In 2017, the Jumanji reboot welcomed a new generation of filmgoers to the jungle. The film was a lively good time: It turned the cursed board game from the original...
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Early in Bombshell, a new docudrama about sexual harassment at the Fox News cable channel, anchor Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) breaks the fourth wall. With impeccable, appropriate TV-presenter style, she...
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Chekhov’s gun is an overused trope. There are no hard-and-fast rules in writing: just because there’s a gun on the table in the first act of a story doesn’t mean...
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The final shot of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is overwhelming. It’s a culmination of the two hours that have preceded it, but it’s more than just...
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It can be tremendously hard to tell a story that has conflict, but no villain. Not all stories have a clear-cut bad guy — life isn’t so simple — but...
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The entire first episode of season 4 of The Expanse is more or less dedicated to getting fans back up to speed with a series that went off the air...
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The ocean’s ceaseless motion, seemingly bottomless depths, and vast wealth of life and death can be seen as beautiful, terrifying, or both. The same description could apply to Mati Diop’s...
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When the trailer for Playmobil: The Movie first debuted, it seemed to elicit one universal reaction: “Wait, isn’t this just a cheaper-looking version of The Lego Movie?” Those who can’t...
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The 1990s show Batman: The Animated Series rewrote the Batman canon, dramatically changing the backstories of several villains and solidifying the noir and gothic style that came to define Gotham...
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Pop-culture fans probably already have a few emotional associations with severed hands crawling around independently onscreen. The Addams family “pet,” Thing, is a eerie version of the image. Ash’s war...
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