Film

Now that Jon M. Chu’s Wicked has cleaned up at the box office, made even more bank thanks to an early digital release, and been nominated for a bunch of awards, the musical is making its Peacock streaming debut on March 21st.

Danny and Michael Philippou, the directors behind the breakout horror hit Talk To Me, are finally ready to show what they having coming next. Well, they’re teasing it. The brief trailer for Bring Her Back doesn’t show all that much, but it certainly sets a mood. As does the premise: “a brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.” The movie hits theaters on May 30th.

It’s hard to imagine The Substance working nearly as well without its exquisitely deranged third act turn, but in a new interview with Vulture, director Coralie Fargeat says that Universal — which was originally slated to distribute the film — “wanted everything changed” and was convinced that audiences wouldn’t respond to her ideas:

As disappointing as it was to see Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto’s Interstella 5555 mangled by AI for its recent theatrical rerelease, the new Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust Blu-ray remaster (whose first 10 minutes you can watch down below) looks like it’s going to be a stunner. The anime classic is coming back to Japanese movie theaters on February 28th, and will be able to purchase on Blu-ray beginning March 26th.

He’s playing Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s new take on The Odyssey, seemingly putting to bed speculation that Tom Holland is playing the lead in the film. It’s Damon’s first time as a Nolan lead, after smaller roles in Oppenheimer and Interstellar.

Almost 40 years after the original was released in June 1985, Warner Bros. has hired Potsy Ponciroli to write the script for a sequel to The Goonies, with Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, and Holly Bario producing for Amblin Entertainment, alongside Chris Columbus. Lauren Shuler Donner will executive produce, according to a report from Variety. It’s unknown who will direct the sequel, and there are no details on its plot or cast yet.

It wasn’t hard to imagine John Malkovich being able to embody the spirit of an eccentric, reclusive pop star in A24’s new thriller Opus. But it’s kind of shocking to hear how good he sounds singing “Dina, Simone”, one of the movie’s original songs written and written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream.

A24’s Heretic was one of last year’s more surprisingly fun (read: deranged) horror features, and it’s set to make its Max streaming debut on March 7th.

DreamWorks’ plan to make a live-action How to Train Your Dragon adaptation has never sounded like a great idea, and the movie’s new trailer really makes it seem like the studio might have been better off keeping this franchise strictly animated. The film hits theaters on June 13th.

It is still kind of hard to believe that Amazon MGM is producing a live-action Masters of the Universe movie starring Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man and Jared Leto as Skeletor. But it’s true, and Deadine reports that Morena Baccarin (Deadpool) and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson (Vikings: Valhalla) have signed on to play The Sorceress of Castle Grayskull and Fisto, respectively.

If you haven’t had a chance to catch Gints Zilbalodis’ animated feature Flow, you might want to check out Max on February 14th when the film makes its streaming debut.

Though Hollywood’s newfound obsession with making horror movies revolving around killer consumer tech is getting a little tired, Cold Wallet — director Cutter Hodierne’s new thriller about a group of armed Redditors looking for revenge after losing everything in a crypto scam — looks pretty legit. The movie hits theaters and digital platforms of February 28th.

Between its dearth of new features and a couple of movies actually being pulled down, this year’s Sundance seemed a little feeble this past weekend, and Yahoo reports that those feelings are shared by producers who came away from the festival feeling that “independent film does not currently have a viable business model.“

Ahead of Fantastic Four: First Steps’ new trailer debuting tomorrow, Marvel has dropped a kitschy teaser hyping up the team’s launch into space.

After a few delays, Universal and Blumhouse’s sequel to their $180 million grossing viral hit about a best-friend-AI-bot-gone-bad is scheduled to premiere on June 27th, 2025. Now the first teaser trailer has dropped on the night of the Grammy Awards with an assist from Chappell Roan’s song “Femininomenon.”

An understated portrait of a life, oscillating between heartbreaking tragedy and hopeful beauty. The movie follows Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) from his quiet vantage point in Idaho at the turn of the century. An orphan who eventually finds a successful career in logging, his largely lonely life is upended when he meets a woman (Felicity Jones) and, with her, finds a real reason to live. And yet Grainier finds that death seems to follow him wherever he goes. Eventually he loses everything — and spends the rest of his days trying to find that reason for being again. (Train Dreams was acquired by Netflix, and so hopefully will be streaming in the near future.)

Though Lucas (Tom Blyth) is good at his job as a plainclothes police officer tasked with arresting men for public indecency, he lives in fear of his own queerness being exposed. Work is the only place he ever “meets” guys like Andrew (Russell Tovey) who make him wonder what his life might be like gay people weren’t forced to hide their identities. The more Lucas thinks about his future, the darker his anxieties become. A grim snapshot of the past, Plainclothes powerfully explores how normalized bigotry and state surveillance go hand-in-hand.

The festival comes to a close today, and while there hasn’t been a particular standout film, there is plenty to keep an eye out for once they hit theaters and streaming services. You can keep up with everything we’ve watched so far right here, including the likes of Artropia, Zodiac Killer Project, and Bunnylovr. And expect more updates throughout the day.

Twinless, writer / director / star James Sweeney’s dark comedy about two men (Sweeney, Dylan O’Brien) who bond after the death of their twins, was screening at in-person and online as part this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But Variety reports that the film has been yanked from the festival’s digital portal because people couldn’t stop recording clips and posting them to social media.

With cicadas swarming Baltimore in the summer of 1987, ASCII artist Connor (Albert Birney) is even more inclined to stay home playing games on his Macintosh. At first, Obex doesn’t seem like much compared to any of the other floppy disk games he has ordered through the mail. But when his dog Sandy vanishes one day, the game’s fantasy world of monsters and magic starts to consume his mind. The film’s experimental, lo-fi depiction of pre-internet screen addiction is imaginative and artful. The story’s a bit thin, but its visuals are strong.

Aimless twentysomething Becca (Katarina Zhu) doesn’t know what she wants out of life, but everyone wants a piece of her. Her sickly gambling addict father William (Perry Wang), her best friend (Rachel Sennott), and men like John (Austin Amelio) she does camshows for all see her time and attention as things they should be able to demand without question. It’s hard for her to say no, but when she unexpectedly receives a pet rabbit, the responsibility pushes her to start pushing back. Writer / director / star Zhu delivers a tremendous, but quiet performance that mirrors the film’s nuanced ideas about intimacy.

This incredibly meta story isn’t strictly about the Zodiac Killer, but rather a failed attempt to make a documentary. After director Charlie Shackleton lost the rights to adapt the book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up, he decided to make a movie that shows what the film would have been like. It plays out like an extended director’s commentary for a movie that doesn’t actually exist. The result is a surprisingly compelling story on its own, but also one that serves as a clever deconstruction of true crime, and a very open look at the editorial decisions that shape the genre.

In the fictional country of Atropia (which is actually a training facility in California styled to resemble an Iraqi village), few people take their jobs as seriously as struggling actress Fayruz (Alia Shawkat). She knows there’s something twisted about roleplaying as a chemical weapons expert for the benefit of soldiers visiting Atropia before they’re deployed to fight in the real, ongoing Iraq War. But it’s a paying gig where she happens to be falling in love with a fellow pretend insurgent (Callum Turner). Though Atropia gets unwieldy between its romantic and satirical modes, it nails the Bush era’s “patriotic” madness.

This film is gorgeous, taking place across a warm and cozy Paris, ultra modern Chongqing, and a virtual reality metaverse where players hunt down a mysterious, mystical deer. Unfortunately its parallel stories of estranged families aren’t particularly compelling on their own, nor do they intersect in a satisfying way. It attempts to throw in some tension through other means – like a surprisingly simple million-dollar art heist, and the search for the virtual deer – but ultimately Luz is too meandering to remain captivating for long.

Set in an unnamed, fictional European country that, due to a long war where residents only had cabbage to eat, has outlawed the vegetable and imposed severe punishments for smugglers. When a honeymooning American couple (Himesh Patel and Sarah Goldberg) gets caught with cabbages in their pants, they end up racing for their lives. The movie is, obviously, ridiculous – and there are some fun comedic performances from Steven Yeun, Dave Franco, and Matt Berry – but it awkwardly tries to mash its humor with a more sincere tale of a couple facing their differences that never really comes together.

It turns out Juliette Lewis makes a very good chair. In this surreal film her character Camille feels overlooked and ignored, until one day she finds the most beautiful designer chair, and the two somehow switch places. While Camille’s inanimate body becomes a strange source of fascination for her friends, she truly feels seen with her soul inside of the chair, which has become an obsession for pianist Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). The movie can drag in moments, particularly because of its lengthy narration, but its strange vision is weirdly charming and eventually pushes towards a surprisingly intense climax.

A zombie apocalypse isn’t enough to stop Vinita’s (Kiran Deol) podcast ambitions. She hosts the titular show despite the world coming to an end, and a planned live performance for episode 100 becomes a useful way to connect with survivors, who are largely isolated in this dystopic world. Didn’t Die starts out as mostly a comedy, with the scary bits serving as background, but when Vinita’s ex and a surprise baby get involved, it becomes a touching –and tragic – story of family and loss, one that ends on a heartwarming and hopeful note.

A gorgeous adventure in the mold of E.T., the movie has a lot of promise but is missing the spark to truly stand out. It takes place in an isolated mountain community, where ape-like creatures called ochi are hunted by farmers trying to keep their livestock safe. But when a young girl (Helena Zengel) finds an injured baby ochi, she sets off on a quest to return it to its family. The creature design is incredible, and there’s a lot of mystery to the post-apocalyptic seeming world. Ultimately, though, Ochi is a charming-yet-fairly-standard family-friendly adventure. (It hits theaters on April 25th.)