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Some lucky critics got to see an early screening of Robert Eggers' take on the classic vampire tale "Nosferatu" — and they all say it freaking rules.

The film, which stars Bill Skårsgard as the titular bloodsucker alongside Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe (among many others), is already earning raves from the fortunate folks who got to see it first. "'Nosferatu:' strangely comforting this week to watch a film that feels conjured from the darkest depths of pure evil," critic Jordan Raup wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). "Eggers' most assured work, one in which you can feel his obsessions flow through every nocturnal frame. Lily Rose-Depp and Bill Skarsgard are out of this world." Carlos Aguilar agreed, saying, "After a few months I can finally share I loved ['Nosferatu']. It further crystallizes Eggers' exploration of evil as an elemental force, as inherent to existence as desire,...

The first few reactions have arrived for Nosferatu, and there seems to be agreement about the horror film. From The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers, the upcoming remake of the classic 1922 silent film reimagines the tale of the classic Transylvanian vampire. It's one of the most highly anticipated movies this fall, with lots of award buzz for the filmmaker and cast. The film features Emma Corrin, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgrd, Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Ralph Ineson, and Lily-Rose Depp.

Now, the first reviews are in for Nosferatu. The results were unanimously glowing, with many critics calling it one of the best films of the year. Praise was especially granted to the performances of Depp and Skarsgrd, along with several other key actors in the film. Check out some of the reactions to Nosferatu below:

Nosferatu: strangely comforting this week to watch a film that feels conjured from...

This post contains massive Alien: Romulus spoilers.

“I’m not going to go after the women in the audience. I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs.”

So declared Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon in the 2002 documentary The Alien Saga, and no one can say he failed. The most famous moment in Alien involved Kane (John Hurt) giving violent birth after a facehugger forced itself inside him. Although later contributors would leave aside the male focus, pregnancy metaphors continued to drive Alien‘s sequels and prequels. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) finds a surrogate daughter in Aliens, gives birth to a xenomorph in Alien 3, and destroys her offspring in Alien Resurrection. When Alien director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise with Prometheus, he included an abortion scene in which Elizabeth Shaw...

In space no one can hear you scream. Or at least that is what some rather ingenious 20th Century Fox marketers pushed back in 1979. Yet we did hear the people scream, and gasp, and panic as the facehugger’s tendrils tightened around John Hurt’s throat in movie houses across the world. And in the near half-century that followed, those screams continue to echo in our ears.

Hence this weekend’s anticipated return of the xenomorph in Alien: Romulus, a movie which star Cailee Spaeny previously described to us as walking a careful line between the understated dread of the ’79 classic and the “‘80s drama” that defines James Cameron’s Aliens. That’s quite a tightrope, too, because more than any other modern movie franchise, each entry of the Alien series has been unique and singular in its approach. With the exception of some unfortunate crossover flicks (more on them...

The most important person in the Mad Max movies is not, in fact, Max Rockatansky. Nor is it Imperator Furiosa. It isn’t even one of the villains, be they Immortan Joe or Lord Humungus. No, the most important person is the tattooed old man seen in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Played by George Shevtsov, he is known simply to his flock and overlords as the History Man, one of many elderly people in the Mad Max universe tasked with keeping records of times past. When someone like Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) calls for a “wordburger,” it’s the job of the History Man to provide explanation and context. Likewise in Mad Max: Fury Road, a History Man, or in this case History Woman named Miss Giddy (Jennifer Hagan), teaches the wives of Immortan Joe who killed the world… hint: it was not other women.

As you can probably guess,...

When one thinks of the great sounds in M. Night Shyamalan’s breakout movie, The Sixth Sense, iconic lines probably leap to mind. And none stand out more than the confession scene, in which young Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) agrees to tell child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) his secret.

“I see dead people,” Cole explains, laying out the rules of the afterlife for the audience and for Malcolm, who doesn’t realize that the boy’s describing him.

It’s a powerful moment, one that deserves to stand the test of time. But it relies upon more than just the dialogue. The scene also works because of the score by James Newton Howard, and more specifically his unique sound design done with editor Michael Kirchberger. Howard works human voices and breaths into the score to represent the spirits’ presence around Cole, making the movie scarier and more profound.

This article appears in the new issue of Den Of Geek magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.

Transformers One sheds light on the earliest era of Cybertronian history fans have seen yet. Set billions of years prior to the films, on Cybertron before it was ravaged by the Autobot/Decepticon Civil War, the story follows young miners Orion Pax and D-16, two best friends who are destined to become the bitter rivals we now know as Optimus Prime and Megatron.

Adopting an American accent that renders him virtually unrecognizable on first listen, Chris Hemsworth lends his voice to the movie as Orion Pax/Optimus Prime opposite Bryan Tyree Henry as D-16/Megatron. Stepping into the iconic role and effectively sharing the reins with the great Peter Cullen is a tall task, but there are few actors better equipped to handle this kind of pressure than the MCU Og.

Here’s the thing about Deadpool: he knows that he’s in a movie. So he’s probably aware that his long-awaited first MCU entry Deadpool & Wolverine has finally been screened to critics and that those critics are sharing their thoughts about the movie on social media. But is he reading the tweets and jumping in joy or blowing himself up a la Deadpool 2? The studio betting big on the character’s latest theatrical outing is definitely hoping it’s the former.

After the relative box office and critical failures of Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, Deadpool & Wolverine is the sole Marvel movie making it to theaters this year (unless we count Sony trash such as Madame Web). Marvel hopes that star Ryan Reynolds and his Deadpool will help turn the tide of superhero fatigue and make the MCU the sensation that it once was.

Oddity begins with a delicious horror conundrum. Alone in her newly purchased country house while her psychiatrist husband Ted (Gwylim Lee) works an overnight shift nearby, Dani (Carolyn Bracken) runs out into the dark to retrieve something from her car. When she hears a strange noise, she rushes back into the house and locks the door.

The sounds from outside intensify, prompting Dani to open a slot on the door, revealing a shocking sight: a haggard and intense man, staring at her with one glowing glass eye. The man begs Dani to let him in, a request she denies until he comes to the point. The man claims that he someone else is inside her house. He pleads with her to open the door before it’s too late. Despite his intimidating appearance, the man seems sincere and kind. What should Dani do?

It’s no spoiler to say that...

Film critic Andrew Sarris changed his profession forever when he introduced, to English-speaking cinephiles at least, the concept of “auteur theory.” The general conceit is that some rarified directors are so gifted, or commanding, in their control over the process of film production that they alone can give a film a “personal or unique stamp.” They are the ones who become the author of the movie you’re watching. If anyone. It’s a seductive theory which encourages the critic to look for points of narrative, visual, or thematic similarity between a filmmaker’s work. The more ideas or images that rhyme, the potentially more impressive the auteur’s command over the medium becomes.

However, while it is hard to dispute the existence of auteurs, the concept at times devalues the contributions of a film’s many other collaborators—especially if they’re, say, editors, production designers, or cinematographers a...

“You can never go back,” warns Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno) in the trailer for the upcoming Netflix anime series Terminator Zero.

That’s a strange thing to hear from a character who literally went back in time. A human resistance soldier from 2022, Eiko has been sent to the year 1997. She’s there to stop a Terminator (voiced by Timothy Olyphant), itself sent to kill someone who might threaten the Machines in the future.

That sure sounds like Terminator Zero is moving back, all the way to the timeline of the first two (and easily best) Terminator movies. But Terminator Zero puts a twist on the proceedings by focusing not on any Connors or even Miles Dyson, the scientist who co-creates evil AI Skynet.

Rather, Terminator Zero features Malcolm Lee (voiced by Andre Holland), a scientist living in Japan. Lee is working on an AI that threatens to compete with Skynet. As the trailer shows,...

Frank Herbert once said there is no real ending. It’s just where you stop the story. This is perhaps ironic given the author famously wrote six Dune novels without ever coming to a final satisfying conclusion to his millennia-spanning saga. But then knowing when and how to stop has always remained an elusive challenge for storytellers, even when they’re working at the height of their craft.

The history of cinema is littered with many great films that seemed to breeze right past the most obvious grace note in favor of underlining, expanding, or even subverting a theme or idea integral to the story. Whatever the motive, these choices sometimes can leave us wishing their films had concluded minutes earlier. Here are some films that we particularly wish ended when the story was already over.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Let’s get the...

It's rare to watch an actor's star rise in real-time, but that is precisely what is happening with Anya Taylor-Joy.

The actress has nary a single project in her resume that wasn't loved by critics and audiences alike, save for a big-budget script or two.

With barely an entire decade under her belt, Anya Taylor-Joy already has thirty-nine nominations, including fifteen wins, three of which are a Golden Globe, a Critic's Choice Aware, and a Screen Actor's Guild award.

Not too bad, considering she's not even thirty yet. She's made some significant moves and has quickly solidified herself as one of Hollywood's most talented young actors.

From protecting the Mushroom Kingdom to questionable fine dining, Anya Taylor-Joy has embarked on various roles. Whether it's just her voice or a full view of her stealing every scene with her piercing gaze, the actress has the skill of someone with decades of experience.

One of the downsides of streaming’s cord-cutting era has been how hard it is to stumble on a great movie midway through. You know the joy of which we speak. After a long day at work or school, a moment to unwind turns into discovering one of your favorite flicks, that one you’ve probably seen a hundred times, is playing right now on cable. And wouldn’t you know it, you’ve come across it right at your favorite bit.

Before you know it, you spend the next 90 minutes catching up on a film you already have half committed to memory. It’s a perhaps uniquely dated phenomenon, but a great one for those of us who have entire personal libraries of movies that we may never have seen from beginning to end. I spent years, for example, convinced Con Air started with Nic Cage enunciating, “I said...

George Miller’s “Furiosa” is already riding high with first reactions.

The prequel to 2015 film “Mad Max: Fury Road” stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character warrior in an epic saga that spans 15 years for her origin story. Per the official synopsis, a young Furiosa is kidnapped from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. As they trek across the Wasteland, the gang come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war over dominance, Furiosa faces many trials to find her way home.

While “Furiosa” is set to premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival May 15, early screening first reactions have already gone viral. Both Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth’s respective performances are especially highlighted by critics.

IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote, “[It] brings me great joy to report that ‘Furiosa’ is really,...

Quentin Tarantino does not view Kill Bill as two separate films. That should be acknowledged upfront as fair. After all, it is this detail which allows Tarantino the ability to claim Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood as his ninth instead of 10th film (thereby delaying any obligatory early retirements). And to be sure, Tarantino shot Kill Bill as one epic vision that was only encouraged to be broken up by, ahem, Harvey Weinstein while Tarantino was finishing up principal photography.

So while the story was released as Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2, they’re two sides of the same tale. Be that as it may, there’s no denying that they’re two incredibly different sides. Whether a creative choice made in post-production after realizing he had hours more of running time to play with, or because the filmmaker was already at his most indulgent...

On April 12, 2024, A24 released “Civil War,” a dystopian film following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House. The film written and directed by Alex Garland stars Oscar nominee Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Nick Offerman.

Early reviews for the movie have been overwhelmingly positive, holding fresh at 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. The critics consensus reads, “Tough and unsettling by design, ‘Civil War’ is a gripping close-up look at the violent uncertainty of life in a nation in crisis.” Read our full review round-up below.

See Box office preview: Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ will try its best not to divide the moviegoing nation

Siddhant Adlakha of Inverse says, “An upsetting sensory experience accompanied by thundering cacophonies and paralyzing scenes of war and savagery so vast, intense, and overwhelming that you can practically...

Every year, SXSW seems to grow in size and breadth. The opportunities to glimpse the future and connect with its architects in an intersection of disciplines—music, technology, television, and cinema included—can be overwhelming. And in 2024 alone, there were more than 115 films and 80 short features at the fest.

It is impossible to see everything, yet our team of critics and journalists made a concerted effort to give it the old college try. Of the more than 40 projects we did glean between us, here were the ones that stood out most and we think should probably be on your radar. Also to note, the list is in alphabetical order.

Adrianne & the Castle

Given the sheer volume and variety of films at this festival, rarely does one do a double-take when reading loglines or hearing directors or producers soft pitch their films in passing. But that was absolutely the case...

In the new horror movie Immaculate, Sydney Sweeney plays a devout nun named Cecilia, who, after learning that she is somehow with child, is pursued by both the manipulative clergy inside her convent in Italy and servants of darkness. But before she became the young blonde prey in this “nunsploitation” flick, Sweeney was the one doing the chasing.

Sweeney first heard of Immaculate many years ago, when she was just 16 years old. “I auditioned for it, was obsessed with it, and didn’t get it,” she tells Den of Geek while promoting the film at SXSW 2024. “And then I found out that they never made it. And every year, I followed up with my team asking, ‘Did they ever make that movie Immaculate? Whatever happened to it? Who booked it?’ And when I got older and I realized I wanted to make it myself, I went after the script.”

Sweeney...

This post contains spoilers for The Marvels.

With the exception of maybe Avengers: Endgame, no MCU movie just ends. Borrowing from the comic book medium in which its characters were born, MCU films end with cliffhangers and portends, mid- and post-credit scenes that tease up the next movie or storyline.

That’s certainly the case with The Marvels, the latest MCU entry and latest indication that the superhero boom is now a whimper. The post-credit scene offers yet another nod to the X-Men, but that’s not the only question viewers have after watching The Marvels.

As David Crow put it in Den of Geek‘s review, the movie feels like “a post-production Frankenstein situation where a combination of ideas are thrown at the wall by reshoots and reedits.” As a result, The Marvels ended with many unanswered questions.

Some of them are little annoyances, like “Why didn’t...

It’s that time of year where critics, film buffs, and awards prognosticators come together and search for a consensus on what were “the best films” from the previous year. It’s already begun with the Golden Globes this past weekend and the Critics Choice Awards coming in the next. Perhaps more than most years, the frontrunners for “the best picture” prizes are obvious too.

That is all well and good, but sometimes attempting to find a consensus (or at least a horse race winner) deprives us from acknowledging our true favorites; films that you or I might have loved and are convinced no one else in the world has seen. These are the pictures that may not be “the best,” but they are favorites for our staff, and we’d like you to consider giving them a chance. Also feel free to shout out your own choices in the comments section below.

Love it, hate it, or love to hate it, Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn has left an impression on viewers. With its acerbic (and maybe muddled) allegory about social and economic class in the UK, the movie is a big twisty swing from the writer-director of Promising Young Woman. It also features star Barry Keoghan going there. In some scenes, there constitutes prancing around a luxurious manor in his birthday suit, galloping as free and liberated as a baby elephant charging a watering hole.

In others, there consists of the literal water (and other fluids therein) pooling around the hole of a bathtub. You know the scene: After Felix (Jacob Elordi), the wealthy patron and object of obsession for Keoghan’s Oliver Quick, is spied pleasuring himself in the bath, Ollie sneaks in afterward to slurp up the remainder that didn’t go down the drain. It’s disgusting, off-putting, and supposedly “titillating,...

No matter what they tell you, Christmastime is the best time. It’s the deep breath on the last page of the calendar; the chance to take stock of the year that was and appreciate that we’re halfway through the darkest days of winter, hopefully surrounded by beloved family and friends.

But you know what would make it one better? If it was family, friends, and a fictional character of our choosing each year! Imagine for just one magical evening every December, Doc Brown rolled up in a DeLorean to sample Christmas cookies? Or what if it’s Han Solo or Princess Leia who is asking you to pass the gravy and potatoes? You just know Chewbacca would be all-in on a game of pulling the Christmas crackers. So with that in mind, we asked our staff to think of who they’d like to party with come Christmas Day.

2023 has proven to be a pivotal year for moviemaking. The industry itself seems to be in a state of upheaval, and perhaps renewal, as two labor strikes that dominated the calendar between May and November culminated with the writers and actors guilds earning hard-won benefits for their work, as well as securities against the advent of A.I.

Onscreen, too, audience tastes seem to be changing as the biggest films of the year are pictures with strong authorial voices from Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan. The former used a beloved doll IP to make a comedy about growing and growing old in the shadow of the patriarchy; the latter did a character study on the man who invented the most genocidal weapon imaginable. Neither were a sequel or a conventional bet, and both far outperformed the movies that were. The industry is changing, but beyond the news and potential paradigm...

After almost four years into a new decade, horror remains one of the most resilient and fascinating genres of this century. In fact, it’s fair to say that the cinema of chills has only grown in esteem. About 10 years ago, some critics were dubiously suggesting that horror movies were undergoing an “elevation.” Nowadays, though, scary movies’ popularity and respect just seems nearly ubiquitous.

In a time when everything is dubiously being stripped down and sold as “content,” horror remains one of the last refuges for filmmakers to make art—or at least a wild good time with a dancing robo-doll! With that in mind, we’ve put our heads together at Den of Geek to provide you with a list of the best horror movies of 2023 so far, for your viewing terror. Enjoy.

Talk to Me

Every year, at least one horror film comes along that dominates the zeitgeist...

Killers of the Flower Moon keeps blooming with critics as the upcoming Western drama attracts many rave reviews ahead of its anticipated international release.

Martin Scorsese's latest feature-length project has been getting widespread praise for its sobering themes, intense sequences and performances, particularly those of Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro. Den of Geek's David Crow summed up De Niro's portrayal of the nefarious William Hale, saying Hale is "the most vile creation ever realized by an actor who’s also played Al Capone and Jimmy Conway. While Hale might be the culmination of Killers of the Flower Moon’s conspiracy, he is just one thread in a larger national tapestry of pitiless conquest." Meanwhile, ScreenAnarchy's Shelagh Rown-Legg hailed how Killers of the Flower Moon told its story, saying it's "the one of the best of Scorsese’s filmography - unflinching, honest, sweeping, intelligent, and necessary.

How do you like to celebrate the arrival of October and true autumn? Perhaps you have a favorite sweater you like to pull out of the drawer; or maybe you’re a fiend for consuming pumpkin-spiced… everything! For ourselves, it’s always been about putting on that first horror movie (or three). While the whole year is a fine time to watch scary movies, there’s something especially crisp about a favorite chiller to match the cool evenings outside.

Spooky season has to start somewhere, and for us it might as well be with a film that either makes us shriek or smile. So if you’re looking for suggestions on how to best ease yourself into the reason for the season, these are the movies that we think make Halloween a wickedly fine time.

It’s not Halloween until I watch… The Shining (1980)

There aren’t many of the...

Sci-fi is a catch-all term, really. Most folks might think of franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek when they hear it—imagining fantastical vistas with magic wizards and teleportation beams. And to be sure, the space opera is a prized staple in the genre’s cabinet of curiosities; but the more interesting science fiction, or at least the type that sticks around in the old noodle, is the more grounded “hard sci-fi.” With a greater emphasis on speculation and estimation derived from the scientific realities of their times, as opposed to the flights of fancy in their pulps, these are stories created by writers, directors, and artists with an eager eye on the horizon.

It is easy to walk out of a film and announce “that will never happen,” but there have been plenty of times where the sci-fi of today turned out to be the scientific reality of tomorrow.

A24 is having a moment right now. For starters, the indie studio and 21st century tastemaker is actually able to produce movies during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes due to its separation from the major Hollywood studios. So bring on that movie where Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega are responsible for killing a unicorn! More impressive though, A24 just picked up its second Best Picture Oscar in six years, and for a movie that walked away with a staggering seven Oscar wins overall in March.

Not bad for a company that’s barely a decade old, and which is still generally regarded in the zeitgeist for putting out strange, and yet often entrancing work. That, indeed, could be used to describe most of their horror output, which has had a bigger hand in shaping the genre in the 2010s than any other studio or production company not named Blumhouse. Whether...

It really is true: Spider-Man does whatever a spider can. And across 10 theatrically released films, in live-action and animation both, he (or sometimes she) has spun a web any size, catching those thieves just like flies. Still, not all webs are created equal, and some of those captured thieves have made for better cinematic opponents than others.

Indeed, alongside Batman, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has probably been blessed with the most consistent series of superhero movies released by Hollywood, with millions of fans ready to swear that either Tobey Maguire, Tom Holland, or the kaleidoscopic animation led by Miles Morales (and Shameik Moore’s voice) is the best Spidey. Heck, there are those out there who will defend the Andrew Garfield years.

Yet while Spidey has been fortunate to lead a number of good movies, some are better than others, and several more missed the Staten Island Ferry completley. So...

From the producer of Pitch Perfect and Cocaine Bear comes the official Red Band trailer for Bottoms, a new comedy that finds two high school senior girls setting up their own fight club in order to hook up with cheerleaders. Released courtesy of MGM, Bottoms is due to land in theaters later this year, and poses the age-old question, do you want to get punched in the face by hot girls? Well, get in line. Check out the Red Band trailer for Bottoms below.

“A refreshingly unique raunchy comedy, the film focuses on two girls, Pj and Josie, who start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders. Their bizarre plan works,” the official synopsis for Bottoms reads. “The fight club gains traction and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. But Pj and Josie find...

During a tumultuous time for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the third and final film in James Gunn‘s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy will (hopefully) arrive to save the day in a satisfying way. Our favorite band of A-holes are heading back to the big screen at the beginning of May for a new adventure together. Some lucky people have already seen the movie, thanks to the movie’s “European Gala” held at Disneyland Paris earlier this month, as well as the US screenings this week for critics. As you might expect, we now have plenty of thoughts about Gunn’s (presumably) final Marvel movie.

But first, a refresher on what’s going on in this one: in the upcoming Phase 5 threequel, the Guardians have pretty much settled down on Knowhere after the events of the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, but when Rocket’s past resurfaces, Peter Quill...

After “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” earned some of the worst reviews for a Marvel movie yet (its 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes ties “Eternals” as the lowest-rated MCU title on the aggregation website), it appears the Marvel Cinematic Universe is back on track thanks to “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” First reactions for the trilogy-ending “Guardians” sequel are rolling in and praise the film as the “best Marvel movie in years” and “surprisingly emotional,” though some critics deemed it “uneven.”

Awards Radar editor Joey Magidson called the film “full of heart” and said it brought him “to tears on multiple occasions.”

“It’s not what you’re necessarily expecting,” he added, “but it really does land. A perfect ending, too.”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is full of heart and brought me to tears on multiple occasions. @JamesGunn making it Rocket’s story pays off big. It’s...

Stakes, silver-tipped canes, and torches are all dependable ways to kill off the classic Universal Monsters. But the one common, unifying monster-slayer they are all powerless against is poor box office. This was very clearly communicated by the failure of Renfield, Universal’s attempt at resurrecting Dracula and his title sidekick in a modern horror-comedy where Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) acted more like a supernatural superhero than the simpering, wild-eyed Dwight Frye of old.

Not even the Scenery-Chewer Supreme that is Nicolas Cage could save Renfield from a meager $8 million opening weekend haul that saw the movie have its lunch eaten by Russell Crowe in The Pope’s Exorcist. This isn’t the first attempt either in the last 10 or 20 years to drag the undead out of their graves: Van Helsing (2004), The Wolfman (2010), Dracula Untold (2014), and the disastrous The Mummy (2017) all climbed back into the Universal Monsters’ tombs as quickly as possible,...

There never has been a movie star quite like Nicolas Cage. While obviously handsome and gifted with backlogs of charisma, beneath the surface there lies an unmistakable hunger, a sense of searching, and what some might even call a mania to take a role to its fullest extreme. Even when Cage is taking the “paycheck” parts, be it in glossy ‘90s Hollywood star vehicles or some of his lesser 2010s straight-to-digital efforts, the actor’s tangible desire to push boundaries and experiment is nothing short of riveting.

In a Reddit Ama, Cage once said the following about his craft: “I think many of the choices I’ve made have been inspired by film stars from the silent era, as well as cultural expression of performance like Kabuki and some of the Golden Age actors like [James] Cagney, so I don’t know how to say I’ve done something new because...

When motion pictures first transitioned to the sound era, film studios were divided about how to use music in the cinema. Should it only be diegetic (as in emanating from a source onscreen that the characters can hear)? Would non-diegetic music distract from the dialogue and characters? Universal mogul Carl Laemmle famously decreed that movies like 1931’s Frankenstein and Dracula should have no background whatsoever after their opening titles.

Of course it didn’t take long for producers, and more importantly composers, to figure out that was nonsense. Musical compositions, leitmotifs, and even well-known songs can be a shorthand to heighten the drama onscreen—or to knowingly undercut it. And arguably few filmmakers would come to understand that better than Quentin Tarantino. The iconoclastic auteur who cut his teeth at the drive-in and video store is famous for not only his meticulously crafted screenplays and camera movements, but even how...

This post contains spoilers for Shazam: The Fury of the Gods

Shazam and Black Adam have finally begun to fight. Just not in the way you expected. Or maybe even wanted.

Hot off the disappointing opening weekend box office sales of Shazam: The Fury of the Gods, The Wrap released an insider report that blamed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for undermining the Big Red Cheese’s cinematic future. In it, unnamed sources describe Johnson as a person who “thinks he’s bigger than the movie,” who wants only “to extend his brand and make a brand centered on himself.” That includes demanding that Black Adam cut out the character’s traditional rival, Billy Batson aka Shazam aka Captain Marvel, going for the more flashy Superman.

Not only does the report back up previous claims that Johnson convinced Warner Bros to give Black Adam his own movie instead of debuting him in the first Shazam!

This article contains spoilers for Swarm.

There’s an old African proverb that says “the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” Prime Video’s surreal horror series, Swarm, takes that proverb and tweaks it to a modern context. Throughout Donald Glover and Janine Nabers’ ode to dark obsession, Andrea “Dre” Greene (Dominique Fishback) burns down not one village but several – from Houston to Nashville to Little Rock to Atlanta – all to feel the radiating maternal warmth from one person: international pop superstar Ni’Jah.

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/swarm-cast-inside-billie-eilishs-first-tv-role/Swarm is a difficult story to fully wrap one’s hands around. Six of the series’ seven episodes promise that the outlandish events viewers are witnessing are all true. And they are, to a certain extent, with Glover, Nabers, and the show’s writing staff drawing upon urban legends surrounding Beyoncé,...

Can a festival have swagger? Because it felt like SXSW was swaggering in 2023. This should not be a total surprise for a weeklong conference that’s an intersection between film, television, music, gaming, technology, and arguably innovation itself. As per one industry insider, SXSW has long been perceived as “the cool kids festival.” Nonetheless, one year and a day after Everything Everywhere All at Once premiered on SXSW’s opening night, that film went on to win a staggering seven Oscars on the same weekend as the 2023 festival.

And after last Sunday, excitement and a sense of vindication floated in the air around every movie theater in Austin. Somehow this fest was coming even more into its own with its first Best Picture win, and that truth appears reflected in the eclectic mix of films and television series that showed up the year Everything Everywhere came to town. From oddball...

Hulu’s list of new releases for March 2023 features an event long in the making.

On March 6, History of the World, Part II will finally arrive more than 40 years after Mel Brooks’ classic comedy History of the World, Part I. first premiered. Of course, Brooks never had any intention of adding future parts to his ahistorical film, but that yet makes the arrival of Part II so many years later even funnier. Described as a four-night comedy event, History of the World, Part II will release two episodes a day through March 9. Brooks returns to write and executive produce this series and will star alongside Nick Kroll, Wanda Sykes, and Ike Barinholtz. Guest stars include…everyone. Basically just everyone.

Read more Movies Great Eat the Rich Satires to Watch After The Menu By Nick Harley Movies Mel Brooks Recalls Alfred Hitchcock’s Unique Review of High Anxiety By David Crow...

It’s a rough time of year out there. Despite what commercials, candy companies, and even the occasionally cagey internet listicle tells you, February isn’t the most romantic month of the year. In fact, for many folks, it’s just a cold, short 28 days with a Singles Awareness celebration wedged smack dab in the middle.

Of course that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. There are many reasons why being single is the ideal lifestyle for some; and to others, a respite after things went wrong. And the horror movie genre is nothing if not deluged with stories about how things can go very wrong.

Spectral old flames, lying spouses, manipulative boyfriends, femme fatales, and a lover who transforms into a literal jungle cat when you get intimate are just a handful of the concepts touched upon in the below list! Many of these stories are clear cut fables.

There are people out there who will tell you they don’t like romantic comedies. These same folks may as well confess that they’re dead inside, with a frozen void replacing where their heart once beat. You shouldn’t be their friend.

Romantic comedies are as old as the movies themselves. Generation after generation, audiences have sought out stories about the universal appeal (or agony) of love. And they’ve often wanted to laugh at it. When two characters—typically as photogenic as a camera lens demands—can generate real heat onscreen, and often channel that into knowing humor for the viewer, it’s more tangible than any visual effect. To wit William Shakespeare, it can create much ado about nothing, and it’s an absolute pleasure to laugh along with.

And despite the best efforts of some studios to drown the genre in the bathtub, rom-coms have endured in the 21st century,...

“Netflix and chill.” Future pop culture historians will likely look back and chuckle at that turn of phrase, which in the 2010s signaled a hefty technological shift from the days of “we can put on records.” It also represents the moment when Netflix dominated the zeitgeist for years. It’s an open question whether that dominance will continue after next month since the most popular streaming service is doing away with its password sharing capabilities. But in the meantime, let’s all “Netflix and chill” one last time, especially with Valentine’s Day around the corner.

Indeed, this Valentine’s season has a winsome collection for the romantics at heart to embrace, with a significant other or otherwise. Below is a list that includes Oscar winners, teen comedies, happy endings, sad endings, young love, old love, and enduring love. Let’s just say if you need something sweet to watch...

Horror cinema is thriving. It feels important to note that after a year like 2022. While the past 12 months saw industry trades choked with grim or despairing reports on the box office of original movies and new ideas, the news surrounding chillers has been strangely sunny and full of cheer. From the year beginning with a robust relaunch of the Scream franchise to its ending, where the horror-comedy-satire amalgamation of The Menu won audiences over twice, once in theaters and again on streaming, we’ve seen repeated testimonials to the fact audiences like being scared—and they don’t necessarily care if the movie has a colon, numeral, or hyphen in the title.

Along the way, we’ve seen some genuinely nervy and daring attempts to push the boundaries of cinematic dread, be it in the art house, a la Speak No Evil , or the multiplex, courtesy of Smile. We’ve...

When Rian Johnson’s Brick arrived at Sundance in 2005, it was a bit like its namesake being thrown through a window. Here was a first-time feature, from a guy barely out of his 20s, talking about the high school experience. That wasn’t the unusual part for a Sundance indie though; the strange bit is that Johnson had made the high school experience look indistinguishable from a Dashiell Hammett novel. Brick was a full-throated, grizzled-to-the-bone noir about characters barely old enough to shave!

This has of course been the fascinating paradox of Johnson’s career as it’s unfolded over the last several decades: one of the most excitingly new, modern filmmakers cheekily and eagerly relies on the cinematic vernacular of nearly a century ago. These sometimes jarring sensibilities have found surprising harmony, too, across the writer-director’s six feature films to date. Along the way, he’s masterminded an...

Once you see M3GAN dancing, you can’t unsee it. While killer dolls have always been fertile ground for horror movie directors to explore, the creators of the new Blumhouse movie M3GAN knew they needed something special for their story of an AI robot going to lethal ends to protect young orphan girl Cady (Violet McGraw). By the time the first trailer dropped late last year, it was clear that they found that something. From Twitter to TikTok, movie fans were recreating a clip of M3GAN dancing before grabbing a paper cutter, presumably to do something murderous.

Although M3GAN boasts creative talent such as James Wan and Jason Blum producing — as well as Akela Cooper, the writer behind 2021’s gonzo horror masterpiece Malignant — the dancing bit came from director Gerard Johnstone. The idea occurred to the New Zealand-born director of the horror comedy favorite Housebound late at night.

“It was one of those crazy,...

We all have our favorite movies in any given year. The ones we raise up and champion with lofty titles like “Best Picture” or “Movie of the Year.” Sometimes in an attempt to claim that title we can even reach for consensus—or at least toward films we’re confident others have seen. However, there are times we each discover something that doesn’t have an obvious consensus. In fact, sometimes you can fall in love with a movie that it feels like nobody else in the world knows about.

Below is a collection of films that members of our staff feel that strongly about. They’re not the movies that wound up at the top of our poll for the best movies of 2022, but they’re movies that at least one of us thinks perhaps should… or that you should at least have heard about and have a chance to seek out.

Cinema just had a rough year. While there were definitely upbeat stories to accompany the now constant anxieties percolating throughout the industry—from Tom Cruise once again asserting his dominance as the king of summer via Top Gun: Maverick to the surprise and wholly welcome blockbuster status of A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once—the fact remains that “the movies” are in a state of upheaval and uncertainty. Do massive, mainstream audiences still have taste left in their palates for original adult-skewing films? And if streaming is the future for dramas, comedies, and other “mid-budget” movies, what then is the future of streaming given that market’s own recent crises?

It’s a weird time. Yet one thing stays consistent: the satisfaction that comes with seeing a good movie. Whether that film makes you laugh, cry, or shudder, there is still an ineffable joy derived from being lost for...

Leave it to Edgar Allan Poe. While many probably associate the mercurial author and poet with horror milestones like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” he’s also widely credited with inventing the detective story with his 1841 publication, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Since then the genre of detective fiction has spanned untold numbers of short stories, novels, plays, radio shows, TV series, and of course, movies.

One of the subsets of detective fiction, the whodunit, remains almost interchangeable with the genre itself and one of its most popular variations. From the urbane, eccentric likes of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot to the more grizzled Sam Spade and Mike Hammer, to the shapeshifting meta-detective Ellery Queen, stories that allow the reader or viewer to solve the mystery right alongside the protagonist are an entertainment staple to this day, as borne out by...

This isn’t about favorites. Favorites are flimsy and can be overdone, like a song or a sandwich filling you tire of after choosing it one too many times. This is about rightness. Of all the Doctors in the Tardis, of all the Bonds in the Aston Martin, of all the Batmen in the Batsuit, there’s one that feels more right to you than the rest. They’re in technicolor while everybody else is in black and white (speaking figuratively if it’s William Hartnell).

Maybe they’re the one you first fell for as a kid, or maybe they’re the newest hire who made everything finally click into place. The point is that they’re yours, an actor in a role that is unchangingly, enduringly right.

You know your Bond, you may well know your Doctor and own the accompanying action figure/reproduction Sonic screwdriver. But who’s your on-screen Santa?...