There are innumerable ways to compliment The Fall Guy, be it Drew Pearce’s sportingly kinetic script, David Leitch’s snappy direction, the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry between stars Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, or its ability to not only elevate the ideas it lifts from the 1980s television series of the same name, but to triumphantly bring its own, original toys to the playground, too.

But perhaps the single greatest compliment you could bestow upon The Fall Guy is that it could have just as easily been called Movie: The Movie, and the fact that The Fall Guy is capable of owning that distinction as a fantastic compliment, is a compliment in its own right.

Indeed, just as those first trailers cheekily telegraphed, The Fall Guy has everything; action, comedy, romance, cowboys, aliens, unicorns, morbid ice baths, lots of car chases, fewer but equally significant boat chases, and Jason Momoa as Jason Momoa. The kicker? It’s all that and, above all, charmingly intelligent, and Leitch and company can breathe easy knowing that they just made the blockbuster to beat this year.

The film stars Gosling as Colt Seavers, a professional stuntman who, after an accident puts him out of work for a year and half, is contacted by film producer Gail Meyer (played by a terrifically devilish Hannah Waddingham; thank you, Ted Lasso, for shuffling her into the spotlight she’s deserved for so long) about a job opportunity in Sydney, Australia. That job is stuntwork on the set of Metalstorm, a sci-fi blockbuster directed by first-time gaffer Jody Moreno (Blunt), who also happens to be Colt’s ex-girlfriend (the “ex” is a result of Colt ghosting her after his accident, which Jody herself witnessed). Colt eagerly takes the job in hopes of making up with Jody, but finds that she’s still upset with him.

Later, Gail tells him that the real reason she brought Colt to Australia was because Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the star of the film, has gone missing, and she wants Colt to find him. Colt agrees to find him so that Jody can get her movie made, but as he plunges deeper and deeper into the case, it turns out to be a much more twisty and dangerous affair than it first seemed.

It is abundantly clear after watching The Fall Guy that the prestige of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar has increased, because Ryan Gosling was nominated for one after his turn in Barbie. Indeed, the Canadian leading man doesn’t miss a single beat throughout the film’s crackling 126-minute runtime, and even when he’s not making the gods of comedic timing smile down upon him, the simple fact that he gets to play in the shoes of a character that’s entirely as likeable as the actor himself is a privilege he runs, jumps, and flips with.

The very same can be said about his co-star and once-Barbenheimer rival Blunt, who’s done a similarly tremendous favor for the reputation of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (Blunt, of course, was nominated for her performance in last year’s Oppenheimer). Even without the same wiggle room that Gosling’s protagonist gets, Blunt steals every scene she’s in with a delightfully mercurial energy, seeing Gosling’s timing and raising it some pristine wit, and generally embodying a firm, admirable, and contextually mighty vulnerability that serves as the hearty engine to Colt’s more palpable monster truck in the derby that is The Fall Guy.

It’s here, at the world “palpable,” that we arrive at the crux of The Fall Guy‘s genius; the full-throttle-yet-dexterous manner in which it pays tribute to the criminally unsung heroes of the Hollywood blockbuster sphere; the stunt folk.

The television series that The Fall Guy is based on centers around a Hollywood stuntman who picks up extra work as a bounty hunter. It makes sense; when you spend all day taking hits, pulling off death-defying acrobatics, and getting willingly set on fire, the rough-and-tumble world of bounty hunting is no great deterrent to you.

This is the aforementioned idea that the film lifts from the television show. The aforementioned elevation, meanwhile, comes in the form of juxtaposing Colt’s status as a stuntman against Tom Ryder’s thoroughly detestable existence as a movie star. Throughout the film, Colt goes about fighting off assassins, jumping from moving vehicles, and getting mouthfuls of gasoline with a relatively nonchalant attitude (he’s driven to do good by Jody more than anything). It’s true that that’s par for the course for the heroes of action comedies, but Colt being a stuntman adds a whole other layer to that. As a stuntman, Colt is well and truly on the front lines of movie sets, literally risking life and limb for almost nothing in the way of recognition (and no, the film isn’t subtle about what it thinks about that reality). Nevertheless, he takes every event in stride, because he’s a stuntman, there’s a job to be done, and all of these explosions are just a Thursday for him anyway.

Ryder, meanwhile, is a superficial spoiled brat who wouldn’t even think about getting his hands dirty, but who is nevertheless revered by the industry and the public, complete with an expensive apartment and enough powerful friends to give him the illusion that he’s above the law. Indeed, all of those high-stakes hero moments that Ryder pretends to have in his movies? Colt actually does have them, except they’re just moments instead of hero moments.

Colt, then, exists in a fascinating liminal space within the movie, like a rugged donut hole whose awareness of the blockbuster excess around him exists separately from that the audience and the other characters in the movie, and that alone makes him one of the most well-crafted and watchable action heroes to date. Combine that with the fact that The Fall Guy has an intense and unabashed love for pop culture (mostly shown through the animus of Winston Duke’s character Dan, who elicits some of the film’s greatest laughs), and it becomes the easiest task in the world to fall in love with the movieness of this movie. It’s entirely void of cynicism (which goes the longest way in making its more meta elements stick their tricky landings), and is packed to the brim with earnest soul; the very same earnest soul that stuntworkers everywhere bring to the sets of Hollywood, and without whom we would never have so many of the movies we love today.

In closing, The Fall Guy has accomplished the impossible of task of having something for everyone while still being not only a good movie, but a genuinely great movie. It does this by being entirely, consciously committed to its identity of movie magic-meets-behind-the-scenes wisdom and heart, and bringing a confident artistic flair to its limitless playfulness. Indeed, The Fall Guy rises to the occasion, and affably so.

Jerry Seinfeld is one of America’s most famous and successful comics. He’s now also a director after stepping into the role for the first time for Netflix’s Unfrosted.

The movie was born out of Pop-Tart jokes from Seinfeld’s 2020 Netflix stand-up special, 23 Hours to Kill, motivated by Seinfeld’s fascination with the need to create such an oddly specific kind of product. In the joke, Seinfeld calls the pastry both a life-changing food for his childhood self, and something with the nutritional value of a cardboard box. This extended setup about the nutritional value of big-brand breakfast cereal frames some of the most successful gags in Unfrosted — a movie that is otherwise as unsubstantial as the food that inspired it.

Unfrosted fictionalizes the story of the creation of the Pop-Tart as a kind of arms race between Kelloggs and Post, as the industrialized-food giants attempt to nail down the perfect recipe for a shelf-stable, easily-preparable breakfast pastry that they believe will solve all their companies’ problems. The milk mafia led by Christian Slater and Peter Dinklage, the sugar mafia led by Felix Solis, Soviet Union First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev (played by Dean Norris), a couple of dumpster diving rascals (newcomers Eleanor Sweeney and Bailey Sheetz), President John F. Kennedy (a hilarious Bill Burr), unionized cereal box mascots led by Hugh Grant’s Thurl Ravenscroft AKA Tony the Tiger, and a ravioli/sea monkey crossover lab abomination all get in the way of the companies’ success. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is.

Seinfeld plays Bob Cabana, Kelloggs’ star executive who teams up with Melissa McCarthy’s Donna Stankowski (for some reason intentionally referred to by the androgynous name form of “Stan” before she’s introduced) to come up with the product that will get Kelloggs comfortably leading the race against their rival concern, led by Amy Schumer’s Marjorie Post. The real creator of the Pop-Tart, William Post, died in February of this year, aged 96. The film then evolves in so many different directions, enlisting so many different distractingly famous faces for the job, that there’s hardly one that’s sufficiently fleshed out to create any significant investment from the viewer.

James Marsden, Thomas Lennon, Bobby Moynihan, Adrian Martinez, and Jack McBrayer play a team of bozo experts enlisted by Cabana and Stan to come up with the perfect fruit pastry recipe, all inspired by real-life American businessmen who introduced all kinds of products in the food industry in the 1960s.

The movie’s connections to the facts are thin. Instead, Seinfeld satirizes the cereal industry, and, in Unfrosted‘s best moments, manages to both criticize it and celebrate it at once. The quality of the products and just how something that processed, fake, and loaded up on sugar can find its way to shelves is a recurring joke that lands every time. There are quite a few jabs at the advertising business, too, like when they expose Sea Monkeys for essentially being dressed-up brine shrimp eggs, and when a marketing pitch uses sex and women to sell something completely unrelated to either. Then there’s a moment when all the actors behind the different cereal brands’ mascots decide to protest their working conditions which, like everything else in the film, is ridiculed and played for laughs, but, if one really squints, it could almost be read as a commentary on the latest Hollywood strikes.

It’s not surprising there is a lot of great material in the film, seeing that comedy, of course, is Seinfeld’s strongest suit. However, a succession of really good jokes doesn’t make a good movie, even if it contributes to its “watchability.” Seinfeld mines every little crevice of a topic for laughs, which leaves little space for breathing room or moments of reflection, particularly when the joke shoehorns unrelated, hard-to-combine subjects into the same punch line.

The heavily referential aspect of certain jokes also assumes that the viewer will enter the film heavy-laden with American pop culture knowledge, encompassing everything from JFK and Marilyn Monroe, to knowing who Jack LaLanne is. Seeing as Pop-Tarts aren’t even commonly found in retail shops around the rest of the world, it’s safe to say Unfrosted will not land as well with international audiences as it will domestically, which is rarely Netflix’s modus operandi.

To add to that, most of its non-American characters are familiar, tired clichés. You’ve got a menacing Puerto Rican cartel leader, a heavy Italian pasta chef with a thick accent, a racist German, and a posh British guy played by the ultimate posh British actor (Hugh Grant, in an uncharacteristically unabashed performance). In all the wrong ways, Unfrosted feels like it comes straight out of the ‘90s.

Then there’s the issue of the film’s pacing and style. Like the product it centers on, Unfrosted feels markedly catered to a younger audience or, at least, a very easily bored one. There’s so much happening on screen at any given time, as it is continuously propelled by frenetic editing, pace, and the most maximalist performances you can think of from its cast. In its busier moments, the movie could make Disney Channel feel like Tarkovsky.

There’s also a lack of stylistic coherence. Although Unfrosted tries to capture the aesthetics and quirks of the 1960s, visually it couldn’t be more 2024. Seinfeld sprinkles in occasional montages of archive footage, presumably in order to provide background information about the cultural significance of a particular scene to people who might not be as versed in the subject, but there’s hardly ever any other attempt to bring the film closer to the period it is set in — even the costume design is more akin to a costume of what someone would assume someone in the ‘60s dresses like.

After 2023’s Barbie, Unfrosted is this year’s feature-length advert: Family-friendly, overstuffed, and unoriginal, a comedy film whose weakness of plot is masked by myriad celebrity cameos —including 15 different stand-up comics — characters all but doing backflips on screen, and a lot of product placement. Then again, in the New York Times video linked above, where Seinfeld ironically details the process behind his 2020 comedy special Pop-Tart joke, the actor-turned-director says that “To waste that much time in something this stupid, that felt good to me.” And that explains a lot about Unfrosted.

Ever played through all the levels of Candy Crush, winning on the first try and getting these special candies without cursing your very existence? Never happens, right? Because that would be a fairytale come true — which is exactly what The Idea of You tries to sell, aided by the exceptional Anne Hathaway, and rising star (who is practically everywhere these days) Nicholas Galatzine.

Does The Idea of You succeed? You can bet that giant burger I gobbled (while pining [read: whining] “Where, God, WHERE is my fan story-turned-real-life true love story?”) that it does.

Had anyone tried to narrate the movie’s plot to me beforehand, I would’ve found it an overly-sweet, exceptionally lucky fairytale-style romance, one that would barely gain enough momentum to break free of a congested crowd of After films, not to mention the likes of Ella Enchanted — which starred Hathaway herself. But on-screen, it more than works. Why? Because The Idea of You balances self-awareness and fantasy with surprising ease, softness, and a lot of heart.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that we all dream of living the life Hathaway’s Solène gets, which is almost relatable on many levels — until it isn’t.

Solène is a 40-year-old single mom with a 17-year-old daughter, Izzy, an ex-husband who is a sleazeball and moron rolled into one, great friends who poke into her life while being understanding, and a quietly flourishing career as an art dealer. Her 20s disappeared into marriage and motherhood, and now, life has adhered to set patterns that she is afraid to disturb.

Then at the Coachella Festival, Solène accidentally ventures into the trailer of 24-year-old boy-bander Hayes Campbell (Galitzine) — a fortuitous misstep which, in the real world, would be next to impossible, and if you do manage to sneak in somehow, celeb-trailer shenanigans will earn you a security-escorted ticket out of the event. Her accidental encounter gives Solène the chance to taste the freedom of youth, the missed adventures, and above all, true love. After hesitating, then making out with Hayes, hesitating again, then making out some more, Solène travels across the world with the young rocker while lying to her daughter, and hiding her happiness as a badge of shame.

This is where the relatability angle comes in. Solène embraces her sexuality, refusing to accept the societal verdict that demands a woman, especially one in her 40s, to forget to live life and just stick to what others expect from her. But even as she dares to break her shackles as a woman, she can’t make herself do so as a mother, not when it affects her daughter.

And this is where the fairytale slides in. With all its story-building and plot arcs to make a made-up story feel plausible, the need to wrap it up quickly and on a fantasy-tinted positive note takes over. Hathaway imbues Solène with a radiant magnetism, showing why anyone who meets her is hypnotized by her charm, while Galitzine’s soulful eyes and emotive performance as Hayes more than justify Solène’s throwing caution to the wind for him. But the story soon acquires Red, White, and Royal Blue’s rose-tinted glasses — seemingly difficult barriers get erased with the flimsiest solutions, and without a hint of the still-very-much-present problems that caused the lead couple to drift apart in the first place.

But that’s why we love fairytales — they are a chance for us to live in a world where everything works out, the good guys always win, those who get separated are destined to meet again, where you accidentally wander off into a renowned singer’s trailer who is then swept away by your beauty, brains, and charisma, and follows you across countries because of a 3-minute conversation. If that gets multiple perfectly choreographed boy band songs, Nicholas Galatzine singing and dancing, and Anne Hathaway reminding me why Ella Enchanted and Princess Diaries still leave me swooning, I don’t really see how I have any hopes of continuing my complaints.

Luca Guadagnino’s mind is a wonderful, slightly terrifying place.

To think that the Italian director has made films as disparate and idiosyncratic as Suspiria, Call Me By Your Name, Bones and All, and now Challengers is as intoxicatingly exciting as it is fascinating. And he’s not showing any signs of slowing down either, taking on a slew of new projects for the foreseeable future, including a Mexico City-set historical romantic drama film with Daniel Craig that’s expected to premiere in the festival circuit as early as this Fall.

It’s equally thrilling that Challengers is Justin Kuritzkes’ first feature film screenplay. His wife, Celine Song, also made her writing and directing debut in Challengers‘ more introspective and sincere threesome sibling, 2023’s Past Lives.

Challengers is an absolute triumph, marked by what is arguably the best work to date by everyone involved, from Guadagnino and Kuritzkes to casting director Francine Maisler and score composers Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography, Merissa Lombardo’s production design, and J. W. Anderson’s costume design add the final touches to a salacious, rambunctious, and decadently stylish movie for the ages.

The package of the film (the way it looks and plays out on screen) is glossy, intense, and sexy, keeping you tuned into every move just by virtue of its leading trio’s chemistry and the way Guadagnino captures it on camera. But what makes Challengers a Grand Slam is the meat, the filling. Kuritzkes’s character work in the duplicitous Tashi (Zendaya), the submissive Art (Mike Faist), and the unreliable Patrick (Josh O’Connor) is an infinite well of possibilities, allowing for a multitude of interpretations and dissections of these three people’s motivations, aspirations, self-sabotaging tendencies, and clashing egos. It’s intoxicating.

The film develops along two parallel timelines: In the present, Art and Patrick prepare to face off in a Challenger Tour tournament final as Tashi watches on from the stands, a visible scar on her knee from a career-ending injury peeking through her baby blue dress. Then Guadagnino takes us 12 years into the past to begin to lay out the knotty, sweaty events that have led the trio to that highly charged moment in New Rochelle.

Young best friends Art and Patrick are attending a junior tournament when they meet teen protegé, Tashi Duncan, who is already being marketed as tennis’ next big star. The two are instantly enamored by her ferociousness on the court and sensuality on the dance floor. Considering the object of their desires is Zendaya, it’s insanely easy to bite into their transfixion. The boys invite her over to their bedroom and the three almost engage in a three-way tryst, interrupted only by Tashi after she successfully proves her point about Art and Patrick’s latent interest in one another. It’s the beginning of a complicated, manipulative, lustful, and emotionally tumultuous decade-spanning love triangle, cleverly translated by Guadagnino into the evolution of that initial/final confrontation.

The way the form of Challengers (its acts, its dialogues, and even its camera movements) mimics a tennis match is nothing short of delicious. Guadagnino’s vision for Kuritzkes’s remarkably rich characters and the dynamics that they share is as clear as it is inspired — he was the only man for this job.

Challengers is a movie about sex and power, and there’s so much power in the way Guadagnino frames his cast’s innate sexuality without showing a single sex scene in the entirety of the film’s runtime. The sexiest scenes are often those where the characters barely touch — it’s the tension created from their desperate necessity and desire to touch that actually drives the film’s erotic charge. It’s masterful.

Tennis, in truth, is a metaphor for human relationships. As Tashi describes early on, a tennis match requires that the two players be completely engaged with one another, blocking out the rest of the world, and focusing solely on their opponent. There’s an obsession with and attraction to your court partner that is intrinsic to the game of tennis and which functions as the key to the entire film. Each decision made by Tashi, Art, and Patrick is essentially a shot in a match, and as each of the men attempts to gradually win each game, and then each set, it all builds up to a closely contested final match point that Guadagnino crafts into one of the most memorable third acts in 21st-century moviemaking — and that is true for both the tennis itself and all the sex, betrayal, and heartbreak it signifies.

Challengers‘ biggest victory, however, is the way it involves each of the three players proportionally in the unfolding of its story. The heterosexual love triangle has been absolutely exhausted in the past, but, as you’d expect, Guadagnino brings a queer sensitivity to his threesome that transforms a tired trope into an electric, alive thing that could evolve any which way at any point. While an even bigger step in that direction would have possibly made Challengers perfect, the fact that the possibility is there alone increases its agitation and complexity tenfold. Art, Tashi, and Patrick dance with and around each other through the years as they sink into an increasingly toxic and self-harmful entanglement that is both killing them and keeping them afloat.

There is so much duplicity, ambiguity, secrecy, and manipulation at the center of Art, Tashi, and Patrick’s relationship from the very first moment the boys lay eyes on their muse, that it becomes virtually impossible to decipher their choices, but all the more fun to try. On the surface, they’re all one thing, but as the film and the tennis match of life evolve, they each reveal small clues about their personalities that could fuel a thousand theories. It’s like catnip for overreaders.

This sophistication of character, we assume, was not an easy task for the leading trio, but they handled it like pros. Zendaya was perfectly cast as the irresistible Tashi, bringing a disarming superficial innocence to an otherwise cunning and calculated woman. She toys around with the two men that she holds in the palm of her hand, yet you never can turn against her, because their obsession and lack of shame are often too pathetic to feel defensive over, especially because Art and Patrick do their fair share of manipulation, too. O’Connor’s Patrick and Faist’s Art play so well off of Zendaya’s Tashi, but better yet off of one another — a scene they share in a fittingly steamy sauna is a highlight in the film, and their chemistry is sizzling enough to travel across an entire tennis court.

It’s truly never been more fun to watch three people be absolutely despicable to one another than in Luca Guadagnino’s tennis court love story. Challengers is a 2024 must-watch, and possibly the year’s sleekest, most vibrant film. Now, excuse me while I go drive my neighbors insane by blasting Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s score at full volume on my speakers.

Knuckles has the difficult task of proving that Sonic the Hedgehog is viable as a cinematic universe. Fortunately for fans of anthropomorphic primary-colored video game icons, it succeeds beyond my wildest expectations.

Knuckles will inevitably be judged compared to the movies that came before. Sonic the Hedgehog became a box office hit by taking the Blue Speedster on a road trip filled with silly jokes and corny messages about found family. The movie has its fair share of high-octane action set pieces in which Sonic uses his super speed to take down the villainous Dr. Robotnik. Still, even then, Sonic the Hedgehog plays as a family-friendly comedy.

While Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was still a commercial success, the movie had more difficulty balancing that act. The sequel introduces world-destroying threats that can no longer be treated as a joke, making it harder to land the right tone. Furthermore, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 sets up the universe’s lore in favor of building solid bases for the future.

There were too many things squeezed into a single film, and Sonic 2 hinted at the limits of the franchise just as Paramount announced their expansion of the Sonic cinematic universe, with a threequel and Knuckles being put in simultaneous production.

Studios pushing too many projects for profit will likely hurt an IP, meaning the odds were not in Knuckles’ favor. However, the spinoff is an excellent addition to the franchise and a fine standalone story. Knuckles ultimately surpasses the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, perfecting their formula and wearing the franchise’s nonsensical nature as a badge of honor.

Set after Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Knuckles (Idris Elba) sends its titular character on a road trip to figure out his place in the world. The similarities with the first Sonic movie don’t end there, as a human partner, the clumsy cop Wade Whipple (Adam Pally), accompanies him. Wade needs someone to train him to become a bowling champion, while Knuckles wants a disciple who can learn the warrior ways of the Echidna clan.

While each character’s motivation is unique, Knuckles is about an alien and a human hitting the road together and learning more about themselves and each other. So, from the pilot episode alone, it feels like the series is only rehashing Sonic the Hedgehog‘s script. That’s a fair first impression, but it doesn’t reflect the surreal places Knuckles takes fans.

If Knuckles was only more of the same, it could still be a success for Paramount Plus. After all, it features a lovable cast of characters and has the same animation quality as the theatrical releases. The latter is a more-than-welcome surprise since TV has a tradition of downgrading special effects due to budget constraints.

The creative team behind the series knows that Knuckles’ story is simple and could become forgettable if told straightforwardly. So, they are constantly finding new ways to explore the primary themes of the spinoff. As episodes go by, Knuckles keeps experimenting with new editing and storytelling tools in a spectacle of color, sound, and goofy jokes that will keep a smile on your face the entire time. The fact the series never takes itself too seriously gives writers and directors the breathing space they need to include every wild idea that crosses their minds, from musical numbers to training montages inspired by sports films. Because of that, Knuckles is a testament to how a talented and passionate team can turn the most basic story beat into something unique and incredibly entertaining.

Knuckles also allows its characters to grow and explore their inner universe. Despite all the funny moments and the show’s lighthearted tone, the spinoff manages to keep the emotional stakes high by forcing the duo of leads to face their past trauma and reshape their understanding of family and home. It’s hard not to think of 2004’s Dodgeball, which takes a secondary sport and gives it a life-or-death intensity, both for comedic purposes and to create a relatable human journey. That’s precisely what Knuckles does with bowling, a feat the spinoff pulls effortlessly.

On top of that, Knuckles gives us a glimpse at a world without Dr. Robotnik, proving that the cinematic universe can survive even if Carrey retires. On that note, Rory McCann delivers a terrifying performance as The Buyer, an evil genius whose presence dominates each scene he shows up. Cary Elwes and Julian Barratt should also be outed for their performances as Pistol Pete and Jack Sinclair, respectively, as they contribute to improving every episode they appear in. Talking about these characters and their motivations would spoil part of the fun, so it suffices to say they are part of the eccentric cast Knuckles and Wade will cross during their trip, who become more than comic reliefs thanks to the actor’s commitment to their roles.

Knuckles also deserves all the credit for understanding the television format – something other big franchises, such as the MCU, still struggle with. The spinoff is not a movie split into six parts but an actual TV show, where each episode has a hook that gets resolved before the credits roll. Knuckles even uses cliffhangers appropriately, ending each story chapter with a new twist that teases the next one. It’s a shame Paramount Plus is dropping the whole season in the streaming service at once, as Knuckles would have worked beautifully as a weekly release.

Of course, as is usual with TV shows, some episodes of Knuckles are better than others. Episode 4, in particular, is a television gem that shows how a story can be heartfelt and deranged at once. Finally, while Knuckles is part of a franchise, the series does serve as a perfect introduction to Paramount’s cinematic universe. Thanks to Sonic’s status as a s pop culture icon, no one needs more than a quick recap to understand what’s happening in the world, something that Knuckles offers in its first episode. From then on, anyone can enjoy this weird, wacky, over-the-top road trip.

All six episodes of Knuckles come to Paramount+ on April 26, 2024.

When part one of Rebel Moon, A Child of Fire, introduced us all to Zack Snyder‘s new sci-fi franchise, there was one thing that became absolutely clear; it is not possible to discern whether this man has fully bought in to the narrative surrounding him, or if he’s starkly oblivious to it. The narrative, of course, being that he’s an acolyte of the “rule of cool,” with both the genre fiction eagerness and storytelling ability of a small child.

That question has only become more impossible with Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, boasting the exact same, unprecedently amateurish makings of its predecessor and doubling down on them in the least effective way possible. It’s a film that is so impossibly committed to its own helpless emptiness, that engaging with it at all is something of a chore, and while the actors generally hold up their end up the deal performance-wise, the sheer dearth of competency in the rest of The Scargiver actually results in that working against the film. In a sentence, what’s become absolutely clear this time around is that it is not possible, at this point in time, to critique anything in the Rebel Moon franchise without constantly being in danger of redundancy; that’s right, The Scargiver is, quite literally, contagiously uninspired.

The film sees Sofia Boutella reprise her role as protagonist Kora, who’s returned to her adopted home planet with the band of warriors she recruited in A Child of Fire, and prepares for the defense of her village against the tyrannical Motherworld. Noble (Ed Skrein), meanwhile, plots a more personal assault on Kora herself as retribution for the scar she gave him.

Yes, that last part is why the film is called The Scargiver, and there is literally a scene in this movie where Noble monologues about how he’s going to show off the scar to the whole of the Senate to symbolize his victory over “the Scargiver” when he defeats Kora. Nothing quite epitomizes the depths of a script’s weakness than a villain telling you why his big moment is going to be cool, even if that big moment never happens.

Indeed, it’s one thing to have a messy plot or ridiculous dialogue, both of which can be easily remedied by enthusiasm from the cast (the Fast & Furious films have this down to a T), but The Scargiver has none of these things. The plot isn’t messy so much as it’s non-existent, with the overwhelming majority of the runtime consisting of useless exposition, fighting, and far more slow-motion farming than any film, much less a space opera, should have. The dialogue isn’t ridiculous so much as it’s blankly encyclopedic, hardly ever serving as anything more than a descriptive audio equivalent and/or connective tissue for its swath of unearned emotional beats. The cast isn’t enthusiastic so much as they’re trapped by a script that more or less forces them to approach to their characters as straight as possible, and while the main cast sell that approach with all their might (particularly Boutella, Skrein, and Djimon Hounsou), they’re entirely powerless against the script from Snyder, Kurt Johnstad, Shay Hatten, and whatever tabletop RPG textbook-writing AI software that they might as well have fed a Star Wars-themed prompt to.

To the point of character, Snyder doesn’t seem to understand that having a whole bunch of cool lore for everyone in his own head does not automatically make them interesting to other people; characterization does, in fact, need to occur. Going into The Scargiver, all we effectively know about Kora’s band of rebels is that they’re really good at fighting; a point that’s verbally repeated on more than one occasion throughout the film, just in case we forget. By the end of The Scargiver, all we know about Kora’s band of rebels is that they’re really good at fighting, and that their lives were all torn apart by the Motherworld in some way, shape, or form; we learn this because Titus literally gathers them all so he can tell them to share their backstories with each other. This universal characterization failure all comes to a front with one major character death; one that gets played like a devastating gut-punch despite the fact that most of the film’s extras had been given roughly the same development, and could have been rotated into the death scene to similar effect.

It’s not just we the audience that suffer from watching these exposition-spewing nothing-burgers go about their farming and insurgencies. Whether it’s the out-of-the-blue romance between Kora and Gunnar (a romance almost entirely summed up—across two movies—with an evening of off-screen love-making followed by Kora telling us part of her backstory once they finish) or the single, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it attempt at inter-squad banter (again, across two movies) that highlights the film’s disdain for characterization more than anything, it is well and truly painful—even embarrassing—watching them try and have any interpersonal rapport with each other whatsoever.

And sure, maybe the visual effects are fine, maybe the score is well-crafted, and maybe the combat is marginally diverting, but the problem with The Scargiver is that it has no identity for any of this stuff to even attach itself to, so it just winds up as noise for the sake of noise, unable to be enjoyed in the wake of such foundationally insulting filmmaking. Creating art is important, and Snyder, like anyone, should feel no shame about his art in the context of his experience. But to occupy this sort of professional, lucrative creative space while putting out something like The Scargiver, is a whole other ballpark/context that can — and should — be subject to shame. And with Snyder having promised even more extreme sex and violence in the inevitable director’s cuts of the Rebel Moon films rather than any actual creative improvements, he seems to be entirely convinced that The Scargiver and its ilk are ready to be produced at the caliber that they are, and that is 100% an open invitation to be labeled as a hack.

All in all, it’s time for Snyder to pull the plug on Rebel Moon, bring it back to the factory, and either reassess the approach or, ideally, commit to a Rebel Moon tabletop RPG as the primary pivot point for this IP; the latter would probably be the less laborious of the two given that both films are, textually, more similar to a game than a movie. It’s clear that the universe Snyder has in his head is sprawling, and there’s absolutely a world where Rebel Moon manifests as the best version of itself, but with The Scargiver having given us more of the same that A Child of Fire introduced us to, Rebel Moon, as it is now, is clearly operating as the worst version of itself, and it is abhorrently stressful to think that that operation is set to continue.

And if by some chance Snyder himself happens upon this, I only hope he knows that the words “The Scargiver sucks, you should know it sucks, you need to do better” come in equal measure from a place of wanting all art to be as great as it possibly can, and utter despondency with which I and many others have had to watch Rebel Moon unfold the way it has so far.

After making horror history by breathing new life into the Scream franchise, creative collective Radio Silence is back in theaters with Abigail. Unfortunately, despite how good Abigail might be, the movie is sabotaged by a misguided marketing campaign.

Starring a phenomenal cast that includes final girl Melissa Barrera and the young and gifted Alisha Weir (Netflix’s Matilda the Musical), Abigail follows a group of criminals tasked with kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy man. Taking a note from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the team uses fake names and hides personal details to ensure everyone’s safety in case things go south and one of them gets caught by the police. The secrecy surrounding the job is so great that no one knows their target except Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), the mastermind who ordered the hit. Their goal is to snatch Abigail (Weir), take her to a secluded mansion, and hold her for 24 hours until a $50 million ransom gets paid. However, dangerous and inexplicable things start to happen in the mansion.

That’s it. That’s the movie. Or at least, that’s all the audience should have known about Abigail before going to theaters. Unfortunately, every trailer, image, and interview released as part of Abigail’s marketing campaign ruins the movie’s twist and reveals *spoiler alert* that the titular character is a vampire.

Abigail begins as a heist movie, slowly introducing all the players involved in the daring abduction. Since each crew member has a specific job and quirky personality, forced confinement doesn’t take long to become a source of hostility among them. These are all strangers, bound by a common goal but comfortable enough with the underworld to turn against each other. When rumors about their target’s identity emerge, they are ready to point fingers – and guns. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett masterfully use the movie’s introduction to enthrall the audience with a perfect balance of tension and comedy. That’s why it’s a shame people won’t enjoy the first arc of Abigail for what it is, as everyone will be impatiently waiting for Weir to show her fangs and begin the hunt.

While Radio Silence’s last original movie, Ready or Not, also deals with a twist spoiled by the trailer, the change of pace comes early in the film. Because of that, it doesn’t get in the way of the story the directors are trying to tell. With Abigail, though, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett want to trick horror fans into buying a house invasion thriller and getting a vampire slaughter-fest. It takes Abigail over 40 minutes to introduce her authentic self in a moment that should flip a button and cleverly tie all the clues the story subtly left behind. If Abigail existed in a marketing vacuum, the bloody reveal at the end of the first arc would be nothing short of genius. Instead, because everyone knows what’s coming, it feels too much like a long wait.

For the rest of Abigail’s runtime, Radio Silence delivers gruesome deaths in a blood-soaked battle for survival as the vampire toys with her prey. That gives the directors the excuse to showcase their best work yet regarding gore. The death and mutilation in Abigail is incredible because Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are committed to practical effects, knowing all too well that horror looks better when it doesn’t rely too much on CGI. So, for horror fiends who rejoice in well-cooked brutality – this writer included – Abigail is a delicious feast.

Story-wise, Abigail has many similarities with Ready or Not, which are easy to understand when we realize Guy Busick co-wrote both scripts. The two movies deal with a group of people pitted against a resourceful killer inside a fabulous mansion, leading to creative deaths and a non-ending cat-and-mouse game. Abigail, however, inverts Ready or Not logic by turning the killer into an antagonist instead of the final girl. Nevertheless, things will more or less evolve similarly until the third arc, when Abigail tries to subvert the movie’s logic again, to mixed results.

Abigail is also similar to Ready or Not when mixing ghastly violence with comedic moments. Not every joke lands, and some moments of Abigail feel uneven, while Ready or Not is a nearly perfect masterpiece. Nevertheless, Radio Silence’s vampire tale is highly entertaining, a popcorn story tailored to become an easy choice in a movie night with friends. Still, after the credits roll, we can’t help but wish Abigail had not traded substance for style, as this might be the least memorable entry in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s filmography.

In their previous films, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett showed an exquisite talent for crafting popular horror stories that still had something human to say. Both SCREAM and Scream VI are brilliant deconstructions of contemporary horror tropes. At the same time, Ready or Not takes down the final girl archetype to turn Samara Weaving into a liberating female character. Abigail tries to find an emotional core through the backstories of Barrera’s Joey and Weir’s vampire. Unfortunately, the supposed character growth of both characters is too sudden and superficial to hit the mark. It also doesn’t help that Abigail’s most significant attempt to anchor the script into grounded human connections comes too late, in the middle of a messy third arc that keeps adding new twists for shock value alone.

All of that said, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett are true horror aficionados. They understand all the tropes and clichés associated with vampires, using the audience’s knowledge against them every chance they can. The script by Busick and Stephen Shields has a lot of wiggling room to test all the traditional weapons against vampires or to delve into the different rituals of vampiric transformation. That’s an extra treat for horror fans, who can discover the truth about Abigail’s blood-sucking creatures and the cast of criminals.

Finally, something has to be said about Weir and Barrera. The young actress is having the time of her life playing a savage monster. It’s also delightful to see Weir dancing around covered in blood after cute musical acts for Netflix’s Matilda. Despite her young age, Weir has already proved her brilliance, and we can only hope she gets more diverse and exciting roles in the future. As for Barrera, her exit from the Scream franchise raised some questions about her career, but Abigail proves she doesn’t need Ghostface to shine as a scream queen. Watching the two together is a spectacle on its own and enough reason to give Abigail a chance.

Abigail is currently available in theaters.

One of the greatest stories of the recent cinema-news circuit concerns the plight of The People’s Joker, a crowd-sourced, coming-of-age, parody passion project from one Vera Drew, whose fight against “an unnamed media conglomerate” over her (perfectly legal) use of DC Comics characters wound up boosting publicity, thus ensuring that ticket sales were just around the corner.

The People’s Joker coming out on top this way is something to admire; with pure heart and dogged grit, Drew and company went to bat against an entertainment culture with little interest in bringing trans stories to the forefront, and far too much interest in mechanically milking intellectual property with the straightest possible face; one that The People’s Joker happily turns inside out, spins around, and upon which it paints a bright red smile.

With all of that said — and I say this with an equal measure of emphasis as a trans woman, and as a media critic —The People’s Joker, as a finished film, is excruciatingly less impressive than the journey it’s been on. Vera Drew — who in addition to directing, also edited, co-wrote, and stars in the film — has proven herself more than worthy of taking a crack at a project with a proper budget, but this first foray amounts to little more than an external success story, with sprinklings of great artistry doing little against its distressingly nuclear, self-indulgent whole.

The film stars Drew as an unnamed protagonist who grows up enamored with a television sketch comedy program titled UCB Live. After moving out from under the roof of an emotionally abusive mother who puts them on Smylex — a drug prescribed by one Dr. Crane that effectively forces you to be happy — they finally move to Gotham City to begin their career in comedy. But upon facing a world in which comedy has been outlawed by the totalitarian fascist Batman, they take the stage name of “Joker the Harlequin,” and join forces with a ragtag group of “anti-comedians” while navigating such hurdles as self-acceptance, love, forgiveness, and gender identity.

The average viewer will be quick to write off The People’s Joker for its visual effects alone, which consist of such aspects as cardboard cities, uncanny animation workarounds, and heavy facial distortions and filter effects. This is not a valid criticism in and of itself; The People’s Joker is under no illusion that it’s going to fool anybody with its visuals, and to focus on the obvious unrealism of it all would be insincere.

What can and should be questioned, however, is why so much effort was put into building up aspects of the film that were never going to be anywhere close to good, rather than strengthening those aspects over which Drew and company did have control. Indeed, visual effects — especially for most comic book movies — almost always need major financial backing to be worthwhile, but all you need to come up with a tip-top script is a wickedly creative mind, a generous amount of free time, and some like-minded folks to workshop with, if you’re lucky. The People’s Joker‘s script, in case my point isn’t clear, is very much not tip-top; the occasional chuckle-worthy line largely outnumbered by far too many comedic misfires, clumsy/inorganic handling of its themes and characters, and a jarringly disjointed flow of story beats.

This particular set dressing shines a light on The People’s Joker‘s chief raison d’être; it’s a heavily-stylized, semi-autobiographical film based on Drew’s experience — and that resulting singularity, despite being what I assume is one of Drew’s greatest strengths, is actually one of the film’s biggest weaknesses. In a world where the verbose Joker/Arkham/DC aesthetic had been entirely stripped away, it’s hard to imagine this character’s journey — if you can call it that — amounting to anything more than a quick filler segment in a documentary about how we experience life as trans people. This in no way should downplay Drew’s personal experience, but nevertheless it must be said that it’s simply not interesting as a story for a movie; one can’t help but think that maybe the job of the film’s comic book shell is to convince everyone — itself included — that the story is more special than it actually is.

Once again, I say all of that as a trans woman, myself. And as someone who’s been in these shoes for years now, I can’t help but sigh as The People’s Joker — a film that opens with the protagonist’s monologue about how sick they are of how we, as trans people, are treated in media — doubles down on a multitude of trans-adjacent cliches, seemingly unaware of the fact that in doing so, it made itself a target of its own critique. Indeed, it rails against a system that more or less demands that we be placed in nice, convenient, sanitized boxes, but doesn’t seem to realize that it’s putting itself in an equally-restrictive box of its own making

I don’t wish to be too editorial on this point of these boxes, but I’ve no other idea how to communicate my exhaustion with my demographic being constantly associated with flashy/niche internet culture, riotous anarchy (true, the mere fact of trans existence does challenge a swath of social institutions and interpersonal ideologies, but The People’s Joker isn’t terribly interested in that dynamic), and a reckless/tongue-in-cheek attitude towards our unique medical struggles. That last detail (captured in an anything-but-subtle midpoint sequence) is, of course, not at all the point of The People’s Joker, and its irresponsible framing is hardly the guiltiest party in the whole of the conversation on trans healthcare. But we all have our part to play if we’re going to risk engaging with such a volatile dialogue right now, and The People’s Joker chose an entirely unhelpful, if not harmful, contribution to said conversation.

Credit must be given where it’s due, however; The People’s Joker draws a parallel between our curious, ever-shifting attitudes towards comedy, and the ins and outs of the world that trans people walk in, and this insight is nothing short of brilliant. Unfortunately, it’s an idea that drowns fairly severely in the film’s haphazardly stentorian mortal essence, but the fact that Drew identified that parallel at all is an impressive creative feat all its own, and there’s no reason to believe that she won’t emerge as a profoundly, genuinely engaging storyteller after a bit of personal chiseling.

The People’s Joker, however, is no such emergence, and while the nuances of the film’s journey and existence are undeniably sensational and cheerworthy, it would be no great favor to anyone to judge The People’s Joker based on what it’s been through, instead of what it is. And what it is, dear reader, is just not that great of a movie.

You could almost hear the mischievous chuckles of Alex Garland and the Civil War marketing team (who no doubt were also responsible for such a deceptively generic title) when that final trailer aired a mere day before the film’s wide release, promising bombastic, paradigm-shifting cinematic combat when, on the other side of those theater doors, a far more necessary film awaited.

Full disclosure; I’m not here to talk about Civil War‘s thunderously evocative gunplay (that aforementioned trailer wasn’t a total misdirect), nor do I intend to spend very long telling you why the cast, particularly Kirsten Dunst in what’s among her most profoundly devastating performances, deserves to be lauded not only for bringing this material to life, but for signing on to this project in the first place. No, the reason you (and everyone else) needs to see Civil War is because, insofar as a movie is capable of convincing us to take a good, hard look at ourselves and the violence that we enable, there may be no more important piece of cinema for the foreseeable future (and that’s assuming the future is something we will, in fact, get to see).

The film stars Dunst as Lee Smith, a war photojournalist suffering from PTSD who, along with her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), endeavors to drive from New York City to Washington, D.C. to get an interview with the President of the United States, which is currently engulfed in an unthinkably violent and wide-spanning civil war between the U.S. Armed Forces and insurrectionists led by Texas and California, collectively known as the Western Forces. Joining the duo is veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and the ambitious but unexperienced photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), and the foursome travel across America, hoping to make it to the White House before the Western Forces can deliver their summary execution to the country’s dictator/would be-interviewee.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to tell exactly how deep Civil War intended to go, because if one were to peel back the layers with unending gumption, you could conclude that Civil War, simply by way of that which it’s critiquing, is about insecurity. Whether or not this was the exact thread that Garland wanted us to pull on is anyone’s guess, but what can be said irrefutably is that Civil War serves as an indispensable stepping stone, one that leads to the conversations that each and every one of us have a responsibility to engage in.

But let’s start from the top. Civil War is a film about journalism; not the job, but the act, the duty, and the severity with which that act and duty has been so thoughtlessly bastardized and hijacked by a world that, at large, is all but ready to pulverize you if your response to atrocity, no matter how big or small, is anything other than apathy, however animated it is.

And Civil War is positively littered with atrocities, whether it’s Jesse Plemons’ unnamed militia soldier who unceremoniously puts a bullet through the heart of anyone who isn’t American, to the nauseating, real-life war footage that gives some idea of what Lee has been through. Of all the bits and pieces to parse in Garland’s latest, it doesn’t take much in the way of media literacy to figure out the film’s stance on war and violence, and frankly, the easiest answer to that question is all that needs to be.

Just as well, because in all seriousness, Civil War is a proponent of easy answers to the many divisions plaguing our world right now. That’s not an insult to Civil War‘s thinking, either, because those aforementioned answers absolutely, positively exist in reality, it’s just that too few of us are willing to do our part in bringing that answer to life.

We, the audience, don’t actually learn what everybody’s fighting about; we just know that the Western Forces are trying to kill the President (who, in this world, has dissolved the FBI, is serving a third term, and has used air strikes against American civilians; in other words, he stands as a none-too-subtle composite of those who wish for us to keep fighting each other while they pull the strings of this heinously violent and dehumanizing system), and that if they succeed in doing so, they win. The Western Forces, I presume, understand the nuances of that win condition about as well as we do. That is yet another of the film’s unchanced details.

Another important detail is Joel’s mask of spectacle-lusting apathy, which hides worlds of pain, fear, and vulnerability that drive so many of us to put a similar face on ourselves. Another still is the President’s opening monologue, in which he commends the victory (spoiler alert: it’s a lie) of the U.S. military over the Western Forces, evoking the exact culture of oppositional domination that gets baked deeper and deeper into the geo- and sociopolitical subconscious with every passing day. Indeed, every scene is another detail in this abominable state of affairs that Civil War is forcing us to stare at.

Because from the heightened non-reality of social media all the way up to ground zero of Earth’s latest genocide, we are all impossibly desperate to convince ourselves that we’re better than the other person. That in no way equates the abhorrence factor of a Twitter war with an actual war, but it all starts at the same place; “I am fundamentally insecure over the possibility that my experience isn’t the correct one, and rather than explore why that is within myself (because that’s far too frightening), I have to make sure that no other possibilities exist, or that they’re otherwise invalidated.” Following that is the lies and manipulation that somehow manage to paint both sides (two, because there’s no room for anyone else) as opposing, all-or-nothing nuclear solutions to the problem at hand, and after that is usually the six-to-seven digit body count preceding the declaration of a winner, and the prize is getting to call their God by the name they prefer, among other myopic spoils.

In closing, go watch Civil War, because the war starts at home, and I’m not talking about the United States.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson says that Back to Black is not a biopic, but a love story. I would argue that it’s neither.

Despite its brilliant, singular moments, Taylor-Johnson’s latest seems unsure of what, exactly, it does want to be. Sure, the love story between Amy Winehouse (played here by a spirited Marisa Abela) and Blake Fielder-Civil (Skins‘ Jack O’Connell) is central to the film, just as it was to Amy’s life, but it’s never explored in any meaningful way.

At the same time, the chapters of Winehouse’s life singled out for filmic inclusion by Taylor-Johnson and writer Matt Greenhalgh seem somewhat disorganized and arbitrary. The fact that this is not a complete and detailed retelling of Amy’s life isn’t inherently negative, it’s just that the criteria for what the filmmakers chose to include are foggy at best.

What ultimately saves Back to Black from its disheveled self are its genuine attempts at getting intimate with Amy Winehouse, in the best possible way. Hers was infamously a life of tumult, excess, darkness, and exploitation, which — ethical discussions aside — undeniably provides rich material for a powerful, dramatic, and provocative story. The internet preemptively assumed that that’s the tack Back to Black was going to take; that it would exploit Amy’s trauma and death to create the most sensationalist film possible, and attract the attention of audiences by way of morbid curiosity. It was a pleasant surprise, then, that morbid exploitation is not among the film’s issues.

There’s so much sympathy for Amy in Back to Black, which is extended, in turn — and some would argue unjustifiably — to her ex-husband, and to her father, Mitch Winehouse (Eddie Marsan). There are no villains and no victims in Taylor-Johnson’s film, and there is a nobility in that choice. On the other side of the coin, in its reluctance to judge its characters, Back to Black fails to make any substantial statement about the questionable choices made by both men, as well as Amy’s management, at a time when she was at her most vulnerable. Because of her untimely death, history has painted Amy Winehouse as a hopeless victim, and while there’s some truth to that perspective of the story, it’s also dishonest to believe that that encompasses the full scope of her life, her work, or her legacy. We obviously can’t and wouldn’t speak for Amy, but our best bet is that she wouldn’t accept that depiction, either.

Back to Black begins with a teenage Amy sorting through a box of memories with her grandmother and “everything icon,” Cynthia (Lesley Manville). Amy swoons over her grandma’s pictures and compliments her style, which she would later emulate, and daydreams about the older woman’s past life singing at Ronnie Scott’s, the famous Soho jazz club. Cynthia assures her granddaughter that with a voice like hers, there is no chance she won’t become a star in her own right one day, too. Later, one of the movie’s most memorable scenes unfolds at that same jazz club.

Back to Black never stirs too far from this grounded approach; it wisely avoids big performance set pieces that don’t serve the story, or generic retellings of the artist’s rise to fame. Instead, it builds on this closely-observed dynamic of granddaughter/grandmother, mentee/mentor, with lovely scenes between Abela and Manville throughout. As with all grandmas, Cynthia takes it easy on Amy, extending to her the most uncomplicated, no-strings-attached kind of love. So when Cynthia dies from lung cancer, Amy’s solid emotional ground crumbles beneath her and she must scramble for comfort, finding it in music, and Blake, and more tragically, in alcohol/substance abuse and bulimia.

Abela’s portrayal — like Back to Black as a whole — captures Amy as an irreverent fantasist with her head in the clouds, who nonetheless knew exactly who she was, and who she wanted to be. It’s this fertile soil of fantasy from which Amy’s slight unawareness of the constraints and obstacles of the real world stemmed, and which allowed her to strive for no less than what she and her talent deserved. Unfortunately, however, Amy’s no longer her own top priority from the moment Blake enters her life. She transfers the take-no-prisoners approach she used to go to bat for her career, and applies it to becoming Blake’s ultimate defender, often oblivious to his nefarious influence.

Either for the sake of wider public appeal, or to err on the side of caution after the backlash generated by on-set photos leaked during filming, Back to Black feels rather clean and glossy. It lacks rock-and-roll edge, and Abela’s version of Amy is significantly less scandalous than the real deal. However, this dearth of punch in the film is compensated for by a number of really successful emotional beats during which, for a minute, you feel you’re allowed a window into this character’s soul. I say “character,” because no one except Amy and those closest to her can ever really know what she was feeling in these critical moments. Nevertheless, Taylor-Johnson treats her subject as a fleshed-out human being; Back to Black’s Amy isn’t a soulless representation-of-a-representation-of-a-representation that so often plagues these mega-celebrity biopics.

It’s when she delivers an intimate performance for a handful of people, walks around New York City, converses with grandma, or takes a moment to reflect after making Grammy history, that you find yourself truly pondering the tragic loss of Amy Winehouse; not just her once-in-a-generation talent, but also her very brief, very special life.

The film’s human, approachable quality is further amplified by the decision to shoot in the real London locations frequented by Amy; her favorite Camden pubs, tattoo parlors, and Soho Jazz clubs bring Back to Black closer to the life it wishes to capture.

Beyond aesthetics and tone, where the film most struggles is with pacing, with several whiplash-inducing time jumps breaking up the rhythm and flow. As previously mentioned, there is also no real through-line connecting the moments that Taylor-Johson and Greenhalgh deemed important enough to include, which becomes particularly noticeable in the end stretch. The last scene in the film enjoys a lot of its best qualities (namely, the intimacy with Amy), yet it feels unnervingly sudden. Upon further reflection, however, it could be read as the filmmaker’s attempt to translate the same kind of feelings the young singer’s death elicited from all of us on July 23, 2011.

The picking and choosing of which facts to mention and which to overlook also results in what has been the biggest criticism wielded against Back to Black; its friendly portrayals of both Mitch Winehouse, and Blake Fielder-Civil. Their lowest moments, some of which are known to the public, are nowhere to be seen — such as Mitch bringing a camera crew to a holiday that was meant to take Amy away from the British tabloids, or commenting on her breast implants on a morning show, or even any of Blake’s darker and more toxic behaviors in their relationship (there is an emphasis, however, on Amy physically attacking him, so it’s easy to find that imbalance odd, to say the least).

The film really sells Amy and Blake’s romance, aided by Abela and O’Connell’s scintillating chemistry, and frames their divorce as the latter’s attempt to be the bigger person after realizing the harm they brought to each other’s lives. But regardless of Taylor-Johnson’s best intentions, to omit the very nefarious things they did together, and that Blake specifically did to Amy, and opt instead for simply vaguely mentioning them, serves to whitewash his role in her demise.

Some narrative weaknesses, and a few with its structure, are palpable enough. Yet almost paradoxically, Back to Black shines in the integrity and compassion of its portrayal of Amy herself as a stand-alone character — so long as you manage to ignore the dubious characterization of the other components that played a part in her fate.

Mixing Nicolas Cage‘s unique talent for weird horror movies and a post-apocalyptic family drama, Arcadian wisely forgoes wasting screen time explaining how humanity collapsed. Instead, a powerful opening scene sets a tone of paranoia by immersing us in a neighborhood’s spreading mood of mistrust as a mysterious threat emerges. Then the action jumps into the future, with proud father Paul (Nic Cage) doing his best to raise teenage twins Joseph (Jaeden Martell) and Thomas (Maxwell Jenkins) in the isolated countryside, as the trio spends their days gathering resources and reinforcing their defenses against any monstrous beings who might come knocking on their doors in the middle of the night.

Deciding to skip the exposition and go straight to the characters allows Arcadian to build a solid first arc, while leaving some threads untied allows the audience’s imagination to seek the link between nasty bugs, environmental pollution, and alien creatures. Horror thrives on the unknown, and by holding back answers, Arcadian hopes the audience will make up their own terrifying version of the apocalypse.

Furthermore, giving the family time to explore their complicated relationships anchors the story despite its twisted paths; regardless of the imaginary perils lurking in Acadian’s shadows, it’s easy to relate to the family’s daily emotional challenges. Paul wants to prepare his children to survive in a hostile world, knowing that he won’t always be around to protect them. For their part, the twins try to forge their own identity, an arduous journey even when societal structures haven’t fallen.

Thomas seeks to understand the world by inventing new ways to survive; Joseph, however, is an explorer with close ties to a nearby farm where his crush lives. So, despite the grim context of their raising, these are still teenagers trying to find their place in the world, and their constant bickering reflect the love and conflict that only siblings can have. Martell and Jenkins do a terrific job turning their characters into layered people, making it worth it to follow their journey even as Arcadian’s plot holes pile up.

While Cage’s star power is prominent in Arcadian’s marketing campaign, it is worth underlining that the movie’ plot takes Cage out of the spotlight, focusing primarily on the twins, a welcome decision given the undeniable synergy of the two young stars. Cage taking the second plane also contributes to Arcadian’s underlying message, which is that a parent’s job is to prepare the younger generation to replace them. However, that does get in the way of Cage unleashing the beast, a spectacle always worth watching. From Renfield to Willy’s Wonderland, there’s something mesmerizing about covering Cage in fake blood and giving him the space he needs to channel his primal self – the devastating mourning breakdown Cage performs in Mandy is still one of the best scenes in his brilliant career.

Cage’s presence, as fabulous as it is, reveals Arcadian main problem, which is its tone. After a solid first arc focused on character dynamics, the creatures that serve as main antagonists start to creep onto the screen. These monsters are wild, born from a macabre blend of animal and human features that only improve as we see them hunting their prey. Sadly, Arcadian doesn’t know how to balance the bonkers concept of its creatures with the small-scaled, slow-burn drama it’s trying to build. As a result, the movie unsuccessfully intercalates scenes where all hell breaks loose with heartfelt speeches that are unearned at best, and blatantly fake at worst. Fortunately, the movie’s unique creature design makes up for every plot mistake. It’s an entertaining mess, for sure, but a mess nevertheless.

Thanks to successful productions such as A Quiet Place, The Walking Dead, and The Last of Us, apocalyptic dramas focused on human relationships have been quite popular in recent years. As such, Arcadian is not the first to try to bank on this profitable trend, nor will it be the last. Sadly, this is not the most successful attempt to recreate the formula, mainly because it feels like Arcadian hasn’t decided what kind of movie it wants to be. It intends to show Nic Cage fighting monsters in action-infused set pieces that defy suspended disbelief. All the while, it wants its core characters to have credible and grounded journeys. In the end, it does neither. 

The battles against the creatures never fulfill their full potential – although we have to applaud their creative approach, Critters nod included. At the same time, the twins’ story is often undermined by questionable developments that serve only to justify the action scenes. As such, Arcadian is never scary, thrilling, or moving enough, with all these goals clashing instead of completing each other. In short, sometimes it feels that Arcadian is trying to build an entire movie just to showcase its unique creatures – to be fair, those creatures deserve their time on the big screen.

It’s hard to figure out Arcadian, because each element shines independently. The movie boasts excellent performances, believable relationships, and over-the-top creatures that steal the show every time they appear. However, the way everything is put together doesn’t quite work, resulting in a fun movie that’s not more forgettable due only to its villains. Then again, who are we trying to trick? As horror fans, we are all suckers for good creature design – a domain in which the movie excels. So, for those of us satisfied with a cool monster to look at, Arcadian is a huge hit.

Arcadian comes to theaters on Friday, April 12, 2024. The movie will be later available for streaming on Shudder.

Resuscitating a 50-year-old horror franchise that never managed to replicate the success of the original movie sounds like a bad idea. Yet, The First Omen manages to breathe new life into a tired formula by trumping The Omen in ways we weren’t expecting.

In 1968, Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby became a critic and box office hit, leading Hollywood in a wild chase for the next Antichrist story they could profit from. 1976’s The Omen is one of the few movies released at this moment that endured the test of time. By shifting the focus away from the birth of Satan’s child to the spine-chilling vision of an innocent child ushering in the Apocalypse, The Omen offered something fresh for horror fiends to obsess about, which helps to explain the original movie’s cult following.

The Omen received three sequels and a remake — all failed to leave a lasting impression. One would think that the franchise had already scrapped the bottom of the barrel, and it may be best to let Damien rest. However, The First Omen finds a surprising new angle to explore the franchise.

Set in the weeks preceding the baby exchange that set the events of the original movie into motion, The First Omen explains exactly how Damien came into the world. That’s not a question anyone needed to answer, as the first movie’s wackiest elements tease a satanic plot beyond human comprehension. Fortunately, The First Omen is aware that the only way to make exploring the original movie’s loose threads worthwhile is to give the most insane possible answers. In doing so, the prequel changes the meaning of some of the original’s critical scenes without spoiling the cult classic’s experience. 

The First Omen introduces a new character, Margarett (Nell Tiger Free), a young novice sent to work at an orphanage in Rome, where she hopes to give herself to Christ and become a nun. In Rome, Margarett creates an unlikely bond with the dark and mysterious teenager Carlita (Nicole Sorace). There’s something creepy happening at the orphanage, and Carlita seems to be at the center of it. So, while there’s a clear and direct connection to the original movie, the prequel also tries to tell its own story. The goal is to add to The Omen’s mythology without feeling derivative and even develop new plotlines that future movies can potentially explore.

Regarding scares, The First Omen strives to create an oppressive atmosphere where deception and secrecy contribute to making the audience uneasy. The prequel doesn’t always manage to do that, and the first arc, in particular, moves too slowly for its own sake. Nevertheless, The First Omen thrives in other horror staples, conjuring gruesome scenes that make you squirm. These scenes are more present in the movie’s final stretch when it perfectly balances what to show and hide to make you uncomfortable on a scale only a good horror movie can manage.

On that note, it’s essential to underline that The First Omen goes all in to make your skin crawl. Regardless of your mileage with horror movies, some scenes are incredibly unsettling, especially those dealing with heavy subjects such as obstetric violence. Still, it’s not just a matter of shock for shock’s sake, as The First Omen leans into the critical analysis of the orthodox Christian belief that women are created to serve and procreate, nothing else. As a result, women’s bodies are things to surveil, contain, and even desecrate to make sure they fulfill their supposedly God-given purpose. That perspective is what makes some moments of The First Omen utterly disgusting because, beyond the fake blood and exposed viscera, there is the very real pain of losing control of your own body due to archaic moral notions.

While the gore is not for everyone’s taste, the effort to use an established franchise to explore a new idea is commendable. The prequel shines the brightest when it questions the danger of giving a religious institution complete control over your life.

Margarett’s journey in The First Omen is one of self-discovery. Her devotion to God is tested, and she realizes she has a desiring body that should be hers to control. At times, the film will use this quest as an excuse to create titillating scenes, only to unveil the terrors that can emerge from the same sources. Unfortunately, that’s a fascinating thematic tapestry that doesn’t get the depth it deserves.

The biggest issue with The First Omen is how it’s trying to overlap two very distinct movies. On the one hand, it tells the story of Margarett, a woman who is suddenly confronted with a whole world of experiences that exist beyond the limits of Christianity. On the other hand, The First Omen is a prequel that is self-constrained by its reverence for the original. While there’s nothing wrong with the movie positioning itself as a faithful prequel, it can be tiresome to see it echo all the significant deaths of the 1976 classic. The situation is only sadder because The First Omen shows a lot of creativity when it allows itself to steer away from the original movie.

The First Omen is trying to bank on people’s love for The Omen. The prequel reuses soundtrack beats, and the image is covered with a yellow glow that mimics the heat printed in analog film in 1970s productions. But if we are being honest, The Omen is not so crucial that you cannot reinvent it and make it your own. That’s the mark of the best legacy sequels, such as 2021’s Candyman, 2018’s Halloween, and 2022’s Scream. So, while The First Omen is a good horror movie for old fans and newcomers alike, we feel it would be better if it embraced what’s unique and worried less about replicating the original film.

With all that said, The First Omen is all the more impressive when we consider this is the feature directorial debut of Arkasha Stevenson. It’s no easy feat to tackle a well-established franchise, and the pressure is even more significant when you are a newcomer to filmmaking. Still, Stevenson proves she is more than up for the task — we’ll be watching her horror career with great interest.