Film

Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low may be an untouchable classic piece of cinema, but Spike Lee and Denzel Washington are teaming up to put their own English-language spin on the film courtesy of A24 and Apple TV Plus.

The Taste of Things, one of our favorite films of 2023, finally makes its way into limited release this weekend — and just in time for the most romantic holiday of the year. (By which I mean Lunar New Year, of course.)

The animated sequel follows Moana and friends on yet another journey at sea, as they venture “into the dangerous, long-lost waters” of Oceania. It hits theaters on November 27th.

The premiere of Dune: Part Two is less than a month away, but for those who have been itching to see Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides finally ride a sandworm, this new extended clip from the movie should help take the edge off.

How will we notice aliens hovering overhead when we’re all too busy scrolling? They’ll make a Squarespace website, obviously.

That’s the goofy premise, anyway, of Hello Down There, a Scorsese-directed Squarespace Super Bowl commercial.

There have always been collectors passionate about owning pieces of their favorite films, but in recent years, the business of buying and selling movie props has become an entirely different ballgame.

It might seem silly to liken film props to the kinds of luxury goods that fetch thousands at auctions. But for the people featured in director Juan Pablo Reinoso’s new documentary Mad Props (in select theaters February 23rd), the prop-collecting life couldn’t be more serious.

The film stars Killer of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone as Jax, a woman living on a Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma, where she’s left to care for her niece following her sister’s disappearance.

When the pair go looking for Jax’s sister, they uncover “a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women.” Fancy Dance first appeared at the Sundance Film Festival last year. It will make its debut in theaters and on Apple TV Plus later this year.

The streamer has been slowly revealing its slate of streaming TV and films, and now the focus is on Korea — a market where Netflix is investing quite a bit. Among this year’s Korean originals are new seasons of Squid Game, Sweet Home, and Hellbound; the historical drama Uprising, co-written by Oldboy’s Park Chan-wook; and a reality show where influencers compete “to find the one true content creator who generates the biggest buzz — by any means necessary.”

Apple doesn’t seem to have posted this ad in any of the usual channels — one X user says they spotted it on Snapchat.

Anyway, this person had a good idea picking Napoleon to watch, considering its 2-hour-and-38-minute runtime is more or less the same as the the Vision Pro battery pack’s.

Pop culture predicted a lot about 1997 that didn’t happen. The Terminator’s Skynet didn’t become self-aware and nuke the world. Snake Plissken didn’t sneak into a bleak, walled-off New York City to rescue the President as Escape From New York imagined.

And Apple didn’t release the Vista Mac 2 — the VR glasses it lightheartedly predicted in this goofy Apple User Group Connection video, and that I now demand a Vision Pro mod of.

A mix of 42 popular Disney flicks, including Finding Nemo, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens are headed to the Vision Pro headset in 3D. Disney Plus subscribers will get access to the whole catalog, but non-subscribers can still rent or buy 3D movies from the Apple TV app.

In Chinese director Lei Zheng’s 2019 film Parallel Forest, a grieving mother’s spiral into depression following the death of her son takes a strange turn when she encounters an alternate reality version of herself.

And from the looks of Parallel, Vertical Entertainment’s upcoming remake starring brothers Aldis and Edwin Hodge, and Danielle Deadwyler, the new film’s going to be just as haunting as the original when it hits theaters on February 23rd.

From a distance, Netflix’s last-minute decision to cancel the release of executive producer Halle Berry’s nearly-completed sci-fi flick The Mothership has looked a lot like the streamer following in Warner Bros. Discovery’s footsteps.

But according to Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bejaria, between production delays, and creative issues “everybody just felt like it was the right thing to not do it.”

Were it not for Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, Cillian Murphy might not have ended up becoming the odds-on favorite to win Best Actor for his Oppenheimer turn at this year’s Oscars.

And in a lovely bit of Hollywood symmetry, the Murphy has signed on to executive produce (and possibly star in) Boyle’s forthcoming 28 Years Later, which is set to be distributed by Sony.

Last summer, Heather Morgan (a Forbes blogger who also rapped under the name Razzlekhan) and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to charges they conspired to launder Bitcoin stolen from Bitfinex in 2016. At the time of their arrest in early 2022, the stolen crypto was worth $4.5 billion.

Netflix previously ordered a documentary series about the couple, and now Deadline reports that Amazon MGM Studios has started development on a Razzlekhan film inspired by this New York Times story.

Honestly, nobody really seems all that excited in the latest trailer for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. But it’s about damn time Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts — the original movie’s real MVPs — really got a chance to flex their ghost busting skills front and center.

If it weren’t for the way Warner Bros. almost immediately put Tenet on HBO Max (rip), the studio would probably be thanking Christopher Nolan right now for all the critical acclaim and financial success Oppenheimer’s racked up.

But rather than dwelling on what awards season coup that could have been, Warner Bros. Discovery is putting Tenet back in theaters for one week beginning February 23rd — just in time to get people amped up for Dune: Part 2.

It was a polarizing outcome even within the courtroom, according to The Japan Times and live coverage from the Asahi Shimbun.

Here’s a very little something we wrote in 2017 about what made KyoAni special, and The Hollywood Reporter’s devastating but uplifting 2019 feature on the tragedy is still worth a read now.

Rather than Patrick Swayze, it’s Jake Gyllenhaal starring as a stoic cooler in Amazon’s upcoming Road House remake from director Doug Liman. And in the movie’s newest trailer Gyllenhaal appears to be having the time of his life slapping the hell out of his co-stars right up until Conor McGregor shows up.

The new Road House hits Amazon Prime on March 21st.

Much in the same way Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron was a poetic and fantastical rumination on living with grief, A24’s Tuesday from director Daina O. Pusic seems like the sort of movie that’s going to hit you right in the heart when it debuts sometime in the nearish future.

Obviously, Netflix’s new live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender is going to be one of the streamer’s bigger releases folks are talking about next month. But along with all the elemental bending, with movies like Ready Player One and Everything Everywhere All at Once are also headed to the platform.

Former TechCrunch EIC Matthew Panzarino got to touch it — something we’d heard was beyond the reach of mere mortals who don’t work for Disney Parks.

It looks just as mindblowing as ever. I am so damn jealous. Here’s how the lightsaber likely works.

Disney announced the Clone Wars spinoff’s renewal during its Celebration event last spring, and now fans can actually see it before it premieres on Disney Plus with three episodes starting February 21st.

Emperor Palpatine, Dr. Royce Hemlock, and Asajj Ventress make an appearance in this preview of the series that follows the vagabonding Clone Force 99’s movements after refusing to obey Order 66.

It’s only been about a year since Jurassic World Dominion ended up collecting a cool $1 billion at the box office, but Universal’s reportedly already working on a movie from writer David Koepp that might be a franchise reboot.

You can stream Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning starting January 25th. The movie’s evil AI was ridiculous, I loved it. (Make sure to stick around to the end of the credits to hear its silly noise!)

Also, Paramount dropped the “Part One” from the film’s original title. The former part two was recently pushed back from a June 2024 to a May 23rd, 2025 release date.

In a year that’s going to be filled with dazzlingly slick and flashy sci-fi features, Level 33 Entertainment’s Molli and Max in the Future from director Michael Lukk Litwak looks like it’s going to stand out for its cleverly practical effects and unhinged vision of the future when it hits theaters on Februrary 9th.

You can still see shades of author Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian in French experimental director Bertrand Mandico’s newest film She Is Conann.

But basically everything about the black and white, 35mm epic’s new trailer makes it look like one of the most inspired takes on the classic Conan myth. The film hits theaters on February 2nd.

A24’s Problemista from writer / director / star Julio Torres was one of the many films whose debut was waylaid by last year’s multiple entertainment strikes.

But it’s a day full of new possibilities including, but not limited to: Problemista now hitting select theaters on March 1st before it gets a wider release on March 22nd.

A24’s Civil War from director Alex Garland was originally slated to hit theaters on April 26th — the same weekend Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers premieres, mind you.

But now, the studio’s bumping up the release of Garland’s latest to April 12th, meaning the wait for what looks like it’s going to be a deeply disturbing reflection on American society just got a little shorter.