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Brendan Fraser has been enjoying a career resurgence, and fans are getting a deeper look into the actor’s personal tastes. In an interview with Letterboxd, Fraser shared the four films that have had the biggest impact on him and which he considers his all-time favorites.

One of Fraser’s picks is the French short film The Red Balloon, directed by Albert Lamorisse. Released in 1956, the 34-minute film follows a young boy in Paris who discovers a red balloon that seems to have a mind of its own.

Fraser explained why it resonates with him, saying, “There’s something magical about the way it tells a story without words. It’s simple but profound.

An update has finally been given about the movie that was set to see Tom Cruise overcome his most powerful foe yet: gravity. In 2020, it was reported that Cruise would once again work with past collaborator Doug Liman on a new thriller that would quite literally take place in space.

Liman has worked with Cruise on some of the actor’s best-loved projects, namely 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, and also directed Swingers (1996) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005). Most recently, he helmed Asteroid, an Xr (meaning Extended Reality) short film that pairs traditional filmmaking techniques with VR and AI.

Now, in conversation with Deadline, Liman has revealed that there are no...

Oldboy director Park Chan-wook continues a long string of critically acclaimed movies. The South Korean director's latest film, No Other Choice, has impressed the critics again.

The crime drama, which stars Squid Game's Lee Byung-hun, just debuted at the 82nd Venice Film Festival to stellar reviews. The film had its world premiere on Aug. 29, and features a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes out of 12 reviews.

Oldboy is one of the greatest South Korean thrillers of all time, and had a huge impact in cinema thanks to its single-take action sequences, iconic twists, and pure violence. However, it's hardly the only critically acclaimed film Park Chan-Wook has directed. No Other Choice...

Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, which marks the Korean filmmaker’s first time playing in the Venice Film Festival competition, scored an 8 1/2-minute ovation Friday after the jet-black comedy thriller’s world premiere.

The 12th movie from the Oldboy, Handmaiden and Decision to Leave writer-director is based on the 1997 novel The Ax by Donald Westlake and follows a man (Squid Game‘s Lee Byung-hun) who is abruptly laid off by the paper company where he worked tirelessly for 25 years. He grows increasingly desperate in his hunt for new work.

The crowd’s response tonight in the Sala Grande was enthusiastic, which left Park looking pleased during the ovation. The fans were noisiest for sure for Lee, the Squid Game star.

The movie also stars Son Yejin (The Last Princess), Park Hee-soon (My Name), Lee Sung-min (The Spy Gone North), Yeom Hye-ran (The Glory), Cha Seung-won (Believer) and Yoo Yeon-seok (Mr. Sunshine).

In his review,...

The reviews are rolling in for Park Chan-wook’s latest, No Other Choice, which debuted this evening at the Venice Film Festival.

Loosely based on the novel The Ax by Donald E. Westlake, No Other Choice follows a middle-aged man named Man-su who embarks on a determined job hunt after being unexpectedly fired from the paper company that he worked for 25 years. Neon has domestic rights and Mubi has a host of international territories.

Park directed from a script written with Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar and Jahye Lee. Lee Byung-hun (I Saw the Devil) and Son Yejin (The Last Princess) lead a cast that also includes Park Hee-soon (My Name), Lee Sung-min (The Spy Gone North), Yeom Hye-ran (The Glory), Cha Seung-won (Believer) and Yoo Yeon-seok (Mr. Sunshine).

The film is probably the best reviewed movie of the festival so far, with most critics swooning.

Deadline’s Damon Wise says...

Since his breakout in 2000 with Joint Security Area, after a brace of duds that are never, ever likely to grace a Western retrospective, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook might be one of the most consistently interesting and entertaining directors working in the world today. Even if you include 2006’s rather terrible I’m a Cyborg But That’s Ok, Park’s style has always evolved, moving upwards and onwards whether thematically or technically, refusing to tread water visually or recycle old ideas. Bong Joon-ho is his only serious rival in that context, which is interesting because No Other Choice — an adaptation of a literary noir by Donald E. Westlake (aka Richard Stark) — could be seen as Park’s response to Bong’s Parasite, a jet-black comedy that stars Lee Byung-hun in his most revelatory role to date. We always knew Lee could do action, but here he proves his worth as a comedy natural,...

You might not remember, but in 2020, there was an indie gem called The Climb whose release was weighed down by the pandemic. But in this writer’s humble opinion, it will go down as one of the best comedies of this decade. The duo behind that film, Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, have reunited for Splitsville — a riotous comedy also starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona, following two couples whose friendship and marriages are torn apart by crossed lines.

We at FandomWire got the opportunity to speak with Covino (director/writer/star) and Marvin (writer/star) about their latest collaboration, Splitsville, and how they use the camera, choreography, and...

For martial arts fans around the world, arguably two of the biggest names next to Bruce Lee in the genre are Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Both are men of undeniably entertaining martial arts action and while they’re similar in many ways, Li and Chan have established their own identities with their resumes, and the film world was big enough for the two of them at their peaks, much like how American action cinema had both Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The dream, of course, was to get both Chan and Li in a movie together and see them fight — either side-by-side or face off in an epic rivalry.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is now available to own on digital platforms, and ScreenRant has a clip to remind you of (or introduce you to) the movie’s blend of action, high stakes, and the occasional lighthearted moment. Tom Cruise’s final Mission (until we hear otherwise) was a critical success, and honored the franchise’s nearly 30-year history.

In addition to Tom Cruise, the movie stars Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger), Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction), and Pom Klementieff (Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2). The story sees Cruise’s Ethan hunt doing his best to stop a rogue AI called the Entity before it destroys humanity.

ScreenRant is happy to present an extended clip from Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning to celebrate its digital release. Take a look to witness the chemistry between Ethan Hunt and Hayley Atwell...

As multi-hyphenates who together have premiered a pair of acclaimed indie comedies at Cannes — first The Climb in 2019, and more recently, Splitsville — Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin have a unique perspective on the old adage that comedies don’t travel internationally.

“At the advent of cinema, what were the first blockbusters?” asks Covino in an appearance alongside Marvin on our Comedy Means Business podcast. “It was like Charlie Chapman and Buster Keaton and a ton of Pre-Code stuff where everyone was naked. But for the most part, it was slapstick. It was silent films where people were falling down or crashing into things or a hose was spraying them in the face, and that is universal and goes worldwide.”

In the case of “very specific, topical comedy that is of a place and speaking to zeitgeist only, then sure,” Covino can see a case being made that a comedy might not translate.

One of the most rewarding examples of movie magic, stunts represent cinema at its most visceral. Performers have been executing stunts on screen from the very beginning. Edwin S. Porter's 1903 film "The Great Train Robbery," one of cinema's earliest smash hits, includes numerous stunts throughout its 13-minute runtime, including shootouts, explosions, fight scenes, and horseback riding. Though CGI and special effects have become quite advanced since then, the best 21st-century action scenes are still those that employ practical effects and boots-on-the-ground stunt work.

The lineage of modern stunt performances can be traced back 100 years. Comedians Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton pioneered daredevil stunt work during the silent era. Historical epics and westerns incited shock and awe in the 1940s and 1950s. The New American Cinema films of the 1970s portrayed gritty action, while Hong Kong cinema exploded in popularity in the 1980s thanks to performers like Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh.

The opening moments of a new Peanuts special feel like returning to a childhood home. The familiar character designs and the gentle piano score immediately transport you. In Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical, the gang boards a bus for Camp Cloverhill, a setting that feels both new and deeply traditional.

This special positions itself as the first true Peanuts musical in decades, a return to a format that seems perfectly suited to its earnest spirit. Charlie Brown is eager for his last year at the camp he loves, while his younger sister Sally is a reluctant newcomer.

The core of the story quickly appears when they learn that their beloved summer retreat is in danger of closing for good. This simple conflict provides the perfect reason for everyone to, what else, put on a show.

Good Grief, They’re Putting on a Show

The story is built on a classic...

The Action Scene explores the form, history, and visceral power of action cinema through its set piecesThis column was occasioned by Issue 7 of Notebook magazine as part of a broader exploration of the unfilmable. The magazine is available via direct subscription or in select stores around the world.Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends.Unlike the wuxia warrior who soars to rafters and treetops, the fighters in the Rurouni Kenshin films (2012–21) move low and fast. Rather than immaculate choreography immaculately framed—the meat and potatoes of golden-age Hong Kong martial arts cinema—their swordplay is less studied, a quicksilver flow of action and reactions. And unlike the conventional samurai standoff, in which opponents take their time sizing each other up from a distance, the action is pure, intimate bedlam. Blades clash everywhere, from tip to hilt, bringing combatants up close; when an attack is dodged, it misses by mere inches. Some...

Seventy-five years after ‘Sunset Boulevard’ premiered in 1950, Billy Wilder’s scathing portrait of Hollywood still cuts deep. Released in the post-war golden age of American Cinema, the film follows Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a former silent film star who, unable to accept the demise of her career, hires a screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), to help her make a comeback. With gothic settings and classic noir fatalism, ‘Sunset Boulevard’ remains a towering critique of fame, vanity, and the entertainment machine that chews up and spits out its stars. In 2025, we see so much of the hyper-speed churn of online celebrities and digital insignificance that the film’s haunting message feels eerily modern. Norma Desmond’s descent into madness, once a melodramatic warning, now reads like a grim prophecy. Things to do: Subscribe to The Hollywood Insider’s YouTube Channel, by clicking here. Limited Time Offer – Free Subscription to The Hollywood...

Chuck Russell, the director of the '90s fantasy comedy starring a prime Jim Carrey, The Mask, reveals he would be more than happy to participate in a sequel to the hit that catapulted the actor further into stardom back in 1994. Carrey and Cameron Diaz have previously expressed their desire to reprise their characters in a sequel, and now Russell joins the duo in saying that he would be delighted to sit in the director's chair again for a Mask follow-up.

"I would be very happy to revisit that if we all get ourselves organized to do it," Russell said to Bleeding Cool during an interview to promote his latest movie, Witchboard. The director was asked if he might be interested in returning to direct a sequel, even if Carrey doesn't play the lead again. In his view, The Mask 2 must have Jim Carrey, as he doesn't believe that...

Charlie Kaufman is preparing to take his new short film “How to Shoot a Ghost” to the Venice International Film Festival next month, but it won’t be long before cinephiles with public library cards get a chance to watch it. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that Kanopy — the ad-free streaming service free for many library cardholders to use — has signed on as a producer and the exclusive library and educational distributor of the film.

“How to Shoot a Ghost” is directed by Kaufman and written by the poet Eva H.D., who previously wrote Kaufman’s 2023 short “Jackals & Fireflies.” Per an official synopsis, the film follows “two newly dead young people meet in the streets of Athens, amid the pulsing cityscape and the ghosts of history. One a translator, the other a photographer, they were outsiders in life; in death they struggle with the residue of their longings and mistakes. They wander the city together,...

With Liam Neeson about to step into a role nobody thought could—or should—be rebooted, there’s never been a better time to revisit The Naked Gun trilogy. Fortunately, you can do just that for the grand total of zero dollars. Beginning August 1, Paramount will make all three original Naked Gun films available for free streaming on Pluto TV. That’s right: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!(1988), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult (1994) will all be rolling out across Pluto’s on-demand comedy catalog — just in time for the theatrical debut of the rebooted Naked Gun starring Big Liam.

To many, the original trilogy is sacred comedy ground. Anchored by Leslie Nielsen’s stone-faced brilliance as Lt. Frank Drebin, these films set a high watermark for parody that few — if any — have matched. Nearly 40 years later,...

Jenna Ortega's Wednesday role launched the actress into the public eye. Wednesday is the number one English-language show on Netflix, but Ortega was initially terrified about playing such an iconic character.

Ortega spoke to Radio Times about her feelings. “I was scared s***less," she said. "I didn’t know what I was doing, I met Tim once before starting to create the character. There was just an obscene amount of pressure and worry and I wasn’t sleeping… We didn’t even know that people were going to watch it.”

She used that fear to her own advantage. “I mean that in an exciting way. I love being able to sink my teeth into something and give it my all," she clarified.

Ortega took cello lessons, learned German for the sake of just a few lines, and did extensive research on Wednesday Addams. “Because a lot of what...

Although he never loomed quite as large as Will Ferrell or Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan was a major player on "Saturday Night Live" from the moment he signed on. He was famous for playing jittery characters, perhaps most of all for the monkey Mr. Peepers. It's a character that's aggressive, weird, and brimming with confidence. If Kattan faltered for even a moment here, if he'd shown even the tiniest sign of self-doubt, the sketch wouldn't have worked. Instead, it became one of the most famous "SNL" characters to come out of the '90s: 

But despite how popular Kattan was in the late '90s and early '00s, he rarely returns for "SNL" cameos these days, nor does he seem to be in many TV shows or movies lately. How could the guy behind Mango and Gay Hitler become such an afterthought in "SNL" history? Officially, Chris Kattan left...

Bob Odenkirk is only a few short weeks away from finally stepping back into the ass-kicking shoes of Hutch Mansell for Nobody 2. Before he sets off for his violent vacation in theaters, however, he swung by San Diego Comic-Con for a conversation with Steve Weintraub at Collider's Inside Hollywood panel. While the Better Call Saul star was there delivering some behind-the-scenes stories from his impressive career, we were also able to debut a convention-exclusive sneak peek at the carnage his workaholic assassin will be caught in during his attempts to have a normal family outing. Collider's Samantha Coley was in attendance, describing an action-packed and hilarious homage to the movies of Jackie Chan that's filled to the brim with fun gags.

In the lengthy sequence, Hutch sends his family off on a duck boat ride before a few suspicious individuals arrive with bad intentions. With a clearly fake story about a tummy ache,...

Nonlinear storytelling wasn’t invented by Christopher Nolan; it’s a tool that’s as old as the medium of literature and motion pictures itself. Among the earliest examples are apparently Homer’s Iliad, Vyasa’s Mahabharata, and several stories in The Arabian Nights. When it comes to cinema, Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane can be credited for both perfecting this gimmick and making it palatable to the general public. As for television, shows like True Detective (the first season), Pachinko, Sharp Objects, Dark, and The Haunting of Hill House are the pinnacle of nonlinear narratives, at least for me, primarily because the timeline jumps gave the themes a lot of depth and fleshed out the characters in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if it was given to us straight. However, much like anything that’s popular, talentless...

Easterseals Southern California is collaborating with IMDb and IMDbPro to highlight disability representation in honor of Disability Pride Month and the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in July. The partnership will last until the end of August.

“To see the disability community featured so prominently on IMDb, our longtime partner, is incredibly impactful,” Nancy Weintraub, chief advancement officer of Essc, said. “It helps us truly reflect the spirit of disability pride, recognizing the influence, voice and achievements of people with disabilities across industries, especially media.”

According to the CDC, 25% of U.S. residents or more than 70 million people across the country reported having a disability in 2022. The longtime partnership between IMDb and IMDbPro for their annual Easterseals Disability Film Challenge acknowledges professionals from the disability community who have also worked closely with IMDb. The collaboration features curated content in the IMDb Spotlight special section, including exclusive video interviews,...

The Misquote Heard 'Round the Web Back in 2022, during Variety’s 'Actors on Actors' series, Jennifer Lawrence added a bold- if inaccurate- claim to her résumé: that she was the first woman to lead an action movie. “Nobody had ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie,” she said, seated across from Viola Davis. She was swiftly dragged across the internet, from Fox News segments to YouTube takedowns, with seemingly every outlet eager to remind her just how wrong she was. In a follow-up with 'The Hollywood Reporter', Lawrence clarified she had simply misspoken- nervous in the presence of a “living legend,” Viola Davis. Honestly, fair. I wouldn’t be able to string two words together if I was sitting across from arguably the greatest actress of her generation. And in a way, something positive did come out of the backlash: a renewed spotlight on...

Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival has announced its full lineup, which will see Radu Jude, Abdellatif Kechiche and Ben Rivers competing for its prestigious Golden Leopard.

Jude, who won the Special Jury Prize only two years ago – for “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” – will bring the much-anticipated “Dracula.” In a conversation with Variety, the Romanian director said: “If ‘Kontinental’ 25’ is my answer to Roberto Rossellini, let’s say that ‘Dracula’ is my love letter to Ed Wood.”

“There’s a lot of talk about A.I. these days, but after this film, you won’t talk about it in the same way. It’s a very radical film, a crazy political comedy,” said Artistic Director Giona A. Nazzaro.

Among all the 17 world premieres in Locarno’s main International Competition, Abdellatif Kechiche will continue his controversial saga with “Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due” – a...

Although they don’t advertise it, action thrillers like Prime Video’s Heads Of State and Netflix’s The Old Guard 2 owe a clear debt to the martial arts films of the previous century…

On a farm in a remote part of Belarus, the British Prime Minister and the United States of America are in the middle of a punch-up with a gang of young-ish thugs wearing tracksuits. Both leaders are big chaps, but they’re outnumbered and older than their opponents; their victory ultimately comes as much from pure luck as their strength. The fight reaches its comedic zenith with one goon left hopelessly coiled up in barbed wire while another’s set on fire by a stray cigarette.

This is Heads Of State, director Ilya Naishuller’s enjoyably daft action thriller which emerged on Prime Video on the 2nd July (you can listen to our extended interview...

What is a classic? It's hard to define, and definitely overused. How many new things claim to be a "classic," yet fall from favor once the hype train moves on? Classics take time. Once the initial praise has passed and moved onto something shiny and new, we're left with the movies that people still talk about years or even decades later. Sure, many Academy Award winners are now considered classics, but many more are not (check out the worst Best Picture Oscar Winners here). Meanwhile, some certifiable classics never won Best Picture or were even nominated.

For this list we're defining "classic movie" as a film that was made before 1990. Not to make you feel old, but that gives the movie more than three decades to make its case for being a classic. I'll also only be including one director's best movie, lest this list become exclusively Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford,...

Combine the three streaming platforms listed below to get access to a wonderful selection of silent films.

Movies today can be awfully…well, loud. Even if the particular movie you’re watching doesn’t drown out the dialogue with sound effects and music as so many seem to, many may yearn to return to a simpler time in cinema when movies weren’t only quieter, they were silent.

If you’re looking to watch silent movies at a price that won’t ruin your monthly entertainment budget, we’ve got the perfect solution for you. Check out our budget-friendly bundle of three services to let you watch a wide range of silent films at a great price.

What’s the best budget streaming bundle for watching silent movies?

HBO Max

Kanopy

YouTube

HBO Max

There’s only one paid streaming service in this bundle to begin with: the Warner Bros. Discovery...

Jeffrey Doe’s documentary, “Wick Is Pain,” arrives not as a simple behind-the-scenes featurette, but as an essential autopsy of a cultural phenomenon that, by all logic, should never have happened. It meticulously chronicles how the John Wick saga, now a monolithic titan of modern action cinema, began its life as a precarious, almost stillborn independent film.

The series that projects such effortless, hermetically-sealed cool was, in reality, born from absolute chaos and desperation. This is the central, delicious irony the film explores with candid insight. It peels back the curtain on a mythology we take for granted to reveal a production teetering on the brink of collapse, a high-wire act performed without a net over a canyon of debt.

We learn that hours before filming was to commence, the entire enterprise was short millions of dollars and destined for the scrapheap of cinematic history. This wasn’t just a...

When Spider-Man: No Way Home was still being made, Marvel had one of its biggest secrets to keep—Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back as their versions of Spider-Man.

Fans had been guessing it for months, with theories and leaks flying around the internet, especially on Reddit. But nothing was ever confirmed before the movie hit theaters. Marvel made sure not to show Tobey or Andrew in any trailer, promo, or poster.

Now, director Jon Watts has revealed that a Reddit post actually changed how those two characters were introduced in the movie. During a panel at the Mediterrane Film Festival, hosted by Collider’s Steve Weintraub, Watts explained what happened behind the scenes.

Related: ‘Savage Hulk’ Will Reportedly Appear in ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day,’ According to a Suprising Leak

He said that the pandemic helped them keep things quiet because everything was shot on closed stages and...

It’s hard to imagine now, but back when Spider-Man: No Way Home was still being made, one of Marvel’s biggest secrets was that Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield were coming back.

Fans had been talking about it nonstop online, and by the time the movie hit theaters, most people had a strong feeling it was happening, even though Marvel kept both of them completely out of all the trailers and posters.

Now, director Jon Watts is explaining how one Reddit post actually changed the way those two Spider-Men were introduced in the movie.

Watts recently spoke at the Mediterrane Film Festival during a panel hosted by Collider’s Steve Weintraub. When asked how the team kept things so secret, Watts said that the pandemic actually helped. “It was in the middle of the pandemic. So it was actually much easier to keep things a secret because we couldn’t really leave the stage…...

The Empire.The recent release of Bruno Dumont’s The Empire (2024), an absurdist space opera focalized around the inhabitants of a small fishing village in northern France, confirms that the past decade inaugurated a distinct period in the French director’s career. With their unblinking treatment of spiritual subject matter, Dumont’s first two features, La Vie de Jésus (1997) and L’humanité (1999), led many to declare him an heir to Robert Bresson. And while the outsized violence of his next film, Twentynine Palms (2003), drew worries that Dumont might be succumbing to a “tendency to the willfully transgressive,” as James Quandt wrote in his polemic against the New French Extremity, his subsequent work undercut such charges: Flanders (2006) and Hadewijch (2009), both unsparing but more restrained, returned to more familiar terrain, with the latter even featuring a direct homage to the swamp-water conclusion of Bresson’s Mouchette (1967). The appearance of Li’l Quinquin in 2014, however,...

There are not many franchises that have maintained the same high level of pulse-pounding quality that the “John Wick” series has. Across its five film installments, the franchise has delivered one breathtaking action set piece after another. Even “Ballerina,” the franchise’s new, Ana de Armas-led spinoff, has a second half that is practically overflowing with some of the most astonishing fights and moments of pure action mayhem that you will likely ever see on the big screen.

“John Wick” set a high bar for itself early on, and yet it has continued to hit and surpass it. In honor of “Ballerina,” here are the franchise’s seven best action scenes, ranked.

“John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” (Lionsgate) 7. Knives Out (“John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum”)

This standout scene from 2019’s “John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum” follows Keanu Reeves’ John as he ends up in a fight against multiple assassins in...

It's very strange that it took so long for Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan to break out in North America. He was a massive star in Hong Kong throughout the 1970s, and his films are exciting and fun. For some reason, though, that success didn't translate very well to American audiences, despite a few tries by major American studios.

In 1980, for instance, Warner Bros. and Golden Harvest teamed up to make "The Big Brawl," a.k.a. "Battle Creek Brawl," an American production that was meant to bring Jackie Chan stateside. "The Big Brawl" starred Chan, playing a gentle restaurateur in 1930s Chicago, who runs afoul of the mob. It co-starred Kristine DeBell, José Ferrer, Mako, Rosalind Chao, and wrestler Hard-Boiled Haggerty. The film was actually a hit, but Warner Bros. was disappointed that it wasn't as big as the recent Bruce Lee film "Enter the Dragon." Chan was...

Tom Cruise did his first underwater scene for “Legend” (1985), followed by executing far more demanding scenes in “Edge of Tomorrow” (2014) and most famously “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (2015), where he held his breath for six-and-a-half minutes. But when writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, who has made eleven films with Cruise, was on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, he made clear the duo walked away from “Rogue Nation” deeply dissatisfied with the underwater set piece.

“Shooting in water is extremely challenging and very frustrating,” said McQuarrie, who at one point swore never to do another underwater scene.

According the McQuarrie, the biggest problem is how time-consuming these scenes can be to shoot, having been limited to only six setups a day working in the tank on “Rogue Nation.” He also said there were a number of mistakes made in how the underwater scenes had been designed for the 2015 “M:i” movie, including its over-reliance on visual effects.

If Keanu Reeves’ John Wick is modern action’s heir apparent to Buster Keaton, then Ana de Armas’ Eve Macarro may be its Jackie Chan.

Series creator and mastermind Chad Stahelski has been anything but shy in sharing his affinity for Old Stone Face, with all four Wick films positively packed with references to the action genre’s first great star, and Len Wiseman’s From the World of John Wick: Ballerina does not break from that mold. But Macarro is no Wick, and where Reeves attacks with a stoic, nearly tranquilized delivery, barreling through a crumbling world teeming with inveterate assassins, de Armas is both brasher and more human. Perhaps it is the difference between a relative novice in this world and a legendary veteran, but she is a teary-eyed killer whose trail is marked with sensitivity. Wick wants solace; Macarro wants justice.

That does seem to be part...

Four years before Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” premiered at Cannes on May 18, the idea for the film was born at the festival as the visionary director presented “The French Dispatch.” Benicio del Toro had a small yet memorable role in the movie as an imprisoned artist, but Anderson wanted more for the Oscar-winning actor.

“I had a sort of image in my mind of Benicio playing a Euro business tycoon,” Anderson told Variety via email. “As if he has walked out of an Antonioni movie with his sunglasses.”

At first, del Toro thought his part would be a similar size to “The French Dispatch,” and didn’t get his hopes up. But then he read the script. “[Anderson] sent me the next 20 pages and I’m still in it and then the next 20 pages and I’m still in it,” del Toro said in an interview with Variety at Cannes.

Keanu Reeves found a second life in his career thanks to the John Wick franchise, an over-the-top smorgasbord of violence utilizing gun-fu and various weapon-based action scenes. In the franchise, Reeves plays the titular character, a former assassin for the High Table who finds himself targeted by his former employers for breaking one of their only rules. By John Wick: Chapter 4, the franchise had developed an almost Buster Keaton-styled action format, making some people wonder if anything in the film was realistic.

Reeves worked hard to ensure that he performed many of his own choreographed fight scenes and trained to pull off the moves as best he could. It also helped that director Chad Stahelski is a former stunt double, so he knows what is and isn't possible for these movies' giant action sequences, making it one of the most exciting experiences in film today. However, a former Navy...

If Mia Threapleton had to pick an avatar for her creative awakening as a kid, she might choose a fox. She could have gone with a lion, the animal she’d pretended to be during summer camps and after-school “acting clubs” with her friends, and which gave her an early peek at the thrill of performing for others. Or maybe a 1930s gangster, courtesy of the childhood viewings of Bugsy Malone; Threapleton vividly remembers seeing a very young Jodie Foster, along with dozens of other kid actors pretending to be...

Hayley Atwell disclosed on The Tonight Show that she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant while filming a hand-to-hand sequence for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, prompting new discussion about stunt safety for expectant performers. Interviews, trade reports and medical guidelines indicate the production built additional safety measures around the actor, whose insistence on doing her own fight work coincided with a film already distinguished by an outsized budget and headline-grabbing stunts.

Hayley Atwell surprised audiences when she told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that a clip from Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning shows her “eight-and-a-half months pregnant” yet still throwing punches beside Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. Speaking later with online outlet CinemaExpress, the 43-year-old actor added that producers offered a stunt double, “but I’d worked too hard—let me do it,” crediting the crew for “taking such good care” of her during repeated reshoots.

Atwell joined...

Freak accidents are inevitable in the Final Destination franchise because they're all part of death's design. However, close calls also happened behind the scenes in the original movie, with one stunt causing serious injury.

Final Destination set the template for every film in the franchise; Death comes via freak accidents. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, producer Craig Perry recalled how one stunt led to a serious injury. In the film's final sequence, Alex (Devon Sawa) is almost hit by a bus, which swerves and hits a utility pole. The pole's fastening popped, ricocheted off a building, and hit a stunt person. "He had 47 stitches and his skin flapped over his face," Perry said. "The shot is in the movie, but he stood up, and he goes, 'Uh, medic?'"

It was all in a day's work for the stunt person, who just shrugged off the mishap. "He wound up coming back to set later that night,...

Editor's note: This article contains mild spoilers for Final Destination: Bloodlines as seen in the trailer.

Over six films, the Final Destination franchise has given us some absolutely wild, jaw-dropping kills — but that’s kind of the point. Unlike other horror favorites that hinge on a killer who just won’t seem to die, the villain in these movies is faceless. And, when the all-knowing presence of death is your villain, you’ve got to get creative. If following a log truck gives you an extreme sense of dread, or if you triple-check before you cross the street, we’ve finally got someone for you to blame — Craig Perry. Since the very first Final Destination followed Devon Sawa’s visionary, Alex Browning, as he attempted to save his life and the lives of others aboard that doomed aircraft, Perry has served as a producer on the franchise. Like death’s design,...

Nearly 75 years have passed since the release of arguably one of the greatest movies ever made, and a stone-cold classic of film noir — Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, who would go on to helm other Oscar winners like Marilyn Monroe's Some Like it Hot and the Jack Lemmon rom-com The Apartment, the feature was a sensation from the moment of its release in 1950, earning 11 Academy Award nominations, three wins, and, eventually, was among the first films to be preserved in the National Film Registry. Yet, one thing the cinematic masterpiece has lacked is a proper restoration in 4K Ultra HD for modern viewers. That's about to change this summer with a new physical and digital release. Collider can exclusively share the official trailer made from restored footage of the Paramount classic.

Immediately, the trailer whisks viewers back to Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, which is looking crisper than ever.

London, England – May 12: (L to R) Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckheimer and Christopher McQuarrie attend the BFI Chair’s dinner where Tom Cruise was awarded a BFI Fellowship at The Rosewood on May 12, 2025 in London, England.

Photo by Dave Benett In London, the British Film Institute (BFI) bestowed its highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, upon the one and only Tom Cruise. The prestigious award was presented at the annual BFI Chair’s Dinner, hosted by BFI Chair Jay Hunt at the elegant Rosewood Hotel. Christopher McQuarrie, a close friend and longtime collaborator London, England – May 12: Tom Cruise attends the BFI Chair’s dinner where he was awarded a BFI Fellowship at The Rosewood on May 12, 2025 in London, England.

Photo by Dave Benett of Tom Cruise, presented him with the Fellowship in a heartfelt tribute. After working together on cinematic landmarks for almost two decades, McQuarrie expressed his admiration for...

The universe, it seems, possesses a rather grim accountant, one with an unyielding penchant for balancing the books on human existence, especially for those audacious enough to smudge an entry. This meticulous, if macabre, ledger-keeper makes a grand re-entry after what feels like an eon in the rapidly decaying memory of pop culture with Final Destination: Bloodlines.

This is the sixth chapter in a saga dedicated to the proposition that Death is not merely an event but an artist of baroque, Rube-Goldbergian catastrophe. This time, the unseen force’s attention narrows, with an almost aristocratic focus, from the randomly fortunate to a specific lineage, a family tree whose every branch is marked for an exceptionally creative pruning. One anticipates a familiar canvas of visceral terror, splashes of uncomfortable mirth, and fatality sequences of a truly… imaginative bent.

The film arrives not as a mere echo of its forebears but with aspirations to graft new,...

Wamg’s St. Louis and Los Angeles teams attended the screening of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning on Monday evening. Starring Tom Cruise and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the last film ended on a literal cliffhanger, having just survived a vast locomotive plunging off a bridge, Ethan Hunt and his fellow Imf team members – Ving Rhames’ Luther, Simon Pegg’s Benji, and converts to the cause, Grace, played by Hayley Atwell – face an uncertain future.

St. Louis writer Jim Batts first reaction out of the early preview was “Tom Cruise and his cast, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, along with a talented behind-the-camera crew, once again take movie audiences on a spectacular around-the-globe “thrill-ride”, combining a “ripped-from-the-headlines” plot with some of the most amazing action stunt sequences ever committed to film. From a sunken submarine search to a breathtaking bi-plane battle, this fantastic film is a superior entry in the nearly thirty-year-old franchise.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning could be the last time fans see Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt risk life and limb to save humanity against various threats. If this is the final Mission: Impossible movie, critics are divided on whether the franchise is going out with a bang or a whimper, as reflected in the first critical reactions before its release.

Per X (formerly Twitter), several critics offered their thoughts about The Final Reckoning following advanced screenings, sharing mixed responses to the eighth Mission: Impossible film. Gizmodo critic Germain Lussier praised The Final Reckoning's action sequences, but lamented how "long" and "repetitive" the film is. Discussing Film's Andrew Salazar went further, suggesting it "comes nowhere near" the most recent installments and "felt nothing" by the end. Additionally, freelance writer Reyna Cervantes claimed the film committed some of "the biggest sins that modern blockbusters can have."

#MissionImpossible: The Final Reckoning...

It's all been leading to this. For the eighth and (potentially) final time, Tom Cruise has put his life on the line to bring pure cinema to the masses with "Mission: Impossible -- The Final Reckoning." This latest installment of the action franchise has been a long time coming, especially after 2023's "Dead Reckoning" ended on a fairly literal cliffhanger. Ethan Hunt came up against the greatest foe he's ever encountered in decades while working for the Impossible Mission Force -- relevantly enough, a nefarious artificial intelligence known only as "The Entity." With every country's intelligence community looking for ways to turn such a superpower to their own agendas, Hunt and his tight-knit team of agents had to go rogue (of course) and do everything they could to stop this Entity and its human ally, the mysterious Gabriel (Esai Morales), from essentially taking over the world.

Where "Dead Reckoning" (formerly...

They’ve chosen to accept it with some caveats.

Paramount lifted the social embargo on Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning late Monday night, two days before the film’s world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The early response from critics and influencers suggests that reviews will be mixed.

“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is dull and dysfunctional in a way I didn't think this franchise was capable of,” Indiewire critic David Ehrlich, a longtime fan of the series, wrote on Twitter/X. “Setpieces are obviously incredible, but as someone so supportive of Tom Cruise's crusade to save the movies and whatnot, this was a massive heartbreaker.”

“Director Chris McQuarrie and star Tom Cruise truly take Mission: Impossible to the next level with The Final Reckoning. Absolutely astonishing action moments meet a sprawling story with many nods to past M:i films. It's the biggest, wildest and most consequential Mission movie yet,...

In James Mangold's safe but enjoyable "A Complete Unknown," Bob Dylan, as played by Timothée Chalamet (who just missed out on the Best Actor Oscar) tells his girlfriend Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning), "People make up their past. They remember what they want, they forget the rest." The legendary musician is notorious for doing just that, spinning questionable tales about his own life in a tradition he's very much kept alive throughout his career. His 2019 "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story," for example, was ostensibly a documentary but came packed with tall tales and fictionalized accounts of non-events, all presented as if they were incontrovertible fact.

This penchant for elaboration and misdirection, combined with his massive success and prolific output, has helped Dylan attain a kind of mythical status in pop culture. As such, you're never really sure which stories about the man are actually true — and there are many of them.

The Museum of Modern Art is spring cleaning its archives for a special ode to Old Hollywood. The exhibit “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography,” which will open June 28, 2025 and be on display through June 21, 2026, features the best studio shots of iconic stars such as Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Harry Belafonte, and more.

This is the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be showcased from the Museum Department of Film’s film stills archive since 1993. “Face Value” will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, with studio photography of Joan Crawford, Louis Armstrong, Carole Lombard, Louise Brooks, Mia Farrow, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Buster Keaton, Anna May Wong, W. C. Fields, Hattie McDaniel, Lupe Velez, Mae West, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Spencer Tracy, and Oprah Winfrey, in addition to the aforementioned stars. Historical figures such as Jackie Robinson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,...