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12 Monkeys Universal Pictures Bruce Willis can be an excellent actor, and “12 Monkeys” is one of his best films. His hurt confusion plays like a concerto against Brad Pitt’s fervent madness. Willis’ time traveler, James Cole, is an unwilling messiah, doing his best to prevent an apocalypse he only dimly understands, never realizing he’s meant to be the sacrificial lamb on its altar. Strange, dreamlike, and emotionally horrific, this is one of Terry Gilliam’s most accessible and meaningful films....

The Book That Started John Carpenter’s Love Of Horror New Line Cinema By Debopriyaa Dutta/Nov. 5, 2022 6:30 pm EST Throughout the course of his career, John Carpenter has directed horror movies that have redefined the genre in several ways. His 1978 horror classic, “Halloween” is nothing less than a full-blown pop culture phenomenon, and his lesser-known films, such as “Prince of Darkness,” is still being discovered by horror-heads. Carpenter’s legacy obviously extends beyond his filmmaking, as he is also a composer with a penchant for creating original soundtracks meant to enhance the source material....

Defamed by Dazed Universal Pictures “Dazed and Confused” focuses on a group of teenagers through their last day of school and final high school party. All the classic archetypes are present and accounted for. There’s the stoner, Slater (Rory Cochrane), the quarterback with an attitude, Pink (Jason London), and the 20-year-old who still hangs out with high schoolers, Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey). Chances are, at least one of these character descriptions fits someone you knew as a teenager....

What We Do In The Shadows Season 4 Showed Off The Series At Its Best FX By Matthew Bilodeau/Sept. 8, 2022 4:54 pm EST This article contains major spoilers for season 4 of “What We Do in the Shadows.” It saddens me that we’ve already reached the end of yet another chaotic season with our favorite Staten Island bloodsuckers (and Guillermo), but I feel much better knowing that “What We Do in the Shadows” will rise to see another full moon....

Why Hugh Jackman’s Pan Failed At The Box Office Warner Bros. By Witney Seibold/Dec. 17, 2022 3:00 pm EST Joe Wright’s 2015 film, “Pan,” an anachronistic and colorful origin story for Peter Pan, sounded like a good idea on paper. Reimagined origin stories were very much in vogue then throughout popular culture, and the tale of how an immortal elven boy came to Neverland only to become rivals with a one-handed pirate is certainly ripe for exploration....

‘It didn’t play enough by Avatar rules’ Dark Horse Cameron explained to Total Film that he loved the ideas from the original “Avatar 2” script, but that they ultimately didn’t feel enough like they belonged to an “Avatar” sequel: “What happened was, we were noodling around. I was working with a team of writers. We had a lot of ideas. We kept trying to corral it into a box, and it never quite fit....

Why Star Trek: Lower Decks Creator Mike McMahan Wanted Non-Trekkies In The Writers’ Room Paramount By Demetra Nikolakakis/Oct. 5, 2022 12:37 pm EST It seems like any screenwriter’s dream: Work hard, build some credits, and eventually land a major gig that reminds you of the films that inspired you in the first place. And if you’re a fan of an ongoing franchise, maybe you help create an upcoming project. It’s a system that (usually) works, too — who better to create a new, exciting television series than a passionate fan?...

Without A Hail Mary Phone Call From Lorraine Bracco, The Sopranos Might Not Have Been Made HBO By Joshua Meyer/Oct. 10, 2022 8:31 am EST “The Sopranos” was instrumental in bringing about a new Golden Age of Television, and it remains one of the most critically well-regarded shows of all time, with a bundle of Emmy Awards to its name (among numerous other accolades). However, the show’s success wasn’t always guaranteed....

Zoe Saldana And Kate Winslet Deserved Better In Avatar: The Way Of Water 20th Century Studios By Jenna Busch/Dec. 19, 2022 3:00 pm EST The following post contains spoilers for “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Audiences have returned to Pandora almost a decade and a half after our first visit to James Cameron’s “Avatar.” The sequel takes place 14 years after the original film, and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have a family of both biological and adopted children....

A Perfect Murder Warner Bros. Inexplicably, critics dissed this excellent and taut 1998 murder-for-hire thriller. The king of ’90s slimeballs, Michael Douglas, plays Steven, a wealthy Manhattan investor whose portfolio just took a serious dive. His beautiful and much younger wife, Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow), hails from an obscenely wealthy clan. She’s having affair with a scruffy starving artist David (Viggo Mortensen). When Steven finds out, he also discovers David is a conman and offers the scammer a deal: Kill my wife for cash or go to jail....

Black Adam Trailer Breakdown: Dwayne Johnson’s Antihero Is Here To Shake Things Up For DC Warner Bros. By Joshua Meyer/July 25, 2022 8:21 am EST Can you smell what Dwayne Johnson is cooking? It’s a new trailer for “Black Adam,” the next high-flying DC movie and the one that will — according to Johnson — change the whole “hierarchy of power” in the DC Extended Universe, as it’s informally known....

Details Kids Won’t Catch In Wendell & Wild Netflix By Chad Collins/Nov. 14, 2022 3:09 pm EST “Wendell & Wild,” the latest animation offering from stop-motion juggernaut Henry Selick (“The Nightmare Before Christmas”), is as weird and wonderful as a Selick and Jordan Peele collaboration sounds. While only several weeks old, the film already feels buried beneath the sheer volume of television and movies Netflix released this Halloween season. As soon as one film lands on the streaming platform, hundreds of titles are waiting in the wings to take its place....

Every Guardians Of The Galaxy Team Member, And Their Various Degrees From Kevin Bacon Marvel Studios By Mike Shutt/Oct. 27, 2022 3:50 pm EST Kevin Bacon has finally entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though it is in an incredibly surprising way. He will be playing himself in the forthcoming “The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special” set to premiere on Disney+ on November 25, 2022. Thanks to mergers and multiverses, Bacon technically already is in the MCU, as he played Sebastian Shaw in “X-Men: First Class,” but this is his official introduction to the current slate....

What is Free Guy? 20th Century Films Inspired by wildly violent open-world video games like Grand Theft Auto, Free Guy follows a non-playable background character in a video game who is suddenly awoken from his daily bank teller routine and tasked with saving his video game world from being destroyed. It’s like The Truman Show meets Wreck-It Ralph with some of Last Action Hero and The Matrix thrown in for good measure....

Genndy Tartakovsky Takes An Unusual Approach To Crafting Primal’s Score Adult Swim By Ernesto Valenzuela/Oct. 9, 2022 6:00 pm EST Genndy Tartakovsky has made a name for himself in the realm of animated projects. The director recently finished the second season of “Primal” with an emotionally charged finale with an unexpected twist. The show, centered around a caveman and a dinosaur navigating a cruel prehistory world, is well known for its stunning animation and lack of dialogue....

How Kumail Nanjiani Reinvented Himself For Welcome To Chippendales [Exclusive Interview] Hulu By Jacob Hall/Nov. 14, 2022 3:00 pm EST In “Welcome to Chippendales,” Kumail Nanjiani plays a type he has never played before: dull and dangerous. Steve Banerjee, the founder of the famed Chippendales club — which brought male stripping into the mainstream via live performances, wall calendars, and so much more — is a man defined by how little respect he inspires, and how much he blends into the background....

Marvel Studios By Jeremy Mathai/Oct. 7, 2022 3:00 pm EST The Marvel Cinematic Universe has grown by leaps and bounds, starting from the most humble beginnings with “Iron Man” in 2008 before reaching the first of many crescendos with “The Avengers” in 2012. It might be tempting to look back and dismiss Phase One as quaint and reserved, featuring remarkably more reserved ambitions — Thor was originally introduced as a boring ol’ extraterrestrial instead of a god, after all, and now look how far we’ve come — compared to the downright cosmic concepts and surreal storylines that the MCU has since embraced....

The cost of success AMC There are two female characters whom the show follows through their workplace journeys over the course of its entire seven season run. There’s Elisabeth Moss’ Peggy, who begins the show as a naive young secretary and works her way up to being a chief copywriter, as well as Christina Hendricks’ Joan, who begins as the office manager and eventually becomes a partner at the firm....

Spencer Grammer Refused To Quit Rick And Morty For Another Series Adult Swim By Ryan Scott/Aug. 25, 2022 10:00 pm EST “Rick and Morty” has been around just shy of a decade, but if it never went any further, its legacy as one of this generation’s most beloved animated shows would already be firmly cemented. A large (and perhaps under-discussed) part of that has to do with Spencer Grammer, who plays Summer and has been a core piece of the puzzle from the very beginning....

Cold Mountain Miramax Films Both a gripping survival epic and an old-fashioned period romance, Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain” explores the lengths people will go in order to hold on to love during wartime. William Inman (Jude Law) lives in a small North Carolina community and becomes smitten with the local preacher’s daughter, Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman). Although he has little personal interest in the Civil War, North Carolina’s secession from the Union forces Inman to enlist....