Voicemails for Isabelle is a Love Letter to Healing from Grief

This article contains some spoilers for the Netflix film Voicemails for Isabelle.

You’re proof that sometimes life rigs things in our favor. In a movie that encapsulates the sometimes silly messiness of grief and the warmth of loving through healing, Netflix’s Voicemails for Isabella is a refreshing, poignant reminder to keep living.

Zoey Deutch stars as Jill, currently a prep cook in San Francisco who aspires to be a baker. As she navigates her life’s challenges, she shares them through a series of phone calls and voicemails with her sister, Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), whose cystic fibrosis has prevented her from leaving their home in Austin, Texas. While Jill is her sister’s only looking glass into the outside world, Isabella is the only voice of reason in hers.

When Isabelle abruptly dies, a devastated Jill continues to leave voicemails and life updates to her sister on her old phone number, unaware that the number has been reassigned. Here enters the movie’s male lead, Wes, played by Nick Robinson, a real estate agent in Austin whose new work phone is the new recipient of Jill’s audio diaries.

While the voicemails are all silly, wacky, and provide TMI comedic relief, hopeless romantics can watch as these two unlikely and chaotically lovable characters find a love that is remarkably grounded, capturing the realities of love with an authenticity that feels both refreshing and deeply moving. Deutch and Robinson provide powerful performances that show that the process of grief and healing can be beautiful.

Directed and written by Leah McKendrick, the romantic comedy-drama is based on her own experiences with leaving her sister voicemails after moving to Los Angeles to pursue her writing dreams. McKendrick’s sister, Olivia, lived in New York, which meant the time difference made it hard to catch up with each other when they weren’t busy. So, McKendrick started leaving her sister long voicemails just talking about everything in her life — noting that the messages helped her during some of the darkest times in her life.

Thankfully, McKendrick’s sister is still very much alive, but using the voicemails as a medium for remembrance is a masterful storytelling tool. The start of the film shows Jill and Isabelle’s relationship, how close they were, and establishes Isabelle as her own character. We are introduced to her humor, her sadness, and her love for Jill. She isn’t just a plot device for the narrative — we learn about her gradually, even her desire to love life in gentle self-deprecating humor.

Even with a brief introduction, Isabelle is built into a fully formed character whose death is felt in more than just the impact on the characters, but the loss of her as a person. Despite her prognosis and being stuck in a room, she felt the liveliest out of all the characters introduced. Viewers feel the absence of that liveliness to the point where one looks forward to hearing her voicemails play when Jill needs to hear her sister’s voice.

The voicemails set up who both Jill and Isabelle are without having to manufacture scenes of character development. The way they talk to each other through technology reveals a bond and a familial intimacy that encapsulates their relationship for all to see. It makes it even more profoundly melancholic when Isabelle can no longer leave new messages of her own. Despite this, Jill’s continuing to talk to her sister as if she never left, even though she acknowledges her death, is beautiful to see. There is a rawness and complete vulnerability that, at times, feels like you are watching a vlog rather than a film.

Grief isn’t linear, and that phrase encapsulates the main theme of the film. Grieving, as a process, is never truly over — the difference is learning to find warmth in remembering what you lost. Wes, despite losing his mother at a young age, still deals with the grief in small ways. Jill’s grief is a constant battle between moving forward and feeling lost. Despite this newfound missing piece, the romance between Jill and Wes never feels like a bridge to avoid grieving or to replace Isabelle.

Wes’ intrigue and love for Jill comes from hearing who she was at her worst and her finding her way back. Jill loves Wes because of his willingness to be himself and have fun, even if at times he is shy or pessimistic. Their connection is defined by their ability to be empathetic, vulnerable, patient, and understanding with each other. Both put themselves aside to understand the other – showing that love can coincide with grief.

Wes’ grief for the loss of his mother isn’t a main focus point of his character. It also isn’t mentioned often; he even downplays it at times due to his lack of memories of her. Yet, in moments like their first date, when Jill makes the dish that his mother used to make him, we see his grief manifest. In one subtle moment, he is seen by Jill and remembers one of the most important people he’s lost. It is a deeply intimate scene that marks a turn in their relationship.

The chemistry between Deutch and Robinson is built upon these little moments of understanding between the characters. Acknowledging the way those they have lost impacted them, and motivating each other to continue. Wes was the one to motivate Jill to lean into her specialty of desert tacos, Isabelle’s favorite food that Jill made, to start her own business and finally be the baker of her dreams.

That is why this story resonates the way it does. The voicemails represent a security blanket for the loss and nostalgia of grief until the healing process progresses enough that they’re not needed.

Turning grief into something tender, hopeful and profoundly human, Voicemails for Isabelle is more than a romance — it suggests that the people we lose continue to shape us through memories, lessons, and love. It is a heartfelt letter to healing — learning to carry grief instead of overcoming it.

Voicemails for Isabelle is now streaming on Netflix.

Spider-Man’s New Popcorn Bucket Is Getting the Dune Treatment

Not long ago, film theater merchandise was fairly straightforward. You got a themed popcorn tub, maybe a collectible cup, and went on with your day. Somewhere along the way, however, Hollywood has started to churn out merchandise that has you stop and think, “Did nobody look at this before it went into production?”

This trend arguably (but not really) started with Dune: Part Two’s infamous Arrakis sandworm popcorn bucket, which instantly became an internet sensation for reasons that had very little to do with Denis Villeneuve’s 2024 sci-fi epic. What should have been a relatively standard piece of film merch instead took on a life of its own, becoming the subject of endless memes and social media jokes jabbing at the bucket’s admittedly questionable appearance.

Since then, theaters have found themselves repeatedly at the center of accidental, or possibly not so accidental, questionable merchandise designs. The latest entry comes courtesy of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, whose newly revealed Cinemark popcorn bucket on Instagram has already caused many double-takes online.

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The collectible is designed to look like Spidey’s signature web-shooting pose with a large cone-shaped web structure with a straw to serve as both a popcorn holder and drinking vessel. It’s a clever idea in theory, one must admit. In execution, many fans have started to point out that the web portion of the collectible evokes something considerably less family-friendly.

In response to Cinemark’s post, an Instagram user wrote a mellow, “We need to chill on the popcorn buckets, I think.” Others were less restrained in their commentary, with one joking, “Chum bucket remove the ‘h,’” while another added in disbelief, “No one actually thought about the cup, I see.” Possibly the most blunt (and hilarious) commenter said, “I don’t want a Spider-Man jizz tornado, thank you.”

Still, as bizarre as Spider-Man’s concession stand may be, it’s far from an isolated case. In fact, it’s not even the only superhero collectible to spark this kind of reaction this year.

A promotional “gripper” cup for James Gunn’s upcoming Supergirl went viral after fans noticed that its suited-torso design featuring Kara’s jacket from the Superman film looked suspiciously like another body part entirely. The internet immediately dubbed it the “Supergirl foreskin cup,” prompting many people to assume the images circulating online had to be AI-generated. They were not. The cup is very real, proving once again that reality continues to outperform parody when it comes to film merchandise.

At this point, the pattern is becoming difficult to ignore even if you insist your mind isn’t in the gutter. Which raises an increasingly real possibility: none of this is accidental.

Studios and theater chains have now seen firsthand what happens when a collectible goes viral. While some make their intentions clear, like the Deadpool-designed Wolverine popcorn bucket for the 2024 Deadpool & Wolverine film (there was something in the air in 2024, wow), others are harder to read. Items like the Supergirl cup and Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s combo container make it less obvious whether these designs are simply unfortunate coincidences or deliberate attempts at engineered viral marketing.

To be fair, plenty of fans genuinely like Cinemark’s batch of Brand New Day merch. The simple but classic Spidey-face water bottle and comic-printed blanket have received much warmer reception, offering something a little more understated for the non-freaky fans. Well, in all fairness, Spider-Man collectors rarely need much convincing to add any new item to their shelves.

Regardless, as the Dune bucket proved, and as the Supergirl cup and Spider-Man container now seem to be proving once more, the weirdest item at the theaters almost always becomes the story.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t arrive until July 31, yet the buzz around the movie is well underway. Regardless of intensity, the design choices have clearly done their job of sparking conversation, going viral, and keeping the film in the spotlight. At this point, whether it’s accidental or not, it’s hard to argue with the results, and Hollywood may well find there’s no reason to not push things even further into absurdity.

Leviticus Ending Explained and Unpacked with the Director

This article contains major Leviticus spoilers.

On the same Friday that first-time feature director Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus is opening nationwide in the U.S., the Australian filmmaker is having lunch in Los Angeles with someone else in the industry. They’re there to discuss work, presumably some prospects for the future, and maybe the SoCal weather. And yet, as Chiarella recounts a few hours later, the most passionate, driving topic of conversation came down to the end of his new horror film and Mia Wasikowska’s portrait of bad parenting decisions in it.

“They really wanted to get to the heart of that,” Chiarella recounts with a wry smile. If you’ve seen the movie, you’d understand why.

In a summer full of potent, “elevated” horror with heavy subtext, Leviticus might be the heaviest. Here’s a film where deeply religious rural communities in Australia turn to a holy man for guidance. This so-called “deliverance healer” practices a form gay conversion therapy prayer that instead of blessing queer teenagers curses them to be stalked by their own desires. A literal demon (or the like) hunts the children down by taking the form of the person they desire most, attempting to lure them to a horrifyingly brutal death.

For Chiarella, it began in part by researching various different gay conversion therapy practices around the world and looking for a through-line.

“What they all seemed to have in common was there was an element of performative scaring people out of their feelings,” the writer-director explains. “There were cases of exorcisms performed in cultures all around the world on queer teenagers, and I started to think about what are they actually doing? Are they taking something out, as they’re claiming to do, or are they just putting something in? They’re infecting people with a fear of their own feelings and their own desires. That’s really how I came up with the idea of this monster that takes the shape of the person you’re most attracted to.”

That is the devastating hook of Leviticus, but the ending revelation is the final gut-punch. Before that moment, poor Naim (Joe Bird) has lost the ability to trust Ryan (Stacy Clausen), both because half the time he sees Ryan it might be a dream-demon trying to lure him to his death, and the other half of the time… well, it’s complicated. Yet as a teenage kid who’s in way over his head, the one person Naim should be able to turn to is his mother Arlene (Wasikowska). But she also disabused Naim and the audience of her trust when she became the one to drive her son, kicking and screaming, to the deliverance healer.

However, it is only in Wasikowska’s final scene with Bird that the full extent of the betrayal become clear. After refusing to hear any of her son’s laments, she belatedly confides, “It can’t be undone.” What was done to him, she was told, is irreversible. She isn’t apologizing though; as Mom sees it, she won’t be around forever and she thinks her son, like everyone, “needs fear” to stay on the righteous, narrow, and Christian path.

“I want the audience to take what they want from that,” Chiarella tells us. “She knew that she was putting her child at risk, how far she thought she was going, I want the audience to try and attach their own meaning to, depending on their own experiences. It’s why we have that little subplot of the pastor and, and his wife losing their child, and the grief that they were experiencing is just sort of glimpsed.”

Indeed, the helmer spoke at length with actors Ewen Leslie and Edwina Wren about how much the parents of another gay child—a kid who ends up butchered by the demon—knew about their deal with the deliverance preacher before going to him, and who was more supportive of the act. And, of course, he spoke about the level of complicity with Wasikowska.

Says Chiarella, “Those little things are the reason why I went with such experienced and qualified actors to play the adults in the film, because they don’t really get a lot of screen time. We don’t follow them off for their own subplots. They have to bring the weight of all of that in the brief moments that we see them.”

Varying levels of complicity and moral culpability are part and parcel for the horror genre though. As a young Millennial filmmaker, Chiarella grew up inheriting the American horror cinema of the 1980s where the parents are often obstacles, an antagonistic presence in their children’s lives that’s incapable of accepting the ghosts of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees are real.

“Quite often those films were about sex and sexuality, and turning sex into [violence],” he adds. “For most of those films, it was heterosexual sex, but turning it into a transgression that was going to bring doom and curses upon these young characters, that was something I was very aware of, ever since I watched those films as a very young kid.”

It was also something he wished to duplicate in Leviticus, and not only with the parents. The film, indeed, asks a lot of the audience when it comes to sympathizing with Joe Bird’s Naim since this kid also, in a fit of jealousy upon learning his semi-boyfriend Ryan is hooking up with the pastor’s son, tells said pastor about the kiss. In effect, by outing the two other closeted kids in his religious community, Naim helps invite the deliverance healer’s twisted brand of Christianity into the town.

“What I’ve always loved about horror movies is the convention where there’s some transgression committed—don’t feed this thing, don’t cross this land, don’t do this thing that we’re warning you about—and then the transgression is committed and that is what unleashes the curse or the monster or the horrible thing that starts terrorizing the characters. But I really love the horror movies where it’s a little gray who committed the transgression and what that was. So I wanted with this film a sense of, ‘Well, did this happen because of the parents and what they did and what they believe in? Did it happen because Joe’s character went and committed this betrayal? Did it happen because of what Stacy’s character did?’”

To the writer-director, it began with forces far beyond any individual character in his movie. While Chiarella was not raised in a religious household, he had friends and extended family who were, and he has always been deeply aware of Pentecostal and other Christian communities Down Under who might embrace homophobic ideology. And he cites the germ of Leviticus being specifically planted around the time of the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, a national survey sent out in 2017 asking every voter if they would support letting same-sex couples marry.

Says Chiarella, “Every single person in the country got to put in their ballot about whether or not same-sex marriage would be legal, and then what that led to was this public debate in the lead up where a lot of homophobic language was being thrown around. So even though we won that vote—I think it was about two-thirds of the country approved of it, and so they did legalize same-sex marriage—in the aftermath of that, there was still all of this language that had been platformed and all of this rhetoric that was still going around.”

For the record, the filmmaker does not consider his film or his personal perspective to be anti-religious. However, by virtue of titling the movie Leviticus, he is calling down a religious text that can be triggering for many in the audience.

“For people in our community, [Leviticus] is a word that carries a lot of weight because of the way it has perhaps been weaponized and communicated,” Chiarella considers. “I think this is a film that’s not so much anti-religion as it is about an interpretation and how people take particular meanings from things and then use them to weaponize those ideas against people.”

The intent of the film is to use horror as a metaphor for literalizing that anxiety. The filmmakers want you to feel as much anxiety and apprehension as relief when Naim and Ryan share a moment on a bus, because like the characters, you’ve been conditioned to think moments of romance or sensuality come coupled with violent pain and anguish.

In Chiarella’s mind, though, he didn’t really know if it worked until he saw it playing at Sundance earlier this year—to such a rapturous reception that indie tastemaker NEON acquired the film for $5 million.

“You can test it out on people you know, but until it’s in an actual theater in front of hundreds, you actually don’t know if the emotion and that sort of gut feeling I’m trying to give everybody actually land,” Chiarella says. “So it was such a relief to play the film at Sundance and just hear those reactions in the first few minutes of the film and just know that it was all landing. That was the bit where I really was able to feel like, ‘Okay, we’ve done something here.’ And then the fact that NEON picked it up, and now it’s opening today on, I think a bit over a few over 1,000 screens, I didn’t really expect it to reach that wide.”

The most rewarding aspect, however, might be how it’s already found a place in the LGBTQ+ cinema landscape. “I certainly didn’t expect all of the fan art and the fan edits and fan fiction to come out of it,” the filmmaker gratefully adds. And particularly seeing the film premiere in Park City, Utah and then play in Austin, Texas for SXSW was illuminating.

Explains Chiarella, “Sundance and South By, they’re held in these regional parts of the U.S., which has been really interesting. You just don’t get industry people going to those festivals, you get people who are from those areas, and local viewer audiences, and a lot of them came forward and spoke about their experiences growing up queer in particular communities, and how the film, shapeshifting demons aside, really spoke to them and their experience. So that was actually really special to know the film was landing with the people I had made it for.”

It’s meant to be an escape from the Arlenes of the world.

Leviticus is playing in theaters now.

Famke Janssen Thinks Avengers: Doomsday Is Missing an X-Men Staple

Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday has promised a truly massive cast, bringing together core groups from across the MCU’s biggest corners The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Thunderbolts, and the X-Men.

For longtime fans of the Fox X-Men era in particular, the appeal in the upcoming film lies in seeing so many familiar faces return after years away from the franchise. Nearly the entire original cast is set to return, with Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique, James Marsden as Cyclops, Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, and Kelsey Grammer as Beast.

Three of the franchise’s most iconic figures, Halle Berry’s Storm, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey, are notably absent from the announced returnees, however.

Berry last expressed her disappointment in being excluded in Doomsday in February, telling ScreenRant, “While I’m sad I won’t be in Doomsday this round, there are other rounds,” and that she would play the Mistress of the Elements “in a heartbeat” if given the opportunity.

Around the same time, while promoting Crime 101, Berry joked with us that co-star Chris Hemsworth might help change her involvement status with the project. When the idea of her absence from the new ensemble came up, Berry laughed and said “Chris is going to fix that,” with Hemsworth quickly playing along, agreeing “I”m going to fix that”

Like Berry, Hugh Jackman also faced questions about whether he’ll suit up again for the film. Speaking with Adam Lupis in May while promoting The Sheep Detectives, the actor played coy when asked about a potential Wolverine return, saying, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is it? Dooms-what? Who knows?”

More recently, Janssen adopted a more pointed tone when discussing the film at Spacecon 2026 with Nerdtropolis, saying, “I think they made a mistake, but hey, who am I? I’m just a little me who thinks that.” She also addressed the ongoing speculation around her involvement, insisting she is not part of the project and joking about how difficult she finds it to hide anything from fans. “I am so bad at keeping secrets that I always say to everyone, ‘I’m the worst actor in the world,’” she said. “It’s all on my face. You right away will read it.”

Janssen made her Jean Grey debut in the 2000’s X-Men, introducing audiences to the telepathic mutant also known as the Phoenix. She went on to reprise the role in X2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand, continuing the character’s arc across the original trilogy. Later, she returned for brief appearances in The Wolverine and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Although Janssen has previously expressed interest in stepping back into the role, she revealed last November that she has “never ever” been contacted by Disney about returning as Jean Grey for any upcoming MCU projects. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, she noted how often the topic comes up in interviews, saying, “Every time I do an interview, it’s mentioned.”

Janssen added that she understands why fans continue to bring the return even years later, though. “I should be flattered, I suppose, that this character has resonated with people. It’s been so long, but it’s nice that people are still talking about her.” It’s no wonder too seeing how much of a crucial role Jean Grey plays in any X-Men story, movie, or otherwise.

That being said, it seems there might be a reason for why Janssen’s version of the character may be left behind in particular. Some fans have speculated that Sadie Sink will take up the Phoenix mantle in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, seeing as her mysterious character has been described as a dangerous mind-controller.

That theory becomes even more plausible when considering Marvel’s new MCU plans for the mutant franchise. With Jake Schreier now set to direct the upcoming X-Men reboot, the studio appears to be looking toward the future with a younger cast in mind rather than simply extending the Fox-era cast’s stay indefinitely.

Of course, much of this remains speculation. Marvel has only revealed what they want to reveal of Doomsday’s sprawling cast, and there are surely surprises no one could expect yet to come.

Whether Janssen’s comments truly signal the end of her time as Jean Grey, whether Sadie Sink is playing the MCU’s version of the character, and how Marvel ultimately plans to introduce its new generation of X-Men are questions that likely won’t be answered until Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, 2026.

Turok: Origins Brings the Dino Hunter Back from the Dead

Any millennial who had a Nintendo 64 will tell you that one of the staples for the console was Turok, a franchise which began with 1997’s Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and released four games on the N64 alone. Since then, the first-person shooter title has struggled to maintain its relevance and audience over subsequent gaming generations, seemingly coming to an end with 2008’s Turok, published by Disney Interactive Studios of all companies. Saber Interactive has now taken the reins on the series with the upcoming Turok: Origins, which we got to play at Summer Game Fest 2026 as part of their demos available on-site, including Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

Playable solo or in a team of up to three people, Turok: Origins unfolds like a linear mission-driven shooter in the tradition of Saber’s recent Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 albeit with its sci-fi/prehistoric aesthetic mash-up still very much intact. Players have an option between three character classes to choose from between deployments, each with their own loadouts and special abilities to support the squad. We personally went with the more acrobatic Raven class and the middle of the road Cougar class, though we were intrigued by the hard-hitting, tank-like Bison class and teamed up with several Bison players in our run.

Once deployed, Turok: Origins feels right within the arcade-style wheelhouse that made its original titles so much fun. There is no question of where to go next, no set of complex mission objectives, at least not in the build that we played. It’s simply a matter of progressing to the next enemy encounter, usually in an arena-like portion of the level, and blasting and/or cutting down every enemy in the immediate area into digitized viscera. And, naturally, this straightforward approach is where the entire game excels.

All of the weapons that we tried felt intuitive and distinct from one another, be it futuristic assault rifles to chugging shotguns with plenty of up-close stopping power. The action is as frenetically paced as you can imagine, but we never got lost in the chaos, being able to tell where the enemies were coming from and keep track of where the ammo and health restoratives were around a given level. And every class has their own glory kill animations for each major enemy type in the game when the target’s health is low enough, denoted by a glowing outline, which had us rushing in to finish off each vulnerable opponent in gruesomely satisfying ways.

And did I personally get the glory kill on the final boss of this demo build? I sure did and, yes, it felt fantastic.

The game also looks much more visually impressive than I anticipated, rather than the repetitive environments and assets that tend to get used in a lot of contemporary extraction shooters. While not the most eye-popping game that we played during SGF 2026 weekend, Turok: Origins also isn’t necessarily trying to go for the most detailed and hardware-pushing presentation. The game keeps its levels varied enough and the combat runs smoothly, even with the controlled chaos of having multiple players and enemies running around trying to kill each other.

The big thing to get used to, and this was more noticeable in a primarily interior mission that closed out our demo, is some of the level traversal mechanics. There are some areas where you can just sprint and jump and others where you need to use a grappling hook mechanic to swing across wider gaps. These moments were some of the less intuitive sequences in the demo compared to the more open environments, with minimal climbing and jumping. In the grand scheme, these are more quibbles than anything else but if I had to cite one area of improvement in the demo, that would definitely be it.

Thankfully, those segments seem to be few and far in between, with the developers recognizing that Turok handles better as a fast-paced shooter than a platforming experience. And even with this in mind, we were never fully taken out of the experience and would’ve loved more time, if only to see what the Bison class was all about on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t have a confirmed release date yet, leaving us on the hook to see how the final build will play out.

Who would’ve thought, in the Year of Our Lord 2026, that the most overtly fun first-person shooter we got to play at Summer Game Fest this year would be Turok: Origins. But it’s true and it’s caught us by surprise as much as anything else, reminding fans that the once-prolific dinosaur hunter should never be counted out completely. Though we only played an early build of the game, we definitely have the title on our radar now rather than regarding it as another attempt to revive a ‘90s franchise. Turok: Origins has enough of the sauce to bring the series back to prominence, or at least does its fans justice in a way its 2000s era titles didn’t.

Welcome back, Turok. We missed you.

Developed and published by Saber Interactive, Turok: Origins is slated for release in late 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.

Tom Hanks Can’t Face Watching One Cast Away Moment Again: “I Will Get Up and Leave the Room”

Though some found Robert Zemeckis’ survival drama Cast Away flawed (usually for its abrupt ending), it was well received by critics and a box-office hit for the director and his star, Tom Hanks.

The 2000 movie was also parodied to death in the decades following its release, after a pivotal scene saw FedEx systems analyst Chuck Noland (Hanks) lose his Wilson volleyball companion to the ocean during a final escape from the deserted island he’d washed up on. “Wilson!” Hanks screams-sobs as the ball floats out of reach. “Wilsonnnnnnn!!!!” Hard not to hear it in your head even now, right?

But Chuck losing Wilson isn’t the Cast Away scene that still haunts Hanks today; it’s an entirely different moment in the movie he has a problem with—and it’s likely a moment that no one else got stuck on but him.

“I do not watch these movies after the first time,” Hanks first revealed to Richard Osman and Marina Hyde on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast. “There are movies that have moments in that I cannot watch because I didn’t get there. There is a moment that it was painful for me where I just think, ‘I’m not there.’”

Hanks added, “At the end of the 47th day of shooting, in the 14th hour of the day, you still have to capture an emotional bit of lightning in a bottle that is going to last forever, whether you do it well or not. There remains forever a terrifying moment of, ‘Am I going to be escorted off the set and off the lot because the authenticity police have dubbed me a crook?’”

Hanks then singled out Cast Away as a specific film he can’t fully rewatch. “There is a moment in that it was painful for me in Cast Away in which I am back, and Chuck is back in Kelly’s house and he gives her watch back. And there is a moment where I just think, ‘I am not there.’ All it is is a turnaround on me, but I do this gesture that I just think is false and is me and is not Chuck. And if the movie is on, I will get up and leave the room before that scene comes on.”

The Toy Story 5 and Saving Private Ryan actor says he didn’t notice the Cast Away moment in question until he finally saw the movie, but it seems to have bugged him ever since. He also won’t really give himself credit for the great moments he did ace.

“I don’t sit there and say, ‘Oh, watch this movie. Watch this move that comes up, we really nailed that.’ I look at it, and all I can say is, ‘I was cold. It looks like I’m warm. I was really freezing that day, or that beard was sticky’. I can say things like that.”

TV Premiere Dates: 2026 Calendar

Wondering when your favorite shows are coming back and what new series you can look forward to? We’ve got you covered with the Den of Geek 2026 TV Premiere Dates Calendar, where we keep track of TV series premiere dates, return dates, and more for the year and beyond.

We’ll continue to update this page weekly as networks and streamers announce dates. A lot of these shows we’ll be watching or covering, so be sure to follow along with us!

Please note that all times are ET.

Note: These are U.S. releases. For upcoming British releases, head on over here.

DATE	SHOW	NETWORK
Monday, June 22	Rhythm + Flow: Italy Season 3	Netflix
Wednesday, June 24	The American Experiment	Netflix
Wednesday, June 24	Another Self Season 3	Netflix
Thursday, June 25	FX’s The Bear Season 5 (9:00 p.m.)	FX \| Hulu
Thursday, June 25	Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2	Netflix
Friday, June 26	Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Happiness (9:00 p.m.)	HBO
Friday, June 26	Strung	Peacock
Saturday, June 27	Agent Kim Reactivated	Netflix
Monday, June 29	Adventure Time: Side Quests	Disney+ \| Hulu
Tuesday, June 30	Ruthless Season 6	Paramount+
Wednesday, July 1	Worst Neighbor Ever	Netflix
Wednesday, July 1	Elle Season 1	Prime Video
Wednesday, July 1	X-Men ’97 Season 2	Disney+
Thursday, July 2	Survival of the Thickest Season 3	Netflix
Friday, July 3	Silo Season 3	Apple TV
Wednesday, July 8	Trying Season 5	Apple TV
Thursday, July 9	Little House on the Prairie Season 1	Netflix
Thursday, July 9	The Five Star Weekend	Peacock
Sunday, July 12	The Westies (9:00 p.m.)	MGM+
Wednesday, July 15	Ride or Die	Prime Video
Wednesday, July 15	Lucky	Apple TV
Thursday, July 16	The Hawk	Netflix
Thursday, July 23	Stuart Fails to Save the Universe (9:00 p.m.)	HBO Max
Sunday, July 26	The Walking Dead: Dead City Season 3	AMC
Wednesday, July 29	Diarra from Detroit	Paramount+
Sunday, August 2	Lioness Season 3	Paramount+
Monday, August 3	Futurama Season 14	Hulu
Wednesday, August 5	Ted Lasso Season 4	Apple TV
Wednesday, August 5	The Shards (9:00 p.m.)	FX \| Hulu
Friday, August 7	Alley Cats	Netflix
Sunday, August 9	The Chosen in the Wild with Bear Grylls	Prime Video
Thursday, August 13	Tires Season 3	Netflix
Sunday, August 16	Lanterns	HBO Max
Thursday, August 20	Outer Banks Season 5	Netflix
Wednesday, August 26	One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part Two	Netflix
Wednesday, September 9	Last Seen	Apple TV
Wednesday, September 16	Slow Horses Season 6	Apple TV
Wednesday, September 16	South Park Season 29 (10:00 p.m.)	Comedy Central
Thursday, September 24	A Different World	Netflix
Thursday, October 15	Crystal Lake	Peacock
Wednesday, October 21	The Terminal List Season 2	Prime Video
Friday, October 23	Lupin Part 4	Netflix
Wednesday, November 11	The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power	Prime Video
Thursday, November 12	The Good Daughter	Peacock
Friday, December 25	Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone	HBO Max

If we’ve forgotten a show, feel free to drop a reminder in the comment section below!

Want to know what big movies are coming out in 2026? We’ve got you covered here.

Movies from the ’70s & ’80s You Can’t Watch Anymore

The 70s and 80s gave us many classics we still enjoy today, movies that have shaped what we understand cinema to be. However, during that experimenting period, many other movies came out that challenge our sensitivities today. We aren’t just ‘emotional,’ we are more comprehensive today when it comes to what is ok to show in movies.

These are the films that you can’t enjoy today due to their content. We’ve also included a few entries that, while technically fine content wise, are physically hard to find, fitting with the theme of media lost to time.

The Kentucky Fried Movie

This 1977 sketch comedy from the creators of Airplane! is packed with jokes that would never survive a modern studio release. Some sketches are now remembered as much for their offensiveness as their humor.

Cruising

William Friedkin’s 1980 thriller remains controversial decades later. Its depiction of New York’s gay leather subculture sparked protests upon release and continues to divide audiences and critics today.

Soul Man

The premise alone makes modern viewers wince. In this 1986 comedy, a white student darkens his skin to qualify for a scholarship, making it one of the most frequently cited examples of an aging poorly concept.

The Toy

Richard Pryor remains hilarious, but the film’s central premise involving a wealthy man effectively purchasing another human being as a plaything makes many viewers uncomfortable today.

Revenge of the Nerds

Once considered an underdog classic, the film has undergone major reevaluation. Several scenes involving consent and intimate deception are now discussed far more than the movie’s comedy.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

This 1980 international hit remains beloved by many viewers, but critics have increasingly questioned aspects of its portrayal of African characters and cultures through a modern lens.

The Cannonball Run

Packed with celebrity cameos, the film also includes racial and ethnic stereotypes that were common in broad comedies of the era but draw far more scrutiny today.

Sixteen Candles

John Hughes’ coming-of-age classic remains influential, but several jokes and character portrayals have become recurring points of criticism among modern audiences revisiting the film.

Bachelor Party

Tom Hanks’ early comedy was a success in 1984, yet many of its jokes reflect attitudes and humor that have become far less acceptable to contemporary viewers.

The Day the Clown Cried

Jerry Lewis’ infamous unreleased film about a clown in a Nazi concentration camp became legendary largely because almost nobody has actually seen it. It remains one of cinema’s most famous lost movies.

Let’s Get Harry

This 1986 action film has never achieved widespread availability on modern streaming platforms. It occasionally resurfaces through specialty releases but remains largely forgotten and difficult for casual viewers to locate.

Nothing Lasts Forever

Despite starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Zach Galligan, this 1984 fantasy comedy was shelved before receiving a proper theatrical release. For years it was nearly impossible to see outside rare broadcasts.

Superman Returns Editor Looks Back at Some of the Film’s Biggest Problems

Superman Returns definitely has its fans—including Quentin Tarantino—but it was a “one and done” DC movie for director Bryan Singer and his version of Clark Kent, Brandon Routh. Though there’s been much discussion over the years about both Singer and Routh’s co-star, Kevin Spacey, Superman Returns was released at a different time in a different cultural landscape, yet it still didn’t meet the studio’s expectations at the box office back in 2006.

Editor John Ottman, who worked on many of Singer’s films until he stopped making them midway through 2018’s award-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, has been looking back at the main issues with Superman Returns in conversation with Half the Picture and says that one of the movie’s problems was actually its deep respect for Richard Donner’s original movie.

“I think one of the problems with Superman Returns is that we were so trying to be so reverential to the ’78 version,” he mused. “It was crippled to go in a new direction. At the same time, I like the fact that it stayed true to the feeling that Superman should have. He should be a very positive, good force.”

Ottman went on to hint that Superman Returns’ “positive, good force” contrasted with Zack Snyder’s take on the character, which began in 2013. “When those dark ones came later, I was like, ‘What is this garbage?’ you know? So, not that ours was great; it’s like ours was very flawed as well. It was a beautiful film. I think it was beautifully done. I just think the plot by Lex Luthor was derivative of before.”

According to Ottman, other perceived problems in the movie were Parker Posey’s Kitty Kowalski, one of Lex Luthor’s henchwomen, who Ottman says “had nothing to do”, and Kate Bosworth’s Lois Lane, who was “fantastic” but “miscast”.

“Not that everyone has to be Margot Kidder [but] she needed to be more endearing,” Ottman explained. “We need to laugh with her at least once or something, and she was so ‘hard-hitting reporter with a Pulitzer’ at like, what, 12? You know, I just didn’t buy it.”

The editor, who also worked on this year’s box-office hit Michael, also discussed the irony of Bosworth’s miscasting after initial concerns focused on Routh’s performance as Superman.

“The funny thing is we were so concerned about [whether] Brandon pulled it off, [but] the whole time it was really her character that was the problem, I think,” Ottman told the podcast. “Not that she was bad, she was excellent in the film and she’s a really good actress, it’s just I felt she was miscast or she was miswritten or something. It wasn’t her fault. So all along it really wasn’t Brandon that shouldn’t have been the worry of ours, it was that role, I think. I think they would have had a more fun relationship, had she been a little more endearing in a way.”

Ottman also thinks Superman Returns’ long title sequence “bogged it down” and that the movie should have got its plot going faster.

Are you a Superman Returns defender? Is it better than Snyder’s movies? Do you think Routh should have continued on in the role? As always, let us know in the comments.

15 People Share the Oldest Video Game They Remember Playing

Video games have been with us for quite a while now, helping many generations grow and discover new ways to solve problems. As we grow older, we often look fondly on the first few games that introduced us to the medium, and the different ages have their own ‘classic’ games.

Users of Reddit gathered to discuss just that, and the different ages of the participants couldn’t be more obvious. Some remember playing the very first video game in existence, while others played as children what others consider games from their teenage years. These are a selection of games they were discussing.

Pong

For many older gamers, Pong wasn’t just their first video game, it was their introduction to electronic entertainment entirely. Two paddles and a bouncing square were enough to create a lifelong hobby.

Duck Hunt

The NES light gun made Duck Hunt feel magical to kids. Pointing a plastic pistol at the television and actually affecting what happened on screen seemed like futuristic technology at the time.

Space Invaders

Arcades and home conversions introduced countless players to Space Invaders. The simple task of shooting descending aliens became one of gaming’s earliest worldwide phenomena.

Battle Chess

Many PC gamers fondly remember Battle Chess on floppy disks. The game followed normal chess rules, but every captured piece triggered elaborate animated battles that made the ancient board game feel exciting.

Super Mario Bros.

Nintendo’s landmark platformer served as a first gaming experience for an entire generation. Running, jumping, and discovering secrets in the Mushroom Kingdom created memories that have lasted for decades.

Leisure Suit Larry

Some players discovered gaming through the notoriously adult-oriented Leisure Suit Larry. Whether they were old enough to play it or not, its humor and puzzle-solving left a lasting impression.

Pac-Man

The yellow dot-eating icon became one of the most recognizable video game characters ever created. For many people, Pac-Man was the first game they encountered in an arcade.

Intellivision Baseball

Sports fans often remember Intellivision Baseball as their introduction to gaming. Its graphics seem primitive now, but the ability to play a baseball game on television felt revolutionary.

Tetris

Countless Game Boy owners received the handheld bundled with Tetris. The puzzle game’s simple design and endless replayability made it one of the most memorable first gaming experiences ever.

Streets of Rage 2

Many Sega fans have vivid memories of cooperative sessions in Streets of Rage 2. The side-scrolling action and memorable soundtrack helped make it a defining game of the early 1990s.

Frogger

Crossing roads and rivers sounds simple, but Frogger became an arcade classic. Many gamers still remember desperately trying to guide a tiny frog safely across increasingly dangerous obstacles.

Minesweeper

For a generation of PC users, Minesweeper arrived preinstalled and ready to play. It introduced countless people to gaming during school breaks, office downtime, or long afternoons at home.

Sonic the Hedgehog

The original Sonic the Hedgehog showcased the Sega Genesis with speed unlike anything many players had seen. For countless kids, it was their very first console gaming experience.

The Oregon Trail

Many students encountered The Oregon Trail in school computer labs. Learning about westward expansion while trying not to die from dysentery became a surprisingly memorable gaming experience.

Crash Bandicoot

The original PlayStation introduced many players to 3D platforming through Crash Bandicoot. Navigating its colorful levels became a formative gaming memory for countless late-1990s kids.

15 Actors Who Live Their Life in the Background

We consider successful actors to be the headliners of a movie, the million dollar face that sells tickets worldwide. Yet we don’t judge other professions with the same pressure; after all, success for most of us is having a bit of disposable income, if at all.

Well, background actors are successful in their own way. These actors have mastered the art of playing coworkers, best friends, police captains, neighbors, villains, mentors, and countless other supporting roles. While they occasionally land leading parts, their careers are largely defined by making the stars around them look even better.

Stephen Root

Stephen Root has spent decades appearing in everything from Office Space to Barry. Rarely the lead, he consistently elevates supporting roles with such reliability that audiences often recognize him before remembering his name.

William Fichtner

Whether playing law enforcement officers, military personnel, or mysterious authority figures, William Fichtner has built a career as one of Hollywood’s most dependable supporting actors across film and television.

J.T. Walsh

Before his death, J.T. Walsh became famous for portraying politicians, executives, and authority figures. He rarely received top billing, but his presence immediately added credibility to almost any project.

Margo Martindale

Margo Martindale has become one of television’s most respected character actors. She regularly appears in acclaimed dramas and comedies, often leaving a lasting impression despite limited screen time.

David Morse

Tall, imposing, and endlessly versatile, David Morse frequently plays soldiers, detectives, and authority figures. His career is filled with memorable supporting performances rather than traditional leading-man roles.

James Cromwell

James Cromwell has appeared in countless films and television shows over several decades. Despite occasional starring roles, he is best known for bringing depth and gravitas to supporting characters.

Bruce McGill

From Animal House to The Insider and countless television appearances, Bruce McGill has spent years excelling as the kind of supporting performer audiences instantly recognize.

Richard Jenkins

Richard Jenkins occasionally headlines projects, but much of his career has been spent as an exceptional supporting actor. His ability to disappear into ordinary characters makes him particularly valuable.

Beth Grant

Beth Grant has made a career out of memorable supporting turns. Whether playing strict authority figures, quirky neighbors, or eccentric relatives, she frequently steals scenes with limited screen time.

Clancy Brown

Known for his distinctive voice and imposing presence, Clancy Brown appears everywhere from live-action films to animation. He often plays villains or authority figures rather than central protagonists.

Xander Berkeley

Xander Berkeley has spent decades portraying military officers, government officials, and tough professionals. He’s one of those actors whose face seems to appear in nearly every genre imaginable.

Harriet Sansom Harris

Harriet Sansom Harris has built a reputation as one of television’s most effective supporting performers. Her eccentric and often intense characters frequently become fan favorites despite limited appearances.

Kevin Dunn

Kevin Dunn has quietly accumulated hundreds of screen credits playing fathers, executives, politicians, and professionals. He’s a classic example of a character actor whose face is more famous than his name.

Miguel Sandoval

Miguel Sandoval has enjoyed a long career playing detectives, doctors, and authority figures. His steady presence has made him a familiar face across television and film for decades.

Colm Meaney

Although beloved by science-fiction fans for Star Trek, Colm Meaney has spent much of his career as a supporting player. His ability to make ordinary characters feel authentic remains his greatest strength.

13 Horror Shows That Got the Pacing Just Right

Great horror television lives and dies by pacing: move too slowly and viewers get bored before the scares arrive, move too quickly though, and the tension never has time to build. The best horror shows understand exactly when to reveal information, when to hold back, and when to unleash something terrifying.

They keep audiences hooked from episode to episode without feeling rushed or padded. Their themes can be about supernatural mysteries, psychological nightmares, or monster stories, yet what matters is that these series found the perfect rhythm. Suspense works best when the timing is just right.

Widow’s Bay

Apple TV’s breakout horror-comedy balances mystery, scares, and humor with remarkable confidence. Each episode expands the cursed island’s mythology without dragging, allowing the story to build steadily toward revelations while maintaining tension throughout.

The Haunting of Hill House

Mike Flanagan’s adaptation unfolds like a carefully constructed puzzle. Every episode reveals new layers of the family tragedy, keeping viewers invested while steadily escalating both the emotional stakes and supernatural horror.

Midnight Mass

Rather than rushing to its twists, Midnight Mass spends time developing its isolated community. The deliberate buildup pays off as the story gradually transforms from character drama into something far darker.

From

The mystery-box structure of From constantly introduces new questions while answering just enough to maintain momentum. The result is a horror series that rarely feels like it’s stalling for time.

The Terror

The first season of The Terror expertly balances survival drama and supernatural horror. Each episode increases the desperation facing the expedition, creating a sense of dread that never lets up.

Marianne

This French horror series wastes little time establishing its threat. The scares arrive early, but the show continues raising the stakes rather than exhausting its best material too soon.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Mike Flanagan’s adaptation moves briskly through its doomed family’s collapse. Each episode delivers a self-contained tragedy while advancing the larger narrative toward its inevitable and satisfying conclusion.

Penny Dreadful

Despite juggling multiple classic horror icons, Penny Dreadful maintains strong forward momentum. Character arcs and supernatural plots advance together, preventing the series from becoming bogged down by its mythology.

Archive 81

The series gradually peels back layers of mystery through found footage and investigation. Every answer leads to new questions, creating a compelling rhythm that keeps viewers moving through episodes.

The Outsider

Based on Stephen King’s novel, The Outsider transitions smoothly from crime investigation to supernatural horror. The gradual shift helps maintain suspense while keeping the story grounded and believable.

Ash vs Evil Dead

The series never lingers too long between action, comedy, and horror. Its energetic pacing allows it to deliver outrageous gore while still finding room for character development.

Kingdom

This Korean horror series combines political intrigue with zombie horror. The story moves quickly, but never so quickly that viewers lose track of the growing crisis facing the kingdom.

Harper’s Island

Designed as a self-contained mystery, Harper’s Island eliminates characters regularly enough to maintain suspense without feeling repetitive. The result is a horror story that keeps moving toward its endgame.

The 15 Worst Episodes Of Great TV Shows

Even the greatest television shows occasionally stumble. A series can deliver years of brilliant storytelling, unforgettable characters, and classic episodes, only to produce one installment that leaves fans scratching their heads. Maybe the writers wanted to try an experiment, or the story just stops flat on its feet. Whatever the case, fans notice and make themselves known.

The fact that these episodes stand out so much is often a testament to the quality of the shows surrounding them. These are widely regarded as some of the weakest episodes from otherwise beloved television series.

Fly – Breaking Bad

Often cited as the most divisive episode of Breaking Bad, “Fly” traps Walt and Jesse in the lab chasing a contaminating insect. Some admire its character work, while others consider it an unusually slow detour.

Stranger in a Strange Land – Lost

Among Lost fans, this episode is notorious for revealing the origin of Jack’s tattoos. The flashbacks feel inconsequential compared to the island mysteries, making it a frequent choice for the show’s weakest outing.

The Great Divide – Avatar: The Last Airbender

Even fans of Avatar often skip this episode. The conflict between two feuding tribes lacks the emotional depth and world-building that made the rest of the series so beloved.

Justice – Star Trek: The Next Generation

This early Next Generation episode features a bizarre society where minor crimes are punishable by death. Many fans consider it among the show’s roughest early efforts.

Fear Her – Doctor Who

David Tennant’s era produced many classics, but “Fear Her” rarely appears on favorite-episode lists. Its story about a lonely child trapping people in drawings is often viewed as underwhelming.

The Principal and the Pauper – The Simpsons

This episode revealed that Principal Skinner was actually an impostor. The twist was so unpopular that later episodes largely ignored it, and many fans still consider it a major mistake.

Intro to Felt Surrogacy – Community

This puppet episode divided viewers sharply. While some appreciated the experiment, many felt it lacked the sharp humor that defined the series.

Space – The X-Files

One of the earliest episodes of The X-Files, “Space” is often criticized for its weak story and awkward effects. It stands out in a series otherwise known for imaginative mysteries.

The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The colonial-era flashback episode has its defenders, but it frequently appears near the bottom of fan rankings due to its unusual premise and departure from the normal formula.

Beer Bad – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In this episode, magical beer causes college students to regress into cavemen. Even many devoted Buffy fans acknowledge that the concept never quite works as intended.

In Camelot – The Sopranos

While not universally disliked, “In Camelot” often ranks low among Sopranos episodes. Its focus on Tony’s father’s former mistress lacks the intensity viewers expect from the series.

The Long Night – Game of Thrones

The massive battle against the White Walkers should have been a defining television event. Instead, complaints about darkness, visibility, and storytelling choices made it one of the show’s most controversial episodes.

Route 666 – Supernatural

This early Supernatural episode involving a haunted truck is frequently singled out as one of the series’ weakest. Even fans who love the show often rank it near the bottom.

The Last Christmas – Modern Family

This late-series holiday episode is frequently cited by fans as one of the show’s weaker efforts. Misunderstandings pile up excessively, and many viewers felt the character conflicts seemed forced compared to the series’ usual charm and warmth.

Night Family – Rick and Morty

While some fans enjoy it, others cite “Night Family” as an example of the show leaning too heavily into a single joke. Its reception was notably more mixed than many classic episodes.

15 Young Actors That Look Totally Different Now

Certain stars have been famous throughout their whole lives, and we’ve seen them grow up into incredible performers. Others, however, we only remember as they were in their youth, either because they stopped acting or we simply didn’t follow their career. Until now.

These few actors have had full lives filled with ups and downs, but we only remember a small chapter of those stories. This is how they look now, past the childhood innocence and filled with adult experience. Some you might have seen already in recent films, without realizing who they once were.

Macaulay Culkin

The face of Home Alone was once one of the most recognizable children in the world. As an adult, Macaulay Culkin looks so different that casual viewers often fail to recognize him immediately.

Jonathan Lipnicki

After memorable roles in Jerry Maguire and Stuart Little, Jonathan Lipnicki largely stepped away from the spotlight. His adult appearance is dramatically different from the round-faced child actor audiences remember.

Haley Joel Osment

The star of The Sixth Sense and A.I. has remained active, but adulthood transformed his appearance completely. Many viewers are surprised when they realize they’ve been watching the same actor.

Mara Wilson

Known for Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, Mara Wilson retired from major film acting while still young. Decades later, she bears little resemblance to the child star of the 1990s.

Jake Lloyd

Millions knew Jake Lloyd as young Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace. After leaving acting, he largely disappeared from public view, making his adult appearance unfamiliar to many fans.

Danny Bonaduce

As the red-haired child star of The Partridge Family, Danny Bonaduce had a distinctive look. Years of adulthood and television work have made him nearly unrecognizable compared to his teen years.

Barret Oliver

The young star of The NeverEnding Story left acting entirely. Today, he is better known for his work as a photographer, and his adult appearance surprises fans revisiting the fantasy classic.

Peter Ostrum

After playing Charlie in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Peter Ostrum never pursued an acting career. He became a veterinarian, and few would connect him to the famous child performer.

Jeff Cohen

Best remembered as Chunk from The Goonies, Jeff Cohen left acting and became an entertainment lawyer. His transformation from lovable child actor to successful professional often shocks longtime fans.

Miko Hughes

The child star of Pet Sematary and Kindergarten Cop had one of the most recognizable faces of the early 1990s. As an adult, he looks dramatically different from his younger self.

Charlie Korsmo

After appearing in films such as Hook and What About Bob?, Charlie Korsmo stepped away from Hollywood. His later career in law and academia makes his childhood fame easy to forget.

Noah Hathaway

The young Atreyu from The NeverEnding Story became an icon of 1980s fantasy cinema. Decades later, his rugged adult appearance bears little resemblance to the youthful warrior audiences remember.

Bug Hall

Known for playing Alfalfa in The Little Rascals, Bug Hall’s childhood image remains frozen in many viewers’ minds. His adult appearance is strikingly different from the character that made him famous.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster

Although he continued acting, many people still picture him as the child from Love Actually or Nanny McPhee. His adult roles often surprise viewers who haven’t followed his career.

Joseph Mazzello

The young Tim Murphy from Jurassic Park grew into a successful adult actor. His appearance changed so much that many fans don’t realize he later appeared in projects like The Pacific and Bohemian Rhapsody.

Toy Story 5 Box Office Suggests Sequel Scarcity Is Still a Good Thing

Thirty-one years since Buzz and Woody first went to Infinity and Beyond, it’s safe to say that Pixar still has a friend in me. And you. Also that family down the street. Plus, now that we mention it, multiple generations of moviegoers. Which is pretty impressive when we haven’t seen a Toy Story movie since 2019—a time before Disney+, streaming wars, and the pandemic.

Even so, the studio estimates from the Father’s Day weekend are in, and according to the latest data, Toy Story 5 just grossed $160 million stateside and a total of $312 million worldwide. That’s the best opening for any Toy Story movie ever, and the second best for Pixar by either measure—with Incredibles 2 earning $183 million domestically in 2018 and Inside Out 2 grossing $384 million worldwide in 2024. Furthermore, it’s the biggest opening weekend in 2026 so far, toppling The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s also impressive $132 million domestic bow back in April.

Cumulatively, this is a big win for Pixar and Disney, which has somewhat commercially struggled this decade, particularly in terms of original movies and/or quasi-original movies that still attempted to rely on Toy Story IP like 2022’s Lightyear. And yet, I cannot help but notice that barring the Lightyear space oddity, Toy Story 5 is the first real movie about these characters in seven years.

With the exception of a handful of short films starring Forky and Bo Peep that were released on Disney+ back when Toy Story 4 was new and Disney+ was launching, the brand has remained relatively dormant, at least onscreen, all while multiple generations of children, parents, aunts and uncles, and even grandparents kept the flame alive via theme park visits, holiday merchandise, and by passing the older movies on to the next era of kids.

This phenomenon of keeping a beloved billion-dollar IP scarce is a rarity in the 2020s, to the point of seeming almost quaintly old-fashioned. Which also means it creates a curious juxtaposition when compared to other brands that were also grossing $1 billion-plus per entry back in 2019, including Disney contemporaries like Marvel, which in the same year saw Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel clear $1 billion (and $2.5 billion in the case of the one with Iron Man), and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which pocketed another cool $1 billion despite a divisive audience reception.

Speaking anecdotally, it became tempting to reminisce about “back in my day” when noticing the hard pivot from a time where audiences waited years between installments to our modern 2020s reality with the market being flooded by a glut of Marvel, Star Wars, and DC projects across multiple platforms and streaming services. Marvel particularly, and despite studio head Kevin Feige’s reluctance, increased production to the point of having a new movie, streaming series, or TV special (and sometimes several) in every fiscal quarter of 2022 and 2023. And at this point, there are more Disney+ Star Wars shows than there are movies when you count the animated series.

Five years ago, it was an open question whether Disney and its contemporaries were over-saturating the market with the short-term gains won by this abundance of product buttressing the streaming services. Meanwhile the handful of IPs kept behind relative lock and key—your James Bonds, your Mission: Impossibles, and, yes, Pixar franchises like Toy Story—were looking creaky in a modern context where we’ve seen three Minions movies, two Marios, and three different actors play Batman since Toy Story 4.

But looking at the Toy Story 5 numbers, another tale seems to be unfolding. Perhaps the best way to keep audience excitement high for a business strategy built around “event” films is to keep the idea of a new installment feeling like an actual event. With the exception of Toy Story 2, which came out four years after the original film in the ’90s, none of the sequels made in the 21st century have arrived in less than half a decade. In fact, Toy Story 5 and its seven-year gap is relatively short when compared to the 11-year gap between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. And each film has shown minute care and dedication on the part of Pixar’s army of artists. Wherever Toy Story 5 ranks on your personal scale for the series, co-writer and co-director Andrew Stanton has been working with these characters since he co-wrote and helped design the original 1995 movie.

The patience and attention to detail in the film is palpable, with the filmmakers, like the audience, treating the movies akin to sacred ground. And the studio has been rewarded for that slow-walk with a movie that just opened like the 2010s never ended. There might be a lesson in these toys’ ongoing story.

House of the Dragon: Tom Bennett on the Ulf Moment That Explained Everything

This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 1.

Midway through the House of the Dragon season 3 premiere, Rhaenyra, Alicent, and the Dance of their Dragons all take a back seat for a bucolic moment of peace in the Riverlands where freshly-minted dragonriders Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew), and Ulf (Tom Bennett) are gathered to keep a watchful eye out for Prince Aemond and his dragon Vhagar.

The trio is clearly bored with the assignment as, unbeknownst to them, Aemond currently has better things to do than aimlessly fly around Westeros now that he sits the Iron Throne in his missing brother’s stead. So Ulf, the most talkative among them, does what he does best and begins to speak. Without so much as a “hey, I’m about to reveal some real shit here” warning, Ulf proceeds with the details of his devastating backstory.

“Never knew my mother. Same as most of the gutter rats. Was kicked about more than a mongrel dog. Wished for death more days than I wished to live. There was this priest from Essos – fancied me, paid me coin to do things. He said I had king’s blood. That I was born for a purpose. I liked that story. So I owned it. Ulf the dragonseed. That red cunt was right!”

With one relatively brief monologue, delivered superbly from Tom Bennett, Ulf suddenly becomes one of the more compelling characters on House of the Dragon and a much more layered version than the one presented in George R.R. Martin’s source material Fire & Blood. As has been well-established, Martin’s book is presented as a historical tome written by “modern day” Westerosi maesters and therefore offers little about the true motivations of the major players of the era, let alone the B-teamers like Ulf and company.

Not only does this tragic account of Ulf’s upbringing help explain some of his cynical mindset and self-destructive behaviors, it also ties him in more closely to the Game of Thrones canon. The priest he mentions is undoubtedly a red priest of R’hllor a.k.a. the sect of crimson sorcerers that Melisandre of Asshai belongs to. In hindsight, Ulf’s backstory feels so integral to his character that it would seem impossible to portray the boorish dragonseed without having access to it.

Thankfully, Bennett had all the access he needed. That’s because, before shooting his first scene on House of the Dragon‘s “Cock Inn” tavern set back in season 2, Bennett was approached by series showrunner Ryan Condal with a revealing document.

“Ryan took a sheet out of his folder and gave it to me,” Bennett tells Den of Geek and other outlets during a press roundtable. “He said ‘I’ve already written this, but I think it might be useful to you now. It’s kind of a monologue of yours.’ I read it and was like that’s so generous, because this really does inform everything. Like this here is your origin story. Now I can hang everything else off that.”

Bennett’s early knowledge of Ulf’s childhood imbues the moment with a gravitas that his scene partners were happy to play off of.

“It was useful for me as well because within that scene he’s revealing so much and being so honest, and then he asks Hugh about himself and Hugh chooses not to tell him anything,” Bew says.

“I was in awe of Tom as he just disappeared as Ulf in the scene, and it’s a particular way I’ve never seen Ulf before,” Liberty adds. “I started to see the humanity in him and kind of understand his perspective and why he is the way he is. And then a couple of takes later I had to obviously be professional and be Addam within the scene. But honestly, it caught me off guard how good he was. genuinely.”

It’s amazing the things you find out about your friends when waiting for a massive she-dragon that never comes.

New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with the finale on August 9.

House of the Dragon Stars Break Down Season 3’s Battle of the Gullet

This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 1.

So-named for the narrow stretch of ocean between Driftmark and Dragonstone upon which it’s fought, the Battle of the Gullet is the biggest engagement in the Dance of the Dragons Targaryen civil war and remains one of the bloodiest sea battles ever fought in Westeros. And House of the Dragon has never been shy about making sure we all know it’s coming.

The second season finale of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel put all the relevant players for the battle in motion. The Triarchy ships, led by flamboyant Lyseni commander Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn) and the reserved Ser Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), were en route to Westeros to break the Velaryon fleet’s blockade of King’s Landing. That, combined with plenty of between-seasons teases, made it clear that conflict was imminent. Little did we know, however, just how imminent it would be.

The House of the Dragon season 3 premiere concludes with the Battle of the Gullet and it’s every bit as bloody and chaotic and promised. During a press table junket with a handful of other outlets, Den of Geek spoke to some of the skirmish’s key players about bringing a naval spectacle to life. Here is what we learned.

As one might expect, the Battle of the Gullet was a big logistical undertaking for the series. Showrunner Ryan Condal previously revealed that the shoot took multiple weeks and involved the creation of a full-scale model of Corlys Velaryon’s ship The Queen Who Never Was and a massive water tank. That attention to detail extended to lessons in the history of naval warfare for the actors.

“There was a gentleman there who I guess was an expert in historical nautical stuff. He would give us all these phrases to say. And yet my one disappointment actually was that there wasn’t a [steering] wheel. It’s just a stick that you have to sort of do that with,” Corlys Velaryon actor Steve Toussaint says, miming the pulling of a whipstaff.

While the experts were helpful in teaching Toussaint and his sailors about “starboard,” “larboard,” and various masts and knots, it turns out that a lot of that training immediately goes out the window in the heat of battle.

“You forget everything,” Alyn of Hull actor Abubakar Salim says. “It is literally just about survival. Is that person trying to kill me? I’ve got to kill them before they kill me. So that was a real fascinating thing to experience to – especially the way it was filmed and choreographed. It showed a very human side and a very ugly side to what battle is, no matter where it is.”

To further illustrate the point about the brutality of war – whether in land or sea – Salim expounds upon the experience of Alyn killing Sharako Lohar.

“Abigail is a force of nature. She was so great and so fantastic work with. But it was dark, man, like we went into a dark place. Originally we had choreographed this really cool fight. What ended up happening though was it just turned into this primal exhaustion. I drown her to her last breath and rather than have her last breath be snatched by the sea, I stab her in the neck. It was cruel.”

Of course, the Battle of the Gullet isn’t just naval warfare as both sides in the Dance of the Dragons have flying dragons and are eager to use them. Queen Rhaenyra’s eldest son and heir Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett) enters the fray on the back of his dragon Vermax and is joined by his cousin/bride-to-be Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia) and her dragon Moondancer. If the presence of two dragons circling around battling ships weren’t chaotic enough, a third dragon arrives – the untamed Sheepstealer ridden by Baela’s sister and novice dragonrider Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell).

While the presence of Rhaena at the Gullet represents a diversion from George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood source material (something George famously loves), it does help explain how Jace’s dragon is taken down by the Triarchy’s ships. It’s not only that their sailors are particularly adept with Scorpion crossbows, it’s that Jace is understandably distracted by the introduction of an unfamiliar dragon who seems to be a foe. Rhaena’s inability to control Sheepstealer leads to Vermax and his rider being dragged down to the watery depths and killed. This makes Jacaerys actor Harry Collett the only Gullet combatant to experience the battle from both the air and the water. That combination led to a funny misunderstanding on set.

“I was wearing Jace’s dragonriding gloves in the scene and they reacted with the water and made my hands blue,” he says. “When I came out of the water tank, the medic ran over to me because my hands were so blue she thought I had hypothermia. But it was just the dye from the gloves.”

In the end, the Battle of the Gullet claims countless lives including some big name characters like Jacaerys, Lohar, and Tyland. With two more seasons of war to come, those at the bottom of the Gullet might consider themselves the lucky ones.

New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating in the finale on August 9.

House of the Dragon Cast Discuss Season 3 Premiere’s Brutal Death

This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 3 episode 1.

Rhaenyra Targaryen is no stranger to the vulgarities of war. The Queen in Dragonstone and claimant to the Iron Throne received an education in what war really costs before her war even truly began.

Back in the House of the Dragon season 1 finale, Rhaenyra lost her second son Lucerys when he and his dragon Arrax were devoured by his cousin Aemond’s dragon Vhagar on what should have been a relatively safe diplomatic mission. It’s a devastating loss, to be sure. But thankfully Rhaenyra still has a host of other sons including her eldest and heir Jacaerys Velaryon.

So, about that…

Jacaerys meets his end in House of the Dragon season 3 episode 1. And like his younger brother before him, he perishes whilst riding his dragon Vermax. Rather than being swiftly consumed by a bigger dragon, however, Jace and Vermax’s demises are more tragically drawn out.

When the Triarchy’s fleet of ships arrives in a narrow Westeros waterway known as the Gullet, Jace locks his queen/mother away in a room for her own safety and takes off on dragonback alongside his cousin/step-sister/fiancée Baela to protect Corlys Velaryon’s navy. Unfortunately, the Triarchy has developed a rather ingenious strategy of dealing with dragons, harpooning Vermax in mid-air and then dragging him down into the water where the beast known to the Westerosi as “fire made flesh” drowns. Jace doesn’t last much longer than his dragon as he is quickly lit up with arrows and killed.

While we do not yet get to see how Rhaenyra responds to her oldest child’s death, her portrayer Emma D’Arcy believes that the moment represents a point of no return.

“I think for Rhaenyra, Jace’s death is an insurmountable loss, honestly. It’s unprocessable,” D’Arcy tells Den of Geek and other outlets during a press roundtable. “But I think grief actually sometimes simplifies things. It offers her a sort of nihilism in that final part of the journey.”

House of the Dragon will certainly look a lot different onscreen without the presence of Harry Collett as the raven-haired, not-so-secretly bastard-born prince. It will also look different for the performers offscreen as the show careens towards its fourth and final season.

“The relationships that we have on the show and the friendships that we form are very real. They’re friends of mine. There is always a life imitating art aspect to a character death because we lose a company member and so those days have an atmosphere necessarily,” D’Arcy says of Collett’s departure.

For his part, Collett is taking things in stride.

“Maybe I’ll have to leave [the cast group chat]. Can you imagine? It’s a really dramatic ‘Harry left the group chat,'” he says with a laugh, then continues: “I was told what would happen in season 1, so I’ve been preparing for this. I’ll always be grateful for being on this show in the first place. Ultimately I’ve had the best time ever and I got to travel the world because of it.”

Collett is also aware that, if your character destined to die in a Game of Thrones story, they might as well do so in style – on the back of a dragon and shot through with arrows certainly fits the bill.

“What a great way to go! I’m glad it just didn’t get, you know, brushed under the carpet. It’s a really impactful episode and it’s been done amazingly. I’m very, very happy.”

New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with the finale on August 9.

House of the Dragon Season 3 Episode 1 Review: Down the Gullet

This House of the Dragon review contains spoilers.

Am I losing my mind or are the drums in the House of the Dragon opening theme louder this season?

It’s possible that the audio on my aging iPad is shot or that the review screener HBO made available to critics was unfinished, but it really does sound to me as though the percussion in composer Ramin Djawadi’s iconic Game of Thrones intro music is faster, fuller, and more insistent. If the usual “duh nuh nuh nuuuhhs” were amplified for season 3, it would certainly make sense. Following a solid but frustratingly incomplete second season, House of the Dragon seems invested in making sure viewers know that the real action has finally arrived.

This is all to say that, yes, the House of the Dragon season 3 premiere is the “Battle of the Gullet” episode.

For those who have not read George R.R. Martin‘s source material Fire & Blood (or the countless articles about the subject on this website for that matter), the Battle of the Gullet is kind of a big deal. It’s one of the most consequential engagements of the Dance of the Dragons civil war that this show is depicting and the biggest naval battle in Westerosi history. Any episode of House of the Dragon that features the Battle of the Gullet will inevitably be reduced to “the Battle of the Gullet episode” in the cultural consciousness with little retroactive attention paid to the B-, C-, and D-plots.

The fact that House of the Dragon opts to open of its third season with the battle is bold. If done right, it has the potential to put some wind at the rest of the season’s back and imbue it with some much-needed energy. If done poorly… well, that would be a very tough look for a Game of Thrones property that has already been criticized by its creator and outshined by its fellow prequel.

Thankfully, House of the Dragon‘s Battle of the Gullet is not a tough look. It’s actually pretty great! HBO, showrunner Ryan Condal, and the rest of production clearly put real time and money into this momentous occasion and it shows. While the watery, smoke-filled melee doesn’t quite reach the same dramatic heights as Game of Thrones classics like the Battle of the Bastards or Blackwater, it’s a suitably epic and bloody affair that kicks the season off on a strong note.

A lot of that success comes down to the script’s (written by Condal) appreciation for the dual elements that make up the name of Martin’s saga*: fire and water. A naval battle is one thing. A naval battle featuring dragons flying is another thing entirely.

*Sure, it’s called “A Song of Ice and Fire” but what is water but if not ice not persevering?

As Condal noted in pre-season comments provided to the press, the Battle of the Gullet doesn’t look like the naval warfare viewers have grown accustomed to. Due to Westeros’ pre-gun powder Medieval-esque setting, there is no exchange of cannon fire here – only ships full of soldiers drifting close enough to board and then swinging swords. That reality makes the skirmishes feel bloodier and more intimate. The main combatants – Shorako Lohar (Abigail Thorn), Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim), and Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) – all have a lot more to do than gaze through nautical telescopes or spin steering wheels.* And they all end up overboard, with Lohar and Tyland dead and Alyn and Corlys unaccounted for.

*Of course, the Velaryon and Triarchy ships are operated by whipstaffs, not wheels. Toussaint noted his disappointment with not getting to play with a wheel in an interview with Den of Geek and other outlets.

For all the chaos on the waters of the Gullet, the skies above it are even more disorienting once Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett) and Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia) arrive on dragonback to provide air support for the Velaryon fleet. Jace does so after literally locking his queen-mother Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) in a room for her safety. That moment alone all but betrays that the Gullet was initially conceived as season 2’s conclusion as the “Rhaenyra wants to do stuff but can’t because she’s queen” was one of that season’s most consistent (and frankly frustrating) running bits. Still, it’s hard to argue that Jace wasn’t right to think of his mother’s safety considering the fate that befalls him…

Rhaena’s (Phoebe Campbell) arrival on the back of her untamed Vale dragon Sheepstealer is a deviation from Martin’s books in which another, more seasoned dragonrider commands Sheepstealer with ease. The fact that Rhaena’s inability to control Sheepstealer causes the confusion that leads to Jace’s death will likely annoy George R.R. Martin to no end (if he even got around to reading the script that is). But it’s also a solid narrative addition that continues the show’s shrewd exploration of the unpredictability of dragons.

Unlike the history books that recall major battles with reverent awe, House of the Dragon never loses sight of the fact that dragon warfare basically amounts to children flying around on nuclear warheads. The history books also don’t get to see what it looks like when a dragon is yanked down from the sky to the ocean to drown and its teenage rider lit up with arrows. But we do. And there’s nothing romantic about it. In fact, Jace’s ignoble end is one of the more striking images presented on the show yet.

While this premiere gets the most important thing, the Battle of the Gullet, right, the rest of the episode is hit-or-miss. The events presented – Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Larys (Matthew Needham) on the road, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) trying to ready King’s Landing for Rhaenyra’s arrival, Ser Criston Cole clearly wanting to die – are conceptually strong. The execution just often leaves something to be desired. A lot of it falls under “we’ve seen this before,” which makes sense given the episode’s likely status as a season 2 holdover, but it does rob the proceedings of some need momentum.

Gullet-included, this premiere operates at its best when presenting something wholly new to the mythos. This includes new characters like the wonderfully rowdy Northman Roderick Dustin a.k.a. Roddy the Ruin (Tommy Flanagan) and Alicent’s haughty and smell-averse brother Ormund Hightower (James Norton). It also includes some old characters revealing new tricks like Aemond’s (Ewan Mitchell) horrifying kissing of his mother on the lips and Ulf’s reveal of a tragic, fascinating backstory.

If House of the Dragon season 3 continues to allow its characters to behave in unpredictable, human ways that the history books can’t quite capture, then the drumbeat in the opener can be as aggressive as it wants to be.

New episodes of House of the Dragon season 3 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, culminating with a finale on August 9.

My Adventures with Superman Introduces a Very Different Green Lantern

This article contains spoilers for My Adventures With Superman season 3 episode 2.

Like most installments of the anime-influenced Adult Swim show, the third episode of My Adventures with Superman, “Mobile Toy Gundam,” features lots of DC Universe deep dives. Sure, we get Superman and his cousin Supergirl, as well as revised versions of classic villains Lex Luthor and the Toyman, and the introduction of the season’s big bad Cyborg Superman. We even see cosplayers dressed as members of the Teen Titans and the Challengers of the Unknown.

But as far as the My Adventures franchise is concerned, the most important character was the easiest to overlook. At the end of her keynote speech at a convention, Supergirl takes a question from a shy girl wearing an “s” stitched onto her blue shirt. The girl gives Supergirl the boost she needs, praising Kara for being a warrior and hoping that she can be just as brave some day. At the end of the statement, the shy girl tells the world her name: “Jessica Cruz.”

For most viewers, the name goes in one ear and out the other. But for comic fans, the name reveals that we just met the star of the sequel series, My Adventures with Green Lantern.

From Victim to Villain to Hero

You’d be forgiven for not recognizing the name Jessica Cruz, as she’s a relatively recent addition to the Green Lantern mythos. Long after the introduction of human Lanterns Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner, to say nothing of deeper cuts like Simon Baz and Charlie Vicker, Jessica Cruz made her first proper appearance in 2014’s Justice League #31 by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke. An agoraphobe with crippling anxiety, Cruz was first chosen not to be Green Lantern, but to be Power Ring, the evil Green Lantern equivalent from the alternate reality Earth-3.

When Power Ring and his fellow members of the Crime Syndicate of America—including evil Superman Ultraman, the evil Batman known as Owlman, and the evil… uh, Lois Lane but also Wonder Woman sort of known as Superwoman—invaded our Earth, the Hal Jordan of Earth-3 died in the attack, leaving his ring to choose a new successor. The cruel ring forced Jessica into service, but she eventually found the strength to rebel, overriding the ring’s corruptive power and helping the heroes of our Earth repel the Crime Syndicate.

The feat was enough to capture the attention of the Guardians of the Universe, who recruited Jessica as a new member of the real Green Lantern Corps. Although she still struggled with doubts and occasional anxiety, Jessica’s unique perspective revealed new ways of using a Green Lantern ring, including getting her ring to call her “J-Bird” instead of the usual “Lantern Cruz.” And that’s adorable.

Since getting an official ring, Cruz has not only served alongside Simon Baz as one of two Green Lanterns on Earth, but she’s also been inducted into the Justice League. She briefly became a Yellow Lantern, the fear-based corps founded by the Green Lanterns’ greatest ally/enemy Sinestro. And currently, she serves as chief of Green Lantern Corps on the planet Oa.

Impressive as that record is, it seems like My Adventures with Superman and My Adventures with Green Lantern will take things back to basics. Voiced by Moana‘s Auliʻi Cravalho, the Jessica we meet clearly isn’t agoraphobic, but she is unsure of herself. Moreover, she already loves superheroes, especially Supergirl, and admires the Maid of Might’s willingness to fight for the powerless.

Dark Adventures With Superman

How will that connection to Supergirl play into My Adventures with Green Lantern? It’s not clear right off, but we can begin to guess, based on episode 2 alone.

At the end of “Mobile Toy Gundam,” Lex Luthor introduces Hank Henshaw’s new incarnation as Superman. Although Henshaw’s look is modeled after the Eradicator from ’90s Superman comics—a sentient Kryptonian machine who sometimes becomes lethal and violent—Henshaw is canonically the Cyborg Superman. Blaming Superman for the death of his family, Henshaw made himself look like Superman, plus a few Terminator-like enhancements, and tried to replace the Man of Steel after his deadly battle with Doomsday.

With the addition of Superboy later this season and John Henry Irons a.k.a. Steel’s introduction in previous episodes, Henshaw’s arrival as Cyborg Superman and the Eradicator completes the quartet of four new Superman who arrived in the Death of Superman story. Before that storyline ended with the return of Kal-El as the true Superman, Cyborg Superman revealed his evil intentions, destroying Hal Jordan’s home of Coast City. The event not only sent Jordan on a downward spiral, eventually turning him into the villain Parallax, but also Cyborg Superman as a permanent member of the Green Lantern rogues gallery.

Will Henshaw’s transformation in My Adventures With Superman mean trouble for Jessica, turning the shy convention-goer into the hero of My Adventures With Green Lantern? My might found out sooner than expected!

My Adventures With Superman releases new episodes every Saturday at midnight on HBO.

Control Resonant Rethinks What’s Possible for Remedy’s Acclaimed Franchise

It’s been seven years since the acclaimed 2019 sci-fi game Control and Remedy Entertainment is back with the bold sequel Control Resonant. The sequel follows Dylan Faden, brother of the first game’s protagonist Jesse, who discovers an extradimensional entity has escaped from the secret government facility, the Oldest House, and has created a warped vision of Manhattan. After playing an early build of Control Resonant at Summer Game Fest 2026, we sat down with game director Mikael Kasurinen to talk about the upcoming sequel.

“I already knew early on that the first two games were going to be about the Faden siblings,” remarks Kasurinen about the sequel changing up protagonists as it continued the story. “It was a very natural thing to have the first one be about Jesse and the second one be about Dylan.”

While progressing the narrative, Control Resonant works just as well as a standalone experience and that distinction is clear right from the difference in gameplay and presentation between the two titles. Whereas Jesse relied primarily on firearms in addition to her paranatural powers in Control, Dylan is using melee weapons and his own powers as he explores a nightmarish vision of New York City. For Remedy, the shift in combat mechanics between games reflected its desire, since the first title, to make an action RPG as only the studio could do it.

“When you look at the first Control game, it was, in a way, a hack-and-slash, but with guns,” says Kasurinen with a laugh. “It was all about leaping in the middle of enemies, using your guns, but also your abilities and moving quickly. We didn’t want to create a shooter where you’re hiding behind corners and taking potshots at enemies. It was about more than that. It was about using these cool powers that you get in the experience and it sets up a fast-paced nature. That was always part of the Control DNA.”

Kasurinen observed that the gunplay in the original Control made players intuitively want to put some distance between themselves and enemies, something that the emphasis on melee combat in Control Resonant reverses. The early build that we played handles that change well, with Dylan darting from target to target and using a variety of attacks to deal damage with his shape-shifting weapon. Mastering these techniques, which didn’t take us long, turns Dylan into a paranatural murder machine, stacking up damage significantly as he flits between monstrous opponents.

That movement is bolstered by paranatural abilities that Dylan receives relatively early on in Control Resonant after escaping from the Oldest House. These powers are unlocked by venturing into cracks in reality, known as faults, and we received several new abilities in short order even in our early build. But in contrast to the bright and organized faults that Jesse experienced, Dylan’s faults are shadowy expanses with overgrown urban environments to traverse. This design difference is one that reflects the Faden siblings’ personalities along with Dylan’s underlying attempt to reestablish his humanity and connection after years of solitary confinement.

“It’s not an accident that the first game takes place in Oldest House, with a brutalist architectural style that’s all about form, simplicity, and things organized in a deliberate manner,” Kasurinen observes. “In Control Resonant with Dylan, it’s entering a world full of human chaos. Things are there as a consequence of the chaotic environments that we have in our everyday lives.”

In the Control Resonant demo, Dylan sets out to find his sister while defending New York from monsters escaping into his world, with his search driving the narrative forward. This follows a tease for the sequel contained in the DLC to Alan Wake 2, underscoring the shared universe elements between the two franchises. But while there is a level of interconnectivity, Kasurinen emphasizes that Control Resonant offers a fun and satisfying standalone experience, even for those who didn’t play the original 2019 game.

“We are very aware that we have this large universe but that makes it more important that every game that we do can stand on its own two feet. They each have their own story, premise, and you need to be satisfied with that package once you’re done with it. That’s absolutely necessary,” Kasurinen notes. “From a storytelling side, we don’t want it to feel like a massive puzzle that you can’t fully understand until you play all of the games.”

Just as Control rethought what was possible for a third-person shooter, Control Resonant takes those core sensibilities and boldly reinvents them through melee combat and a more expansive environment in a corrupted Manhattan. At the same time, the sequel is still so distinctly a Control game, maintaining the first game’s underlying aesthetic of “the strange colliding with the mundane” as Kasurinen puts it. With that in mind, the trappings are similar and the narrative foundation is present but Control Resonant completely defies expectations for what a direct sequel should be, continuing Remedy’s reputation as one of the most unique studios putting out refreshingly original games today.

“We think that it’s important that we stand out from the crowd. We’re a small studio. The worst mistake that we could do would be to just try and copy others,” Kasurinen declares. “At the end of the day, it is an action RPG where you are in New York using melee combat and cool abilities to fight monsters. Everybody will get that and anybody can grab a controller and start playing the game. And it’s a unique and fun game to play!”

Developed and published by Remedy Entertainment, Control Resonant releases September 24, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and macOS.

Minecraft Is Becoming Entertainment’s Most Unexpected Storytelling Tool

Do you think about me when you’re not playing? That’s a line spoken by eldritch terror AI character Verity in a two-part horror series by Minecraft content creator ThatMob. Verity, voiced by another Minecraft creator, JustWhispy, has taken the blocky sandbox game’s audience into increasing levels of fandom excitement.

ThatMob, or Mob, plays as himself, as the AI helper he downloaded, Verity, becomes increasingly creepy. Knowing intimate details about Mob’s life and daily routine outside when logged off, Verity isolates Mob from the NPCs in his game and becomes increasingly invested in obtaining all of Mob’s attention. Verity, who appears as a 3D smiling emoji, turns into a Slenderman-like apparition as Mob tries to escape his stiflingly unsettling presence. In a fashion reminiscent of Nikki from Obsession, Verity turns into a force of manic fixation that can’t be removed.

The series has now amassed 15.5 million views, marking the newest trend in Minecraft-based role-play and narrative short films. Minecraft was not designed to be a storytelling game. Originally, a sandbox experience that allows players to modify, create, and explore a blocky world of creatures, intricate buildings, and lore — players have taken to modifying the game into a Dungeons & Dragons-level storytelling platform. From scripted series and roleplaying communities and reality-TV-level social experiments to educational narratives and fan films, Minecraft is becoming one of entertainment’s most versatile storytelling tools.

Swedish programmer Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft and founder of Mojang Studios, began developing the game in 2009. Inspired by the game Infiniminer, Persson wanted to use that block-based mining gaming structure in combination with isometric base-building mechanics to create a new game. Players are dropped into an algorithmically-generated world with no plot, no narrative, and no ending. The game is designed to give creators 100% control over their environment and experience — encouraging experimentation rather than limiting them with predefined narratives.

Since its launch in 2011, Minecraft has seen a storytelling evolution that has taken place primarily on YouTube. YouTubers have been creating scripted storytelling RPG-like content via Minecraft for well over a decade now. Minecrafter Jessica “Aphmau” Bravura is a trailblazer in the roleplaying Minecraft genre, having created iconic series like Minecraft Diaries, whose first season has accumulated 76.9 million views and the second 26.9 million views, and MyStreet with 39.1 million views.

The narrative popularity of roleplaying storylines has expanded into even more expansive lanes, giving rise to entire roleplaying communities like the Dream SMP. While ultimately the infamous community that took off in popularity during the global pandemic crashed hard, it doesn’t take away from the group’s impact on the storytelling genre.

Dream SMP showed Minecraft’s ability to simulate stories of wars, nation building, factions, eras in society, and global crises, making it “must-see-TV” for those chronically online in the early 2020s. Taking on an almost tabletop gaming feel, they created a balance between scripted and authentic content that opened the possibilities beyond traditional roleplaying.

This includes reality simulation content like YouTuber Ish’s “1000 Players Simulate Civilization: Rich & Poor,” which went viral in 2025. With over 45 million views, Ish created a social experiment by placing 1300 players in a world with two islands, one with a surplus of resources and another that was barren. The point was to see who people choose to be when faced with their circumstances, which is a rather fascinating and deep question for a Minecraft server. It was one of the most captivating and well-done pieces of entertainment of 2025.

Audiences follow these series like they would any other weekly episodic show schedule or major film release. The accessibility of Minecraft makes it enjoyable to both creators and viewers, and that aspect adds to its rise in creative popularity.

Creating an animated series or short film requires extensive software, equipment, and technical knowledge that can limit beginners. In Minecraft, there isn’t a need to be a master at Blender to create large-scale, highly detailed settings (like Backrooms creator Kane Pixels did). With the addition of mods, creators have developed interactive world maps whose immersion rivals Disney World. While Minecraft’s blocky visual nature is often seen as a limitation, it actually adds a lot to world-building.

Similar to books, Minecraft’s avatars’ lack of facial emoting allows audiences to fill in emotional gaps with imagination and “body language.” While emoting is still a new concept in Minecraft, the game’s reliance on vocal cues has made players defer to spoken communication to convey story. This has made viewers into active participants in the story, having to interpret and comprehend the activities happening in the gameplay.

This adds another element to the social relationship between creators and audiences, as Minecraft also relies on direct interaction — which has made it a profitable market for live streamers. Livestream viewers get the opportunity to influence player decisions live, contribute to theories and lore, and add an adaptability element when creators respond to viewers’ interests on the spot.

Minecraft has successfully made itself a combination of multiple platforms: a game, film set, animation tool, social platform, and even an archive.

Curating a truly independent experience for players, the newest entertainment shift is toward unique, smaller independent media instead of larger conglomerates. Traditional media relies on passive consumption, while in comparison, Minecraft relies on interaction.

As Gen Z and Alpha rise into the consumer sphere, fandom culture and the line between gaming and storytelling are blurring. They are accustomed to narratives that span multiple platforms and require participation. Minecraft stands not only as the introduction of that trend, but for some, it is the foundation of it.

Modders, shaders, and custom animations are pushing the platform to new limits every day. These innovators even inspired Mojang Studios to create Minecraft narrative content of its own, including its 2015 TellTale Games collaboration, Minecraft Story Mode, and its RPG Minecraft Dungeons, whose second installment releases in September.

Minecraft’s greatest strength is in its ability to blend audience participation and narrative structure. As the entertainment industry continues to look in that direction, Minecraft continues to provide a look at what the future of that landscape may look like.

For aspiring creatives, Minecraft serves as an accessible introduction to storytelling — allowing creatives to experiment with narrative techniques, world-building and audience engagement. The next generation of entertainers may very well get their start in a Minecraft world — building the future of storytelling one block at a time.

Spider-Man: BND Trailer Is the Clearest Confirmation of an X-Men Crossover Yet

This article contains possible spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

To me, my Spider-Man! Okay, that’s not how the line goes. But for months now, fans have been speculating that at least one of Marvel’s Mighty Mutants would be making their MCU debut in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Sadie Sink has long been rumored to play Jean Grey, the mutant telepath who serves as a founding member of the X-Men.

Notice the word “rumored,” because thus far, the identity of Sink’s character has not been revealed. However, Sink does appear for a few seconds in the latest trailer for Brand New Day, and she’s doing a lot of things that Jean Grey would do—especially if Jean had not yet enrolled in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

The latest trailer reminds us that Peter Parker is in a bad way after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. With his Aunt May gone and his identity erased from the minds of everyone, including best friends Ned and MJ (Jacob Batalon and Zendaya), Peter is more alone than ever. He’s got villains like the Scorpion to deal with, played by a finally-returning and finally in-costume Michael Mando, and he seems to be going through some type of mutation. To make matters worse, he has to deal with Hand ninjas. Also, he has a Hulk, but not in a good way.

Amidst it all, Spidey seems to have been recruited by an organization run by a character played by Severance‘s Tramell Tillman to capture Sadie Sink’s character. Who is that character? Well, she’s wearing yellow and green and she has red hair. Also, she seems to be able to take over people’s minds, a lot like a certain mutant we know.

Or is it? When Jean Grey first debuted in 1963’s Uncanny X-Men #1, by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, she possessed only telekinesis, the ability to move things with her mind. We certainly see her doing those things in the trailer, potentially even lifting vehicles. But the standout section of the trailer sees Sink’s character either controlling minds or potentially jumping from body to body, like the killer in the movie Fallen, which isn’t traditionally one of Jean’s original powers.

Jean doesn’t start showing telepathic abilities until X-Men #43 (1968). A decade later, Marvel retconned her origin to reveal that Jean has always been a powerful telepath, but Professor Xavier blocked out some of her abilities to prevent her from being overwhelmed (or to control her because, as we should all remember, Professor Xavier is a jerk).

That inconsistency in her power set may point to Jean playing a different character, perhaps the Spider-Queen—who controls and army of drones—or Shathra, the inter-dimensional monster who hunts people with spider-powers. Both characters come from around the time of the comic storyline The Other, which seems to be a major inspiration for Brand New Day, and both work as villains.

Yet, there are two things in the trailer that point away from those villains and toward someone who is misunderstood instead of evil. First, we see that the Punisher Frank Castle is helping this girl, possibly out of his own volition instead of mind-control. Second, Tillman’s character seems to be related to the Department of Damage Control, the MCU Homeland Security equivalent that has not been friendly to superheroes like Spidey or Ms. Marvel. So if Frank is for her, and Damage Control is against her, she’s probably a good egg.

Most importantly of all, if you watch the trailer with the subtitles on, you’ll see that the captions identity Tillman’s character as “Metzger.” That’s William Metzger, a very minor character introduced in 1999’s X-Men: Children of the Atom #1 by Joe Casey and Steve Rude. Metzger was an anti-mutant activist who gained traction in the U.S. government for a short time. While Marvel has no problem radically imagining minor characters from the comics (remember when Man-Thing’s girlfriend Ellen Brandt became an Extremis bomber in Iron Man 3?), the Metzger name seems telling.

So, to recap, the trailer shows a red-haired girl in yellow and green who can move things with her mind, has telepathy, scares Damage Control and an anti-mutant bigot in particular, and wins the support of Frank Castle. Sure sounds like Jean Grey is here, and the X-Men can’t be far behind.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives on July 31, 2026.

Tribeca 2026: Everything We Saw

New York City is often a town of extremes. It can be too hot; it can be too cold. It can be too loud; and it can be painfully quiet on occasion. Yet there are times where it is absolutely perfect, and this June was no exception.

With the Tribeca Film Festival in its 25th year, Robert De Niro’s pride and joy has added a lot of character to Lower Manhattan, especially in recent iterations during one of the city’s most glorious months. June is still springtime in the big city, and between sunny weather, Pride parades, and overdue New York Knicks victory laps in the NBA Finals, it’s a perfect time for a film festival that celebrates the fun, the festive, and sometimes the frightfully poignant in its narrative and documentary selections. This year, we were not able to cover everything in our hometown fest, but we saw enough to realize, as always, sometimes this city is just right.

Chris & Martina: The Final Set

The real ones—tennis fans who follow both the men’s and women’s tours from grass to clay and hardcourts all over the world—know the fierce rivalry between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova is perhaps the greatest the sport has and will ever see. Chris & Martina: The Final Set definitively sets the record straight. This is one of the greatest stories in all sports, period, but not for the reasons you might think. Director Rebecca Gitlitz deftly uses archival footage of their on-court battles, which spanned three decades and 80 matches, and an eye-popping 60 finals, while chronicling their dueling recent bouts with cancer, and the off-court friendship that helped them persevere. – Chris Longo

Cotton Fever

When it comes to stories of addiction, audiences are often met with tales that focus on one or two characters. It’s a play of someone aiding their battles while the rest of the world revolves around them. With Cotton Fever, writer-director Daniel Blake Schwartz took his short, which was also based on his own life, and turned it into a rainbow of expression for a group of people, not just a singular human.

The film’s two stars, Kyle Gallner and Sosie Bacon (reunited after their time together in the horror film Smile), can be seen as the protagonists for easy breakdowns. Yet Cotton Fever is a tapestry of six main characters all dealing with the same troubles while finding themselves in startling different situations.

Cotton Fever is a film that bravely has both happy and sad endings, depending on how the viewer wants to dissect each character’s journey. There are no official answers handed to the audience, just honesty. – Matthew Schuchman

Doc Meets World

For television viewers of a certain age—specifically elder and mid-range Millennials—the 1990s were defined by a handful of shows. At the top of that list with a bullet is Boy Meets World, the funny and surprisingly tender coming-of-age dramedy that aired on ABC from 1993 to 2000. It represents a time of wonder and joy for many who grew up with it, as well as more complicated emotions for the folks who made it, including stars Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel, and Will Friedle.

All three have been on a bit of a reverie of late thanks to their podcast Pod Meets World, which sees the trio revisit the series episode by episode. And now that journey culminates in Doc Meets World, directors Chris Levitus and Zane Rubin’s curious snapshot of media navelgazing. On the one hand, the documentary is a kind of a testimonial of a culture and generation stuck in the past, with the actors returning to a series they spent much of their adult lives trying to put away. Conversely, their fans eagerly bask in the show again and again with their own children via rewatch parties, live podcast presentations, and even ‘90s nostalgia conventions.

Yet the movie represents a bit of healthy introspection and public therapy, too, for its three leads who are now ready to reconsider their youth with affection, some regret, and a newfound awareness of the culture and influences that shaped their lives. Ours too. – David Crow

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

Many folks think of Los Angeles as a kind of fairy tale Oz full of magical realms, folks of good cheer… and also relentless celebrity sex appeal. So leave it to David Wain and Ken Marino, the happily filthy minds behind good clean comedy fun like Wet Hot American Summer and Childrens Hospital, to give that contradictory fantasy uproarious life in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a chipper, song in its heart remix of The Wizard of Oz, only with a lot more celebrities and sex.

Based on the purely nonsense premise of a Midwestern gal (a winsome Zoey Deutch) who discovers her fiancé slept with his celebrity crush because of the joking “pass” many couples have, Gail Daughtry follows its eponymous character and her sassy BFF (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) as they go to LA so she can get even by pursuing her girlhood crush from Mad Men days: Jon Hamm. And yes, he’s in the movie playing himself. As is John Slattery and a host of other celebrity cameos who all play folks shockingly empathetic and eager to help Gail on her quest, as well as riffs on her own Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion (Slattery).

It’s maximalist absurdism comedy that cashes in a lot of favors and friendships on Wain and Marino’s part—be on the lookout for Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, and Jennifer Aniston cameos, among others—making for a laugher that’s ridiculous, a little frisky, but pretty wholesome in the main. – DC

Humpty Dumpty X

Never in my life have I ever experienced something so inane and sloppy, yet in the same breath mindnumbingly brilliant as Humpty Dumpty X. Even if you are familiar with the turbulence behind the production of some people’s favorite movie of all time, American History X, nothing could prepare you for what History X and Dumpty X director Tony Kaye has in store in his official documentary about what “really” happened when he made his jump from commercial to feature film director.

For someone who wants audiences to be on his side, Kaye can’t help from shining a big bright light on himself. And I don’t mean the stage spotlight, but the big hot one that cops turn on during an interrogation. One minute he is humbling you with admissions of mistakes and missteps, followed immediately by him contradicting those statements. At times it clearly seems like he is in on the joke and playing into it, and at others it feels like he is completely clueless to the way anything in this world works.

The majority of the film is told through old camcorder footage from the time of his battle over control of American History X. He apparently recorded every moment. There are shocking revelations (though not intended for audiences to hear) from indie filmmaker Mike Figgis at the start of the film—which come after Tony plays full six-minute clips of commercials that made him famous. There is even a point where we are treated to footage of Kaye and Marlon Brando filming each other as they have a conversation. This is all punctuated by a follow up interview 20 years later with the head of TIFF while Kaye films the interview on an Arri Alexa, but the only footage we see is from a cell phone recording from behind the scenes.

I couldn’t have asked for a more absurd experience than what I got with Humpty Dumpty X. Trying to explain the madness in a few short paragraphs is almost impossible. And even worse, I can’t tell you if it is the single messiest documentary I’ve ever seen or the single most amazing.- Matthew Schuchman

Tim Blake Nelson at Tribeca 2026 — Photo by Nick Morgulis

The Leader

In its opening shot, The Leader is instantly recognizable. Sitting square in frame is Marshall Applewhite (Tim Blake Nelson), co-founder of the Heaven’s Gate cult that committed the largest mass suicide on U.S. soil. In a time when true crime documentaries are frequently hitting the number one spot on streaming service’s top 10 lists, The Leader offers a look at the infamous members of the cult through the lens of writer and director Michael J. Gallagher.

In a performance that expertly captures the film’s theme of the desire to belong, Vera Farmiga plays Marshall’s Heaven’s Gate co-founder, Bonnie Lu Nettles, who passed from cancer before the cult’s tragic end in 1997. With supporting performances by Jim Parsons and Grace Caroline Currey, The Leader accomplishes what it sets out to do: leave you unsettled and heartbroken over the members of Heaven’s Gate. – Emily Cappello

In Memoriam

There is perhaps no better way to capture the fleeting nature of fame than and the obsessive qualities it possesses than with the story of a dying actor who measures his importance in the adoration of his fans. In Memoriam shows Marc Maron in his first leading role as Langston Stanford, a somewhat has-been actor hellbent on making it into the Oscars’ “In Memoriam” segment after his recently diagnosed terminal cancer will soon take his life. Real-life Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone is a shining light as Langston’s end-of-life therapist Samantha, and Talia Ryder gives a moving performance as his estranged teenage daughter.

Writer and director Rob Burnett has managed to capture the age-old tale of the importance of family legacy versus the hollowness of celebrity with a freshness that is not just engaging but emotional. With colorful performances by Judy Greer, Sharon Stone, and a hilarious Justin Long, In Memoriam is likely to have viewers excited for what’s to come from Maron’s acting career, and will certainly have them checking in on their loved ones. – EC

The Long Haul

Grief comes in many forms. The Long Haul follows truck driver CJ (Margo Martindale) who 25 years later is still grieving her daughter’s murder and seeking comfort through constant movement on the road. Hell-bent on doing things her way, she is forced out of her usual routine when she takes a job with a young truck driver (Cole Sprouse) who is better at gaining social media followers than doing his actual job.

While CJ captures our attention from the moment she comes on screen, it’s her beautiful performance alongside Yalitza Aparicio that truly brings out the heart of the film. Ending with a brilliant and heartbreaking monologue as CJ faces her daughter’s killer, The Long Haul is a film that highlights the importance not just of forgiveness, but of resilience. – Emily Cappello

Sofia Boutella and Simon Pegg at Tribeca 2026 — Photo by Nick Morgulis

Only What We Carry

Sometimes a film succeeds on pure emotion. Sometimes it can succeed on the strength and camaraderie of its cast. The new film from Jamie Adams, Only What We Carry, definitely succeeds on both fronts.

Famed dancer Charlotte Levant (Sofia Boutella) seems to be stuck in a bit of a rut. Having an article released from her former choreographer and partner Julian Johns (Simon Pegg), doesn’t help. A specific line in Julian’s recent interview sticks like a thorn in Charlotte’s side. Along with her sister, Josephine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Charlotte heads to face Jualian about what he said and their past. What follows is a weekend of discovery and soul searching between the group who are joined by Julian’s publisher John Percy (Quentin Tarantino)..

If you’re new to the films of Jamie Adams, Only What We Carry follows in his tradition of a script that outlines a structure, but a film built mainly from improvisation. Simon Pegg described the work in our studio as “a process of discovery… and that’s really exciting because you are uncovering the story as you’re making it.” It also leads to some very authentic scenes of characters just caught up in discussion.

With that said, the approach could be a little less fun for actors like Boutella, who are tasked with playing the “sour one” when every other character is full of exuberance. “I felt nuts, absolutely crazy,” she tells us. “I kept looking for the colors of our dynamic, but [Pegg] was just so nice.”

Like a modern day The Big Chill, Only What We Carry has a great number of highs and lows to wow audiences. And when you see it, be on the look out for that damn fog on Simon’s glasses. You’ll know what I mean once you see it.- MS

Ponderosa

David Lynch once famously said his films don’t make any sense, but “people get used to a film that explains itself 100 percent, and they turn off that beautiful thing of intuition.” Finding films that take this idea to heart and produce a worthwhile result are few and far between. But this year’s Tribeca Film Festival provided a gem that not only exudes this ideal, but wormed its way into my mind and nested there.

Ponderosa is a movie that best works without explanation before you see it, but on its surface, it revolves around Zeke (Jack Dylan Grazer), a quiet, somewhat introverted teen who is drifting through life. Zeke’s mother (Alexis Beldel in her return to the screen after a short hiatus) works at the aging restaurant Ponderosa to keep the two afloat. After stopping for a meal at said establishment, Zeke catches the eye of George (Bill Camp) who thinks he can offer young Zeke some guidance and stability.

The movie that commences will probably confuse some viewers, but that is done on purpose. During our chat, writer-director Rob Rice even explains that the film has “a traditional narrative structure, something to do with two characters having a conflict with each other.” But it is the one-sided conflict that creates some of Ponderosa’s greatest ambiguities and strengths. George as a character is frustrated with Zeke’s seemingly unending apathy. And watching Camp become exceedingly more unhinged because of it is brain candy. – MS

Stealing Magic

Few documentaries can play like an action thriller. Stealing Magic, from director Matthew Testa, follows a team of illusionists as they span the globe to track down the pirates responsible for the theft of the world’s greatest tricks. Yes, it sounds readymade for a thriller, and the film absolutely delivers on its incredibly exciting logline as Magician Andi Gladwin rallies a community keen on defending its intellectual property. I came for the magic but I left touched by the lengths these illusionists would go to protect not only their livelihood, but a profession intrinsically tied to their being. – CL

X-Men ‘97 Season 2

X-Men ‘97 hit comic and animation fans like a thunderbolt two years ago. While revivals of long dormant and beloved TV shows from the 1980s and ‘90s are a dime a dozen these days, X-Men ‘97 came rip-roaring out of the gates with the sincerity of the original Saturday morning cartoon that ran on Fox Kids from 1992 to 1997, but the audacity and ambition of an adult drama. Or for that matter a comic book melodrama. With more gusto and angst than 90 percent of live-action MCU movies, this was an animated series that captured the epic grandiosity of folks in colorful costumes grappling with the highs and lows of life, death, and powers approaching godhood.

The first two episodes that premiered on the last day of the Tribeca Film Festival carry on that tradition while rather bullishly adapting the kind of trenchant, lore-heavy timeline shenanigans that ultimately made X-Men comics so labyrinthine by the end of the 1990s. With at least three timelines in the episodes we saw—one with X-Men sent two thousand years into the future, another with a different group of heroes sent four thousand years into the Egyptian past, and one still based in 1997—there are competing factions, characters at different ages in their lives, and at least two off-shoots of the main team. And just wait until you see how the X-Force are introduced!

Through it all remains a sense of purpose that we are building to a moment of epiphany and revelation in these characters’ lives, which might be fitting since they are up against a biblical threat this season via Apocalypse. As X-Men ‘97 executive producer Brad Winderbaum told us at the premiere, “Apocalypse is an exciting character, [and I’m] so happy to bring him back to the screen. He represents, I think, a horrible future and destiny for the X-Men that they’re always trying to avoid. So he serves a very specific, and very awesome purpose.” – DC