It's generally understood how every element of a film contributes to its overall effect, and that changing even the tiniest detail can make or break a particular moment. Even so, sometimes it takes some experimenting to see just how and why something may or may not fit into the overall fabric of a movie, because you never know until you try. This principle can be trickier when attempting to experiment with a franchise, especially one as long-running and well-established as "Star Trek." Yet J.J. Abrams managed to stretch "Trek" past its usual parameters when he mounted his 2009 reboot/legacy/alternate "Kelvin" timeline feature, giving the franchise a much-needed burst of new aesthetic energy while retaining many of its core principles. After all, who ever thought that a Beastie Boys song would fit neatly into "Trek?"

It's in this spirit that the two follow-up films, Abrams' "Star Trek Into Darkness" and...

"Deadpool & Wolverine" may've rescued the Marvel Cinematic Universe at the box office this year, but it's Kathryn Hahn's scheming Agatha Harkness and her ragtag coven of fellow witches who're quietly getting Marvel Television's affairs into order with "Agatha All Along." The belated "WandaVision" offshoot was something of a wild card heading into its debut, what with it being a product of Marvel TV's disastrous former production process. Thankfully, much like the titular sorceress, Jac Schaeffer's spinoff has some unexpected tricks up its sleeves and has proven to be a cheeky, spoopy, and otherwise wickedly good time. (Read /Film's review by Bj Colangelo for more on that.)

"Agatha All Along" is also one of the more visually interesting MCU installments in a minute thanks to the plethora of colorful set pieces and costumes used to realize the supernatural (and occasionally horrifying) trials that Agatha and her motley...

Any horror franchise that sticks around for more than a handful of entries becomes an institution by default. And few long-running horror franchises have provided genre fans with such a rollercoaster as "V/H/S," perhaps because each movie in the series feels like an unpredictable theme park ride in its own sick, twisted, ambitious way.

The first "V/H/S" film, released in 2012, laid out the endlessly adaptable format: a horror anthology consisting of "found footage" shorts, each of them directed by a different filmmaker, with only a thin (if that) thread connecting them all. Really, each "V/H/S" segment is an excuse for a director to cut loose, to run wild, and to tell a brisk, violent, sometimes funny and sometimes disturbing tale of terror. The only real rule is that it has to be found footage, but even that is malleable. Stories in the series are told from camcorders, GoPros,...

By the pricking of my thumbs, something spoilery this way comes. Warning: This article discusses events from the latest episode of "Agatha All Along."

Yep, here we go again, folks. Old habits die hard, especially among powerful witches, but nothing dies harder than the average Marvel fan's obsession with the infamous entity known as Mephisto. We've been down this road before in "WandaVision" and even "She-Hulk," to name just a pair of Marvel Cinematic Universe installments that played fast and loose with our expectations of when the demonic villain might finally make his live-action debut in the franchise. Well, just in case the latest Disney+ series didn't already have enough going on, "Agatha All Along" has pushed its poker chips all in and actually name-dropped the elusive comic book character during episode 3 -- something that no other property under Kevin Feige's careful supervision has yet dared to do.

What does...

"Terminator" fans are eating well in 2024, thanks to "Terminator Zero." Mattson Tomlin's anime series is not only one of the best sci-fi shows of the year, but it also takes the "Terminator" franchise back to its cyber-horror roots while at the same time actually enriching its themes about fate and why humanity even deserves not to be wiped out by the machines in the first place. That's a welcome reprieve for a sci-fi property whose central storyline has been "eating its own tail for a very long time ('Terminator: Dark Fate' innocent)," to quote Bj Colangelo in her "Zero" review for /Film.

Like Bj, though, I'm also a "Dark Fate" apologist. The 2019 movie saw James Cameron working on the "Terminator" franchise for the first time since "Terminator 2," and it showed. While "Dark Fate" doesn't reach the same bar as Cameron's 1984 "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgement Day,...

American Zoetrope's filmography is kind of mind-boggling. Co-founded by "Movie Brats" Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas in 1969, the distributor and production company has stayed pretty true to its mission statement of backing not just projects by Coppola and his family, but also experimental and international cinema. The list of directors that've had American Zoetrope in their corner at some point or another is just as extraordinary. There's Jean-Luc Godard, Akira Kurosawa, Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader, Agnieszka Holland, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Godfrey Reggio, Carroll Ballard, and, of course, Tim Burton. Wait, what?

It's true: At the peak of his powers in the 1990s, the ringmaster of the "macabre funhouse" (as /Film's Bj Colangelo has aptly put it) teamed up with Coppola's American Zoetrope for 1999's "Sleepy Hollow." 

When you think about it, it's not so surprising that Coppola got in on Burton's creep-tastical revamp of Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

"It Ends WIth Us" is coming home. The major motion picture based on Colleen Hoover's best-selling novel of the same (which deals with domestic violence and emotional abuse) was directed by Justin Baldoni, who also starred alongside Blake Lively, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, and Brandon Sklenar. In the film, Lively stars as Lily Blossom Bloom, an aspiring florist who begins a Hallmark-like romance with a handsome neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni), only for things to take a turn for horror territory.

/Film's own Bj Colangelo wasn't a fan of Baldoni's adaptation and described it as "an infuriating, emotionally manipulative watch and a disservice to the talents of every actor involved" in her review. Indeed, it's a movie that's proven controversial across the board. Critics in general were divided on whether "It Ends With Us" is any good, at least one country banned the film, and there are multiple reports...

(Welcome to Ani-time Ani-where, a regular column dedicated to helping the uninitiated understand and appreciate the world of anime.)

Once upon a time, the mere thought of anime versions of American pop culture franchises was enough to get everyone to roll their eyes and expect little more than hot garbage — "The Animatrix" notwithstanding. But recent years have broken that curse, with plenty of collaborations resulting in some of the best shows of the decade, including "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners," "Scott Pilgrim Takes Off" and the outlandish "Suicide Squad Isekai," showing that you can, in fact, adapt Western properties into anime.

The latest anime to join this list is "Terminator Zero." The "Terminator" franchise started as high as it possibly could with two back-to-back masterpieces, but it has since become an underwhelming and convoluted mess. As /Film's own Bj Colangelo wrote in her review of "Terminator Zero," this new installment takes "the new...

Marvel Studios is going through troubled times at the moment. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a complicated mess containing too many titles and too many plot threads that lead nowhere and were abandoned along the way. Recent years have made it clear that the MCU isn't what it once was, and the public has responded in kind. The box office performance of Marvel movies ("Deadpool & Wolverine" notwithstanding) has been declining, and review scores have been trending downwards as well. Nowadays, a Marvel movie feels less like a result of meticulous plotting and planning and more like the messy result of too many discarded script drafts and last-minute VFX changes.

Now we have "Agatha All Along," the latest Marvel Studios title, which is a long-awaited spin-off of the 2021 series "WandaVision." Bj Colangelo gave an overall positive review of the first four episodes for /Film, describing the show as "deliciously chaotic.

Call it the witching hour for Marvel Studios. Kevin Feige's first foray into Disney+ streaming went extremely well with "WandaVision," the 2021 spin-off series set in the aftermath of "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame" that follows the powerful Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her beloved Vision (Paul Bettany). One of the main scene-stealing highlights, of course, was none other than Kathryn Hahn's mischievous neighbor-turned-antagonist Agatha Harkness, a rival witch with a serious talent for gaslighting, girlbossing, and, well, you know the rest. After that ridiculously catchy song went viral (and even earned Marvel an Emmy), it was pretty much a guarantee that the studio would rush to take advantage and bring Agatha back to the small screen for more magical hijinks. It took three years, but we're finally mere days away from the premiere of "Agatha All Along.

Horror continues to be the surest of sure non-ip things at the box office, so it's a bummer that Tilman Singer's "Cuckoo" couldn't catch on theatrically like its distributor Neon's "Longlegs" did back in July. The film received mostly positive reviews (it currently holds a 77% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes), and boasted an acclaimed performance from "Euphoria" star Hunter Schafer, but it just couldn't generate the must-see buzz of Osgood Perkins' skin-crawling sensation. Dan Stevens turns in a far more interestingly unhinged performance than Nicolas Cage's one-note shriek-show in "Longlegs," but Stevens, for whatever reason (and it's getting fairly baffling by this point), isn't an A-lister. He's handsome, he's charming, he's ridiculously talented — what's the problem here?

In any event, since you probably missed "Cuckoo" during its brief theatrical run, you'll now be able to discover its nutty pleasures. As is typically the case with horror movies nowadays,...

Joaquin Phoenix's loss was James McAvoy's gain. The latter is now starring in Blumhouse's retelling of the 2022 Danish horror film "Speak No Evil", adding yet another terrifying and brilliant performance under McAvoy's belt as the antagonist of the story. Not surprisingly, the trailers for the movie almost seemed to be going out of their way to evoke the actor's vaguely similar turn in M. Night Shyamalan's "Split," where he stole every one of his scenes as the mentally unstable villain -- one whose entire mood and personality shifted at a moment's notice, not unlike his character in "Speak No Evil." Well, those comparisons might never have happened in the first place if Phoenix hadn't dropped out of yet another high-profile gig at the very last moment.

The "Joker" star recently made headlines for doing just that, abandoning what would've been a leading role in director Todd Haynes'...

After years of waiting for their franchise to get back on-track, "Terminator" fans finally have a decent on-screen installment in the long-suffering saga. After several studios tried and failed to right the "Terminator" ship, a savior arrived in the unlikely form of Netflix. The streamer's new "Terminator Zero" anime show is a gorgeous and gruesome eight-episode series that represents showrunner/EP/writer Mattson Tomlin's attempt to inject a bit of horror back into the franchise.

It's an element of the original two movies that has been conspicuously absent from subsequent entries. As the "Terminator" films went on, they increasingly leaned into action blockbuster territory, jettisoning the slasher vibe creator James Cameron established with his 1984 original film, as well as the ambient sense of doom from Cameron's 1991 sequel "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." Thankfully, much of that is back in "Zero," which as /Film's Bj Colangelo writes in her review, features...

This weekend marks the end of an era. A remake of 1994's "The Crow," which has been in development since at least 2008, has finally made it to theaters. Its odyssey saw four different directors come and go before it finally ended up in the hands of Rupert Sanders ("Ghost in the Shell"), and a string of actors attached to play protagonist Eric Draven -- including Bradley Cooper, Luke Evans, and Alexander Skarsgård. "The Crow" took so long to finally make it to production that the starring role ended up passing to a younger Skarsgård.

Now, "The Crow" has arrived and it's... bombing. Produced for $50 million, the movie is expected to gross just $5 million or less in its opening weekend, according to the Hollywood Reporter. On the box office charts, that will put it in a dismal seventh place as "Deadpool & Wolverine" reclaims the No. 1 spot. This marks back-to-back megabombs for distributor Lionsgate,...

This article contains massive spoilers for "Blink Twice."

"Blink Twice" is a confident, exciting piece of filmmaking that turns a talented actor into a multi-hyphenate triple threat. Zoe Kravitz, who you know from films like "The Batman" and shows like "Big Little Lies," co-wrote the screenplay for "Blink Twice" alongside E.T. Feigenbaum and makes her feature directorial debut with this spectacular and subversive movie, a gorgeous, colorful, primal scream of a thriller that uses its heightened, stylish trappings to terrific effect. /Film's Bj Colangelo called the movie "the biggest surprise of 2024," and considering we didn't know Kravitz had this in her as a filmmaker, I'm inclined to agree.

It's the type of film that starts going in one direction, builds to a reveal, takes a big turn, and ramps things up exponentially as it races toward the finish line. Here's what you need to know about the movie, and what its ending means.

First reactions to Fede Álvarez's long-awaited space horror flick "Alien: Romulus" are here, and according to several critics, it's a movie that plays like a "greatest hits" take on the series that first began with Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien." Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate, but early reactions so far appear more mixed than expected — especially after 20th Century Studios dropped such a deliciously nasty trailer for the film earlier this year, setting horror fans abuzz and solidifying the movie as one of the year's most anticipated.

The hype paid off for some critics, including /Film's Bj Colangelo, who notes on X that the film is in her personal top 3 "Alien" film ranking. She calls the new movie "a return to form for the franchise in the sense that it is an unapologetic legacy sequel — but also is filled with thrilling, disgusting, and scary as hell moments.

You know the old saying: Couples who star in two extremely hyped-up movies at roughly the same time together (despite technically being rivals at the box office) tend to stay together. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively have always been one of the internet's favorite celebrity pairings and, this past week, the dream team's romance has found itself in the spotlight like never before -- and that's not even factoring in Lively's own cameo as, spoiler alert, the voice of Lady Deadpool. The overlapping releases between Reynolds' "Deadpool & Wolverine" and Lively's "It Ends With Us" played out like a rising tide raising both ships, buoyed by their respective audiences turning out in droves and pitting both films against one another in a battle for that prized #1 spot.

But that competition only exists in the minds of financial experts, film journalists, and internet stans who are way too invested in their pop-culture idols.

Only a few weeks after "Deadpool & Wolverine" supercharged the box office, perhaps it was fate that the first real rival to the Ryan Reynolds-led superhero movie would come in the form of a romantic drama starring Blake Lively, both of whom are married to one another and are undoubtedly, as the kids say, goals. (Lively even scores multiple fourth wall-breaking references in her husband's threequel and her own cameo voice appearance as well.) "It Ends With Us" might not seem like a conventional challenger to potentially knock off one of the most highly-anticipated blockbusters in years from the number one spot, but that would be underselling the sheer expectations the film comes with, based on the bestselling novel by author Colleen Hoover.

The story follows recent college graduate Lily Blossom Bloom (Lively), who has aspirations of opening her own floral shop and meeting the perfect guy. When she...

Summer is here, and if you're anything like me, you're ready for July to be over after the last several weeks of unbearably hot weather. I've already gotten a head start on the spooky season by taking in some summer scares over the past month (check out our picks for the best horror movies streaming right now), with plans to keep barreling ahead until further notice. Luckily, as chance would have it, August's batch of new arrivals on Netflix is packed with either horror titles or horror-adjacent offerings. That includes the multiple AMC shows premiering on the streamer on August 19, not least of all the best vampire series you're not watching. So, should you be so inclined, join me on the dark side as we get our macabre on with stories of blood-suckers, cannibals, killer robots, and the scariest thing of all: a mentally unwell person who really, really wants to be famous.

Neon's latest wild horror movie, "Cuckoo," has just dropped a new trailer featuring more glimpses at Dan Stevens and Hunter Schafer's already-acclaimed performances. The enigmatic yet apparently entertaining film debuted at the Berlin International Film Fest this year, and /Film's B.J. Colangelo dubbed it a "screeching ride of repulsive sci-fi body horror" in her positive festival review back in April. Since then, strong opinions surrounding the movie have multiplied, with /Film's Bill Bria describing "Cuckoo" as "profoundly strange, nightmarish, and moving in equal measure" on Twitter. Currently, the film holds an 81% approval rating from critics cited on Rotten Tomatoes.

Written and directed by "Luz" filmmaker Tilman Singer, "Cuckoo" tells the story of a teen whose move to the Bavarian Alps is met with a series of sinister events. The movie marks the first horror role for "Euphoria" breakout star Schafer (though Yorgos Lanthimos' "Kinds of Kindness" certainly toes...

When early footage reactions to Shawn Levy's highly-anticipated "Deadpool & Wolverine" dropped on Twitter a few weeks back, the consensus was overwhelmingly positive. The limited pool of critics and audiences privy to the 35-minute sneak peek praised the film's irreverent humor while expressing hope for the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe flick. Well, it seems like we have to wait no longer, as the first reactions to the Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds-led superhero film, which had its world premiere last night, are finally here. While most of the reactions are enthusiastic and effusive, some express a sense of disappointment while praising the performances delivered by the central duo.

The finer details of "Deadpool & Wolverine" are under wraps for good reason, as the film is set to grace theaters this Friday, but the involvement of the Time Variance Authority, leads Deadpool and Wolverine to team up...

This article contains mild spoilers for "The Imaginary."

Animation and horror is a peculiar and difficult combination. Although the West has seen kids' animated movies descend into pure horror plenty of times before, it is trickier with anime, where more often than not horror is boiled down to simply a metric ton of blood or body horror. Still, even when the atmosphere of horror doesn't work in an animated movie, chances are it will still provide a horrifying monster or villain. This has been true since the early days of feature animation in the U.S., when "Snow White" gave countless kids nightmares with the Evil Queen.

That tradition has mostly gone away, as cartoons inspired by horror are becoming increasingly rare each year. This only makes the movies that do remember the power of horror in a kid-friendly setting all the more powerful. So is the case of "The Imaginary,...

The box office is finally seeing signs of life — once again, animation saves Hollywood — but that doesn't mean there aren't still reasons to stay at home and watch things on streaming. With the summer ramping up, and movies like "Despicable Me 4," "Twisters," and "Deadpool & Wolverine" giving us hope that the theatrical experience will remain a popular choice in the next month, we feel slightly less bad about recommending things to watch from the comfort of home.

Indeed, after a couple of slower months, Netflix is gearing up for one big summer, releasing some very highly anticipated titles, some surprising sequels, and also adding some modern classics with timely ties to movies still in theaters. With so many titles releasing on streaming every month and so little effort done by these platforms in advertising their own product, we're here to tell you what you should prioritize on Netflix in July.

Maybe I've simply been in the game too long, but spoilers just don't bother me anymore. /Film's Bj Colangelo put it best in her own takedown of spoiler culture and media: "Without actually seeing the spoiler in action or having context, we can't know the execution of the scene, the tone, or see the reactions characters have to the moment ... all necessary cues to a moment's impact." I myself have gone in fully spoiled for many films and TV series I've seen in recent years (such is the nature of this industry), yet I usually come away feeling either far less annoyed or more deeply moved by major reveals or character deaths. It all depends on how they're handled.

I get it, though. For casual viewers, investing years of your life in a story only for some jagoff to ruin the ending or a shocking twist must be infuriating. It...

This article contains spoilers for "A Quiet Place: Day One."

To put it mildly, the "A Quiet Place" series is not best known for its world-building. The ingenious premise of the original screenplay by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (revised into the 2018 crackerjack setpiece machine co-written and directed by John Krasinski) works best when less detail is put into it: otherworldly monsters are roaming about, and if you make a sound loud enough to break the silence, they will track you and kill you instantly. Simple!

Krasinski's film made sure to do the bare minimum when explaining these extraterrestrial invaders, resulting in the (now somewhat infamous) dry-erase board of facts and speculation maintained by Krasinski's simple farmer and patriarch, Lee Abbott. Even though 2021's "A Quiet Place Part II" expanded the post-apocalypse world and characters, there was really only one new big piece of information given about the creatures, the...

Want to hear something impressive? "A Quiet Place: Day One," which /Film's review calls the best film in the franchise, is only director Michael Sarnoski's second feature film. His first feature, 2021's "Pig," was among my favorite films of that year, and also made it into /Film's overall top 10 of 2021. When he was hired to direct "A Quiet Place: Day One," it felt like a throwback to the days when Sundance faves like Colin Trevorrow or Jon Watts were plucked from the indie scene and dropped into a much larger canvas, but I was still eager to see what he would do with the movie. The film's marketing campaign was so overbearing, though, that it eventually wore away a lot of my anticipation. Turns out the folks at Paramount knew what they were doing by flooding the zone with those trailers, because the film is off to a great start...

One of the best and most original horror films -- not just of this year, but perhaps of the last few as well -- is finally available to watch at home. "In a Violent Nature" rode a tidal wave of critical hype, including /Film's review by Bj Colangelo, and positive word of mouth on its way to becoming a modest indie box-office hit earlier this year. For those lucky enough to catch this slasher in theaters, they know that writer/director Chris Nash's innovative twist on horror formula was well worth making the effort to see. For those who haven't yet been able to enjoy the gory, deliberately-paced charms of this supernatural slasher that mainly follows the perspective of its hulking and eerily silent killer, well, now's your chance.

After enjoying a prolonged film festival run and a limited release in theaters, "In a Violent Nature" has now been...

This is a very exciting time for action cinema. Movies like "John Wick" have brought a new appreciation in American cinema for meticulous choreography and cartoon physics that make each set piece larger and wilder than the ones that came before them. Indie filmmakers like Adil & Bilall are similarly playing in the big studio space, while there's now unprecedented access to action movies from around the world, with filmmakers from countries like Indonesia leaving their mark on the genre. Indonesia, in particular, has seen some of the best action movies of the past decade, and it also gave us perhaps the most exciting voice in the genre working today — Timo Tjahjanto.

To quote our own Bj Colangelo, Tjahjanto "has never made a movie that didn't, at minimum, totally rip," whether it's his short films in "V/H/S/2" and "The ABCs of Death," his Sam Raimi-inspired movie "May the Devil Take You,...

Oh, George Miller, the genius that you are. The 79-year-old Oscar-winning filmmaker has played in multiple genres, giving us plenty of masterpieces and films that pushed the medium forward, from "The Road Warrior" all the way to "Happy Feet." This is, after all, the mad man who gave us "Babe: Pig in the City," arguably the closest predecessor to "Fury Road" — one of the best movies of all time (according to the /Film team).

Now, nearly a decade after welcoming us to Valhalla in "Fury Road," Miller is back in the Wasteland with "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," an epic tale that follows Imperator Furiosa on a quest for vengeance. As our own Bj Colangelo wrote in her review, "'Furiosa' is somehow bigger, more imaginative, and yes, better, than what came before. George Miller has given us a scorching, rip-roaring, and downright breathtaking odyssey that serves as his finest work yet.

Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc is looking dapper as hell in this new look at "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," Rian Johnson's latest murder mystery that continues the adventures of the private detective after "Knives Out" and "Glass Onion." The topline instant takeaway is obviously that Blanc has much longer hair than he's had in the previous two films, and that new look could potentially signal a new attitude or maybe even a whole new worldview for this character. Could a shaggier-haired Blanc be a bit more laid back and bohemian this time around? Perhaps he's been hanging out with his pal Derol from "Glass Onion" in between movies and taken some life lessons from the amiable slacker.

Aaaaand we're off! Today is day 1 of shooting on the next Benoit Blanc mystery "Wake Up Dead Man" - see you on the other side. pic.twitter.com/Napfvq...

Lock your doors and hide in the bathroom: The Strangers are coming home. More specifically, the first installment in Renny Harlin's new horror reboot trilogy, "The Strangers: Chapter 1," is now available to rent and buy digitally, with a home media release hopefully to follow.

In case you're not up to date on your "Strangers" lore, here's a quick recap: the original horror movie "The Strangers" rattled viewers to their core when it was released in 2008, scaring the bejesus out of spooky movie fans thanks to its tension-building, bad-guys-in-the-background slow burn, and a home invasion plot with no rhyme or reason. Director Bryan Bertino co-penned an unrelated sequel, the underrated mobile home park slasher "The Strangers: Prey At Night," in 2018, with Ben Katai co-writing the script and Johannes Roberts directing. The first "Strangers" film is polarizing but widely considered one of the freakiest movies of the aughts, while the...

Breaking news: The greatest threat to this industry isn't the death of movie theaters, the rise of artificial intelligence, or Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's reign of terror. It is, in fact, writer/director Rian Johnson's ceaseless efforts to cast the entirety of Hollywood in his "Knives Out" movies.

Since today's a day that ends in "Y," that quest continues unabated yet again. After only just hearing word that the third film in this murder-mystery series, titled "Wake Up Dead Man," has added actors Josh O'Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, and Glenn Close to its roster of stars, we've now received word that yet another high-profile name is close to signing on the dotted line. None other than Marvel Cinematic Universe veteran, current "Mayor of Kingston" lead, and former mastermind behind the Renner App (which sadly flew too close to the sun and never took...

After nearly a decade, director George Miller has returned to the Wasteland with "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga." The film serves as a prequel to 2015's Oscar-winning, dangerous epic "Mad Max: Fury Road," which has garnered a reputation as one of the greatest action films ever made. Miller enlisted Anya Taylor-Joy ("The Queen's Gambit") and Chris Hemsworth ("Thor") to tell the tale of Furiosa years before we met her in "Fury Road." With the film hitting theaters this week, critics have weighed in, and while many are praising Miller's latest, others have vocally disliked it. So, what are critics saying about the long-awaited film?

The latest entry in the "Mad Max" franchise centers on a young Furiosa (Anya-Taylor Joy) who is snatched from the Green Place and winds up in the hands of the warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). As he goes to war with the Immortan Joe for control of the Wasteland,...

Not to sound like a broken record but it was yet another brutal weekend at the box office as May rolls right along. Director John Krasinski's big-budget, family-friendly flick "If" topped the charts with a worse-than-expected opening. Theaters are desperate for a breakout hit given the relatively lackluster performances of other films like "The Fall Guy" in the early going. But, as has been the case so many times in the pandemic era, horror came to the rescue — sort of. Lionsgate's "The Strangers: Chapter 1" had a solid debut, but not so much that it can make up for what was lacking elsewhere. It was also an iffy start for a film that is launching an entire trilogy.

Director Renny Harlin's new take on "The Strangers" (the first part of it anyway) opened to an estimated $12 million domestically, placing at number three on the charts behind "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes...

Nine years ago, director George Miller came kind of out of nowhere to deliver one of the greatest action movies of all time with "Mad Max: Fury Road." Miller revived the long-dead franchise with a film so universally beloved the only shocking thing is that it took nine years to get another "Mad Max" movie made. Well, here we are, staring down the barrel of the release of "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," which tells the origin story of Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron in "Fury Road"). The question is, can this prequel build on the audience that has come to adore "Fury Road" in the years since its release? Warner Bros. will need that to be the case for the film to be an outright hit at the box office.

"Furisa" hits theaters next weekend and will be opening directly against "The Garfield Movie." Admittedly, these films are both playing for radically different audiences.

This article contains major spoilers for "The Strangers: Chapter 1."

The horror genre is no stranger (pun intended) to creatures returning from the dead. After "The Bride of Frankenstein" brought back the Monster in 1935, no major cinematic horror character has lain dormant for too long, with even the unlikeliest of beasties or killers coming back for at least a second go-round or more.

The villains of 2008's "The Strangers" count as one of those unlikely killers, though not because they're difficult to sequelize. On the contrary, the very ethos of the Strangers — that being they kill "because you were home" — is incredibly open-ended and ripe for exploration and expansion in further films. Yet therein lies the rub, as they say, for a large part of what makes "The Strangers" so terrifying is that it's a home invasion movie where absolutely no rationale is given for the tragic fates suffered by the...

The post contains major spoilers for "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes."

After a seven-year break, the "Planet of the Apes" franchise has finally returned with a new installment, one that takes us much further than seven years into the future. Director Wes Ball's "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" takes place centuries after the Caesar trilogy in the overall timeline, with apes now firmly the dominant species on the planet. So yes, there is a new ape villain at the center of the proceedings in the form of Proximus Caesar (played by Kevin Durand). However, the film's real villain was hidden pretty well in the marketing -- even though right there the whole time.

The film sees Noa (Owen Teague) seeking out the sect of apes led by Proximus, who annihilated his home, killed his father, and kidnapped Noa's clan. Along the way, he and his...

It looks like Snake Plissken will be trapped in New York a bit longer: a planned reboot of the John Carpenter classic "Escape From New York" has lost its directors again, according to ComicBook.com. "Scream" legacy sequel directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, who are better known as Radio Silence (the name of their production group), were attached to the project as of 2022, but say they're no longer officially on board.

"We are not [developing it], unfortunately," Gillett told the outlet in a new interview, explaining, "I think titles like that bounce around for a while and I think they've tried to get that out of the blocks a few times. I think it's just ultimately a tricky rights issue thing." It sounds like it's not that Gillett and Bettinelli-Olpin aren't interested in pursuing the project, but that they weren't able to make it within a set window of time before the...

George Miller is about to return to the wasteland with "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," but it might surprise some people to know that his biggest box office hit to date remains the technological marvel that is "Happy Feet."

Though you wouldn't think of "Happy Feet" as being connected to "Mad Max: Fury Road," they have some things in common — particularly their stunning visuals and how they approach VFX. Despite what some fans would like to believe, "Fury Road" is full of CGI. As Miller himself told Vulture in 2022, "There was not one shot in that movie that wasn't CGI in one way or another." The film works because it blends digital and practical effects, using CGI to enhance scenes, delete wirework, and otherwise make what is already real feel larger-than-life. This is the approach that the best movies take -- the ones that understand CGI is a tool and not a shortcut.

Australian director George Miller made his first feature film, "Mad Max," in 1979. It was a very low-budget affair costing about $200,000. The film takes place in the near future when the Earth is running low on oil and civilization is just beginning to crumble. "Mad" Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson) is a road cop tasked with reigning in the chaos. "Mad Max" was decidedly low-fi, but it struck a chord with audiences, ultimately earning almost $100 million worldwide. It remains one of the most profitable movies of all time, comparable only to "The Blair Witch Project," "Paranormal Activity," and "Deep Throat." Miller would go on to make several sequels to "Mad Max" in 1981, 1985, and 2015. The fifth film in the series, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," is hitting theaters this month, with a potential sixth entry, "Mad Max: The Wasteland," in the early planning stages.

Miller recently participated in a "Furiosa" screening and Q&a event,...

Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys. Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of the main group of kidnappers/mercenaries who have absolutely no idea what they just got themselves into. The directing duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (also known as Radio Silence) unleashed a hellish feast for the senses earlier this year thanks to their horror flick with a twist, "Abigail." Because of the wonders of marketing, of course, we found out long before our doomed lead characters that the innocent-looking child they've chosen to hold for ransom is actually a bloodthirsty vampire (Alisha Weir). And in no time at all, the full weight of their predicament dawns on them as they realize that the hunters have now become the hunted in a horrific cat-and-mouse game set at a decrepit old mansion over the course of one endless day.

After debuting to rave reviews but inflicting...

Despite the widely despised series finale of "Game of Thrones" -- which, for the record, we at /Film didn't hate nearly as much as the rest of the world seemed to at the time -- the show was an immense cultural juggernaut for HBO, and in the risk-averse television landscape, it's only natural that other channels and streamers saw that show's success and wanted to replicate it for themselves. Prime Video spend ungodly amounts of money on the rights to a TV show set in "The Lord of the Rings" universe, Netflix dumped a bunch of money into the forgotten "Marco Polo," and even History got into the mix with "Vikings."

FX, meanwhile, decided to greenlight "Shogun," a tremendously expensive-looking adaptation of James Clavell's 1975 novel (which was previously adapted into an ultra-popular miniseries in the '80s). After enduring production delays due to the pandemic and finally premiering this February,...

It's safe to say first-time feature screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes came out of the gate hot with his first produced screenplay. "Challengers," the erotic tennis thriller starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor, was one of /Film's most anticipated films of 2024, and the movie lived up to our sky-high expectations by being a mesmerizing drama about three people locked in a deep and unconventional relationship.

But interestingly, one of the film's most important scenes was not in its first draft. I spoke to Kuritzkes this week in advance of the film's release, and he told me about how a story idea from director Luca Guadagnino eventually evolved into one of the movie's most famous moments:

"One of the first conversations we had was that Luca said, 'In a love triangle, all the corners should touch.' I heard that, and I thought, 'Yeah, all these people's lives are so deeply intwined,...

A fiercely capable woman with ice water in her veins finds herself in a creepy-looking mansion, where she has to survive a supernatural threat over the course of one endless night and eventually ends up covered in gore and viscera? If I had a nickel for every time a horror movie directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence) came out in the last five years with that exact same premise, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but you know how the rest of the meme goes. If this past weekend's "Abigail" triggered a nagging feeling of déjà vu, well, that's probably because the vampire movie packing a nasty bite (you can read /Film's review by Bj Colangelo here) shares quite a bit of DNA with the directing duo's previous movie, 2019's "Ready or Not."

Apparently, the creative team decided to lean into those similarities even more.

Horror has been a real anchor for the box office in the pandemic era, with franchises like "Halloween" and originals like "M3GAN" managing to break through in a meaningful way. Now, Universal Pictures is looking to strike with something original while also playing in familiar territory with "Abigail." The upcoming horror film deals with vampires, something Universal has done dating back to the original "Dracula" more than 90 years ago. But this one comes with a pretty unique spin on the tried-and-true genre. The question is, will it be enough to motivate moviegoers to turn up for a vampire movie? Or will this be another unfortunate misfire for the studio?

Radio Silence, the team that includes Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, directed the film. They've got a very good track record and Universal is hoping that they can work their magic once again. As it stands, things look pretty good. "Abigail...

Richard Donner's "The Omen" is one of the most revered horror classics of all time. Now, Disney's 20th Century Studios is bridging the franchise back from the dead for a prequel in the form of "The First Omen." Horror has been on an incredible hot streak at the box office over the last couple of years, and Disney is the best in the business at milking franchises for all they're worth. So, will this R-rated franchise revival scare up enough to make it a hit when it opens next weekend?

Director Arkasha Stevenson's horror prequel is currently expected to pull in between $8 and $13 million on its opening weekend, per Box Office Pro. It will be opening directly against Dev Patel's action flick "Monkey Man," which has its sights set on a debut between $16 and $25 million. Both movies will also be contending with "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" on its second weekend,...

Hollywood isn't investing nearly as much in straight-up comedies as they used to. While 2023 saw many of the best comedies of the year come from the indie and arthouse world. "Barbie" was a big winner last year, but that's a blockbuster doing a lot more heavy-lifting than just bringing laughs, with an adventure fueled by one of the most recognizable intellectual properties of all time. "No Hard Feelings" and "Anyone But You" brought some raunchy, romantic laughs to the proceedings, and we were certainly grateful that Jennifer Lawrence and Sydney Sweeney took risks as producers on R-rated studio comedies like that. Otherwise, most of the laughs come from cross-genre comedy hybrids that have bigger box office potential because of a high-concept story that just so happens to bring some hilarity, such as "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" or "Cocaine Bear."

So how is comedy shaping up in 2024? Unfortunately, with some worrisome box office potential,...

Last year was a standout year for animation, and 2024 is already shaping up to be another banger. While a majority of the high-profile animation releases are due out later this summer, the first quarter of 2024 has already been promising. We at /Film are constantly singing the praises of animation as a medium, and doing our best to course-correct the ignorant idea that animation is only for children. Admittedly, this list is going to look mighty small for the time being, but it will be updated throughout the year as more films become available. As we noted last year, animation is one of the only mediums where global cinema is given an equal footing to studio-produced films in America, with the artistic visuals serving as a universal language that we can all enjoy. Meaning, this list is not limited to Hollywood animation releases ... and that's a good thing. As for now,...

We love horror here at /Film, which gives us an excuse to highlight some of the best horror movies of 2024. The year is still young — it's not quite April yet — but there are already a slew of creepy, spooky, and scary titles to pick through and celebrate. We can only hope and assume this list will grow considerably as 2024 continues on, but for now, let's look back at what's already arrived and highlight some titles that might've completely slipped through the cracks for some of you. We've avoided spoilers to keep these films fresh for you. You're welcome. And now, here are the best horror movies of 2024 so far.

Read more: The 50 Scariest Horror Movie Monsters Ranked

Blackout

Larry Fessenden, indie horror auteur, is back — with a werewolf movie. But "Blackout" isn't your typical lycanthrope flick. This is more like a quirky indie character drama that also happens to be about a werewolf.

Your scent. It's like a drug to me. You're like my own personal brand of heroin. Or perhaps it's just that Lionsgate simply refuses to let sleeping dogs (shape-shifters?) lie, even now that we're more than a decade removed from the peak of "Twilight" fever. The studio has already revealed its intention to reboot Stephenie Meyer's YA fantasy romance phenomenon for the small screen as a TV series, which begs the question: how exactly does it plan to go about trying to rebottle the "stupid lightning in a stupid bottle" that was the original movie adaptations of Meyer's books, to quote /Film's Bj Colangelo? We now have part of the answer and, incredibly enough, it's not at all a bad idea.

Speaking during a Q&a at this week's Morgan Stanley media conference (as reported on by Variety), Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns casually dropped the bombshell that...