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Plot: An astronaut (Eiza Gonzalez) wakes up on a distant planet and discovers her entire crew has been killed. Suffering from amnesia, she soon meets a fellow astronaut (Aaron Paul) who says he was part of her team, but she’s unsure whether she can trust him.

Review: Space horror is a reliable sub-genre of the sci-fi universe. Alien is the king of the castle as far as it goes, but the vastness of space is always a good place to set a horror flick, and it’s a genre that I have a particular weakness for. Event Horizon is a favourite of mine, and I even like the not-great ones, like the campy Saturn 3 or The Black Hole. Ash owes a lot to the genre classics, with director Flying Lotus clearly having a deep bench of genre knowledge. However, his influences aren’t limited to film, with many...

The Time Guardian – starring Carrie Fisher and Dean Stockwell and directed by the co-writer of Mad Max 2 – has emerged on Prime Video UK.

Star Wars royalty Carrie Fisher. Blue Velvet and future Quantum Leap co-star Dean Stockwell. Filmmaker and Mad Max 2 co-writer Brian Hannant making one of the most expensive Australian films up to that point.

With a pedigree like that, you might think that The Time Guardian would be better known than it is. Instead, it largely sank without trace on its brief cinema release in 1987, and became one of those films that was doomed to lurk on the lower shelves of VHS rental libraries.

Unexpectedly, though, The Time Guardian has emerged on Prime Video in the UK, which means subscribers have the rare opportunity to watch one of the weirdest – and less often-discussed – sci-fi movies of the 1980s.

On paper, it’s a typical B-movie of its era.

Exclusive: Paris-based genre specialist Reel Suspects has boarded Korean producer and director Kimbo Kim’s classical music-themed psychological thriller Forte for an EFM launch.

The movie revolves around young composer Yeonji (Chaeyoung Leem) who lands a dream job at the prestigious Forte Studio.

Her joy over the position soon fades when she starts working at its isolated HQ due to the eerie atmosphere and odd behavior of her new colleagues.

Fiercely ambitious and competitive, she also discovers that her new boss only wants to use her as a ghostwriter rather than letting her shine in her own light.

A battle of wills develops that escalates into a matter of life and death.

South Korea-born Kim studied filmmaking in Seoul and Prague, before founding the production company 37th Degree in Seoul in 2014, which he expanded to U.S in 2015.

Forte marks his directorial debut after producing around a dozen shorts and...

Disney veteran Joe Hale, who helped bring to life a variety of beloved animated films, has passed away. He was 99 years old.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Hale died of natural causes at his home in Atascadero, California, on Jan. 29. His passing was confirmed by Beverly Hale, his wife of almost 60 years.

Joe Hale passed away at the age of 99 due natural causes. Famous producer from Walt Disney Animation Studios he worked in movies like Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and more.We thank him for his contributions to our favorite movies may he rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/lIDo7qhd0i— Dtva News (@DTVANews) February 6, 2025

Hale worked for 35 years as an animator, layout artist, and producer for Disney. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the effects for 1979's The Black Hole. He'd previously started his work at Disney as an inbetweener on 1951's Alice in Wonderland.

Joe Hale, who spent 35 years as an animator, layout artist and producer at Disney and received an Oscar nomination for his effects work on the 1979 film The Black Hole, has died. He was 99.

Hale died Jan. 29 of natural causes at his home in Atascadero, California, his wife of nearly 60 years, Beverly Hale, told The Hollywood Reporter.

Hale started out as an inbetweener on Alice in Wonderland (1951) and worked on such other classics as Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), The Jungle Book (1967), The Fox and the Hound (1981), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) and Pete’s Dragon (1977).

In 1980, Hale was named a first-time producer on The Black Cauldron (1985), a project that had been languishing at Disney for about seven years, and he oversaw a staff of 300 artists — including a young Tim Burton — and a big budget of $44 million.

When some children found scenes in the...

Disney is in a remake mood, but there are a lot of lesser-known movies that should be redone instead of classics!

Fans will always grouse when it’s announced a remake or a reboot of a past movie is coming. Sure, now and then, a remake can work, but most fail to capture what made the original movie work so well.

Disney, of course, has been doing live-action remakes of their animated movies as well as looking at some past films. That includes Bryce Dallas Howard planning a remake of the cult 1986 movie The Flight of the Navigator.

But there’s a period that Disney should be exploring for any possible remakes: The Dark Age. This is the nickname for the period between 1970 and 1986 when Disney’s movie output wasn’t that great.

Many will note the animated films, yet the live-action ones were rough too. There were hits and...

Paris-based Reel Suspects has acquired international sales rights toLilly Hu’s teenage love triangle drama 1 Girl Infinite about two young women in southern China whose relationship is shaken up when one falls in with a drug dealer.

The film set in Changsha, China will world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in the Bright Future section on January 31, and Reel Suspects will launch sales at EFM in February.

Hu’s debut feature is produced byLatvia-based Trickster Pictures with Singapore’s Vanilla Films and US-based Ogi Film. It is executive produced by Eric Roth, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump,...

From Metropolis to Avengers: Age of Ultron, robots are such a staple of movie-going that it's easy to forget they haven't always been around. The idea of automated machines doing work for us has existed for as long as civilization, but it wasn't until 1920 that Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the word "robot" to describe a humanoid machine in a play called R.U.R.

Robots have been part of science fiction since even before the word was coined, but as powerful as literary explorations of the technology can be, there's nothing like seeing it on-screen. Maybe it's because, through the power of visual effects and production design, movies can give even the most futuristic robot an existence viewers can actually see. Or maybe it's that watching real people react to robots allows audiences to explore the relationship between humanity and technology by watching actual human bodies and faces.

Update: 2025/01/15 04:06 Est...

Sci-fi movies often prioritize stories and visuals over scientific accuracy, because their goal is to entertain, not educate. Many concepts, like space travel or futuristic technology, are based on imagination rather than real science, or at least science that is currently based on our understanding of physics still far away.

Filmmakers may also take creative liberties to make the plot more thrilling or easier to follow for the audience. Most people aren’t really all that bothered by these inaccuracies, but Neil deGrasse Tyson is not most people.

Celebrity scientist Tyon often points out scientific inaccuracies in Hollywood movies, especially in sci-fi films, not to spoil the fun but to encourage better accuracy. He often highlights unrealistic concepts, like artificial gravity or sound in space, and provides corrections based on real science.

Tyson in the past criticized Michael Bay’s 1998 thriller ‘Armageddon’ as the most scientifically inaccurate movie. However, he...

Know that when celebrated astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson nitpicks the bad science commonly encountered in mainstream Hollywood blockbusters, he's not trying to spoil anyone's fun. He's just being a nerd, and I think we can all respect that. There's nothing shameful about possessing a lot of scientific knowledge, and pointing out the physics and astronomical errors in a movie can only, one might hope, encourage filmmakers to be more accurate next time. Case in point: Tyson infamously complained to director James Cameron that, in "Titanic," he got the night sky wrong. Tyson knew what the constellations looked like in the North Atlantic on that fateful April night in 1912, and suggested that Cameron, using digital trickery, rework the skies to match. Cameron, also being a nerd, obliged.

When it comes to most space-bound movies, though, Tyson has a lot to complain about. Audiences have accepted that most sci-fi spacecraft, for instance,...

There's no question that modern sci-fi films have a certain grandeur to them, especially with the enormous budgets modern blockbusters have to play with. Yet sometimes it seems that behind all the mind-blowing CGI and A-list actors, those films just aren't saying anything new or interesting. Thankfully, due to DVDs, blu-rays, streaming services, and more, the films of yesteryear are still around to dive into whenever there's interest.

While many 70s and 80s cult classics aged poorly, there are so many more fantastic films that make for a great watch even when they're over half a century old. This was a groundbreaking era for films, featuring some of the first major uses of CGI in a movie, innovations in use of electronic music, and helping launch the careers of some of the biggest names in genre filmmaking. These ten space adventures are all great journeys not only into the farthest reaches of the cosmos,...

Traditionally, movie killers, especially slashers and horror, have been men, starting with Norman Bates in Psycho. Even though Norman did a lot of his killing dressed like his mother, he was still a man in the clothes of his dead mother. The All-Boys Slasher Club, however, has had credible challenges from some truly frightening female killers.

Upsetting the patriarchy of Leatherface and Freddy Kruger, these ground (and skull) breaking women have slaughtered gender stereotypes, as well as untold innocents, to rise to the top of the slasher body count heap. Long before empowering hashtags, these movie pioneers were shattering the glass ceiling and carving out a path for prolific female killers.

Updated on November 20, 2024, by Robert Vaux: Female killers in horror movies often follow the pattern set by femme fatales in the classic noir movement of the 1940s. Though ostensibly villains, their status as outcasts in a patriarchal society earned audience sympathy in many cases.

A quirky Estonian science fiction comedy is making waves on the international film industry after signing global sales rights with Reel Suspects. “The Black Hole,” directed by Moonika Siimets, is a bizarre examination of human nature via an unusual cosmic lens.

The film follows the occupants of a typical apartment complex whose lives are upended when a mysterious black hole forms in a lilac shrub. Its plot weaves together several unusual narratives, including two ladies participating in an alien experiment, a man falling for his neighbor, and a woman seeking sanctuary from abuse in an apartment inhabited by huge spiders.

Inspired by Armin Kõomägi and Andrus Kivirähk’s short stories, the film combines science fiction styles similar to David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg. This marks a dramatic departure from Siimets’ earlier production, the 1950s historical drama “The Little Comrade.”

“‘The Black Hole’ is a wild, cosmic thrill ride where aliens,...

Exclusive: Paris-based genre specialist Reel Suspects has acquired international sales rights for Estonian director Moonika Siimets’ absurdist comedy The Black Hole, which has been enjoying a buzzy run at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The film revolves around the residents of a drab apartment block whose lives are upended when a black hole appears mysteriously in a lilac bush, and they find themselves confronted with aliens who change their lives forever.

Sirje and Maret, who dreaming of finding work abroad, end up in an extraterrestrial science experiment; Jüri, who is still living with his mother, falls in love with his lustful neighbor; Gertrud Mariliis, who dreams of a world without abusive men, finds shelter at fearless bodybuilder Uma’s apartment full of giant spiders.

The screenplay is inspired by the short stories ‘The Spider’ and ‘The Black Hole’ by Armin Kõomägi and ‘A Life Worth Living’ by Andrus Kivirähk.

Disney was in a strange place in the mid-eighties. The younger audiences that were once their bread and butter were tired of the old Disney fare, with many of them thinking their movies were “for babies.” Indeed, the success of Star Wars had changed the game, as family-friendly fantasy – with an edge – was all the rage at the big studios, and Disney was still stuck producing antiquated G-movies like Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. They tried to make their own Star Wars-style movie with The Black Hole, as well as a James Bond-style action movie with Condorman, but neither were successful. Their big SFX-driven extravaganza, Tron, was too costly to turn a profit, so Disney dipped their toe into darker fare, such as Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the movie we’re highlighting in this edition of Fantasizing About Fantasy Films, Return to Oz.

To be sure, Disney had...

As seen from the yearly tradition of re-releasing perennial Halloween favorites The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus, Disney fans and movie fans keep flocking to these horror favorites to liven the season. And as seen from the box office, audiences are surely turning up.

However, the studio has a lot more in their library that can make for great Halloween traditions in the cinema. Imagine these hidden gems and cult classics getting a second life on the big screen, with seats being filled by fans and first-timers.

With that, here are five potential Disney movies that make for great re-releases for every Halloween season:

Frankenweenie (2012)

Tim Burton always knows that his comfort zone is in stories with horror undertones and paying tribute to his horror idols. So, he went for the chance to do both with adapting his 1984 short film and turning it into a black-and-white stop-motion flick.

But...

As Halloween approaches, there's one Disney movie that, both as a film itself and its star, may well rank as the darkest film the company has ever produced!

Disney has always dabbled in dark stuff ever since the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. For a "family-friendly" company, they've dipped their toes into horror-themed storylines a lot. That was especially true in that late 1970s/early-80s period, when the company was trying to win over new fans and break out of that image.

That included darker fare like The Watcher in the Woods, The Black Hole, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Yet one movie has to stand out as a film you cannot believe was ever made by Disney for its dark tones. As time has gone on, it's only become darker for shades the company couldn't possibly predict.

The Devil and Max Devlin.

This...

Once upon a time, in a magic kingdom, long before the Renaissance and days of corporate intellectual property piranhas, trouble engulfed the Walt Disney Studios. The New Hollywood era had transformed American moviemaking, with such titles as The Godfather, The Exorcist, Bonnie & Clyde, The Last Picture Show and M*A*S*H* attracting record-breaking audiences. These films, often directed by young, counterculture directors, also pushed the envelope on the amount of sexuality and violence a movie could show without landing an X rating.

At the same time, the Disney Studio, with its long reputation for nostalgic, schmaltzy, squeaky-clean family entertainment, seemed like a product of a bygone era. With the company facing an ever more financially tenuous future, the company bosses decided on a new strategy: emulate New Hollywood's success with more adult-leaning movies, while still maintaining the Disney brand as kiddie-friendly. If those two approaches seem at odds with one another,...

Teodora Ana Mihai’s “Traffic” was named the winner of the 40th Warsaw Film Festival on Saturday. The film was written by Cristian Mungiu, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes with “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and stars “Happening” lead actor Anamaria Vartolomei.

“Traffic” focuses on Romanian immigrants in Belgium, who go from unwanted second-class citizens to very much wanted criminals, as they decide to stage a heist that will change their lives forever.

You can watch the trailer here:

“I was excited about the opportunity to work closely with Cristian Mungiu, as he was also co-producing the project. I anticipated it would be an intense and challenging experience, but I don’t shy away from challenges, as I demonstrated with [previous film] ‘La Civil,’” Mihai told Variety.

“I believe Cristian and I have always shared a similar understanding of the themes explored in this film, which camouflages...

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Disney has recently delved into remaking some of its classic films with live-action slants. Some of them are truer to their original tales than others. They have also had varying degrees of success in audiences' minds. The Disney remakes have become a controversial topic in the fandom since a lot of viewers believe that the originals are the best versions. However, some older Disney films could benefit from a remake.

These Disney films either have outdated aspects to their stories or would simply translate well to live-action. There are also ways that these tales can be explored that could make their remakes worthwhile. Not every Disney film should be remade, but some candidates could qualify.

Update: 2024/10/01 22:46 Est By Brian Cronin

Alexandra did a wonderful job listing ten Disney movies that could really do well with remakes, and so this update is...

Paul Mazursky's 1986 comedy "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" is a sharp indictment of ultra-moneyed yuppie culture, which was running rampant during the Reagan administration. Culturally speaking, the mid 1980s saw a redoubled effort to enrich the already-wealthy and encourage rich people to become obsessed with conspicuous consumption. Many, many films and TV shows about Beverly Hills were released at this time, delving deep into the cockroach nest where America's wealthy classes gathered and cannibalized each other.

Prominent among these was Mazursky's film about a rich family, the Whitemans, that recently became wealthy thanks to a wire hanger manufacturing empire. The family are all empty and unhappy. Matriarch Barbara (Bette Midler) is attempting to fill her emptiness with increasingly strange renditions of New Age spirituality, while patriarch Dave (Richard Dreyfuss) is filling his own emptiness by having an affair with the family's live-in maid, Carmen (Elizabeth Peña). Their child...

A little while back, we ran a special Wtf episode about the 1979 Disney movie, The Black Hole, an uncommonly adult film for the family-friendly studio. It kicked off an experiment for the studio to move into adult fare, eventually spawning no less than three subsidiaries that produced some of the most influential movies of the 80s, 90s and 2000s. These off-shoots paved the way for Disney’s place as the most powerful motion picture studio in the world, with them owning Lucasfilm, Pixar and the MCU. This summer, the Mouse House released an uncommonly bold MCU movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, which sported an R-rating, and has done blockbuster business. Many are wondering if perhaps this could have the way for Disney to tackle some adult fare, but it wouldn’t be the first time, and maybe now is the time to bring back Touchstone Pictures.

So, what’s Touchstone Pictures...

Ridley Scott, renowned for his visionary approach to filmmaking, set out to challenge the conventions of the sci-fi genre with his 1979 film Alien. In a bold move, he envisioned Alien to be the complete opposite of Star Wars. Further, deliberately crafting a storyline that diverged sharply from the space opera’s epic, heroic tones.

A still from Alien (1979) || credits: 20th Century Fox

Instead of the adventurous and optimistic universe of George Lucas’s creation, Scott’s Alien introduced audiences to a darker, and intensely terrifying world. Further, redefining the sci-fi landscape with its unique, horror-driven approach.

Ridley Scott on Making Alien the Opposite of Star Wars

Star Wars set a new standard for science fiction movies. Following which, the late 1970s saw a wave of similar sci-fi films. Studios quickly released movies like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Disney’s The Black Hole, the sci-fi-infused James Bond adventure Moonraker, and...

Fantastic Fest 2024, celebrating their 19th edition from September 19 – September 26, 2024 at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, TX, has unveiled its lineup. Highlights include the U.S. premiere of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go, Nacho Vigalondo’s Daniela Forever, Sean Baker’s Anora, the world premiere of Terrifier 3, and much more.

“The Fantastic Fest team is absolutely elated about this year’s festival. We can’t wait to share the very best new films from around the world and enjoy our sensational events together this September,” says Festival Director Lisa Dreyer. “We’re also honored to be joined by a number of notable guests, and welcome our Fantastic Fest family back to Austin to celebrate cinema, whether it’s your 1st time or 19th!”

See the features lineup below.

Aj Goes To The Dog Park (Burnt Ends Selection)

USA, 2024

World Premiere, 79 min

Director – Toby Jones...

Fantastic Fest is nearly here.

One of the very best, most underrated film festivals of the year, which takes place annually at a single movie theater in Austin, Texas (that’d be the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar), returns on Sept. 19. And ahead of the genre film festival, we’ve got the full lineup, which includes 28 world premieres, 23 international and North American premieres, and 15 U.S. premieres. (You can see the full list below.)

Among the movies playing at Fantastic Fest are “Never Let Go,” the new supernatural thriller from Alexandre Aja and actress Halle Berry; “Apartment 7A,” the “Rosemary’s Baby” prequel from Paramount; the Palme d’Or-winning thriller “Anora” from Sean Baker; A24’s bizarro “A Different Man;” and DreamWorks Animation’s beautiful, touching “The Wild Robot.” Other animated offerings include “Memoir of a Snail” from “Mary and Max” filmmaker Adam Elliot, and “Spermageddon” from “Violent Night” filmmaker Tommy Wirkola.

Douglass Fake, founder of leading movie soundtrack label Intrada and producer of more than 700 albums of movie and TV music, died Saturday at a Richmond, Calif., hospital after a long illness. He was 72.

Fake’s many credits include the first complete restoration of Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Waterfront,” a lavish 5-cd release of Elmer Bernstein’s “The Ten Commandments” and the debut of several Henry Mancini scores including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” previously only available in abridged pop recordings.

Among the label’s best sellers were expansions of previously incomplete recordings of such classics as John Williams’ “Jaws,” Alan Silvestri’s “Back to the Future” and Jerry Goldsmith’s “Alien.” Fake also supervised the re-recording of a dozen albums of classic film music including Bernard Herrmann’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and Miklos Rozsa’s “Ivanhoe,” “Spellbound” and “Julius Caesar.”

A longtime film-music fan, Fake launched Intrada Records...

We're in an interesting cultural moment. For a while, it seemed like society was becoming more progressive, and the film industry seemed to follow suit; there are more stories being told now, about more kinds of people. However, if you take a cursory look at Film Twitter or FilmTok, you're likely to find people complaining about "unnecessary sex scenes." There's a backlash brewing, a sense that movies need to get back to an imagined past when everything was about plot.

A lot of that concern involves kids, as if the two kinds of entertainment are either "Oppenheimer" or "Bluey." In fact, there's a lot of middle ground, and there used to be even more. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s, a lot of family-friendly films included scenes for adults that felt a bit out of place but made it in anyway. These days, a lot of those violent, strange edges...

As David Corenswet Debuts As Superman, Here’s A Look At Every Actor Who Has Played The Superhero So Far

David Corenswet has officially made his debut in the Superman suit as his first look from the upcoming eponymous film has been revealed. James Gunn, the writer-director of the film and the Co-CEO of DC Studios, unveiled the look himself. Now that David Corenswet is playing a new version of the Man of Steel, he has a legacy to live up to, as a number of actors have taken on the costume in the past.

Superman’s screen history goes way back to the 1940s when the first live-action film serial based on the DC superhero arrived in cinemas. Since then, the baton has been passed down from generation to generation, with each actor bringing their own charisma to the character. Let’s have a look at all the actors...

Clockwise from bottom left: Halloween (Compass International Pictures); Hellbound: Hellraiser II (New World Pictures); Mandy (XYZ Films); Re-Animator (Empire Pictures); Chopping Mall (Concorde Pictures) (Screenshots: YouTube)Graphic: The A.V. Club

We’re halfway to Halloween, and even though October 31 is still six months away, there’s still one place...

Before Disney extended their business with the Star Wars franchise, the studio had an expensive bet against George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope— a space adventure that took Hollywood by storm. It was one of the greatest hits of the time, which prompted several studios to have their pie in the game.

George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope poster.

Of course, it was before Disney acquired Lucasfilm— founded by the director of the first and several Star Wars movies, George Lucas. Decades before the acquisition of the company on 30 October 2012, Disney had their own ambitious plan to create another space adventure marvel.

Disney’s Most Expensive Bet Against Star Wars A still from Disney’s The Black Hole

Disney was very keen to have their shot at the space adventure genre following the mega-hit of George Lucas’ 1977 Star Wars movie. Disney made the...

The late '70s were a dark time for Disney. Following the death of Walt Disney, the studio went through much experimentation (not all of which was successful), and the departure of animator Don Bluth and several other animators led to a mini-crisis at the studio. Still, this was a very interesting time for Disney, which released many movies unlike anything they'd made before or since, from the sci-fi adventure "The Black Hole" to the criminally underrated "The Black Cauldron."

Loosely based on the first two books in Lloyd Alexander's "The Chronicles of Prydain" series, the film follows a bard and a princess who try to destroy a powerful and ancient magical cauldron before the wicked Horned King uses it to rule the world. This is by far the darkest animated movie Disney has made, one that starts with an explanation that the Black Cauldron's power comes from an...

When Gene Roddenberry began developing the screenplay for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" in 1975, expectations for how a science fiction film could look and feel were rapidly shifting. "2001: A Space Odyssey" offered moviegoers a 70mm trip to outer space, while "The Omega Man," "Soylent Green," and the "Planet of the Apes" series fed off the sociopolitical tumult of the times to thrust audiences into dystopian futures of our own foolish making.

Where did a show that was, at its core, a dream of racially and ethnically inclusive space exploration fit in an era of consciousness-raising spectacle and pessimistic earthbound forecasting? Though the series had failed to enthrall a sizable enough viewership to survive more than three seasons during its initial run on NBC in the late 1960s, "Star Trek" had become popular in syndication with 1970s couch potatoes. There was clearly a hunger for more, and there weren't any...

Exclusive: Emperor of Ocean Park, MGM+’s series adaptation of Stephen L. Carter’s best-selling novel, has found its lead.

The series, which comes from John Wells and Sherman Payne, has cast Grantham Coleman as Talcott Garland.

Set in the worlds of politics, Ivy League academia, and the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard, the series centers on Talcott Garland, an Ivy League law professor whose quiet life is shattered when his father, Judge Oliver Garland, dies of an apparent heart attack. The nature of the judge’s death is questioned by Tal’s sister, Mariah, a former journalist and inveterate conspiracy theorist, who believes that the judge, a failed Black nominee to the Supreme Court, met with foul play.

Tiffany Mack & Paulina Lule (Courtesy of Di Harvell / Molly Pan)

Tiffany Mack plays Mariah Denton and Paulina Lule plays Kimmer Madison Garland, Tal’s wife, a high-powered lawyer on the verge...

Disney’s first-ever PG-rated film was The Black Hole (1979). Disney's interest in creating more adult-oriented content led to the creation of Touchstone Pictures in 1984. Disney has created many successful non-g-rated films over the years since The Black Hole.

Audiences may have taken a step back in 1979 when Disney released its first PG-rated film, The Black Hole. A science fiction thriller bordering on horror. Produced under the Walt Disney Productions label, it was far from a box office success. This was an era in which Disney box office receipts were lacking. Studio execs at the time saw the shift in audience demographics and there was less of a demand for the fairy tales and fantastical happy endings Disney traditionally offered.

Attempting to capitalize on the hype of George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), Disney set out to tell an equally epic galactic saga. However, it missed the mark.

In 1977, a little movie called Star Wars came out and changed everyone’s idea of what a blockbuster could be. Overnight, science-fiction went from being a genre consigned to B-movies to A-level epics, and within a year, every studio in Hollywood was planning their own sci-fi epic. That included Walt Disney Pictures, who had infamously passed on developing Star Wars. Now, they were going to catch up with their own sci-fi epic, 1979’s The Black Hole (which we wrote up earlier on The Best Movie You Never Saw). Sporting a hefty $20 million budget (it cost twice what Star Wars did), The Black Hole was supposed to usher Disney into a new era of movie-making, where adult audiences would be targeted just as much as kids. The movie was not the flop history remembers, but it underperformed. Yet, it was an essential part of sci-fi movie history as it used computerized...

If you thought Michael Bay’s 1998 disaster flick Armageddon – about a team of oil drillers hired by NASA to deflect an asteroid the size of Texas from hitting Earth – was preposterous, well, you’re right. But as it turns out, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has another pick for the most inaccurate sci-fi movie he has ever seen: 2022’s Halle Berry-starring Moonfall.

Appearing on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show (via Deadline), the host brought up Armageddon as being the movie that “violates more laws of physics per minute than any other film ever made.” But Tyson went for another director who doesn’t exactly take the time to adhere to scientific accuracy: Roland Emmerich. “It was a pandemic film that came out, you know, Halle Berry, and the moon is approaching Earth, and they learned that it’s hollow and there’s a moon being made out of rocks...

Snyder’s epic-looking Netflix effort comes complete with lightsabers and exotic space princesses. Can it revive a neglected style of film-making?

For a genre that pretty much inspired the entire blockbuster era, space opera has become weirdly hard to get hold of beyond Star Wars. After the original trilogy’s barnstorming success in the late 70s for Lucasfilm, there were umpteen abortive attempts by other studios to grab themselves some of that good space fantasy dollar, but nobody really got anywhere useful. Disney’s appalling The Black Hole is barely remembered these days, while Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars is perhaps memorable only for giving a certain James Cameron an early break on special effects. There was even a James-Bond-in-space movie, Roger Moore’s Moonraker, although it hardly registers as one of 007’s most scintillating adventures.

Flash forward to the present day, and space opera seems to...

Summer’s here, and if you’re looking for new movies to watch this June, we’ve got you covered. Newly streaming titles this month include the third (and final?) “Magic Mike” movie, Chris Hemsworth’s highly anticipated “Extraction” sequel on Netflix, the “Nicolas Cage as Dracula” new release “Renfield” and at long last, “Avatar: The Way of Water” makes its streaming debut on multiple streaming services. As always, we’ve also rounded up a number of library titles newly streaming on Netflix, Prime Video, Max, Paramount+, Hulu, Peacock and Disney+ throughout the month of June, so not only is there a little something for everyone, there’s enough to get you through those days when it’s just to hot to step outside.

Check out our list of some of the best new movies to stream in June 2023 below.

Also Read:

What’s New on Amazon Prime Video in...

At the end of the 70s and beginnings of the 80s, Disney decided to take a turn into a darker side of cinema, at least for them. In 1979 they released The Black Hole, a sci-fi epic which had among its cast Anthony Perkins, best known for Psycho as well as a space station manned by animated corpse/robot hybrids. The film would include an ending which would literally show the villain of the piece in hell in penance for his crimes for all eternity. The following year would be another creepy sci-fi entry The Watcher In The Woods.

Following these films would be the gory fantasy epic Dragonslayer. That film actually showed a real Disney Princess being eaten by blind baby dragons on camera. So to round out a really fantastic run of Dark movies the House of Mouse went all in with a fantasy film that covered themes of death,...

In the post-Star Wars world of the late 1970s, filmmakers furiously scrambled to capitalize on the massive popularity of George Lucas' groundbreaking epic. Among the studios eagerly boarding the space opera bandwagon was Disney, and in 1979, it released The Black Hole. At the time the most expensive film produced by the media giant, and the first to receive a PG rating, the sci-fi adventure was met with a mixed reception but has since developed a cult following.

For many years, Disney didn’t go near any films that would jeopardize its carefully-cultivated image as a producer of prime family-friendly motion pictures. Only in the late 1970s did it begin to dip its toes into the well of PG-rated fare like The Black Hole, and even then, these projects were quite tame compared to the biggest motion pictures dominating that decade of American cinema. Everybody else in this era of big-screen storytelling was exploring how far feature narratives could go and what the limits were for what audiences would want. Disney, meanwhile, stuck to its guns, hoping that what would work in the past could work forever.

In the past decade, David Lowery has emerged as one of the most exciting young writers/directors in the film industry. While his films haven’t become mainstream hits like Greta Gerwig, Lowery has carved out a unique place within the independent film community and continues to do groundbreaking work. There’s a formal elegance to the way that his stories are crafted that makes them stand out, but there’s also a diversity. The Old Man & The Gun was a terrific send-off for one of cinema’s greatest icons, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was an untraditional western, and A Ghost Story is an experimental masterpiece that touches on the biggest questions in the universe.

While it’s exciting that there’s such a versatility to Lowery’s filmography, it’s clear that his greatest passion is fantasy. The fantasy genre is desperately in need of support right now...

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise was one of the most unexpected success stories in the history of Walt Disney Studios, and the series subsequently became one of the most valuable assets that the company ever created. Prior to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Disney’s efforts to create live-action films aimed at slightly older audiences hadn’t been particularly successful; The Black Hole has been considered as a cult classic by some viewers, but it was hardly a mainstream success. However, Pirates of the Caribbean became a massive hit and spawned a five film franchise that proved Disney could make PG-13 adventure films.

In 1977, a movie you might have heard of called Star Wars came out and thoroughly shifted the kind of movies Hollywood considered blockbusters. Until then, the idea of an epic sci-fi fantasy grossing hundreds of millions of dollars was considered laughable, and the genre was regarded as B-movie material at best. Star Wars changed that thinking, and suddenly studios were bending over backwards flooding theaters with their own sci-fi epics. This led to Star Trek getting a crack at the big screen, with the original crew headlining a movie that, at the time, was one of the most expensive movies ever made. In this episode of Revisited, we dig into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Flashback to 1978. Star Wars was still making a mint, and Universal took the pilot episode for a Star Wars-knock-off series they developed, Battlestar Galactica, and released it in theaters. It made a stunning $41.8 million internationally,...

When the European Film Market kicks off in Berlin on Feb. 16, the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will share the stage as the EFM’s joint Countries in Focus. The showcase, which is supported by the Estonian Film Institute, the National Film Center of Latvia and the Lithuanian Film Center, will offer a range of events within the framework of the EFM, along with a selection of market premieres and screenings of Baltic films already making waves on the festival circuit. Twelve up-and-coming Baltic producers will also be presented to the international industry during a happy hour on Feb. 17 in the Gropius Bas.

Here’s a selection of Baltic buzz titles that the region’s top producers will be taking to Berlin:

Last Sentinel

Director: Tanel Toom

Producers: Ben Pullen, Ivo Felt, Jörg Bundschuh, Pippa Cross, Matthew James Wilkinson

Kate Bosworth stars in this sci-fi thriller from...

Director Gary Nelson, whose credits include live-action Disney films like "The Black Hole" and the original "Freaky Friday," as well as numerous TV episodes, has died of natural causes at the age of 87. Nelson's son confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday that Nelson had passed away in his Las Vegas home several months ago, on May 25, 2022, though the news is only just now coming to light.

Nelson was born in Los Angeles on October 6, 1934, and he first came up in Hollywood as an assistant director. Among his earliest credits are the classic James Dean film "Rebel Without a Cause" and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1955 film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls," both of which were nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He followed this up with further Ad work on two more Oscar-nominated Westerns, "The Searchers" and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," before crossing over into television.

TV Work...

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Gary Nelson, who directed the Disney films Freaky Friday and The Black Hole, served as the in-house helmer on the first two seasons of Get Smart and called the shots for scores of other shows, has died. He was 87.

Nelson died May 25 in Las Vegas of natural causes, his son Garrett Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter.

His father was Sam Nelson, who served as an assistant director on such landmark films as The Lady From Shanghai (1947), All the King’s Men (1949), Some Like It Hot (1959) and Experiment in Terror (1962) and was a co-founder, along with King Vidor and others, of what would become the DGA.

Gary Nelson started out as an A.D., too, working on films including Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955), John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), before he got a big break thanks to his future wife,...

From an early age, animator Don Bluth was a great admirer of Disney and has said in interviews that as a child, he would practice drawing by copying old Disney comic books. This childhood activity led to him being hired by Disney to work on their feature film version of "Sleeping Beauty" in the mid-1950s. After a stint doing missionary work and animating for various TV shows, Bluth returned to Disney in the mid-'70s to work on the company's version of "Robin Hood." Bluth worked on various animated features for Disney, eventually rising to the role of animation director for the 1977 film "Pete's Dragon." Over the course of working for Disney, however, Bluth became kind of disillusioned with the way the company owned all of their animators' work, and how animators were all trained to draw and animate the same way. Bluth left Disney in 1979 to form his own production company.

Upcoming animation from ’My Life As A Courgette’ director Claude Barras also among recipients.

Berlin Golden Bear winner Radu Jude’s upcoming feature A Case History is one of 24 features to receive a share of €6.5m (6.87m) in the latest round of Eurimages co-production support funding.

The film, a co-production between Romania and Croatia, has received €150,000 and marks the Romanian filmmaker’s next feature after winning the Golden Bear in 2021 with Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn.

Produced by Ada Solomon and Adrian Sitaru of Bucharest-based 4Proof Film, the story will be told in two parts. The first follows a...

Today on Crew Call we speak with Jurassic World Dominion co-scribe Emily Carmichael about how she broke into the Universal 5 billion-grossing series; one of the keys to wowing over filmmaker Colin Trevorrow was her screenplay redo of Disney’s 1980s sci-fi movie The Black Hole.

We also talk with Carmichael about the intense amount of drafts she did in bringing back the original Jurassic Park characters played by Laura Dern, Sam Neil and Jeff Goldblum, as well as taking the universe of humans vs. beasts in a gene-splicing world to another level. The threequel has already grossed 55M in its offshore launch in 15 markets with recording debuts in Mexico and Korea, with an opening that will easily be 100M+ stateside.

You can listen to our conversation below:

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