Over two films, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series has offered something largely absent from the modern movie landscape: intricate murder mysteries full of humor and gasp-worthy moments. The original Knives Out started things off relatively small with a cozy whodunit, which then became a larger and more elaborate puzzle with the sequel Glass Onion. Both […]
When Jon M. Chu first announced that his big-screen Wicked adaptation would be split into two parts, there was concern about whether the original musical’s second act could be fashioned into a fully fleshed-out movie. Compared to the stage show’s lengthy first act, where all the musical’s most recognizable songs are front-loaded, the second act […]
When The Running Man was first published in 1982 under Stephen King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym, the United States was just beginning to feel the impacts of then-president Ronald Reagan’s neoliberal economic policies. Under Reaganomics, massive tax breaks for the wealthy and deep cuts to social safety programs like food stamps and Medicaid drastically intensified income […]
Between Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, 20th Century Studios’ classic survival thriller franchise has been on a tear with stories that get at the heart of what makes this world of alien big game hunters great. In both films, director Dan Trachtenberg stuck to the Predator series’ narrative basics and focused on crafting clever […]
We live in an age where it has become infinitely easier for people to lead lives that are wholly divorced from any semblance of reality. Conspiracy theories run rampant, science denial is en vogue, and there is a vast media ecosystem filled with charlatans encouraging others to “do their own research” instead of believing well-educated […]
Guillermo del Toro has been thinking about Mary Shelley’s novel for a lifetime. He has described Frankenstein as “the quintessential teenage book,” and his famous Bleak House in Los Angeles is filled with versions of the creature from various film and stage adaptations. Naturally, the director has also imagined turning it into a movie himself. […]
Though Tron: Legacy was not a sterling piece of cinema, its gorgeous visuals and a banging score from Daft Punk made it an enjoyable update to the original 1982 cult classic. The movie tried to strike a healthy balance between nostalgic fan service and novel riffs on the source material to make itself feel like […]
There is a certain degree of body horror baked into American football that becomes readily apparent whenever players sustain gruesome, career-ending injuries on camera. For some, football’s overt violence is part of its appeal, and players are seen as people who have chosen to risk their safety in pursuit of fame and glory. Over the […]
It’s been almost exactly a year since I first saw Megalopolis, and the last 12 months haven’t been kind to Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating epic. It mostly bewildered critics and audiences, earned back just a fraction of its $120 million budget, and still isn’t easily accessible via streaming or a Blu-ray release. Megalopolis is a […]
When Stephen King’s The Long Walk was first published in 1979, dystopian young adult fiction had not yet become a wildly popular genre. With all of its gore and brutality, King’s novel wasn’t really meant for children. But in the book’s story about disillusioned youths being made to march through wastelands as a form of […]