No one was really at fault here since the scene was in such dire need of attention that Andrew Garfield forgot his surroundings. While ignoring his surroundings is a good idea for acting, Garfield did it while running on the road with vehicles alongside him.

Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man | Credits: Sony Pictures

The scene in question involved Garfield’s...

It's long overdue, but the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have confirmed today that the Oscars will recognise stunts with a new category.

The "Academy Award for Achievement in Stunt Design" will begin with the 100th Academy Awards in 2027. It's a fitting time to start recognising a crucial element of filmmaking that's been part of countless Hollywood movies - blockbusters or otherwise - for as long as the Oscars have been a thing.

"Since the early days of cinema, stunt design has been an integral part of filmmaking," Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy president Janet Yang said today. "We are proud to honor the innovative work of these technical and creative artists, and we congratulate them for their commitment and dedication in reaching this momentous occasion."

Eligibility and voting rules will be announced in 2027, and this comes after several filmmakers have pushed...