Movies

Image: DreamWorks Pictures In 1999 American pop culture still felt relatively optimistic. Television offered earnest takes on politics and exploration—shows like The West Wing and Stargate SG-1 imagined cooperation and curiosity—while films such as The Matrix channeled our late‑century anxieties with a cool, kinetic edge. Star Wars was also reasserting itself with the promise of...

Photo: Macall Polay/HBO Cristin Milioti won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series on Sunday for her portrayal of Sofia Gigante, the mafia scion in HBO’s The Penguin — a spinoff of The Batman. That award, however, doesn’t tell the full story: Matt Reeves — the director of The Batman who also executive-produces...

Image: Sony/Crunchyroll Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle debuted in U.S. cinemas this past weekend and delivered a staggering opening, earning north of $70 million domestically, according to a Sony press release shared with Polygon. That haul marks the largest opening weekend ever for an anime feature — eclipsing the long-standing benchmark set by Pokémon: The First...

Image: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment My introduction to pop culture came at home: my dad taught me Tekken 3 and later nudged me toward anime with landmark films like Tekken 3, Akira, and Princess Mononoke. But his attempts at selling me on sci‑fi fell flat: Godzilla and Star Wars felt distant and sterile. Then one...

Photo: Jonathan Hession/Netflix Wednesday season 2 has wrapped, and regrettably, a large portion of the show’s charm evaporated with it. I entered the latter half of this season cautiously optimistic — but many narrative choices left me feeling misled rather than delighted. Between baffling plot turns and moments that felt engineered for virality more than...

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures Weapons, the new unsettling thriller from Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger, proved a major box-office draw as viewers packed theaters to experience its tense blend of dread and dark humor. The film, which follows a town reeling after the baffling disappearance of 17 children, is now available on VOD for the first...

Image: Don’t Nod A television take on the time-bending adventure Life is Strange has circulated in rumors since 2016, but Prime Video confirmed on Sept. 5 that it has ordered a series based on the franchise. Charlie Covell — known for KAOS and The End of the F***ing World — will serve as executive producer...

Image: Magnolia Pictures Nicolas Cage, a prolific and unpredictable screen presence, leads the cast of the forthcoming religious-horror film The Carpenter’s Son — a dark, unsettling take on episodes from Jesus’ childhood. As someone who admires Cage’s recent work in films like Pig and his classic turn in Face/Off, I found the premise intriguingly strange...

Image: Sony Classics Mark Hamill has lately been appearing in Stephen King adaptations in distinctly different registers. In The Long Walk, he dons sunglasses and an unsettling charm as The Major — an orchestrator of a brutal, vaguely fascistic spectacle in which young men must outpace one another or face death. By contrast, in The...

Photo: Marni Grossman/Paramount Plus Star Trek: Strange New Worlds was conceived—according to co-showrunner Akiva Goldsman—as a character-driven series, with serialized emotional arcs anchoring episodes that shift in tone and genre. Season 3 opened with strongSetup that explored themes like PTSD, bodily autonomy, and mentorship. Unfortunately, many of those promises falter as the season increasingly leans...