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Getting The Wire Renewed Was Always An Uphill Battle HBO By Jeremy Smith/Sept. 1, 2022 9:03 pm EST Even though it’s now widely considered one of the best television series in the history of the medium, if not the very best, David Simon’s “The Wire” was frequently on life support. It was a critics’ darling, but viewership was never robust, and Emmy voters repeatedly shunned it (the taste-challenged organization coughed up all of two nominations during the show’s run)....

Sneaky and underhanded cost-cutting manoeuvres HBO Max In a new report by Variety, we now know that Warner Bros. Discovery has been surreptitiously removing certain original movies from their own streaming service, HBO Max, in what seems like — what else — a sneaky and underhanded cost-cutting maneuver. Reportedly, within the last few weeks, the studio has quietly taken down at least half a dozen movies that debuted straight-to-streaming. Those titles include the Cole Sprouse and Lara Condor-starring rom-com “Moonshot,” Melissa McCarthy’s “Superintelligence,” the Robert Zemeckis-directed “The Witches” remake, Seth Rogen’s “An American Pickle,” “Charm City Kings,” and even one of the earliest Covid-set movies, Doug Liman’s “Locked Down,” starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor....

Here Are All Of The Cast And Crew Family Members Featured In Thor: Love And Thunder (That We Know About) Marvel Studios By Sandy Schaefer/July 11, 2022 1:33 pm EST Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” is a bit of a mess. It’s a film that tries to synthesize elements from all three previous “Thor” movies, including Thor’s romance with the human scientist Jane Foster, while also serving as a followup to “Avengers: Endgame” and re-imagining Jason Aaron’s run on “The Mighty Thor” comic books for the Marvel Cinematic Universe....

How The Iconic Diner Scene From Heat Influenced Heat 2 Warner Bros. By Ryan Scott/Aug. 12, 2022 12:04 pm EST Director Michael Mann delivered one of the greatest crime films ever in 1995 with “Heat,” the filmmaker’s heist epic that centers on detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and expert thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro). The movie’s reputation has only grown in the years since its original release and, to that end, Mann recently released a sequel in the form of a novel, “Heat 2,” which he co-wrote alongside Meg Gardiner....

How The Rings Of Power Foreshadows Isildur’s Fate In Mordor Prime Video By Debopriyaa Dutta/Sept. 30, 2022 1:00 pm EST This post contains spoilers for episode 6 of “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” The latest episode of “The Rings of Power,” aptly titled “Udûn,” which means “hell” in Sindarin, culminates in a reveal that is both sudden and shocking. While fans of the show were aware that a part of the Southlands would soon be transformed into Mordor, the manner in which the events are triggered takes even the mighty Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) by surprise....

How To Watch Billy Eichner’s Bros At Home Universal Pictures By Ryan Scott/Nov. 28, 2022 2:26 pm EST One of the most acclaimed studio comedies in recent memory will soon be available from the comfort of your couch, in your preferred method of consumption. The movie in question is “Bros,” the gay romcom starring Billy Eichner and directed by Nicholas Stoller, of “Neighbors” fame, not to mention that it was produced by Judd Apatow....

Marvel’s Predator #1 Review: A Big, Ambitious, And Futuristic Exploration Of The Hunter Marvel Comics By Ryan Scott/Aug. 10, 2022 9:00 am EST The “Predator” franchise has been two things over its years in the pop culture landscape: enduring and inconsistent. Sequels have never followed in rapid succession, so fans have been forced to wait for long stretches of time between installments. And when those installments do come, they are usually a radical departure from what came before....

Mary Harron Knew The Music Of American Psycho Had To Set A Tone Lionsgate By Devin Meenan/Dec. 24, 2022 4:00 pm EST “American Psycho” satirizes the culture of the 1980s, and you can’t talk about the decade and leave out the era’s music. The ’80s were a conservative decade, with an ascendant political right-wing, the financialization of the global economy, and more commercial art compared with the subversiveness of the 1960s and ’70s....

Nichelle Nichols’ Biggest Fan, Martin Luther King Jr., Convinced Her Not To Quit Star Trek Paramount By Devin Meenan/July 31, 2022 6:17 pm EST Another day, another acting legend gone. Nichelle Nichols, a trailblazer if there ever was one, passed away on July 30, 2022. Nichols’ role as Lt. Nyota Uhura on “Star Trek” was one of the first times a Black woman was portrayed in a competent, authoritative role on US television, and Nichols herself was the first African-American actress to have a lead role on a TV show....

One Does Not Simply Shoot A Scene On The Rings Of Power’s Sundering Seas By Marcos Melendez/Sept. 14, 2022 3:10 pm EST The record-breaking budget of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” allows the series to obtain unprecedented production value, but that does not mean creating the vast nature of Middle-earth gets any easier. Bringing the most fantastical parts of the source material to life proved no easy feat for Peter Jackson’s original trilogy, and despite significant technological advancements, “The Rings of Power” still seeks to push the boundaries of the canon....

Why be a secret agent if you can’t verbally delight in the demise of your foes? Sony When Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sam Mendes unexpectedly signed on to direct Craig’s third Bond flick, “Skyfall,” no one was expecting a more frivolous 007. Mendes was a serious craftsman of prestige films. Though he’d just made a whimsical road comedy in “Away We Go,” he was known primarily for the barbed satire of “American Beauty” and his brutally faithful adaptation of Richard Yates’s “Revolutionary Road....

No fun in C.G. A24 The initial plan for “The Lighthouse” was not to build a lighthouse. Creating an entire lighthouse from scratch is costly, and the film only had a reported budget of $11 million, which is not exactly the kind of budget that usually allows for major construction projects. But they just couldn’t find a suitable location. Speaking with Vogue, Robert Eggers recalled their journey to the decision to build:...

Take it easy, sweetheart! Warner Bros. The news that Robert Pattinson could suddenly become the new face of the DC universe comes ahead of the much-discussed meeting between the new DC creatives and Warner Bros. Discover CEO David Zaslav, one that will go a long way towards deciding the new course for the embattled superhero franchise. This throws a fascinating (and sure-to-be divisive) wrinkle into the previously reported news that Reeves’ “Batman” movies/spin-off shows would remain safe from the restructuring — /Film’s Joe Roberts provides a compelling counterargument here — that has already begun to affect other holdovers from the previous regime....

The Antares Paradox Review: An Emotional Sci-Fi Drama About The Cost Of Scientific Pursuit [Fantastic Fest] Onirikal Studio By Rafael Motamayor/Oct. 5, 2022 12:52 pm EST “The Antares Paradox” is a one-location sci-fi drama that plays as if it takes the best parts of “Contact” and “The Guilty.” This is a very emotional, grounded, and thrilling story about finding life in outer space while exploring the ramifications of dedicating your life to a greater goal, and how much of a personal toll it takes on you....

The Big Difference Between Midnight Mass And The Midnight Club, According To Mike Flanagan Netflix By Hannah Shaw-Williams/Sept. 1, 2022 8:03 pm EST Writer/director Mike Flanagan has firmly established himself as Netflix’s king of thoughtful, slow-burn horror. The relationship began with Flanagan’s 2016 movie “Before I Wake,” and continued with his 2017 adaptation of the Stephen King novel “Gerald’s Game.” But things really kicked off in 2018 with the arrival of “The Haunting of Hill House,” a series that was (very) loosely based on the Shirley Jackson book of the same name....

The Daily Stream: With Joe Wright’s Cyrano, Romantic Cinema Remains Alive And Well MGM By Mike Shutt/Dec. 20, 2022 1:00 pm EST (Welcome to The Daily Stream, an ongoing series in which the /Film team shares what they’ve been watching, why it’s worth checking out, and where you can stream it.) The Movie: “Cyrano” Where You Can Stream It: Prime Video The Pitch: Adapted from the classic play by Edmond Rostand, Peter Dinklage stars as the titular Cyrano de Bergerac, a celebrated soldier who is hopelessly in love with his friend and confidant Roxanne (Haley Bennett)....

The Entire Matrix Timeline Finally Explained Warner Bros. By Jason Baxter/July 27, 2022 4:39 pm EST The mythology of the Matrix franchise is one of the most complicated and dense in all of pop culture. Part of its enduring popularity is the seemingly impossible aplomb with which Lana and Lilly Wachowski synthesized a stew of philosophical concepts cribbed from Jean Baudrillard and others with various pop culture inspirations, including anime, the cyberpunk fiction of Philip K....

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Pushed Humphrey Bogart’s Patience To Its Limit Warner Bros. By Witney Seibold/Aug. 24, 2022 7:37 pm EST It’s perhaps no coincidence that John Huston’s 1948 film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” came out the same year that comic book publisher William Gaines took control of EC Comics and began to work the company away from its original moniker, Educational Comics, to a much more commercially viable model — Entertaining Comics....

The Truman Show Almost Had A Very Different Star And Director Paramount By Witney Seibold/Aug. 17, 2022 9:43 pm EST That Peter Weir’s 1998 film “The Truman Show” managed to claim as many accolades as it did was kind of extraordinary. It was nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay — and won numerous other awards from various other critical bodies. Part comedy, part high-concept sci-fi film, “The Truman Show” followed the everyday life of the good-natured everyman Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) as he treks to and from work, makes small talk with his neighbors, and enjoys evenings with his wife Meryl (Laura Linney)....

The Worst Decisions Characters Ever Made In The Halloween Franchise Compass International Pictures By Justin McDevitt/Oct. 19, 2022 3:42 pm EST In 1996, “Scream” introduced viewers to the rules of slasher flicks, and even if they knew them already, even if they sat on the couch throwing popcorn at the screen and cursing every bad decision in every horror movie ever made, “Scream” put into words what moviegoers had always known....