Ethan Hawke Is Right About the Actors Who Deserve Oscar Noms This Year
Ethan Hawke is no stranger to awards praise. In addition to his recent Best Actor nomination for playing Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon, Hawke has earned Best Supporting Actor noms for Training Day and Boyhood and even two writing noms for Before Sunset and Before Midnight.
Yet, as an actor who has been on our screens since 1985, Hawke also knows that a lot of incredible work often goes unnoticed by the Academy. Hawke remembered that fact even while accepting his nomination for Blue Moon, drawing attention to the fine acting that didn’t get awards attention.
“At 55, I’ve spent so many of these kinds of mornings disappointed throughout my life, so it’s hard for me not to think of all the people who did great work, even in my category alone,” he told Variety.
Even better, Hawke gets specific, naming names of great actors who he thought deserved more attention. “Jesse Plemons is absolutely brilliant in Bugonia. Lee Byung-hun was staggeringly great in No Other Choice. Dwayne Johnson was phenomenal in The Smashing Machine. George Clooney in Jay Kelly. Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein,” he listed. “My brain does flips over how many people deserve it.”
More than just a gracious gesture, Hawke’s statement is an important reminder about the art of cinema, something that can get lost in all the Oscars hype. Unlike the 10 slots for the Best Picture category, the acting categories only have five nominees, which means there’s less room for variety. And in a year that includes an glowing movie star performance from Michael B. Jordan in the blockbuster Sinners, veteran actor Leonardo DiCaprio being both captivating and pathetic in the thrilling One Battle After Another, and Timothée Chalamet cementing himself as one of the greats with his multifaceted work in Marty Supreme, there’s only room for two others.
Hawke is absolutely right to give those names praise, especially Plemons in Bugonia and Lee in No Other Choice.
Plemons has been doing fantastic work on screen for years, playing everything from the coldest killer in Breaking Bad to the biggest sweetheart in The Power of the Dog to a divorcee very concerned about Frito-Lay’s profit margins in Game Night. He seems to combine all those facets for Bugonia, in which he plays a seemingly good-hearted man who allows a family tragedy to drive him into a paranoid delusion. Even when he’s tormenting the CEO who insists is an alien (played by an always incredible, and Oscar-nominated, Emma Stone), we still sympathize with him.
Lee has an even longer and more varied filmography, even if most of it is in his native South Korea. he began working with Park Chan-wook with 2000’s Joint Security Area, playing a South Korean guard who strikes up a friendship with his Northern counterpart (Song Kang-ho) and, a few years later, showed up on American screens playing ninja Storm Shadow in 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Lee’s American fanbase increased with Squid Game, in which he played the Front Man, and for voicing the monstrous Gwi-Ma in last year’s animated hit Kpop Demon Hunters. Even though his latest work with director Park, No Other Choice, pushes his character to desperate and murderous ends, Lee keeps him grounded, making him feel like a real person, no matter how outrageous his decisions are.
These are just two of the great performances that Hawke mentions, and even that list leaves out other incredible lead acting turns. There’s Joel Edgerton‘s taciturn take in Train Dreams, Vahid Mobasseri’s layered work in It Was Just an Accident, Liam Neeson poking fun at his screen person in The Naked Gun… the list goes on, far beyond five, far beyond even ten.
So while it’s fun to give attention to the five performances that got nominated for awards, Hawke is right to remind us that there’s so much more good acting out there, more than any one award could represent.
The Muppet Show Trailer Is a Welcome Mix of Fuzzy Nostalgia and Contemporary Bite
In the year of our Lord 2026, everything old is new again, but sometimes that’s not actually all that much of a problem. Case in point, Disney’s forthcoming revival of The Muppet Show, which is arriving at precisely the moment we all really, really need it to. It’s exactly a secret that the world isn’t doing all that great at the moment, and what better antidote for our collective anxiety could there be than the return of the famous Jim Henson characters who’ve held our hands through uncomfortable moments before. (No, I don’t have “The Rainbow Connection” playing in the background right now, why do you ask?)
The original The Muppet Show technically only ran between 1976 and 1981, but it’s a series that still casts a long shadow, with its famous guests, mystical numbers, puppet-based stunts, and behind-the-scenes antics. Henson’s famous felt creatures have gone on to star in everything from television one-offs and specials to feature films (The Great Muppet Caper is untouchable, and I will not be taking questions at this time). Disney’s been trying to bring the franchise back into the mainstream pop cultural zeitgeist for several years now, with varying degrees of success. The 2011 film The Muppets (a.k.a. The One with Jason Segel) was cute enough, but The Office-style mockumentary series Muppets Now largely felt tonally wrong for the franchise we all loved and hands up if you even remember that
Happily, Disney’s taking things back to basics with this pilot, which feels like nothing so much as a slicker, more expensive (and expansive) version of the original we all loved. This pseudo pilot episode, clearly a test run to see if the format can still attract viewers, will feature guest appearances by Sabrina Carpenter, Maya Rudolph, Seth Rogen, and pretty much every Muppet you can think of.
The tone is perfect, the clip full of backstage commentary and familiar Muppet-based antics, like Gonzo’s death-defying stunts and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew’s disastrous experiments. But the trailer also indicates a sly self-awareness about who’s most likely to be watching the show, including some contemporary humor right alongside its silliest and most old-school antics. We see Carpenter, Kermit, and Pepe the King Prawn share an arch exchange that references the singer’s slightly racy stage shows, signaling that everyone involved knows the audience is full of grown-ups who are not only all in on the joke, but generally unbothered by a hint of adult humor.
But, honestly, this whole thing could have just been several minutes of Miss Piggy swanning around backstage in a turban, and I suspect we would have all been fine with it. Play the music and light the lights, indeed.
The Muppet Show premieres February 4, 2026, on Disney+ and ABC.
James Gunn Reveals Jason Momoa As a Comic Accurate Lobo (Sans Space Dolphins)
The Main Man has come to the DCU. We’ve known for a while now that Jason Momoa would be sticking in the world of DC Comics once James Gunn and Peter Safran took over. And we’ve also known that he would be trading in the orange skivvies of Aquaman and taking the role of Lobo, the bounty hunter for Supergirl. But outside of a smoky silhouette in the Supergirl trailer, we have not yet seen what Momoa’s take on the Last Czarnian would be.
But now we know. A reel that Gunn released to his Instagram follows a giddy Momoa as he drives to the set and ends with a close up him driving his motorcycle through flames, hooked chain in tow. A close up on his face reveals everything you’d expect: dirty hair, unkempt beard, a blue domino pattern around red eyes, and a stogie protruding from his pointed teeth. Yep, that’s Lobo. Except… where are the space dolphins?
Okay, in all fairness to Supergirl and Gunn, Lobo did not have a love of space dolphins when he first appeared back in 1983’s Omega Men #3, written by Roger Slifer and penciled by the great Keith Giffen. Of course, little of the Lobo who became a cult hit in the ’90s was present in that first issue. Sure, he was still an intergalactic bounty hunter with a space bike and a bad attitude, and he did have his distinctive ‘stache and eye markings, but that version of Lobo wore purple and yellow tights, hardly the most intimidating look.
Over the years, Giffen would return to Lobo and develop him further into a parody of the extreme edge-lord superheroes that became all the rage in the 1990s. In the two miniseries that Giffen did with co-writer Alan Grant and illustrator Simon Bisley, along with the 1991 Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special—in which the Easter Bunny hires the Main Man to slaughter Santa Claus because Christmas is more popular than Easter—Lobo brought to DC Comics a level gratuitous violence one previously only found in British superhero satires like Judge Dredd and Marshal Law.
Those storylines established Lobo as a completely amoral person who lives by one code: he always keeps his word. Outside of that, he’ll kill any bastich (to use his preferred epithet) for money and, thanks to his ability to regenerate from a single drop of blood (a power intended as a joke about Wolverine‘s healing factor… introduced about 15 years before Wolverine canonically regenerates from a single drop of blood), he can never be killed.
But just because Lobo couldn’t die didn’t mean that his stories lacked for killing. We learn that the name Lobo means “he who devours your entrails and thoroughly enjoys it” on Czarnia and that he’s the last survivor of his planet, not because it exploded like Krypton but rather because Lobo murdered every inhabitant in grade school after a teacher flunked him.
Lobo’s predilection for extreme cartoon violence made him a hit in the ’90s. However, it also kept him feeling fairly one-note, and the character fell out of favor in the 2000s. So unpopular was the character that DC tried to reboot him in 2011, introducing a thin, serious-minded and somewhat honorable version who claimed to real Lobo and introduced himself by beheading the Lobo we’ve known for decades. Ironically, that take went over so poorly that when the hulking psychopath Lobo returned to kill the spindly imposter, his fan base grew again.
However, as prevalent as Lobo has been in DC comics over the past decade, he did not appear in the miniseries Supergirl: The Woman of Tomorrow, which is the source of the upcoming Supergirl movie. So how, exactly, do they plan to bring him into the film?
The most obvious answer is that Lobo has probably been hired to kill Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), the murderer that young Ruthye Marye (Eve Ridley) is trying to find, with the help of Supergirl (Milly Alcock). Probably, Lobo will cross Supergirl’s path, the two will duke it out, and Supergirl will have to find some way to convince Lobo to change the terms of his agreement.
All of that is fine, and Momoa certainly has both the look and the attitude to make a remorseless killer fun to watch. But however Supergirl plans to use Lobo, they had better get his space dolphins on screen, if only to help Momoa better transition from hanging out with an octopus in Aquaman to hunting down bastiches as Lobo.
Supergirl (and Lobo) arrives in theaters on June 26, 2026.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Ratings Prove Audiences Aren’t Tired of Westeros Just Yet
HBO’s Game of Thrones is, without question, one of the most successful fantasy properties of all time. It’s also one of the most controversial, thanks to its hotly debated final season, which featured everything from pacing problems and character deaths to big twists that felt almost completely unearned. (Save one, anyway.) But while many of us may never stop complaining about how the flagship series wrapped its story up, we’re also apparently still eager to see more stories set in George R.R. Martin’s world of Westeros.
Per Deadline, the first episode of the new Thrones prequel series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, drew 6.7 million viewers over the three days following its premiere on HBO and HBO Max. According to Warner Bros. Discovery, that makes the show “a top three series launch” in the history of the HBO Max streaming platform, though the company did not share the other two titles on this particular list.
Given that the show has already been renewed for a second season, the specific numbers themselves probably don’t actually matter all that much. What’s more important is what this result says about the people watching. Because this series success firmly indicates that viewers are apparently not as over Game of Thrones as many would like to believe.
A lower-stakes, scaled-down version of the Thrones universe, Seven Kingdoms follows the story of a loveably dumb hedge knight (Peter Claffey) and his squire (Dexter Sol Ansell) during a chaotic tournament in the Reach. It’s a story that’s lacking in many of the elements we consider central to this world: There are no dragons or magic, and characters from big, influential families hover on the edges of the story rather than drive its actions. And viewers are clearly into it anyway. If anything, Seven Kingdoms is a proof of concept that HBO can take some risks when it comes to this universe and audiences will still tune in.
Though it’s set nearly 200 years before the events of Thrones, House of the Dragon often feels like a fairly close approximation of the original series, with its intense politics, near-constant betrayals, and massive dragon battles. Seven Kingdoms is very deliberately not that, and its initial success must be a balm to the studio execs who are trying to find ways to further expand this fictional world onscreen.
We already know that more spinoffs are coming, and some of the rumored projects in the works include everything from a rumored Arya Stark follow-up and a retelling of Aegon’s Conquest to an animated series following the seafaring adventures of Corlys Velaryon. But the subject matter may not really matter in the end, not when there’s so much lore and history in this universe that’s worth exploring and clear evidence that audiences are willing to come along for the ride, no matter what.
Invincible Season 4 Will Feature its Own Red Hulk, Who’s Also a Dinosaur
In issue #80 of the Invincible comic series, Mark Grayson and Samantha “Eve” Wilkins, better known as the heroes Invincible and Atom Eve, have a difficult conversation about their living arrangements interrupted by an emergency call. “There’s a big red guy—tearing the whole city apart,” Eve tells Mark. “Big red guy?” Mark responds while pulling on his mask, “I can’t narrow that down to less than four people.” Neither can most comic book fans, as cape and cowl are filled with scarlet superpeople, ranging from Red Hulk to Devil Dinosaur to Red Bee.
Anyone who watches the trailer for season four of the Prime Video series Invincible can narrow the list down to one. In between bits of dialogue about Mark’s unresolved trauma and shots of a fresh wave of Viltrumite invaders (including Lee Pace’s Grand Regent Thragg!), we see the big red guy who’s going to make trouble for Invincible, the delightfully named Dinosaurus. A Hulk pastiche (with a little bit of the Lizard and Devil Dinosaur thrown in), Dinosaurus is an example of what Invincible does best, riffing on comic book concepts and taking them in directions that Marvel and DC cannot.
Dinosaurus Is Against Us
When Dinosaurus first appeared in 2009’s Invincible #68, he plays like just another one-off riff on an established hero, in part because writer Robert Kirkman and artist Ryan Ottley focus more on Mark’s wavering moral compass than it does the new threat. The story takes place in the aftermath of the Viltrumite war, with Mark trying to assuage his guilt by helping to a repair a destroyed city. His do-gooding gets interrupted when Dinosuarus arrives, not only preventing Mark from rebuilding but also lecturing him about the evils of humanity in the process.
After trading a few punches, Dinosaurus changes forms, revealing himself to be a chilled-out guy called David Anders. Anders begs Mark for help, explaining that he has no control over Dinosaurus and that Dinosaurus will not stop until he’s destroyed humanity. So Mark does the only reasonable thing when given the one way to stop a all-powerful monster. He wraps his hands around David’s neck, and…
Well, given the Invincible show’s tendency to hew closely to the comics, we won’t get into the details here. But suffice to say, Mark knows he needs to take extreme action against such an imposing threat, which sets it apart from Dinosaurus’s Marvel forerunner.
Marvel’s Monster Problem
The Hulk has always been a problem for the Marvel Universe, especially as the world gets smaller. In his initial appearances by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, the Hulk is a Jekyll and Hyde analogue modeled on Frankenstein’s Monster. When the sun goes down, Banner turns into the Hulk, who creates some sort of trouble. The creative decision to tie Banner’s transformations to his anger certainly complicated things further, but Marvel found ways of keeping the audience’s sympathies with the Hulk. Most of the time, he just wants to be left alone, but he keeps getting hassled by the Captain Ahab-like Thunderbolt Ross or encounters some type of commie saboteur or supervillain, which makes his freak-outs justified.
But every once in a while, Marvel has to deal with the fact that the Hulk is a big, rampaging, and uncontrollable monster. The most famous example is the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines designed by writer Greg Pak, in which the Illuminati—Marvel’s secret group of geniuses and power player such as Reed Richards and Tony Stark—send Banner off-planet, where he becomes a heroic gladiator. Pak played into the tragedy of it all and made Hulk’s vengeful return to Earth feel exhilarating and just, but it only worked at the expense of making Richards, Stark, Professor X, and other Illuminati members seem villainous—something common in those days of Civil War and Deadly Genesis, but not sustainable long-term.
The excellent Immortal Hulk series by Al Ewing and the great current Incredible Hulk run by Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Nic Klein return Hulk to his monster roots, making him less of a superhero who pals around with Captain America and Spider-Man and more of a Godzilla-like beast who battles other creatures when not leveling cities.
Great as these are, the solutions are short-lived. Eventually, Marvel’s going to want Green Genes back with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and his cousin She-Hulk (the usual stand in when Bruce is indisposed) won’t cut it. Which means that they can never let the Hulk be a pure monster, nor can they kill Bruce or the Hulk for good. He’s the monster they’re stuck with.
Sincerity and Suffering
When Mark puts his hands around the neck of David Anders, we readers believe that he won’t remove them until that man is dead. And while we may be sad for Mark for having made such as choice, we won’t blame him for it either.
Which is exactly what we love about Invincible. To be certain, Kirkman, Ottley, and original penciler Cory Walker acknowledge the weird and sometimes terrifying parts about superheroes. The entire concept of Omni-Man and the machinations of the Global Defense Agency underscore the scary side of Superman and SHIELD, while oddballs such as Dupli-Kate and Allen the Alien remind us that superheroes are unabashedly silly.
But while satires such as The Boys and The Tick have covered that ground with tongue in cheek, Invincible remains fully sincere in its love of heroes in a way that only Kurt Busiek’s majestic Astro City has matched. It loves the superheroes it deconstructs and reimagines, even while putting them through the wringer.
The coming of Dinosaurus means that the animated Invincible gets another goofy take on an established character. But it also gives the show to take that character to its most logical extreme, testing Mark Grayson’s moral code in the process—which is exactly what makes Invincible one of a kind.
Invincible season 4 premieres March 18, 2026 on Prime Video.
15 Stars Who Broke Out at Sundance in the Last 15 Years
The Sundance Film Festival may be the kick-off for every New Year’s lineup of indie cinema players, but it has movie star roots. After all, the festival was co-founded by Robert Redford as the Utah/U.S. Film Festival in 1978, back before the actor drew from the name of his famous cowboy character and rechristened it the Sundance Film Festival in 1978.
It’s fitting, then, that Sundance has been a launching ground for new movie stars ever since, a tradition that it continues to this day. Some of the most exciting young actors of the last decade had their first major roles in films that premiered at Sundance, including these 15 future screen legends.
Michael B. Jordan – Fruitvale Station (2013)
As demonstrated by Sinners‘ march through awards season, director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan are one of the most exciting creative pairs in cinema today. Before the two worked together for stories about vampires or Wakanda, they did a more grounded, realistic project. Fruitvale Station recreates the last day in the life of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old who was murdered by police at the titular train stop.
Coogler and Jordan restore humanity to a man too often reduced to a news item, putting Jordan’s movie star charisma to good work. Fruitvale Station went on to win the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at Sundance that year, fully transforming Jordan from the kid in The Wire to a cinematic talent to watch.
Brie Larson – The Spectacular Now (2013)
Like Jordan, Brie Larson first appeared on screen as a kid in a TV show, appearing as one of Bob Saget’s kids in the sitcom Raising Dad and later putting in supporting roles in Hoot and Scott Pilgrim vs the World. But it was a pair of independent films in 2013 that transformed Larson from an able secondary player to exciting lead, starting with The Spectacular Now.
Directed by James Ponsoldt and based on the novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now follows a charismatic high school senior (played by an actor we’ll talk about in a moment), whose alcoholism gets the best of him when he’s dumped by his girlfriend. As the girlfriend who sets off the chain of events and not the one who puts the protagonist back together—that job went to Shailene Woodley—Larson has the difficult task of keeping viewers on the side of a complicated person, a talent she’ll only further develop in her other 2013 movie, Short Term 12. Which, by the by, also got its start at a festival, albeit SXSW.
Miles Teller – The Spectacular Now (2013) / Whiplash (2014)
As great as Larson is in The Spectacular Now, she did have to play support to another young star making his major movie debut at Sundance. Miles Teller has the role of destructive cool kid Sutter Keely, and must keep the audience pulling for him despite his shortcomings.
Teller returned to Sundance the next year, too, to build on the heat generated by The Spectacular Now with what still remains his best work. In director Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, Teller puts in an electrifying turn as a talented but arrogant drummer who faces off against a cruel teacher (J.K. Simmons). It put Teller and Chazelle on the map, leading to bucolic musicals in the Hollywood Hills and a trip for Teller straight into the danger zone.
Tessa Thompson – Dear White People (2014)
Over the past decade, Tessa Thompson has played everything from an Asgardian warrior to a physicist who turns into flowers in Annihilation to, most recently, an upper-class malcontent in Hedda. While she showed hints of such range in early projects such as Veronica Mars and For Colored Girls, they truly came to the fore in the Justin Simien-directed comedy, Dear White People.
As the wry author and sharp-witted radio host Sam White, Thompson gets to play high status and embody the transgression implied in the film’s title. But she really showed off her skills in the movie’s second half when Sam has to confront some truths about herself and her school.
Anya Taylor-Joy – The Witch (2015)
Ten years later, it’s hard to remember just how challenging The Witch seemed upon release (and 11 years ago for Sundance-goers). Robert Eggers’ film certainly had some traditional horror elements but its use of period-accurate language and its punishingly-bleak tone set The Witch apart from other movies about creepy, cackling women. Much of the movie’s success therefore came from Anya Taylor-Joy‘s ability to ground the movie as the Puritan girl Thomasin. With her uncanny wide eyes and ability to convey both fear and interest with just a lift of the eyebrows, Taylor-Joy made The Witch a hit, which in turn cemented her to one of the most reliably great young actors in Hollywood.
Florence Pugh – Lady Macbeth (2016)
Okay, we’re fudging a bit here since Lady Macbeth opened at TIFF in September 2026 and then BFI London Film Festival in October before making its U.S. premiere at Sundance in January 2017. But since we’re talking about Florence Pugh, we’ll gladly make an exception. Pugh’s legion of fans may love her turns in Midsommar and Thunderbolts, but the internal resilience and passionate depths she brings to her characters were already present in Lady Macbeth.
In this adaptation of the novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, directed by William Oldroyd and written by Alice Birch, Pugh stars as a 19th century woman who rebels against her loveless marriage to a cruel older man. It’s familiar ground for a period piece, but Pugh made it all feel new and undiscovered.
Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name (2017)
As Marty Supreme reminds us, any movie that ends with Timothée Chalamet crying is going to be great. And with no disrespect to Marty Mauser’s kid, no movie has done that better than Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino and James Ivory’s soulful story about a teen boy’s romance with an older man (Armie Hammer) in 1980s Italy. Chalamet brings to life the curious adolescent from the André Aciman novel, making his unique experience seem universal—especially in the final shot, in which Chalamet quietly sobs in front of the fireplace while a Sufjan Stevens song plays.
Margaret Qualley – Novitiate (2017)
If there’s a recent actress who rivals Chalamet as a rising star, it might be Margaret Qualley of The Substance. The daughter of Andie MacDowell, Qualley had appeared in The Leftovers and The Nice Guys. But it was the Sundance film Novitiate that first put her in the lead. In Novitiate, Qualley plays a nun-in-training who doubts her faith, especially under the rigors imposed by the cruel Mother Superior (Melissa Leo). The conflict that Qualley embodies helped Novitiate earn a Grand Jury Prize nomination and another Jury Prize for writer/director Maggie Betts.
LaKeith Stanfield – Crown Heights (2017)
LaKeith Stanfield may have made his film debut alongside Brie Larson in Short Term 12, but he didn’t take the center stage until Crown Heights premiered at Sundance. Between those two projects, Stanfield had memorable turns in Selma, Dope, and Atlanta, but Crown Heights was the first to prove that this idiosyncratic performer can carry a feature film.
For Crown Heights, writer-director Matt Ruskin adapts a This American Life, a story the about wrongfully-convicted inmate Colin Warner and how he finally gets released through the work of his friend Carl King. Alongside Nnamdi Asomugha as King, Stanfield plays Warner as both rightly angry but resiliently hopeful, using his unique energy to keep the audience riveted.
Harris Dickinson – Beach Rats (2017)
Harris Dickinson hasn’t had quite the same big roles as some of the others on this list, but he’s electric in them all. In indie favorites such as Triangle of Sadness, Babygirl, and The Iron Claw, Dickinson brings a genuine openness while retaining a human element in even the most outre indie. He demonstrated that skill in his first major film role, the coming-of-age drama Beach Rats from write-director Eliza Hittman. In Beach Rats, Dickinson plays a wayward Brooklyn teen who avoids facing his homosexuality by engaging in increasingly reckless and dangerous behavior with his friends.
Daniel Kaluuya – Get Out (2017)
Just because Sundance is associated with small, independent movies doesn’t mean that the festival cannot debut an Oscar-winning blockbuster. Such was the case when Jordan Peele’s Get Out premiered there on Jan. 23, 2017 before it became a culture-defining horror film, thanks in part to an incredible lead performance by Daniel Kaluuya. While Kaluuya came to the part with memorable credits in Black Mirror and Sicario, it was Get Out that established him as one of the most exciting performers of his generation. As the conflict-adverse Chris Washington, Kaluuya proved that he could create a three-dimensional character with just the furrow of his brow and a widening of his eyes.
Thomasin McKenzie – Leave No Trace (2018)
Thomasin McKenzie hails from New Zealand, which means that her first film role came, of course, in a Peter Jackson movie, which for her was via an uncredited contribution to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. But it was a much smaller American film that really caught viewers’ attention, appearing alongside Ben Foster in Debra Granik’s sensitive drama Leave No Trace. McKenzie plays Tom, the teenage daughter and de facto caretaker of a PTSD-stricken veteran. Though playing younger than she actually was at the time, McKenzie was still a teen while shooting Leave No Trace. Nonetheless, she believably embodied a girl forced to abandon her childhood to help her troubled parent.
Emilia Jones – CODA (2021)
While not the first Sundance film to win an Academy Award, CODA feels like the most Sundance movie to ever get the honor. Written and directed by Sian Heder and based on the French movie La Famille Bélier, CODA stars Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi, a child of deaf adults or a CODA. After that film became a surprise awards titan, Jones has gone on to build an impressive career, appearing just last year in Edgar Wright’s The Running Manand beside Mark Ruffalo in the HBO crime drama, Task.
Daisy Edgar-Jones – Fresh (2022)
Before playing Noa, a romantic hopeful who gets targeted by a charming cannibal (Sebastian Stan) in Mimi Cave’s horror-comedy Fresh, Daisy Edgar-Jones already had an impressive resume. In addition to acclaimed stage work in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Edgar-Jones had main cast parts on Cold Feet and War of the Worlds. But it was her ability to play both a woman falling in love and a survivor fighting against her attacker in Fresh that changed the course of her career. Since then, Edgar-Jones has chased tornadoes in Twisters and will try to find love and stability in a new version of Sense & Sensibility, coming this year.
David Jonsson – Rye Lane (2023)
For most readers, English actor David Jonsson caught their attention as a sensitive synth in Alien: Romulus and then truly became one to watch alongside Cooper Hoofman in last year’s The Long Walk. But Jonsson came to those films with a lead actor credit already under his belt, having starred in Rye Lane, from director Raine Allen-Miller and writers Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia. This gentle romantic comedy plays like a South London spin on Before Sunrise as Jonsson stars alongside Vivian Oparah as two strangers who spend the day together after a chance encounter.
Wonder Man Review: A Harmless Hollywood Diversion for Marvel
This Wonder Man review contains no spoilers.
It’s been two years since Marvel Studios released its first TV series under the Marvel Spotlight banner, with head of streaming Brad Winderbaum hailing it as a platform to create more “grounded, character-driven stories” that didn’t require as much MCU knowledge to enjoy.
That first Marvel Spotlight series, Echo, was a shaky first step in that direction. For a start, it followed its main character heading back home after the climactic events of another MCU show! It certainly helped to know what the character had been through before, but you could still basically follow the plot if you hadn’t the foggiest idea. New Marvel Spotlight series Wonder Man is more successful at separating itself from the MCU at large, which you may find either a breath of fresh air or a little underwhelming, depending on what you hope to get out of it.
Created for Marvel by Destin Daniel Cretton (Spider-Man: Brand New Day) and Andrew Guest (Hawkeye), Wonder Man centres on Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), a struggling 30-something actor who also happens to possess mysterious, but clearly dangerous, superpowers.
Simon has felt different his whole life. He has no friends to speak of, his family finds him a worrying curiosity, and he can’t maintain a romantic relationship. When he finds out that a respected director is remaking Wonder Man, a superhero movie he enjoyed with his late father, he begins to fixate on landing the lead role and finds an unlikely ally in Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), a washed-up actor who portrayed the Mandarin terrorist in Iron Man 3 and popped up again in a pocket dimension during Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The pair is an absolute delight to watch. Abdul-Mateen II’s neurodivergent-coded Simon is determined but hapless; an introverted guy who has set himself the goal of becoming a famous actor but keeps getting in his own way and undermines his natural talents as a result. Kingsley’s Trevor enters Simon’s life as the extroverted influence he’s badly needed for a while. It would be easy to imagine Trevor as Simon’s excitable imaginary friend if we didn’t already know he was real. He only adds to the feeling that Simon could lose control, pushing and exploiting his new friend in escalating, precarious circumstances as the duo trots around Hollywood trying to make their mark.
Meanwhile, Simon’s caught the eye of the Department of Damage Control (remember them?), who consider him a threat. His unexamined powers are truly a compelling problem across the board, because even though Simon genuinely couldn’t give a single fig about them, the MCU’s version of Hollywood has also banned people with superpowers from acting under something called “the Doorman Clause.” The question of how Simon can land the role of Wonder Man and keep a lid on his powers hovers over the series like a dark cloud – eventually, something will have to give.
For anyone concerned about making a weekly commitment to this story, the good news is that all of Wonder Man‘s episodes are arriving at once, and they average out to sitcom length. It will take less than four hours to get through the entire season, and most of the episodes (and their jokes) land perfectly well. There’s a standout episode in the middle that pushes the show a little deeper into its own lore, but there’s also a frustrating episode that feels like unnecessary running around and almost derails its momentum.
Luckily, it doesn’t. But for a while, it adds to the feeling that we’re stuck in a bit of an MCU segue. Wonder Man is indeed a character-driven project, so it is much less concerned with superhero fripperies. It takes place in a universe where Rogers: The Musical is still doing business, but audiences are still experiencing superhero fatigue, which is a meta approach from Marvel that may be part of its undoing – it’s rather unlikely that people who have become less interested in the studio’s output will see the show on their Disney+ menu and be thrilled enough by the premise to give it a go, while those who are still committed to the machinations of the MCU might find it charming but ultimately a bit forgettable.
If you’re looking for superhero cameos, CGI battles, and piles of easter eggs, this is definitely not the show for you, but if you feel like watching a wholesome, funny little show about friendship that happens to focus on someone with superpowers, you could certainly do a lot worse than Wonder Man.
All eight episodes of Wonder Man premiere at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 27 on Disney+.
The Pitt Season 2 Episode 3 Review: Cooperation, Not Commitment
This article contains spoilers for The Pitt season 2 episode 3.
Bro, what is in the air on The Pitt season 2? It’s 9 a.m. on a typically busy Fourth of July shift in the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center emergency room – complete with dislocated shoulders, distended bellies, exposed brains, the whole nine yards – and everyone is horny. Not 20 minutes after Drs. Javadi and King have drained multiple syringes of blood from a dangerously erect penis, The Pitt season 2 episode 3 finds itself in a curiously randy mood. The sexual energy is subtle, in keeping with the show’s realistic style, but it’s there all the same.
Less than two hours after she complained that she needed to get laid, Dr. Cassie McKay appears to be giving off pheromones (or folks just realize that Fiona Dourif is very pretty). A kindly old patient who can’t sit still flirts with the good doctor in a playful, grandfatherly way. His romantic odes to McKay’s beautiful eyes are followed up by a more sincere expression of romantic interest from a fit stud in a U.S. soccer jersey. When things die down for a moment of quiet, dual attending physicians Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) and Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) resolve to go their separate ways with a curiously charged send off.
“Splitting up so soon?” Robby jokes. “Your’e free to see other people, Dr. Robinavitch. I’m looking for cooperation, not commitment,” Al-Hashimi grins back.
Ma’am. That is way too hot for 9 a.m.
The Pitt throwing itself an early Valentine’s Day is another example of the way it effectively establishes episodic themes even within its stylistic restraints. It’s also a helpful reminder of why the show’s fandom is Like That. Many well-crafted popular TV series lend themselves to some passionate shipping from the terminally online, but The Pitt‘s partisans have really found a way to stand out from the pack on social media. After the pure yearning presented in “9:00 A.M.,” I’m ready to join the fan-cam crafting masses.
Even the patients seem to be in on the simmering sexual tension. The agitated Mr. Williams (Derek Cecil) gets a diagnosis and it’s a grim one: a four centimeter mass in his frontal lobe that is likely a brain tumor. But his spirits are buoyed by the arrival of his ex-wife to the hospital thanks to an outdated emergency contact form. Not only does the now-Mrs. Lambdin seem quite concerned for Michael’s well-being, she’s also intrigued by the fact that his tumor may have been present years earlier and responsible for his sudden aggressive behavior. One can see her imagining a blissful life as Mrs. Williams once again once Dr. McKay supports her theory.
Then there are the Yees, a married couple that Robby and Al-Hashimi attend to following a car accident that killed a motorcyclist. (No, the motorcyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet. Yes, he is killed instantly. And yes, the doctors immediately seize upon that fact, causing Robby to lie and claim that he always wears his.) Mr. Yee (Eugene Shaw), it turns out, was experiencing hypokalemia, an incredibly rare condition that shifts potassium into cells and causes temporary paralysis. Once he wakes up, he bears witness to an explosive screaming match between Benny Connors and his girlfriend regarding the condition of Benny’s daughter Kylie.
Like Mark Yee himself, Kylie is the Pitt’s second “zebra” of the hour, diagnosed with the exceedingly rare Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP). But Mark doesn’t know that. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to end up like that couple, so he asks for Dana’s (Katherine LaNasa) help in composing a filmed video to his wife. Unfortunately, Mrs. Nancy Yee (Angela Lin) has already been brought up to surgery to address internal bleeding that Robby and company missed – perhaps because she was ambulatory and alert, or perhaps because the doctors didn’t want to interfere with a loving wife’s care for her husband.
While romantic energy provides a thematic throughline, the rest of the installment keeps the baseline chaos levels high while introducing several new conflicts. The case of Jackson Davis (Zack Morris), the young man brought screaming nonsense into the Pitt at the end of last week’s episode, comes to a speedy resolution, if not conclusion. When Jackson’s tox screening comes up negative for any hallucinogens or psychoactive drugs, overzealous campus security officer Tony Chinchiolo (Kurtis Bedford) has to answer for his use of a Taser. Meanwhile, Dr. Langdon and the young’ns get an insightful look into what home life is like for the legendary stockcar racing family, the Hansens. It involves a lot of drug sharing.
And what would an episode of The Pitt be without a check-in with our beloved teddy bear, Louie (Ernest Harden Jr.)? The fluid has successfully been drained from Louie’s stomach (and seemingly shattering his previous record of over a gallon), but now the tooth pain is starting to flair up again. May the TV gods watch after the ailing alcoholic because we need him to continue to deliver Pittsburgh fun facts like he does regarding the Zambelli fireworks family.
Louie isn’t the only example of The Pitt putting its setting to good use. The most compelling patient introduced in this hour arrives rich with painful Pittsburgh history. Brought in with a severe burn to her leg, Yana Kovalenko (Irina Dubova) is a wonderful firecracker of a woman, delighting in Dr. Robby’s (albeit lapsed) Judaism, razzing his dangerous choice of transportation, and advocating for him to settle down. She also, however, is revealed to be suffering from PTSD due to her experiences with the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, a real life 2018 massacre that remains the deadliest attack on a local Jewish community in American history.
Yana’s conversations with Robby and nurse Perlah Alawi (Amielynn Abellera) are simple but affecting. They represent the show finding novel and unobtrusive ways to conjure up quick pathos. The scenes also serve as a reminder that not every American medical drama need be set in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Human tragedy isn’t confined to the coasts. The Pitt has plenty of it to go around. No wonder its doctors need a release.
New episodes of The Pitt season 2 premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max.
Masters of the Universe Trailer Looks Like the Barbie Movie for Gen X Boys
Boys of the 1980s were taught that the world of grown-ups was one filled with paramilitary organizations who shot lasers at terrorists, cars that were actually robots in disguise, and humanoid cats that gave you confusing feelings. Turns out, real life is a lot more boring.
At least, that’s the assumption made by the first trailer for Masters of the Universe, the latest big screen adaptation of the toy line/cartoon series about sci-fi barbarians. The two and a half minute clip introduces us to Adam Glenn, a nondescript (save for his dreamy blonde locks) man who dreams of something more. What follows is a trip to another world, lots of deep cut toy references, and a healthy dose of self-awareness. All of which worked wonders for another movie about a Mattel toy, Barbie.
As any ’80s kid knows, Adam is Prince Adam of Eternia, even if he’s swapped his pink tunic for a pink button-down. Portrayed by Nicholas Galitzine, Adam seeks out a sword that will bring him to Eternia, a place that he left as a youth when his mother Queen Marlena Glenn (Charlotte Riley) sent away for his own protection. It’s no spoiler to say that he finds the sword and soon teams up with characters familiar to many a Gen X’er: Camila Mendes as Teela, Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms, as well as CGI creations of Beast Man, Spikor, and Battle-Cat.
Of course, the high fantasy imagery comes only after a few knowing jokes, including the pronouns “He/Him” on Adam’s nameplate and a shopkeeper who chides Adam for grabbing the sword. Certainly, after decades of Joss Whedon-style quippy dialogue and its lingering effects in the MCU, some cringe at the thought of Masters of the Universe mocking itself. But after Barbie found incredible commercial and critical success with gags about a pregnant doll or a doll with a camera in her chest, it’s easy to see why studio AmazonMGM would go this route.
However, fans should keep in mind that Barbie‘s wry humor came alongside with not just sincerity but a healthy bit of pride in its product, which the film positioned as not just a reliable birthday or holiday gift, but as a feminist breakthrough. Certainly, Masters of the Universe can do the same about restoring the power of myth and imagination to a lost generation.
Moreover, Masters of the Universe is directed by Travis Knight. In addition to being the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight and former rapper who called himself Chilly Tee, Travis Knight founded stop-motion animations studio LAIKA and directed the movie Kubo and the Two Strings. That movie, like all of LAIKA’s output, drips with both sincerity and whip-smart humor.
Still, fans have two causes for concern. One, of course, is that the villain Skeletor is played by Jared Leto, a man against whom “box office poison” is the least damning charge. Second is the strange overlap the 2026 movie has with the 1987 flop by the Cannon Group. In addition to casting the mostly non-English speaking Dolph Lundgren as He-Man (and a committed Frank Langella as Skeletor), the 1987 movie took place mostly on Earth, where He-Man hung out with a pre-Friends Courteney Cox and a pre-Star Trek: Voyager Robert Duncan McNeill.
While the 2026 trailer does have its Earth-based set-pieces, it clearly strives for accuracy to the toys and cartoons. Much like the Street Fighter movie also releasing this year, the film is correcting the wrong of an earlier adaptation by leaning into the silliness of the source material. Does Masters of the Universe have the power to follow in Barbie‘s footsteps? We’ll find out this summer.
Masters of the Universe will bring the power of Grayskull to theaters on June 5, 2026.
Sentimental Value Is the Quiet Best Picture Nom That Deserves Your Attention
This article contains no spoilers for Sentimental Value but does describe a couple of scenes.
As in most years, the Oscar nominations of 2026 reward big movies. There’s the spectacular horror of Sinners and Frankenstein. There’s the bravado filmmaking of One Battle After Another and MartySupreme. There’s big feelings of Hamnet and the big weirdness of Bugonia. But if there’s one movie that seems out of place in this celebration of all things bold and brassy, it’s Sentimental Value, the quiet, personal drama/comedy from Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier.
Sentimental Value mostly deals with family strife, particularly as it involves a house whose ownership of which comes into question after a matriarch’s death. It’s also about the shooting of a movie, and thus Hollywood does interject—mostly in the form of a glamorous American actress portrayed by Elle Fanning and in a hilariously prescient line about Netflix—but there’s little of the glitz usually associated with show business films. Instead, Trier devotes much of his screen time to conversations between family members, conversations that rarely escalate into high drama shouting matches. And yet, it’s that very lack of drama, that very quiet that makes Sentimental Value stand out in the Best Picture crowd.
Capturing an Uncomfortable Laugh
In Sentimental Value‘s most extravagant moment, respected but fading Norwegian director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) takes American actor Rachel Kemp (Fanning) through the final scene of the movie they’re shooting. As he walks her through the family house where the movie will be shot, he notes both the technical details of the bravado oner they’ll do and the emotional notes she’ll need to hit. To prepare herself to play a mother who hangs herself after sending her son to school, Rachel asks earnest, thoughtful questions.
The discussion brings the duo into the room where the suicide scene will take place, and Rachel sits on a stool to take it all in. When she asks if the hook she’s supposed to use for the hanging would support a grown woman’s weight, Gustav answers in the affirmative. “Well it happened like that,” he says with a bit of smile. “With my mother.” Rachel responds with shock at the information and when Gustav points out that his mother used the very stool on which she sits, she bolts up with discomfort.
The description above fails to do justice to the way Trier unfolds the scene. We viewers already know the relationship between the character that Kemp is playing and Gustav’s mother Karin, a holocaust survivor who formerly lived in the house. We also know that Gustav initially wanted his elder daughter Nora (Renate Reinsve, once again working with Trier after 2021’s excellent The Worst Person in the World) to play the part. Nora refused, in part because of her anger at Gustav, who abandoned the family to make his movies and has only returned after the death of their own mother to make his film.
In short, we viewers know the full weight of the scene that Rachel is doing before she does, and we watch her process the information like we watch a horror movie victim walk toward a hidden killer. Yet, we laugh when Rachel jumps up from the stool. We snicker when, at the end of the scene, Gustav and his other daughter Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) laugh that stool is in fact from Ikea, while the earnest Rachel talks through her part in the background.
How could something so bleak and so real also be so funny? That’s the magic of Trier’s direction.
Assured, Unspoken Direction
Sentimental Value is a movie about a movie making family that cannot speak about its suffering. While it does include occasional snippets from movies that Gustav made earlier in his career, including one in which Agnes starred as a child, most of the struggle comes through in conversations. Yet, the characters refuse to address their feelings directly through speech, so Trier fills the film with conversations in which people talk past one another.
One of the best examples occurs right before Gustav and Rachel arrive at the house in the aforementioned scene. Nora and Agnes stand in the kitchen, and Agnes tries to talk kindly about their father. Nora doesn’t endorse the sentiments, nor does she explicitly rebuke them; rather, she just follows along with the conversation. That is, until Agnes mentions that their father has cast Kemp in the part Nora turned down, a part informed by their grandmother’s life.
Even more than the words she says, Nora expresses her hurt and betrayal with the look on her face, in her inability to fully express herself. Likewise, Agnes’s attempts to smooth over the tension doesn’t convey the depth to which she wants peace and belonging, her desire for both her sister and her father to be alright.
When Rachel and Gustav (along with Cory Michael Smith a.k.a. the Riddler from Gotham, who gets turned away without speaking a line) come to the house, Nora grabs a vase and shoots out the door. The shot of Nora running away from her father and toward the camera, vase in hand, looks ridiculous, and it should be. Trier allows us to laugh at her absurd desperation.
But the shot also captures the movie’s theme. Nora grabs the vase because it represents for her the house that’s being turned into a movie set, the memories of her recently passed mother, and the frustrations she has with her father. It has sentimental value.
Nora’s hardly alone in attaching feelings to objects or practices, feelings that she cannot speak or even acknowledge. Indeed, Gustav expresses his feelings through his movies, and sees the act of making a film in his family house and trying to cast Nora as a supreme act of paternal love. It’s for him both an admission of guilt and a plea for forgiveness, neither of which he can express through words.
Instead, these big feelings come out in objects, looks, and half-finished conversations, all of which Trier captures with his camera, like the vase in Nora’s hand.
The Value of Sentiment
Neither an actress getting awkward about stool nor a woman running with a vase are the most attention-grabbing parts of this year’s Oscars batch. Even F1, easily the most inconsequential of the Best Picture noms, at least has visceral racing sequences and a killer Hans Zimmer score.
But few Best Picture movies have the same complex character dynamics and eye for detail that we find in Sentimental Value. Trier shows what movies can do best, using images to capture the thoughts we cannot say, the feelings that we cannot express, and the sentiments we cannot forget.
Sentimental Value is available to buy or rent through all major platforms.
Doctor Who Director Says “Something Went Wrong” With Disney Deal
If the past is anything to go by, Doctor Who fans are going to be rehashing the fallout from the BBC’s failed partnership with Disney for a long, long time. There are still debates raging about why Doctor Who was originally cancelled back in 1989 and why the 1996 film failed, after all. But the mess that happened with the House of Mouse is genuinely next level.
After much initial hype, the much vaunted new production partnership fizzled out after just two seasons, leaving the franchise scrambling for a new direction and without a lead actor in its signature role. (And that’s not even counting the entire spinoff that Disney appears to have shelved in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.) And Peter Hoar, who directed season 15 episodes “The Robot Revolution” and “Lucky Day,” has a rather blunt view of the reasons behind the “well-publicized dropping off” of the series.
In a recent interview with Deadline about his plans to reboot the classic sci-fi series Blake’s 7, he cites the most recent era of Doctor Who as something of a cautionary tale, pointing out that neither the bigger budgets that came with the Disney partnership didn’t necessarily improve the series’ quality.
“I don’t think anybody would doubt the skills at the front line of that show, but something went wrong,” he said. “I think there were lots of areas you could point fingers at, but ultimately it wasn’t a better show with more money,” he said. “And that’s a good thing, because we haven’t got the money anymore, nobody has.”
Most Whovians have likely suspected what Hoar says to be true for a while, in fact. Sure, the show has probably never looked better than it did during the Disney seasons, but a whole lot about this partnership just feels as though it was all extremely sus, particularly during star Ncuti Gatwa’s second year.
Per his own admission, showrunner Russell T. Davies was working on scripts for another season with the Fifteenth Doctor as early as the summer of 2024 and was “very confident” that the show — despite not having been renewed yet — would likely be shooting the following winter. Even Gatwa seemed to be planning for at least one more ride in the TARDIS. None of that happened — in fact, Disney became increasingly vague about their plans for the show’s future, hedging their bets about any potential renewal and refusing to comment one way or the other until season 15 finished airing.
It’s clear something happened. But what? Anonymous reports immediately following the break-up announcement pointed to everything from ratings woes and expensive budgets to Davies’s penchant for diverse storytelling as reasons for the partnership’s decline. The show also reportedly struggled to bring new viewers into the franchise, and negative fan reaction to both [admittedly messy] season finales certainly hasn’t helped matters.
Doctor Who will get a chance (yet again!) to reinvent itself later this year, with a Christmas special that must deal with the Billie Piper-shaped mystery that the finale “The Reality War” left behind. What the new iteration of the series will look like — or who will star in it — is anyone’s guess. But it certainly sounds like it’s past time for a fresh start.
Oscars 2026 Predictions: Who Will Win and Why
After months (and in some circles, a year) of speculation, jostling for position, and campaigning, the nominations are in. The final curve of the road to the Oscars is set. And we now know who the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have deemed the best and brightest of 2025.
Yet while we are entering the home stretch, the final votes remain far from cast. Nevertheless, on a morning where folks are still basking in Sinners and horror’s overperformance—or wondering why One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti got snubbed for Best Actress in seeming favor of Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue—we are ready to forecast where this all ends come March 15. Admittedly it is incredibly early to offer even an educated guess about the final winners come Oscar night. Consider that at this time last year, Emilia Pérez was still perceived as a Best Picture frontrunner before its star’s complicated social media history came to light. But we like to think of this as both a prediction as well as a snapshot of where the race is circa late January 2026, as well as a chance to cast our own phantom ballot.
For that reason, please know that the movies we think will win in the major categories will be bolded, the ones we want to see win will be italicized, and sometimes they will be one and the same.
Best Picture
Bugonia F1 Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sentimental Value Sinners Train Dreams
Some awards seasons are easier to predict than others, and 2025 looks a bit like the year of Oppenheimer or 12 Years a Slave: a clear consensus favorite has emerged and it’s about as close to a sure-thing as Best Picture can be. We admit that Sinnersbecoming the most nominated film in Oscar history gives us a bit of pause. The Academy famously does not line up with most critics groups (see: The Brutalist’s dizzying list of critics wins last year). So there is reason to doubt AMPAS will agree when the New York Film Critics Circle or the Critics Choice Awards dubbed OBAA the best of film of last year. However, Sinners at the end of the day remains a horror movie, and One Battle After Another has three major things going for it.
First despite being widely considered one of the best filmmakers of his generation, Paul Thomas Anderson—the writer-director of Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Magnolia, The Master, and Phantom Thread—has never won an Oscar. So the “it’s his turn” narrative will be in full effect. Furthermore, like Sinners, OBAA was a cagey bet by WB Motion Picture Group co-heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, and the industry will likely want to salute both’s dedication for risky original films that can find a commercial audience in movie theaters, particularly in the face of what seems like an imminent takeover by streaming service Netflix. Granted, that narrative also applies to Sinners, but lastly the aggressively left politics of OBAA will play to an Academy voting body eager to signal support for anyone willing to resist state-sanctioned ICE thuggery and the oppression tactics by the current administration.
Finally One Battle After Another is just a thrilling piece of filmmaking and storytelling, working both as a suspenseful thriller and a shaggy-haired hangout flick with Leonardo DiCaprio at his most comical and pitiful. It’s an exhilarating film and honestly the best of last year.
Best Director
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value Ryan Coogler, Sinners
For all the reasons stated above, we suspect Anderson will also win Best Director, although we suppose one could say if the vote were to be split, here might be where Coogler excels. Sinners is the most nominated film in Oscar history, and the three movies tied for the second most amount of nominations—All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land—all won Best Director, even when one of them failed to take Best Picture. Still, we’d bet on PTA to break that trend this year.
Best Actress
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value Emma Stone, Bugonia
Rose Byrne has been many critics’ pick for Best Actress, including my own when I voted for her in the Critics Choice Awards. However, industry folk notoriously differ from critics, and the Academy’s longstanding preference toward life-affirming stories, particularly in a historical or period context, will almost certainly make the more beatific vision of motherhood in Hamnet stand out and over Byrne and filmmaker Mary Bronstein’s cynical gallows humor vision of mom trauma via If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
Which is by no means a besmirch against Jessie Buckley. She gives a magnificent performance that is genuinely among the year’s best, with Hamnet’s entire climax hinging on the layers of grief, relief, and joy she is able to communicate in an instant as a woman who is at last afforded a moment of grace through the power of art. That also just happens to be a message better aligned with Academy interests than Legs’ screed about the indignities and grievances of motherhood.
Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon Michael B. Jordan, Sinners Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
A day ago, I might have said my own personal choice for Best Actor—Timothée Chalamet in Marty Supreme—was the shoo-in to win, and part of me still believes that. So it might be a desire to stop pouring cold water on Sinners, but I am coming around to the idea of Michael B. Jordan surprising in this category, especially after the vampire epic is given a second or third look by Academy voters following its record-breaking run of nominations.
To be clear, Chalamet is terrific as Marty Mauser, a role deliberately crafted around an exuberance and arrogance that Chalamet is able to channel into manic humanity. However, the Academy curiously remains reluctant to give Oscars to too many actors under the age of 35. The youngest Best Actor winner is Adrien Brody for The Pianist when he was 29 (an irony given how many twentysomething women win Best Actress). Chalamet is 30 and his aggressive campaigning has rubbed some the wrong way. If he were to lose, traditional wisdom might suggest Leonardo DiCaprio would be in line to receive his second Oscar nomination, but Michael B. Jordan pulled double duty in Sinners and honestly, if someone else were to win, it’s a showy performance…
Best Supporting Actress
Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value Amy Madigan, Weapons Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Teyana Taylor created a blistering and unforgettable visage of revolution and resistance inside of 20 minutes during the opening of One Battle After Another. And I suspect it will be rewarded as such, but upon rewatching Sentimental Value this holiday season, it is increasingly Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas’ quiet but devastating performance as the only member of an estranged family who sees everything that the others don’t that has stuck with me. In a film full of stunning performances from well-known awards players, the unknown Lilleaas might be the best one.
Best Supporting Actor
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein Delroy Lindo, Sinners Sean Penn, One Battle After Another Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
There is an argument to be made for Benicio del Toro, who already has an Oscar and is in the club. That is more an asset than hinderance when nominated in a supporting category, and his win for Traffic was over 20 years ago. Seeing him do scenery-stealing work as the more subdued, competent dissident opposite DiCaprio’s screw-up is the kind of supporting work from a leading man that Oscar voters tend to reward. But Stellan Skarsgard’s even more introspective and aloof portrait of a wayward patriarch and over-the-hill artist desperate for reclamation as both filmmaker and father is the one that lingers.
Best Original Screenplay
Blue Moon It Was Just an Accident Marty Supreme Sentimental Value Sinners
Best Original Screenplay is where I suspect Coogler will earn his first Oscar, no matter what happens in the Directing category later that night. While the Academy notoriously has been reticent about awarding horror movies Best Picture or Director, they tend to be a bit more open-minded about recognizing “weird” or lurid genre content in the screenwriting category. See: Get Out and The Exorcist for more. Personally though, the carefully calibrated insanity of Marty Supreme was fairly intoxicating.
Best Adapted Screenplay
Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Train Dreams
Paul Thomas Anderson’s big night will likewise begin in earnest with a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. And to be sure, one has to be a kind of mad genius to look at Thomas Pynchon’s decades-spanning novel about real-life radicalism from the 1960s through ‘80s, Vineland, and turn it into an action movie clarion call during the age of unchecked ICE brutality.
Best Cinematography
Frankenstein Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners Train Dreams
The way that Autumn Durald Arkapaw filmed rolling hills of cotton in IMAX as if they were the Technicolor bricks of the primrose path was enough by itself to win this, and we didn’t even mention the lighting of a juke joint on fire when a vampire comes calling.
Best Film Editing
F1 Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sentimental Value Sinners
I could never begrudge Andy Jorgensen’s deft hand at keeping a nearly three-hour movie feeling taut and even eerie winning, but the way Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein were able to make the even longer Marty Supreme’s constant sense of oppression and grueling pressure feel somehow exuberant is its own kind of magic trick.
Best International Film
The Secret Agent It Was Just an Accident Sentimental Value Sirat The Voice of Hind Rajab
Only one of these was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, and thankfully it is Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a movie that gets better the more time you sit with it.
Best Animated Feature
Arco Elio KPop: Demon Hunters Little Amélie or the Character of Rain Zootopia 2
Netflix is going up, up, up, on that Oscar stage. Sorry, not sorry.
Best Original Song
“Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless “Golden,” KPop: Demon Hunters “I Lied to You,” Sinners “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” From Viva Verdi! “Tran Dreams,” Train Dreams
Resisting the urge of making the same pun again. So let’s just say, Netflix and KPop will be feeling… golden on March 15?
Best Original Score
Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Sinners
Ludwig Göransson already has two Oscars for Oppenheimer and Black Panther. I suspect this will mark three, although the melancholy of Jonny Greenwood’s sometimes jazzy, sometimes folksy, and always hypnotic One Battle After Another work is what sticks.
Best Production Design
Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners
We come at last to categories where Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein will shine, and in terms of production design Mary Shelley’s story hasn’t looked this lush and grand since the days of James Whale.
Best Costume Design
Avatar: Fire and Ash Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme Sinners
Did you see those Gothic works of art Kate Hawley designed for Mia Goth?
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Frankenstein Kokuho Sinners The Smashing Machine The Ugly Stepsister
If somehow Jacob Elordi pulled off a surprise win for Frankenstein in the Best Supporting Actor category, I would not be upset. But I’d be flabbergasted if lead makeup and prosthetic designer Mike Hill’s transformation of Elordi into the undead Creature went ignored in this category.
Best Visual Effects
Avatar: Fire and Ash F1 Jurassic World: Rebirith The Lost Bus Sinners
James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash went surprisingly overlooked this Oscar season, even though we’d argue it was a step up from The Way of Water, which was nominated for Best Picture in its year. Nevertheless, Avatar remains unbeatable in the Visual Effects category, whatever the year.
Best Sound
F1 Frankenstein One Battle After Another Sinners Sirat
Meanwhile surprise Best Picture nominee F1 will likely have its moment in the combined Best Sound category—but only because Best Stunt Design is still not a viable category until next year.
Best Casting
Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sinners
And here we end on an entirely new category, which has no historical precedent or basis to draw from. So I am going to simply pick what I perceived to be the best cast, filled with both stars and lifelong character actors combining to create an unforgettable ensemble: Sinners.
Sinners Sets Oscar Nominations Record and Ushers in Banner Year for Horror
It is said in Sinners that music has the power to connect the past with the present. That might be so, but when it’s good enough it appears also able to shape the future. Such is the case for Ryan Coogler’s musical-vampire-gangster-hybrid movie which made Oscar history Thursday morning when it became the most nominated film in the Academy Awards’ 98-year history.
Coming in with an astonishing 16 nominations, including for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, Sinners broke a record previously shared by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016), all of which earned 14 nominations in their given year. And two of which, we might add, went on to win Best Picture after all three picked up Best Director.
It’s a staggering haul that would seem to rewrite what we expect from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has traditionally been recalcitrant about recognizing scary movies, or anything with the scent of horror, with major above-the-line awards. Before this morning, in fact, there had only been seven horror movies nominated for Best Picture, and only a single winner in the bunch, 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs.
This morning that distinction rose by two, however, because in addition to Sinners receiving 16 nominations, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankensteinhardly went overlooked. The dream project for the genre maestro earned an impressive nine nominations across numerous categories. These included a lot of technical areas, such as Best Costume Design, Production Design, and Cinematography, but it also included Best Adapted Screenplay and an incredibly well-deserved Best Supporting Actor nomination for Jacob Elordi.
Still, it is Sinners’ stunning performance that turned heads, especially with relatively unexpected nominations for the film in the Best Supporting Actor category, courtesy of a sweltering Delroy Lindo performance, and Best Supporting Actress thanks to Wunmi Mosaku’s haunting work. It should also be noted Lindo is an actor the Academy has long snubbed, including just five years ago for Da 5 Bloods. The belated recognition of his talent is overdue and further evidence of just what acultural powerhouse this film has been. Already the highest-grossing film in the domestic box office of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture—Sinners earned $280 million in the U.S., albeit with the asterisk that its $368 million total is dwarfed internationally by fellow BP nominee F1, which grossed $632 million worldwide—Coogler’s vampiric meditation on the roots of Black culture in the Jim Crow South has proved equally spellbinding for Academy voters that showered it with nominations in Best Cinematography, Production Design, Sound, and even Best Original Song, courtesy of “I Lied to You.”
All of which raises the question of whether the Academy’s well-documented aversion toward horror is fading. At a glance, one might be tempted to say that Sinners could be an outlier, a cultural and commercial juggernaut so well-done that it becomes the exception that proves the rule—a feat Coogler is personally familiar with since he remains the only superhero movie director to earn a Best Picture nomination to date thanks to Black Panther—but we’d point out that, again, Frankenstein also overperformed. Furthermore, Amy Madigan earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Weapons, which is all the more remarkable when you realize Ariana Grande, who seemed like a sure-thing six months ago (back before folks had seen Wicked: For Good), was snubbed.
Cumulatively it seems to suggest that as the Academy’s tastes have diversified and broadened in the last decade, prejudices against genre have faded away. It was only a few years ago, after all, that the genre-bending Everything Everywhere All at Oncewon Best Picture.
Still, we’d suggest perhaps taking a pinch of salt with any giddiness about the AMPAS embracing horror this morning. While there were a number of great movies in 2025—and we haven’t even had enough time to note until now One Battle After Another’s impressive 13 nominations or Sentimental Valueabsolutely slaying with four acting nominations, and deserving every one of them!—it was on the whole a somewhat subdued year for critical darlings that penetrated pop culture. And in a generally weaker field, the Academy voters perhaps have better incentive to turn to where artistic and commercial success blended into movies people actually saw. Movies like Sinners and Weapons.
Plus it bears reminding that nominations do not mean automatic wins. Consider, for example how just last year Demi Moore looked like the definite frontrunner for Best Actress due to career-best work in The Substance, yet Moore lost came Oscar night, perhaps due to, as several anonymous Oscar voters admitted in the press, many refused to actually watch the horror movie. Also while The Substance was nominated, another great vampire movie just last year went snubbed in everything save Best Cinematography, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu.
One morning does not mark a trend. But at the very least, it does suggest a willingness to accept that in some years, a great horror movie with something to say—particularly about the role of race, love, and yes, horror, in the experience of American life—should not be denied. More than 50 years after The Exorcist lost Best Picture to The Sting, history might judge one as more culturally and cinematically significant than the other. And Sinners has already made such a splash, Academy voters would be wise not to preemptively ignore its musical beck and call.
The 98th annual Academy Awards air Sunday, March 15.
Oscars 2026: The Complete Nominee List
Below you can find the complete line-up of films nominated for the 98th Annual Academy Awards. The Oscars will telecast live on ABC on Sunday, March 15.
Best Picture
Bugonia F1 Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sentimental Value Sinners Train Dreams
Best Director
Chloé Zhao, Hamnet Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value Ryan Coogler, Sinners
Best Actress
Jessie Buckley, Hamnet Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value Emma Stone, Bugonia
Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon Michael B. Jordan, Sinners Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent
Best Cinematography
Frankenstein Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners Train Dreams
Best Visual Effects
Avatar: Fire and Ash F1 Jurassic World: Rebirith The Lost Bus Sinners
Best Sound
F1 Frankenstein One Battle After Another Sinners Sirat
Best Film Editing
F1 Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sentimental Value Sinners
Best Production Design
Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Sinners
Best Animated Feature Film
Arco Elio KPop: Demon Hunters Little Amélie or the Character of Rain Zootopia 2
Best International Film
The Secret Agent It Was Just an Accident Sentimental Value Sirat The Voice of Hind Rajab
Best Documentary Short
“All Empty Rooms” “Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” “Children No More: ‘Were and Gone'” “The Devil Is Busy” “Perfectly A Strangness
Best Documentary Feature
The Alabama Solution Come See Me in the Good Light Cutting Through the Rocks Mr. Nobody Against Putin The Perfect Neighbor
Best Original Song
“Dear Me,” Diane Warren: Relentless “Golden,” KPop: Demon Hunters “I Lied to You,” Sinners “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” From Viva Verdi! “Tran Dreams,” Train Dreams
Best Costume Design
Avatar: Fire and Ash Frankenstein Hamnet Marty Supreme Sinners
Best Casting
Hamnet Marty Supreme One Battle After Another The Secret Agent Sinners
Best Supporting Actor
Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein Delroy Lindo, Sinners Sean Penn, One Battle After Another Stellan Skarsgard, Sentimental Value
Best Original Screenplay
Blue Moon It Was Just an Accident Marty Supreme Sentimental Value Sinners
Best Adapted Screenplay
Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Train Dreams
Best Animated Short Film
“Butterfly” “Forevergreen” “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” “Retirement Plan” “The Three Sisters”
Best Live-Action Short Film
“Butcher’s Stain” “A Friend of Dorothy” “Jane Austen’s Period Drama” “The Singers” “Two People Exchanging Saliva”
Best Original Score
Bugonia Frankenstein Hamnet One Battle After Another Sinners
Best Supporting Actress
Elle Fanning, Sentimental Value Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Sentimental Value Amy Madigan, Weapons Wunmi Mosaku, Sinners Teyana Taylor, One Battle After Another
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Frankenstein Kokuho Sinners The Smashing Machine The Ugly Stepsister
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy Episode 3 Review – Vitus Reflux
The following contains spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 3.
After a two-episode premiere that had to work overtime introducing the series’ characters and larger narrative set-up, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’sthird episode feels a lot more like the show many of us likely expected this franchise installment to be. Whether or not you find an hour focused on what is essentially an interschool game of laser tag and a not-so-secret prank war to be particularly compelling television is a choice viewers will have to make for themselves. But it’s certainly a vibe that fits the series’ subject matter a bit more cleanly than what’s come before.
“Vitus Reflux” puts the Academy cadets at odds with their fellow students in the Starfleet War College, the organization that essentially replaced the OG institution during the century of the Burn and still trains and learn alongside them today. The War College students, save for new addition Tarima, are all pretty much interchangeable jerks, smug in the way that is both vaguely unlikable and kind of dull. None of them — including their director — seem to believe the Academy will survive, let alone turn into anything useful, and they’re determined to prove their superiority by… repeatedly humiliating the Academy kids in various public ways. (Personally, I’ve got questions: Why did they keep both institutions? What is the War College meant to be and/or do now that the Academy exists again? Train soldiers? Be rude?)
In addition to the escalating prank war, the two schools are being set against each other in some sort of field day competition where they have to play an advanced laser tag-style game called “callica,” in which the objective is to shoot a target being protected by the other school’s mascot. Tryouts involve everything from explosions to attack drones to phasers that transport opponents into a penalty box.
It all seems extremely extra, but at least it gives us the opportunity for a training montage in which various students snipe and shoot at one another, most notably Genesis and Darem, the show’s pair of overachieving legacy kids who live under the shadow of their parents’ expectations. After using Genesis’s self-admitted daddy issues to win the position of team captain, Darem must ultimately learn some valuable lessons about strategy and planning when the kids find themselves in a covert after-hours game against their fellow students/mortal enemies. Everything about this is fairly predictable, and you won’t remember much of it after the final credits roll, but at least it makes more sense as a story for these particular characters than Jay-Den operating on someone last week.
Caleb, mercifully, takes something of a backseat in this episode, outside of turning out to be some sort of generational talent at callica, a game that he has seemingly never played before! Because he hates organized sports, don’t you know, but is so good at them anyway! At this point, you sort of have to wonder if this supreme Gary Stu schtick is meant as some kind of joke, because it’s already becoming laughable that he’s so darn good at literally everything. Unfortunately, Starfleet Academy is simply not the sort of show that will ever be that self-aware. At least Darem manages to experience something that actually looks like growth over the course of the hour, and his apology to Genesis — even if it comes complete with a sob story about how much his mom and dad suck — is surprisingly genuine. Take some notes, Caleb.
There are also some interesting, smaller moments throughout the episode — Darem’s desperation to please the parents who categorically ignore him, the surprising revelation of Jett Reno and Cadet Master Thok’s romantic relationship, and Caleb’s run-in with Tarima, who has seemingly inured herself against much of his nonsense. Sure, the show couldn’t possibly be telegraphing any harder that these two are getting together romantically at some point in the not-too-distant future, but it’s interesting to see her push back against his speedy assumptions about what kind of relationship they share. Yes, they’re clearly into each other, but she’s right — they’re still essentially strangers! (Or maybe I’m just programmed to like anyone who makes Caleb have to do anything approaching self-reflection, who can say.)
Speaking of learning, although the gang’s highly coordinated final heist plan is fun to watch play out, it really, really doesn’t make any sense. They force the other students out of their dorms by way of filling them with endangered plants? That’s… great? What? Other things that don’t make sense include: Almost everything about Ake’s behavior. Yes, her determination to let her kids be kids and not squash their light or whatever after growing up in the shadow of the Burn is admirable, and it’s probably a good idea to both let the kids blow off some steam and bond over a common adversary. But arguing that this ridiculousness is somehow meant to really be teaching them about the patience and empathy needed to stop wars is… kind of laughable, particularly since it’s Ake who hand-feeds them most of their strategy in the first place. It’s not a leadership style that seems particularly…helpful, to be sure, but hey, at least she’s staying true to her whole freewheeling chancellor vibe.
At the end of the day, though the hour’s larger arc is fairly ridiculous, it’s nice to see Starfleet Academy’s core group get the chance to bond as an ensemble in ways that go beyond their various connections to and relationships with Caleb. And that’s a promising enough development to overlook some of the… let’s just say stupidly youthful antics we have to sit through to get there.
New episodes of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy premiere Thursdays on Paramount+, culminating with the finale on March 12.
The DCU Batman Movie Will Be a Flash Reunion
It sounds like Batman‘s ready to get nuts again. Bruce Wayne first offered that opportunity back in 1989, when Michael Keaton delivered the lines “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!” in a scene with Jack Nicholson‘s Joker. Keaton put an updated spin on the line when he reprised the role for The Flash in 2023, in which he played an older, disillusioned Wayne forced back into action to save the multiverse alongside Barry Allen (Ezra MIller).
Although Keaton’s return to the Batcave was a major part of the movie, The Flash obviously isn’t a Batman movie. Yet, the people who brought him back will get more time with the Dark Knight soon. We’ve long known that Flash director Andy Muschietti would be helming The Brave and the Bold, the first Batman film in James Gunn‘s DCU. But we now know that he’ll be joined by The Flash screenwriter Christina Hodson.
Given the mixed response to The Flash, that news will probably thrill half the people who hear it and disappoint the other half. While The Flash enjoys a 63% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and made $271 million worldwide, it was hardly a success. Among the knocks against it were charges that the script was too complicated, a multiversal storyline that involved multiple Batmen, multiple Flashes, and multiple Supermen, the latter represented by ill-considered CGI recreations of George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, and Nicolas Cage fighting a giant mechanical spider.
Based on the Flashpoint storyline from DC Comics, The Flash sees Barry Allen trying to undo the wrongful conviction of his father (Ron Livingston) for the murder of his mother (Maribel Verdú) by going back in time to prevent the event from happening. He creates a new reality, one in which Batman is not the guy he knows from the Justice League (played by Ben Affleck, who appears in a dreadful blue and grey costume in the film’s first act) and Superman never arrived on Earth. Yet, General Zod (Michael Shannon) is still coming to invade the Earth as he did in Man of Steel. Barry recruits this reality’s Batman, the retired weirdo played by Keaton, and Supergirl (Sasha Calle), who has been hidden in a government facility. At the end of the film, Barry returns to his own reality, but recreates the multiverse in the process, changing his world into one in which George Clooney is Batman, and creating Gunn’s DCU in the process.
So yeah, The Flash is a lot. And it only gets worse when you throw in the film’s tortured seven-year production schedule, star Miller’s crimes around the time of release, and the change in DC Studios regime to Gunn and Peter Safran a year before release.
Yet, for all of the problems with the movie, it’s hard to blame it on the script. The final version of the movie had to do heavy shared universe lifting, giving a reason to end the DCEU inaugurated with Man of Steel, and had to meet the demands of ‘member berry-style storytelling that DC wanted to emulate after Spider-Man: No Way Home. Despite that impossible task, Hodson crafted a remarkably clean script. Barry’s desire to save his mother, visualized with the simple image of a jar in a grocery store, runs across the entire film and even side characters like old man Batman and Supergirl have clear arcs.
When you also take into account Hodson’s great scripts for Birds of Prey, or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn and Bumblebee, it’s clear that she excels at grounding outrageous stories in human emotions. Which is exactly what she’ll need to do with her Batman movie. Unlike the Matt Reeves movie The Batman: Part II, The Brave and the Bold takes place within the DCU continuity that began in Creature Commandos and Superman. It will pair Batman with Robin, who in this story has a convoluted backstory as the secret child of Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter Talia, raised by assassins to take over the world.
In short, The Brave and the Bold will need someone like Hodson, a screenwriter who can keep stories grounded with emotional stakes, even when things get nuts.
The Brave and the Bold is currently in preproduction.
Kenan & Kel Meet Frankenstein Revives the Abbott & Costello Tradition
At the end of the 1948 monster mash classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the hapless heroes played by Lou Costello and Bud Abbott take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. Not only have they survived an encounter with the titular monster, portrayed by Glenn Strange (who had inherited the role from Boris Karloff years earlier), but also Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man, and a mad scientist played by Lenore Aubert.
No sooner does Abbott’s character assure Costello’s that all the monsters have been defeated than they hear the disembodied voice of Vincent Price. “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the Invisible Man,” he says, setting up a later film, 1951’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man.
A final teaser for an upcoming film is just one of many elements of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein that still feels modern today. And that’s why it makes perfect sense for a contemporary comedy duo to take up the mantle. Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell have announced that they’re putting their own spin on horror comedy with Kenan & Kel Meet Frankenstein.
Although we currently know little about the project, it makes perfect sense as Kenan & Kel are perhaps the most beloved comedy duo of the past thirty years. The two appeared together as teens on the ’90s Nickelodeon sketch show All That, spinning off to the sitcom Kenan & Kel and the 1997 film Good Burger. Certainly, Kenan has been the more high-profile of the two in recent years, as he’s been a Saturday Night Live cast member since 2003, but he recently reunited with Kel for 2023’s Good Burger 2.
Moreover, the Abbott and Costello monster movies are a perfect model to revive. Starting with Meet Frankenstein in 1948 and continuing through Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), Meet the Invisible Man (1951), and Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953), the films followed a foolproof formula, teaming the comedians with Universal Monsters.
The first act would introduce the duo and establish the running bits—for example, in Meet Frankenstein, Costello has a beautiful girlfriend which befuddles the straight man Abbott—and introduce the characters’ jobs. Those jobs bring the characters into the orbit of the monsters, as when the delivery drivers played by Abbott and Costello receive crates containing Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monsters, and entangle them all together. From there, however, the movie plays as both a straightforward horror movie and a straightforward comedy.
As that description suggests, Meet Frankenstein and its successors understand a point too often lost by modern horror comedies. Where too many horror comedies use the comedy to undercut the horror or go so hard into the horror that the jokes get lost, the Meet movies work keep the two genres more or less separate, without forcing one to be subordinate to the other. When Dracula hypnotizes Costello’s character in Meet Frankenstein, he’s just as frozen as anyone who meets Lugosi’s gaze. But when Abbott wakes him up, the two immediately go into one of their well-tuned argument routines.
Of course, it helps that Abbott and Costello come to their films with an established comedy persona. Which is also true of Kenan & Kel. If Kenan & Kel Meet Frankenstein can let Kel play a maniac and Kenan play his befuddled friend alongside a standard movie about a reanimated corpse, then they can match the magic of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, bringing the classic into modern times.
Gates McFadden Says Star Trek Limited Crusher’s Command to Make Room for Voyager
Gates McFadden had some standout episodes as Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, including “The High Ground,” “Attached,” and the extremely rewatchable “Remember Me,” where the ship’s doctor got trapped in one of her son’s shrinking warp bubbles and had to understand a world where everyone else had simply ceased to exist. There was also the sex candle ghost episode “Sub Rosa,” which… well, perhaps the less said about that one the better.
Still, Doctor Crusher nearly always smashed it, and why wouldn’t she? After all, she was the chief medical officer of the Enterprise-D and at the same level of command as Captain Picard’s number one, Will Riker, but scenes of her taking charge in dangerous situations were few and far between compared to Riker, and now we know why.
During a recent panel at Fan Expo Portland (via Collider), McFadden was on hand to discuss her tenure on The Next Generation, revealing that the powers that be were reticent to place Beverly Crusher in the chair too often, lest it get in the way of their future plans.
“They knew they were going to have a female captain fairly early on,” she explained. “They knew they were going to do Voyager. So, while I was put sometimes in the captain’s chair, since I had the same rank as [Will Riker], they were careful about how much they wanted to do that, because they were saving that for when Voyager happened.”
Kate Mulgrew would go on to be Trek’s first female lead on Voyager in 1995, playing Captain Kathryn Janeway for seven seasons. The actress told Star Trek Magazinethat taking the role of the first female captain was both a privilege and a challenge, allowing her to transcend stereotypes she was well acquainted with. “I was able to do that in front of millions of viewers,” she said. “That was a remarkable experience—and it continues to resonate.”
Though Beverly Crusher never quite lived up to her potential in The Next Generation, the character did endure long after the series wrapped up, with McFadden returning to play the doctor in several big-budget movies and subsequent Trek shows like Prodigy and Picard, where she was ultimately promoted to the rank of Admiral.
His & Hers Producer Teases What a Season 2 Could Explore
This article contains His & Hers spoilers.
After amassing a staggering 49.4 million views on Netflix in the first two weeks of release, His & Hers is ripe for a second season. The murder-mystery show, starring Tessa Thompson and Jon Bernthal, was initially conceived as a limited series, but its popularity may well lead to more episodes in the future.
Executive producer William Oldroyd played coy when the subject of His & Hers season 2 came up recently, saying, “You have to ask Netflix” whether it’ll happen, but he did discuss how the show’s story might continue beyond its shocking finale.
Adapted from Alice Feeney’s popular 2020 novel of the same name, His & Hers focused on a murder investigation in a small Georgia town, as Bernthal’s Detective Jack Harper and his estranged wife Anna Andrews (Thompson) tried to get to the bottom of who was responsible for the killing of several local women. After discovering that they were all involved in a horrifying incident from Anna’s past, the final episode revealed that Anna’s mother, Alice, was the vengeful murderer, having found evidence of the past crimes against her daughter on an old videotape.
So, will Anna tell Jack that Alice was the killer all along? Oldroyd suspects not, telling TV Insider that Jack wouldn’t be happy. “I don’t think Anna’s ever going to tell Jack because it would totally destroy his relationship with Alice, right?”
Oldroyd seems keen to discuss season 2 with his team, mulling the possibility of either joining the story from where we left off or jumping forward in time to explore the fallout of the reveal on Anna and Alice’s relationship.
“The question I have is, ‘Where do you pick it up from? Do you pick it up straight from where you’ve just left off? What does she do with this information? Or do we just move on?’ For me, it’s like, ‘Do you want to see what she does with that information, or do you want to just start from a position which is further down the line and she’s sitting with it, and it’s still there, and she knows the truth, see how it plays out with her relationship with her mother after that?’”
The producer, who also directed and wrote several episodes of the hit streaming series, said they definitely didn’t think beyond its first season when working on it, but admitted they’ve created some great characters and that the audience is “really responding” to the show.
If Netflix decides to pursue more His & Hers, we’ll let you know!
Sundance Says Goodbye to Park City, Robert Redford, and a Legacy That Changed Cinema
John Nein has a turn of phrase he likes to share with his fellow programmers, festival-enthusiasts, and acolytes at the Sundance Institute: Legacy is where they work. It’s their office. The veritable place to hang the hat, whether that’s on a hook near the epicenter of mainstream American filmmaking in Los Angeles, or among the further afield European partners and locales that Nein knew growing up. And it’s most certainly felt in Park City, the location where the Sundance Film Festival has lived these last 45 years, nurturing and celebrating the future of independent cinema one program at a time.
Still, when we catch up with Sundance’s senior programmer barely a week ahead of the 43rd in-person festival in the snowy ski resort town, Nein is allowing himself a brief moment to be nostalgic and backward-looking. This is, after all, Sundance’s final bow in Park City before a much publicized move to Boulder, Colorado next year, as well as the first to be held since the death of its co-founder Robert Redford. All of these things are on Nein’s mind, as are memories of the first time he came to Park City as a curious cinephile caught in a blizzard virtually 30 years ago to the day.
During a wide-ranging conversation that runs the gamut from that first snowy landing in Utah to Nein’s earliest win as a programmer when he helped discover Once, an Irish musical from a fresh-faced John Carney, we dive into a legacy that Nein has been at the vanguard of shaping for three decades, and how his institute is finding a way to say goodbye to Park City and the Sundance Kid.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You first attended Sundance in 1996 as a filmgoer, which means this marks 30 years for you. What are your first memories of arriving in Park City?
I had begun to hear about Sundance in the years earlier with films like Sex, Lies and Videotape and Cronos, and, House Party. And these films had one thing in common, they played at this place called Sundance, and I was really intrigued by what that was. I had been working in what you could call traditional Hollywood for a year or two and not really finding my place, but I went to Sundance in 1996 and said, ‘Oh, I’ve just been looking in the wrong place! These are my people.’
It was a really amazing entry into the notion of community and how important that’s been in the way that Sundance has run in parallel with the independent film movement. And in ‘96, I remember there was a big snowstorm, so I assumed that that’s what happened every year. That just all the time there was snow! So I was disappointed for years afterwards when there was only moderate snow at other festivals.
I assumed you participated in the snows of legend that cut the festival out from the outside world. Were they as apocalyptic as they’ve been described to me by wild-eyed film journalists?
[Laughs] I don’t know, I was coming from Southern California, and I just thought it was wonderful. I thought, ‘This is fantastic.’ But there is something to this. We talk about what is the secret sauce of Sundance, and this was very striking to me because [my] first year was in the analog days where the way you got a ticket was to line up in the cold outside of the box office for two hours before tickets went on sale, which meant like five in the morning. It was very early and it was very cold, but then standing there in line, you sort of think, ‘Wow, you have to really want to watch these movies in order to come here.’ And there’s something to that, right?
Thinking back to those early years for you, and beginning to work in 2001 for the festival, what was it like making that transition from being just an enthusiast to someone who actually helps put on this singular event?
It’s a great question because it probably draws a distinction between how the festival is perceived from the outside world and then how it’s put together and programmed, because I started in programming, and it really was a great perspective on the values and philosophy behind the program and what it is that the festival was trying to do. It also underscored the role that Sundance was playing in this burgeoning independent film movement, which by the time I actually started on staff had been very well established, and there was a mature industry around it. It was very different from the early ‘90s just 10 years earlier.
It was about understanding the mechanics of the festival, and that we draw from a certain pool of films and that there’s a real thought and care put into a program and its diversity, and how it tries to speak to the moment in the world. It was a very interesting way of transitioning from looking at a program from the outside—‘Oh, I liked this film, I liked this film’—to ‘why are we doing this and what is this program about, and how does it reflect the place that we’re in, in cinema?’
And you know, I’ve now bridged a generation or so of programmers, yet the philosophy and the values are the same, and they have come from something that’s passed down in this group of people who’ve curated the program.
What is a memory you most cherish when you think about Park City?
I have always felt, and I think that many of the programmers feel the same way, that the most rewarding moment is when you see a filmmaker watching the reception of their work. Whether it’s them at their first screening, and it’s a very emotional experience for many of them—it’s validating in a way, especially for those first-time filmmakers. A lot of us find it very rewarding to be with filmmakers in this transformational life-changing moment, and you see it. There’s also so many times when you see how a little film just comes into the world, nobody was looking for it, and it makes its way and it just becomes this thing.
So for me, my first year as a programmer, I went to the Galway Film [Fleadh] in 2006, a regional festival in Ireland, and there was a works-in-progress screening of a movie called Once, and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a scrappy, small, beautiful, intimate love story with great music.’ I knew the frames a little bit, but I just felt like this is a movie that could go someplace.
So watching their success at the festival and subsequently at the Academy Awards, [meant something] because I associate it with my first year too. John Carney, who now has made so many films and has such a fantastic career, it was really his breakthrough moment. And in a weird way, for me, it was my earliest moment in programming.
In fact, I remember going to Galway and realizing that nobody had told me what I was supposed to do if I liked a movie. So while watching this movie, I remember sitting next to the late Bingham Ray, and saying, ‘Yeah, I don’t know but this movie was really good. I guess I should do something about that?’ And he said, ‘Let me introduce you to the producer,’ who he and [filmmaker Eamonn Bowles] knew. But I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do, so there was a way in which that was a very early memory for me.
This is going to be the first Sundance without Robert Redford, as well as the last in Park City. Does it feel different this year?
I think we had been planning for a festival that celebrates the history of the festival in Park City, and then when Redford passed away it became also a way of honoring his legacy, and those two things went hand-in-hand in a kind of beautiful way. And one of the reasons for that is because Redford always put the artist forward, always wanted the story of the festival to be the story of the artists who were part of it, and that was obviously true of the labs as well, and everything that the Sundance Institute does through its artist programs.
So in a weird way, what we had been planning around repertory screenings and artist talks, and gathering our community for this festival, was the culmination of 43 years in Park City. All of those things were things that we had been thinking about. And when Bob passed away, they became very much a reflection of honoring his vision and his legacy. I’ve said a few times that legacy is where we work every day. It’s our office. So I think the notion of carrying it forward into the future is something that we all feel very strongly about.
And there’s a clear vision for that. We know what this place is about and we know what he built, so I think the ways that we’re celebrating that at the festival, we have an entire second half of programs that really reflect the legacy of the festival: screenings of Little Miss Sunshine, Mysterious Skin, and Saw, and Half Nelson, American Dream, Cronos, which we added to the program. We have artist talks with important alumni, people whose careers have really flourished or been launched at Sundance. So that all feels like the right way to honor Redford’s legacy and also the history of the festival.
Do you have a favorite memory of Bob yourself?
It is actually one of the reasons that we’re screening Downhill Racer.Downhill Racer was an early starring role for Redford in a film that he produced. It was released in 1967 with Paramount Pictures, and he would gather the filmmakers at the festival each year at a director’s brunch that we have. And he told this story often, both at the festival and at the labs, of how it was that he tried to protect the creative independence of that film while making it, and how he struggled to have that film reflect the stories and the values that he wanted to tell as a storyteller.
He would tell that story year after year, and there would always be different inflections and different little pieces of information. So if you add them all up, it was a really pretty robust and amazing story. He saw it as a way of connecting with this group of independent artists, and saying to them, ‘Hey, I had to fight to maintain the creative independence of this film.’
And I believe they filmed it roughly where the Sundance Film Festival became located.
It was filmed in a couple of different locations, a lot of it is some on-location shooting in Europe, which at the time was quite extraordinary for skiing. But yes, there were many different locations, and Utah was amongst them.
You mentioned doing some of the anniversary screenings. Obviously Little Miss Sunshine at 20 years is remarkable, but how did you select others for the last year in Park City?
I do oversee the repertory program in our film preservation initiative. So part of screening these films, in addition to simply wanting to screen important films from the history of the festival, and as you noted anniversaries are always useful because people pay attention to anniversaries, but it really is also just that we’re trying to keep these films in circulation. Especially for films that for some reason are less accessible.
Half Nelson is actually a great example of a film that, because it was part of THINKFilm, which then went bankrupt and became part of a library that had a lot of litigation around it, it kind of dropped off. You would not be able to watch it. So part of this program, and part of the way we think about how we program films in the repertory section, is really about looking specifically at different films and saying, ‘Hey, someone needs to work on Half Nelson. We gotta make sure that this doesn’t disappear.’
We’ve been reminded lately that physical media and preserving cinema is more crucial than ever.
Absolutely and I’m heartened by the fact that I think other people believe that, and when you talk to independent exhibitors across the country, one of the things they’ll say is that repertory films are doing very well with young audiences. And to me, that is actually a sign of hope at a time when there are so many challenges in our field. The fact that repertory cinema is performing with younger audiences is fantastic.
The Sundance Film Festival makes its last bow in Park City between Jan. 22 and Feb. 1.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Director Explains What That Ending Means for the Franchise’s Future
This article contains full spoilers for 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple.
Twenty-eight years later, the rage virus still ravages the United Kingdom. But 28 years and 110 minutes later, or whenever the events of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple finish, the tide begins to turn. Dr. Ian Kelson seems to have discovered a cure for the virus and administered it on his most dangerous patient, the hulking Alpha Infected he refers to as “Samson.” As Kelson succumbs to the wounds he received from the maniacal Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, Samson arrives to thank the doctor—which he does by speaking words, recovering the language the virus seemed to strip away.
Does that mean the story is finished? The zombie threat has been solved and the good guys will live happily ever after? Not so, says Bone Temple director Nia DaCosta. In a debrief with The Hollywood Reporter, DaCosta points out that Samson is “not fully cured, and the level that he is healed is permanent. He’s not what he was, but is he one of us? I don’t know. But he’s not what he was.”
DaCosta visualizes that difference throughout the film. Even before Keslon (Ralph Fiennes) muses that the Infected must see things differently than uninfected people, we see through the perspective of Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry) in which other people become raging zombies from which he must defend himself. In one of the movie’s most poignant moments, Kelson’s treatments allow Samson to relive an experience on a commuter train, recalling the humanity that he once had. As Kelson puts it, the rage virus seems to cover over the person who was once there.
While some might object that Kelson’s field medicine would be able to find a cure went undiscovered by neither the U.S. military in 28 Weeks Later nor the Scandinavian officials seen in 28 Years Later, the discovery matches the movie’s theme. Writer Alex Garland continues the humanitarian worldview that he established in the previous film, suggesting here that some like Sir Jimmy (Jack O’Connell) use their pain to create a dogma that harms others in the name of charity, while others such as Kelson respond to hurt and threat by seeking the humanity in others. Kelson’s cure does exactly that, finding what remains in the Infected instead of destroying it.
The movie’s closing scene with Jim (Cillian Murphy) choosing to help Spike (Alfie Williams) and Kelli (Erin Kellyman)—after lecturing his daughter on the importance of helping rebuild an enemy instead of annihilating them, no less—suggests that the next movie will show how Kelson’s cure can spread across the Infected.
Then again, the future is uncertain, even for DaCosta. The same level of latitude that allowed her to make the movie her way means that she doesn’t necessarily have full insight in the next installment, which will be directed once again by Danny Boyle. She couched her answer in the admission that, although she recently spoke with Garland about it, she had “strong opinions about how I approached [the cure] for this movie” and didn’t want “to say anything that might need to be retconned.”
In other words, we won’t know for sure until 28 Years Later 3 comes out. But after two and a half decades, what’s another couple of months?
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is now playing worldwide.
How Tom Hiddleston Channeled the Joker to Play Loki
Before the Joker, there was Loki. The Clown Prince of Crime may take on different personas and attitudes to befuddle Batman and the citizens of Gotham, whether it be Heath Ledger constantly changing his story about his scars or the prank-filled capers he pulled off in early comic book stories by Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson. But even on his best days, the Joker is borrowing moves from the Norse trickster god Loki, a shapeshifter known for his ability to not just change his form, but also his motivations and backstory.
Yet, in a surprising reversal. The man most associated with Loki these days looked to the Joker, not Norse mythology, for inspiration. Specifically, Tom Hiddleston drew ideas from Jack Nicholson‘s take on in the 1989 movie Batman. “Truthfully, I don’t think I would’ve played Loki without that film,” Hiddleston told host Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“I think the way Jack Nicholson played the Joker… at the time in my life when I saw it, it made such an impact on my imagination.” In particular, Hiddleston was drawn to joy that Nicholson brought to the character. “I understood he was the villain, but he was having such a good time — that could describe somebody else I know — and he was so charismatic and so inventive and so free.”
That description may help us understand why Hiddleston returns to the character so often, even planning to reprise the role for this year’s Avengers: Doomsday, despite having brought him to a satisfying conclusion at the end of Loki‘s second season. In Hiddleston’s hands, Loki has indeed been inventive and free, moving from the clear baddie of Thor and The Avengers to something of an antihero and even sacrificing himself at the hands of Thanos to allow Banner to escape to Earth at the start of Avengers: Infinity War. Each time he appears on screen, Hiddelston’s Loki is a little different: sometimes threatening, sometimes noble, always charming.
That mercurial element tracks with Nicholson’s performance in Batman. Although the film gives Joker a definitive origin as a high-level gangster who gets set up by his boss—an origin absent from the comics—Nicholson seems to be playing a different person in every scene. Sometimes, he’s a mastermind who seeks the forceful takeover of Carl Grissom’s (Jack Palance) gang. Other times, he’s an art lover who simply wants to express himself. Sometimes he’s a populist revolutionary, sometimes he wants to kill them all.
For Hiddleston, the appeal of the Nicholson Joker isn’t all that a complicated. “I guess it’s in my make up as a fan, as someone who loved movies as a child. I loved villains who enjoyed themselves,” he admitted, adding to the list Alan Rickman in Die Hard and James Mason in North by Northwest. “I mean, Alan Rickman, particularly in that film, was having such a good time and was so likeable.”
Obviously, Hiddleston has succeeded in making Loki likable for fans and enjoyable to play. But if he ever gets tired of playing the god of stories, then there is an opening for a certain grinning villain in James Gunn’s new DCU…
Luke Cage: Mike Colter Won’t Confirm or Deny an MCU Return
Luke Cage has some unfinished business. At least, that’s what Cage’s actor Mike Colter said about the character he played in the Netflix series Luke Cage. Across two seasons, Cage established himself as the superman of Harlem, a wrongfully-convicted man who gained super strength and invulnerability due to prison experiments. He was last seen alongside not just the Iron Fist Danny Rand, Cage’s partner in the comics, but also with Jessica Jones and Matt Murdock a.k.a. Daredevil. Now Murdock has come to the MCU with Daredevil: Born Again, which will welcome back Jessica Jones in its second season.
Is Cage far behind? Colter isn’t saying for sure. “I’ve had conversations and I’ll leave it at that,” he slyly admitted while visiting Shawn Stockman’s On That Note. “Daredevil’s back. Jessica’s back. We’re in a better position to see this come into fruition faster than we think.” Which isn’t a strong “yes.” But that isn’t a “no” either.
While much of the conversation with Stockman focuses on music—which is, after all, the topic of his show—he and Colter cannot help but express their love of Luke Cage a.k.a. Powerman, one of the most prominent Black superheroes in comics. Created by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska, Roy Thomas, and John Romita Sr., Cage first appeared in 1972’s Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1.
In the same way that Iron Fist andShang-Chisought to jump on the martial arts craze and Blade and Werewolf By Night wanted to capture some of the horror buzz, Cage was created to take advantage of a larger interest in Blaxploitation films, and his earliest appearances matched the tone of Shaft and Superfly, albeit in an all-ages comic book tone. However, Cage truly found his footing when being paired with Iron Fist for genre heavy adventures, which continued to define the character even when he was elevated to Avengers status in the mid-2000s by writer Brian Michael Bendis.
It was Bendis’ work on the character that caught the attention of Netflix, who based their Marvel shows on his street-level comics. But while Colter’s performance was rightly praised, as was the show itself—especially the first two thirds of season one, which co-starred an electric Mahershala Ali as the villain Cottonmouth—he has not yet been revived for the current MCU.
Which isn’t to say that Colter has been missing from screens. In addition to a main role in the cult favorite series Evil, Colter stole the screen from Gerard Butler in the pulpy actioner Plane, and in fact will be the star of a sequel, now in production.
Yet, it’s hard to imagine a better time to bring in Colter as Cage than Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season. The season borrows heavily from the Devil’s Reign storyline from the comics, in which Mayor Wilson Fisk outlaws all masked vigilantes from New York City, waging a war against the heroes. Of course, Fisk loses in the end and is expelled from office. And who takes his place as mayor? Why, none other than the Power Man, Luke Cage.
Will Born Again‘s second season include that plot beat and give us Mike Colter as Luke Cage again? Colter isn’t saying, but that sure sounds like some business we’d like to see him finish.
Daredevil: Born Again season 2 premieres to Disney+ on March 4.
Marty Supreme’s Box Office Success Proves that Audiences Want Complex Films
Clearly, no one can dispute Marty Supreme‘s success. But the success of protagonist Marty Mauser, played by Timothée Chalamet, remains in question. The movie ends on an ambiguous note, leaving fans to continue to debate its meaning. In this age of superhero blockbusters and Disney live-action remakes, such complexity seems like box office poison. But audience’s embrace of Marty Supreme proves that viewers want something more than easy-to-understand good guys and bad guys.
Like Safdie’s previous collaborations with brother Benny, Marty Supreme follows a mess of the protagonist’s own making, as arrogant and reckless ping-pong phenom Mauser shamelessly seeks a rematch against Japanese champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), exploiting anyone who has the misfortune to enter his orbit. Chalamet gives a virtuoso performance, at once charismatic and repellent, inviting viewers to hold him in contempt as much as they watch him with awe.
Safdie, who co-wrote the script with Ronald Bronstein, matches Chalamet’s layered performance with his filmmaking. The movie follows the beats of a traditional underdog sports story, its spectacle heightened by incredibly-shot table-tennis matches and a powerful synth score by Daniel Lopatin. Yet, it doesn’t shy away from Mauser’s despicable behavior, nor from unpleasant moments, such as a subplot involving a low-level hood (Abel Ferrara, director of NY scuzz classics such as Driller Killer) and an injured dog.
At no point does Marty Supreme tell the viewer how to feel about the character or the events, which seems like the kiss of death at the box office. In a year when Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash topped the box office, both films that end with heroes saving the day and obvious bad guys given their just rewards, Marty Supreme seems like the sort of thing that would garner a following among the same weirdos who love Ari Aster and Oz Perkins flicks and be ignored by everything else. But Marty Supreme‘s returns show that there’s a desire for messy works with no clear moral message.
The same could be said of A24’s other $100 million dollar grossing movie. While Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s ecstatic message of contentment and empathy resonated with many moviegoers, it also sparked a backlash in which film fans dismissed it as glib and cloying. Worse charges were hurled at Civil War, which came under fire for refusing to map its characters onto our current political climate, and at Materialists, who some found as either too kind or or too critical of its doomed romantics. Yet, these varied controversies did not keep moviegoers from seeking the films out.
As these numbers show, audiences certainly want spectacle with clean narratives and simple morality. But they can also handle some nastiness and ambiguity along with their popcorn fare.
Marty Supreme is now playing in theaters worldwide.
