James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” remained the dominant force at the China box office over the Dec. 26–28 frame, adding RMB166.4 million ($23.4 million) to lift its local cumulative total to RMB700 million ($98.6 million), according to Artisan Gateway.

Disney’s “Zootopia 2” held steady in second place, grossing $15.2 million in its fifth weekend. The animated sequel has now amassed $558.3 million in China, cementing its position as one of the market’s highest-grossing releases of the year.

Maoyan Movie’s new release “The Fire Raven” opened in third place with $2.8 million. Directed and written by Sam Quah, the crime thriller centers on a cold case involving the murder of a student in Duma City, with a witness and a police officer drawn into a wider web of corruption and retribution. The film stars Peng Yuchang, Alan Aruna and Chang Ning.

Romantic drama “Love Is Hard,” from Ncm Television, was at No.

Actor, singer, sex symbol and style icon Brigitte Bardot, who retired from acting and became controversial for her right-wing politics in her later years, has died. She was 91.

Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals, who confirmed the news to The Associated Press. No cause of death was provided, and arrangements for funeral or memorial services have not yet been announced. She had been hospitalized last month.

In the 1950s Bardot ignited an international zeal for boldly sexual European movies, often directed by her first husband, Roger Vadim, such as “And God Created Woman.”

Though Bardot’s reign as a major box office draw was relatively brief, and she retired from films in the early ’70s, her influence was far-reaching: She made youthful, pouty, nubile blondes a staple in cinema, particularly in American movies,...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year at the box office, and the sleigh full of Christmas Day releases continued to deliver on Friday. However, it was James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” that led the pack for the second weekend in a row.

Disney’s third “Avatar” installment earned $22.6 million domestically on Friday, a roughly 39% decline from last week’s opening day. The film has grossed $46.6 million since Christmas and looks to add a total of $75 million to $80 million domestically by Sunday. North American earnings should reach $176 million by the end of the week.

Rounding out the top five were two holiday newcomers, including Jack Black and Paul Rudd’s “Anaconda” and Timothée Chalamet’s “Marty Supreme,” as well as holdovers like Disney’s “Zootopia 2” and Paul Feig’s “The Housemaid.”

A24’s “Marty Supreme” took second on Friday with $6.73 million domestically from 2,668 locations. The...

Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” now in theaters, is made up of three very different segments, each with a notable cast discussing the nature of their family relationships. One thing they have in common is a specific color: A deep red, the color of a jammy merlot, is a throughline that appears in each character’s contemporary clothing.

Set in New York state, Dublin and Paris, the three segments each revolve around an adult sibling pair. While in the first two, the siblings have somewhat uncomfortable interactions with their parents, in the third Paris section, the twin brother and sister have only memories of their late parents to excavate.

The clothes worn by cast members including Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett and Charlotte Rampling appear to be everyday items, but costume designer Catherine George explains that all the pieces seen onscreen — even Tom Waits’ very mundane hoodie — were made...

A funny thing happened when Netflix put the “Stranger Things” finale in theaters: Fans bought tickets. A lot of tickets.

The AMC Kips Bay in New York City listed 11 screenings as “almost full” on New Year’s Eve alone. The 34th Street theater filled up nine screenings, and Lincoln Square had five showings nearing capacity. The same demand was seen on the opposite coast in Los Angeles, where The Grove packed the house for seven screenings, the Century City AMC had eight, and Universal CityWalk turned out 11. Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, and more cities where the finale is playing saw similar demand, and all of these sales took place days before showtime. By New Year’s Eve, Netflix’s latest “event” screenings should be even busier.

Now, this may not be surprising to some of you — “Stranger Things” is one of the most-watched properties on Netflix and has been for nearly...

Writer and director Quentin Tarantino has made a name for himself delivering violent, dialogue-heavy dramas that draw heavily from exploitation cinema. His two-part ode to revenge movies, "Kill Bill," is likewise part kung fu epic, part Spaghetti Western, and part samurai film, with some other exploitation genre references sprinkled throughout. However, the biggest inspiration for the film is probably none other than actor Meiko Kaji. 

Kaji is a Japanese action star best known for playing the title character in the 1973 samurai revenge thriller "Lady Snowblood," though she appeared in more than 100 film and television roles across her career, helping to shape 1970s Japanese exploitation cinema along the way. Those movies,...

Some comeback!

The past 12 months were supposed to turn things around for struggling cinemas. But instead of heralding a dramatic return to moviegoing, 2025 is running neck-and-neck with the middling 2024 box office, and will fall far short of the $9 billion in domestic ticket sales that most analysts expected the theatrical movie business to easily eclipse. Prior to the pandemic, North American revenues would regularly hit between $10 billion to $11 billion. The 2025 results are a massive disappointment that no amount of spin can change. (Already there’s talk of how much better 2026 will be.)

“There’s an unfortunate trend, which that we just can’t get the industry to $9 billion at the domestic box office,” says Mike Sherrill, the chief operating officer of dine-in cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. “It looks like it’s going to be two years in a row that the industry flatlined.”

More worrisome is the reality that many of...

The western genre (for lack of a better word) is an American creation, but a handful of other countries dabbled in the genre over the years as well. The most notable, of course, is Italy, which produced hundreds of so-called "spaghetti westerns" through the 1960s and 1970s. But what exactly is a spaghetti western?

The long explanation can be found here, but the shorter answer is that while American westerns tend to mythologize "the west" and the cowboys who called it home, Spaghetti westerns are more prone to tearing down those archetypes and dissolving the line between good guys and bad guys. They're westerns made by Italians, frequently shot in Spain,...

The way of water has no beginning and no end — just like spoilers. This article discusses major plot details from "Avatar: Fire & Ash."

"Avatar: Fire and Ash" closes the second act of James Cameron's "Avatar" saga, essentially telling the second part of the story started in "The Way of Water." Despite criticisms to the contrary, the movie does a lot more than just repeat certain ideas from the previous film. This is the movie where James Cameron most overtly argues against pacifism, a movie that forever changes Na'vi and even Tulkun culture in regards to violence. "Fire and Ash" introduces an antagonistic clan with quite bloody aspirations, forever...

In 1986, James Cameron was a young filmmaker under immense pressure as the writer and director of “Aliens,” a big-budget follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi classic. Although tensions were high, he formed several alliances on that movie that would serve him well for decades to come — star Sigourney Weaver, for example, became a key collaborator on later films, up to and including Cameron’s latest, “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”

Even more pivotal was Cameron’s partnership with special effects artist Stan Winston, who had previously joined forces with the director on “The Terminator” but brought the collaboration to new artistic heights (and an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects) with his designs for “Aliens.” Winston and Cameron reteamed in 1991 for “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (a dual Oscar-winner for Winston in the categories of makeup and visual effects), and it was not long after that film that Cameron and Winston had a fateful conversation.

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Opinions vary, but it's generally accepted that 2017's "Thor: Ragnarok" is one of the best Marvel Cinematic Universe movies to date. Thanks to the refreshing, funny direction by Taika Waititi, it made for a welcome rebound from "Thor: The Dark World," which helped set a low bar for the MCU. And though she was largely a one-and-done villain, the movie also benefited from Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett's presence as Hela, the Goddess of Death and a villain whose appearance was actually inspired by the McU's fans themselves.

In a 2017 interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Blanchett explained how she and her collaborators...

"The Testament of Ann Lee," directed by Mona Fastvold — partner of fellow director Brady Corbet, with whom she worked on "The Brutalist" and who co-wrote this historical musical epic with her — depicts the founder of the Shaker movement, portrayed by Amanda Seyfried. As Fastvold and some of her colleagues (including Seyfried) discussed over a variety of interviews before the film's wide release on Christmas, the director and her composer, Daniel Blumberg, detailed how they ensured that real Shaker hymns were a part of the film.

Speaking to IndieWire, Blumberg — who won an Oscar for his score for "The Brutalist" — said that he found himself fascinated by "the early formation of the Shakers,...

Editor’s Note: This review originally ran during the 2025 SXSW Film and TV Festival. “The Dutchman” opens in select theaters on Friday, January 2, 2026.

André Holland continues his streak as one of the sharpest dramatic actors working today — and I’m not just talking about “Moonlight,” have you seen TV’s “The Knick”? — as a New York businessman in marital freefall in Andre Gaines’ “The Dutchman.” Gaines and co-writer Qasim Basir lift Amiri Baraka’s classic 1964 play out of its midcentury Civil Rights Movement context and transplant the text to present-day Manhattan, where Clay (Holland) is going mad over his wife Kaya’s (Zazie Beetz) recent admission of an infidelity.

So launches a dark night of the soul through the city that echoes “Eyes Wide Shut” — in which mysterious women also tempt a spiraling Tom Cruise over an evening after Nicole Kidman confesses to extramarital thoughts — and even “After Hours” with...

The Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild (Muahs) has announced the nominations for the 13th annual Muahs Guild Awards. On the film side, nominees are led by the usual suspects of the 2025-2026 film awards season: “Frankenstein” and for its prosthetic work by Mike Hill and Megan Many, plus “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “Wicked: For Good,” and “Weapons” — all in three categories.

Television series were also nominated for the awards, with a voting tie in the Best Contemporary Make-up in a limited series or made-for-tv movie, resulting in six nominees. See the full list below. Other films nominated throughout the categories included “Bugonia,” “Eddington,” “The Smashing Machine,” “Marty Supreme,” “Superman,” “The Naked Gun,” and more.

Winners will be honored at the Valentine’s Day awards gala on Saturday, February 14, 2026, at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. The announcement was made by Julie Socash, President of Muahs, IATSE Local 706.

Feature-length...

When you ask who the most powerful superhero is, the go-to answer for most would be Superman. He's the most famous superhero there is and across his almost century-long existence he's been depicted with practically every power you can think of. It helps that Superman's most obvious power is his strength and invulnerability. Short of some green kryptonite, little slows Superman down, and in some stories he's even powerful enough to move whole planets.

But might there be a DC Comics superhero even more powerful than Superman? A leading contender is Aquaman. Arthur Curry's powers have historically been reduced to breathing underwater and talking to fish. But his strength and endurance is,...

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” “Weapons,” “Frankenstein and “Wicked: For Good” led the 13th annual Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Award nominations.

The films all three landed nominations apiece.

The makeup and hair team behind “One Battle After Another” was nominated in contemporary makeup and special makeup prosthetics. Arjen Tuiten, who was nominated in the latter category, used prosthetic pieces, contact lenses and dentures for Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw in the film’s third act after he survives a horrific car crash.

For “Frankenstein,” Mike Hill, the film’s prosthetics artist, steered clear of the classic zombie, and used 42 prosthetic pieces to transform Jacob Elordi in Guillermo del Toro’s Creature.

Francis Hannon had her work cut out for her on “Wicked: For Good.” Aside from keeping Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba green, she had to work with Mark Coulier to transform Jonathan Bailey into the...

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" franchise hasn't always hit home runs, but Tobe Hooper's original 1974 cannibalistic nightmare is widely regarded as one of the best horror films of all time. For many fans, "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is a gritty, realistic, unrelenting exercise in pure terror — and that's what it makes it awesome. However, naysayers like influential critic Roger Ebert argue that Hooper's sweat-drenched slaughterfest lacks any real vision or merit in terms of storytelling. As Ebert wrote in his review:

"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises — a real Grand Guignol of a movie. It's also without any apparent purpose,...

Beyzaie, who has died aged 87, wove myth, folklore and classical Persian literature into stories that defend against a regime which sought to obliterate them

One of the last messages I sent to the great Iranian stage and screen writer-director Bahram Beyzaie was a recent photograph, taken by a friend, of the interior ruins of Tehran’s oldest cinema, Cinema Iran. There, on one of the walls, hung posters of Beyzaie’s 1988 film Maybe Some Other Time, positioned above and below the torn portraits of the supreme leaders of the theocratic regime.

The symbolism – the ideological ruin; cinema and the future – was too striking for something so accidental, particularly given that...

Say what you want about the "Indiana Jones" franchise, but it has produced a string of big, bold, well-received movies. Despite things like the alien antics and general Shia Labeouf-ness of 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" or 1984's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" getting banned in India for obvious reasons, the silver screen adventures of Henry Jones Jr. (Harrison Ford) have consistently received reviews that have ranged from good to great. The video game leg of the property has also yielded some well-received titles, including the sweet 1992 LucasArts adventure "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" and the stellar 2024 game "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

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Kevin Smith has always been a beacon for aspiring indie filmmakers to look toward. His feature debut, "Clerks," became the little indie darling that could, kicking off his career in impressive fashion. All eyes were on Smith and what he would do next. He leaned into his comic book nerd sensibilities and made "Mallrats," a buddy comedy that takes place, well, at a mall. Though the movie was a big disappointment in its day, it has since become a fan favorite. More than that, it also gave Smith the rights to Jay and Silent Bob, which greatly influenced his career from that point on.

Primetime television had a brief superhero moment in the 1970s when shows like "Wonder Woman," "The Six Million Dollar Man," "The Bionic Woman," "The Incredible Hulk" and "The Amazing Spider-Man" became hugely popular with young viewers. Their special effects were primitive (limited mostly to miniatures), but what they lacked in high-tech pizazz they more than made up for with practical stunts. They look positively quaint 50 years later, but, as someone who grew up watching them, they were must-watch television. Miss an episode, and everyone in your elementary school peer group would freeze you out.

Seeking to, er, ride the wave of small-screen superhero success, NBC introduced Patrick Duffy, one year...

In documentary I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the actor and his family revealed that doctors told them to ‘prepare yourselves for the worst’

Chevy Chase suffered “near fatal” heart failure which led to him being placed in an induced coma during the pandemic in 2021, according to a new film about the American actor and comedian.

As documented in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon movies, who hosted the Oscars twice, spent a total of five weeks in hospital.

The character of Elim Garak (Andrew Robinson) first appeared on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in the episode "Past Prologue", only the second episode of the series. Garak, as Trekkies can tell you, was the only Cardassian left on Deep Space Nine after the Cardassian military occupation of Bajor had ended. Despite lingering prejudices against him, Garak remained on the station as a tailor, but his demeanor implied that he was up to something beyond mere sewing. Garak was always a suspicious character, grinning like he had just found out something intensely personal about you. He would often talk about how there was no such thing as objective truth, inspiring...

Worldwide box office: December 26-28 RankFilm (distributor)3-day (world)Cume (world)3-day (int’l)Cume (int’l)Territories 1 Avatar: Fire And Ash (Disney) $245.2m $760.3m $181.2m $542.7m 52 2 Zootopia 2 (Disney) $87.9m $1.4bn $67.9m $1.09bn 53 3 Anaconda (Sony) $34.5m $43.6m $20m $20m 59 4 The SpongeBob Movie: Search For SquarePants (Paramount) $33.3m $60.2m $22.1m $22.1m 51 5 The Housemaid (Lionsgate) $29.2m $60.5m $13.8m $14.1m 22 6 Buen Camino (various) $29.2m $29.7m $29.2m $29.2m 1 7 Marty Supreme (A24) $19.2m $30m $1.7m $1.7m 3 8 David (Angel) $12.8m $50m $0.1m $0.2m 9 9 Dhurandhar (various) $11.3m $120.6m $9.6m $103.8m 21 10 Wicked: For Good (universal) $9.5m $503.9m $4.2m $172.3m 82

Credit: Comscore. All figures are estimates.

‘Avatar: Fire And Ash...

The latest in our series of writers highlighting their most rewatched comfort films is an ode to the charming 80s-set comedy

While casting his knockout quasi-biopic The Social Network, film-maker David Fincher must’ve really dug how eventual Mark Zuckerberg portrayer Jesse Eisenberg handled being dumped on screen. A year before the award-lassoing Facebook drama, which led to an Oscar nomination for Eisenberg, the actor agonised through the dreamy foreground of Adventureland as reluctant carny James Brennan.

The parallels between Fincher’s and Greg Mottola’s movies begin and end with their opening unceremonious separations, yet an admittedly romantic logic does allow me to soak in the notion that the...

Cliche-ridden, excessively sentimental and lacking in historical rigour, this film is an act of nationalist self-soothing

Nothing says happy Hanukah like a Holocaust-themed movie, especially if it ends on a feelgood note of survival and reunion after a run of tragic deaths and lashings of suffering. But this Israeli-Belarusian co-production is so excessively sentimental, cliche-riddled and arguably hypocritical considering its provenance, it’s not easy to forbear.

It opens in contemporary Tel Aviv with an elderly man named Ilya receiving news he can barely believe is true: someone dear to him from his childhood is alive. This prompts Ilya to tell his grandsons for the first time about what happened...

Jérémie Battaglia’s captivating documentary follows two north African raseteurs battling bulls and systemic racism in southern France

In southern France, the ancient and controversial tradition of Camargue bullfighting remains to this day. In contrast to more lethal forms of the sport, participants – or raseteurs – win points by snatching various ribbons attached to the bulls, each of which comes with a cash prize up to thousands of euros. Following a group of athletes of north African descent, Jérémie Battaglia’s documentary paints a captivating portrait of multicultural France.

For Jawad Bakloul and Belkacem Benhammou, the two young men at the centre of the film, the hardships multiply. Because of their ethnic background,...

James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” continued to dominate the Korean box office over the Dec. 26–28 frame, grossing $8.6 million from more than 1 million admissions, according to Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council. The film has now amassed $32.5 million.

“Zootopia 2” remained a powerful No. 2, adding $3 million for the weekend and lifting its cumulative total to $50.3 million. The sequel has now crossed 7.4 million admissions, cementing its status as one of 2025’s top-performing imported animated releases.

Opening in third place was the South Korean romantic drama “Even If This Love Disappears from the World Tonight,” which debuted with $1.2 million. Directed by Kim Hye-young and based on the novel by Ichijo Misaki, the film stars Choo Young-woo and Shin Si-ah in a bittersweet high-school romance centered on a girl with anterograde amnesia whose memories reset each morning. The film has earned $2.5 million in its first five days.

Japanese...

M. Night Shyamalan made his directorial debut in 1992 with the semi-autobiographical "Playing with Anger," a film that — despite the director's eventual fame and success — remains obscure. He made it by borrowing money from his family and his friends, so it was a very personal affair. Shyamalan asked his parents to serve as associate producers on his next film, "Wide Awake," which ended up getting a sweet distribution deal from Miramax Films. In 1999, Shyamalan wrote and directed "The Sixth Sense," a $40 million film that earned an unexpected $672 million at the box office. It was also animated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

And that was...

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Gary Oldman had decades worth of moviemaking under his belt, with dozens of memorable roles during that stretch. Many love his Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan's beloved "The Dark Knight" trilogy to his Oscar-winning performance as Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour," but for a great many viewers, his role as the villainous Zorg from 1997's sci-fi classic "The Fifth Element" stands out more than just about anything else he's ever done.

Directed by Luc Besson and featuring Bruce Willis in the lead role as Korben Dallas, the movie takes place in the far future of 2257. It centers on a...

It has always been easy to trivialize Brigitte Bardot. In 1956, starring in the movie that made her a global sensation, “And God Created Woman,” what she did was not widely regarded as accomplished screen acting — or, in a certain way, as acting at all. The movie treated her as a ripe object of erotic fixation, and that’s just what she was called upon to play. She is introduced with shots of her bare feet arched just so, her body lying naked, face down on the ground. “Sex kitten.” “Baby doll.” “Teenage temptress.” At the time, she was branded all those things. Was the movie a sober French drama or soft-core porn? It was marketed as something in between.

Yet there was more at stake. And part of it is that Bardot, who died Sunday at 91, made no less a figure than Marilyn Monroe seem a sex symbol from an entirely different era.

The movie business grew up in the pages of Variety.

There is no more comprehensive chronicle of film history than Variety – hands down, no contest, case closed. This gallery backs up that bold statement by offering an array of amazing movie and movie-related advertisements drawn from Variety’s 120 years of covering entertainment and Hollywood.

Truly, the pages presented here only scratch the surface of the jewels and historical artifacts in our voluminous archives. This is definitely not an exhaustively researched selection. These are but some of the fantastic finds that we came across while working this year on the 120th anniversary issue, published Dec. 10 in print and online.

Some of these ads are for long-forgotten obscure titles, some are for classics like “King Kong,” “Casablanca,” “Sunset Boulevard,” “Dr. Strangelove,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” “Chinatown,” “Star Wars,” “Platoon,” “Silence of the Lambs,” “Rushmore,...

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Some might consider it one of the worst Marvel movies to date, but "Thor: The Dark World" is not without its moments, particularly one added at the last minute that contributed to the growing cohesion in the franchise that was being built like a Russian nesting doll. One scene in the hammer-wielding hero's second movie saw him being taunted by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who, in an attempt to push his adopted brother's buttons, briefly transformed into Captain America (played by Chris Evans), fully star-spangled (albeit in one of Cap's worst costumes), before switching back. According to "The Story of Marvel Studios...

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There is still some debate among Trekkies as to which of the "Star Trek" feature films is the best. Common wisdom dictates that Nicholas Meyer's 1982 movie "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" is the best, and some of the films that followed are essentially "Wrath of Khan" retreads. Other Trekkies, however, might prefer Robert Wise's ambitious "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" from 1979. That film is about a massive, massive cloud-like space entity — an ineffably powerful machine intelligence — that threatens to swallow Earth if its mysteries aren't solved in time. "The Motion Picture" is certainly the kind of...

Timothée Chalamet is officially the king of the Christmas box office.

It’s the third consecutive holiday season where the A-list star has thrived at the box office, a reign that began with 2023’s family-friendly musical “Wonka” and continued with 2024’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.” This year’s ping pong adventure, “Marty Supreme,” extended the trend, serving up a stellar $27 million over the four-day frame. And Chalamet’s domination around the merriest of holidays should endure with 2026’s “Dune: Part III,” set for Dec. 18.

“Seemingly every year, Timothée has a major hit during the important holiday moviegoing corridor,” notes Comscore’s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian. “No matter the genre, whether it’s a musical, biopic, sci-fi or comedy, his choice in the material and collaborators has made him not only a bona fide movie star, but a box-office draw.”

“Marty Supreme” confirms Chalamet’s status as...

Tony Scott's "Top Gun" was a huge commercial hit in 1986 and has maintained a glowing legacy ever since. More than three decades later, Joseph Kosinski gave us "Top Gun: Maverick," the critically acclaimed sequel that understands the inner workings of a thrill-inducing blockbuster. Kosinski leans hard into Tom Cruise's commitment to showmanship, and Maverick is still as gutsy and unpredictable as in Scott's original — which is precisely the source of conflict in the blockbuster sequel. Part of the film's appeal lies in the specialized planes that the characters (mostly Maverick) fly, where every design detail and prop plays a seminal role in selling us the fantasy of "the fastest man alive.

One of Laura Dern's more high-profile roles was playing Dr. Ellie Sattler in Steven Spielberg's 1993 adventure film "Jurassic Park." Dr. Sattler was a paleobotanist who had been invited by the Burl Ives-like John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to visit his soon-to-open zoo on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. Hammond had, thanks to some genetic tinkering, found a way to clone and resurrect long-extinct dinosaurs, and hoped to display them in a Disneyland-like Jurassic Park. Sattler was there to give her approval on the endeavor, but, to Hammond's dismay, rejected the idea. It seemed that a Jurassic Park is inviting chaos.

And, of course, when the...

There's an obvious reason techno-thriller movies continually resonate within an ever-evolving society: they directly speak to that very notion of change. The type of sci-fi and cyberpunk movies that become enduring objects, however, further associate that change with an internal endeavor toward growth and self-actualization — you may notice how many films on this list feature bodily transformation, or otherwise act as allegories for the transition of identity.

These movies typically literalize these ideas through plot mechanics that manifest in ambitious, heady story components and impressive makeup effects work. You can be certain that all the movies on this list endure from multiple perspectives: that of tangible filmmaking and artistic craft,...

"The Big Lebowski" is a Coen Brothers classic that's full of amazing quotable moments and centers on one of the most lovable and coolest characters in cinema history: Jeff Bridges as The Dude. It's easy to watch, absolutely hilarious, and has stood the test of time. Unfortunately, the opposite can be said for its bizarre sequel, "The Jesus Rolls," which came out more than 20 years after "The Big Lebowski" and absolutely tanked with audiences and critics alike.

"The Jesus Rolls" was a strange follow-up because it's also a remake of the 1974 French film "Going Places," and it only exists because writer, director, and star John Turturro begged the Coens to...

Burt Reynolds had many classic roles, from Bo "The Bandit" Darville in "Smokey and the Bandit" to Lewis Medlock in "Deliverance." Prior to both of those examples, however, the actor had a chance to take on what would have surely been the most well-known role of his career when he was offered the chance to lead the James Bond franchise. Why would he turn it down? Well, it was for the simple reason he felt the character had to be played by a Brit. Still, during multiple interviews in the years since, Reynolds said he felt "stupid" for saying "no" to Bond.

For as many great roles as he had,...

Meta-storytelling and meta-humor are huge these days, drawing from a long tradition of horror movies that got a little tongue-in-cheek and crystallizing into its current form on shows like "Community" and "Rick and Morty." Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, however, audiences weren't super clued-in to those kinds of meta jokes, which makes a great little moment on an episode of "Happy Days" that much better. In the episode of "Happy Days" that introduced Robin Williams as the alien Mork from the planet Ork, Ron Howard's character Richie has Mork watch some TV, and he lands on "The Andy Griffith Show." Delighted, Mork tells his new friend, "I like that boy Opie!

During a recent episode of the “Team Deakins” podcast, Kate Winslet discussed her debut in Peter Jackson’s 1994 drama-thriller “Heavenly Creatures,” which follows the Oscar winner and Melanie Lynskey as two teens who share a dangerously obsessive friendship. When asked how much of herself she brought to the role of Juliet, Winslet shared that her “first intimate experiences” as a teenager were “with girls,” which helped her understand the “really intense connection” at the heart of the film.

“I’ll share something I’ve never shared before. Some of my first intimate experiences as a young teen were actually with girls,” Winslet said. “I’d kissed a few girls, and I’d kissed a few boys, but I wasn’t particularly evolved in either direction.”

She added, “At that stage in my life, I certainly was curious, and I think there was something about the really intense connection that those...

The spin-off game can be a tricky one, and there's no telling which property has the potential (or is handled well enough) to become a franchise. For instance, when Roland Emmerich's 1994 sci-fi film "Stargate" dropped in 1994, few could have guessed that it would eventually become a small screen spin-off machine big enough to rival the likes of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and the One Chicago franchise.  

Yet, that's exactly how things turned out for the movie. From "Stargate" rose "Stargate Sg-1," the remixed and recast TV adaptation, which explored further corners of the "Stargate" universe in ways that proved enticing enough to carry the show for an impressive 10 seasons.

In May of 2024, Deadline reported that, after just two years and seasons on "Grey's Anatomy," actress Midori Francis would hang up her stethoscope as Dr. Mika Yasuda. Francis, who was previously known for projects like "Dash & Lily," signed with agency WME to try and book more varied roles and split "amicably" from the long-running medical series, which was created by Shonda Rhimes but has been helmed by showrunner Meg Marinis since the show's landmark 20th season. 

Who was Francis's Mika, and how did she leave the series? Mika arrives in season 19 as part of a group of new interns, and thanks to a mountain of student debt, she works...

Avatar: Fire And Ash dropped a mere 28% in its second weekend and added an estimated $64m to reach $217.7m through Disney, leading an energised session that saw A24’s Marty Supreme in third place soar to $28.3m after expanding wide for one of the biggest Christmas Days of all time for an R-rated film.

Marty Supreme starringTimothée Chalamet grossed$9.5m on December 25,$17.5m over the three-day session and$27.1m over four days, following last weekend’s launch on2,668 screens.

Disney’s Zootopia 2 ranked second on $20m for a $321.4m running total after five weekends, and Lionsgate’s thriller The Housemaid...

Fans of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" — the Amazon Prime series helmed by Jenny Han, who also wrote the novels — are waiting with bated breath to catch up with Isabel "Belly" Conklin (Lola Tung), Conrad Fisher (Christopher Briney), and the rest of the beach house gang in the forthcoming movie. So why is the three-season series getting a movie in the first place instead of a fourth season?

In November 2025, Lexy Perez spoke to Han for The Hollywood Reporter about the movie and asked why Han, who's also writing and directing the film, wants to expand Belly and Conrad's happy ending. "I just see the movie as an opportunity to...

Apple TV's "Foundation" is a bold, audacious adaptation that would've been considered unthinkable just a few years ago, much like Denis Villeneuve's film versions of "Dune" and Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy were once upon a time. Isaac Asimov's original books are gargantuan, spanning millennia and dozens of planets (with even more characters). Indeed, their themes and ideas are so complex that it would've once seemed like a fool's errant to try to simplify the story to work as a film or capture it on a TV budget.

The "Foundation" series, however, excels at doing just that. It successfully brings Asimov's universe to...

Emmanuel Macron leads tributes to​ actor who became an international sex symbol ​and later embraced animal rights​ and far-right politics

Brigitte Bardot: a life in pictures

Peter Bradshaw on Brigitte Bardot – a zeitgeist-force and France’s most sensational export

Brigitte Bardot, the French actor and singer who became an international sex symbol before turning her back on the film industry and embracing the cause of animal rights activism and far-right politics, has died aged 91.

Paying tribute to Bardot on Sunday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, wrote on social media that France was mourning “a legend of the century”.

M. Night Shyamalan's divisive horror-thriller, "Old," tackles intriguing themes. The 2021 film might be a far cry from most M. Night bangers, but it dares to do something different while playing around with genre conventions. It's a bizarre, gimmicky exploration of the existential fear of aging, but this very lack of subtlety can also be a lot of fun. After all, the premise itself is inspired by Pierre Oscar Lévy's "Sandcastle," a gripping graphic novel about the far-reaching consequences of rapid aging, including intergenerational trauma. In terms of thematic depth, "Sandcastle" is the superior text here, as it is populated by compelling characters torn apart by an inexplicable phenomenon they are ill-equipped to navigate.

Brigitte Bardot, the French actress who rivaled Marilyn Monroe as a cinematic goddess for more than a decade, died on Sunday, December 28 at the age of 91. The actress, who became one of the definitive sex symbols of the 1950s with “And God Created Woman” (1956) and who later worked with several Nouvelle Vague directors including Jean-Luc Godard in “Contempt,” had been retired from films for nearly a half century. News of Bardot’s death was first reported by The Associated Press via a spokesperson for the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.

Born in Paris on September 28, 1934 to well-off parents, Bardot pursued interests in dancing and music as a child. She began her career as a young model, appearing on the cover of Elle magazine at just 15 years old. And it was not long before movie stardom came calling for her.

At 18 years old, she made her film debut in Willy Rozier’s “Manina,...