As a splashy Hollywood version of Dan Brown’s most popular potboiler, The Da Vinci Code premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was the subject of countless faux-examinations about early Christianity on the cable news circuit—as well as the object of ire for some modern Christians’ growing need for perpetual outrage. Protests occurred at theaters throughout the U.S., while other international markets banned it outright. And all of that cacophonous noise was over… a pretty middle-of-the-road adventure movie....

Inside the pages of Charles Forsman’s The End Of The Fing World comics, outsiders James and Alyssa will be forever where they were left – James shot by the police and Alyssa carving his name into her arm with a pin. Frozen between the gutters of Forsman’s drawings, they’ll never grow older than 17, never get jobs or go to university or get married. They won’t have to learn about responsibility or face the consequences of their bloody road-trip....

Well, it’s finally here. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 6 was an action-packed, but rather messy season finale for the show. Hopefully it isn’t a series finale, and we’ll see it continue in season 2 as Captain America and the Winter Soldier, but that’s an argument for another time. For now, we’re here (as usual) to dig in to all the Marvel Comics and MCU references the show gave us this episode....

Between 2014 and 2019, IoT technologies increased from 13% to 25%. A report from McKinsey says that by 2023, there will be 43 billion IoT-enabled devices in use. The growing field of IoT has opened up a whole new world for skilled engineers and professionals. Because there is more demand, the gap between supply and demand has grown bigger. The research found that as many as 47% of the businesses surveyed by Immersat Research had to outsource IoT projects because they didn’t have the right people to do them....

As directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s follow-up to Goodnight Mommy, The Lodge is another unsettling sleight of hand about the constricting nature of familial bonds, especially when there is no actual familiarity between you and the person at the other end of a rope. A tense exercise of claustrophobia in a snowy outpost, the film stands on the shoulders of horror royalty while plowing its own path to memorable disturbance, in no small part thanks to a tour de force performance by Riley Keough....

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Episodes 1 and 2 So The Rings of Power has finally arrived! As we mentioned in our spoiler-free review, the series is stunningly beautiful, the set, costume, and visual effects work is impeccable, the acting is great, and it all has the feel of a tale with an epic scope. The only drawback to these first two episodes is that, inevitably, they’re largely devoted to set-up....

The Mandalorian Chapter 13, “The Jedi,” gives us answers to many of the biggest questions surrounding Baby Yoda, the former Jedi youngling whose actual name is Grogu, while also introducing new mysteries about the ancient order. In fact, the episode has just set the stage for what will likely be an explosive conclusion to the second season, as Mando and Grogu set off to find what could be the birthplace of the Jedi....

Mike Flanagan has become Netflix’s go-to spooky season purveyor, dealing out annual horror miniseries that serve somewhat as Trojan horses for deep ruminations on life, death, and faith. After The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, Flanagan’s house style has crystalized. A Flanagan joint will have flowery monologues, complicated group dynamics, and harrowing backstories for the central characters that inform the scares being served in the main narrative....

Gamers who want to experience everything The Skywalker Saga has to offer will have to unlock over 380 characters. Most of these are key players such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, recurring side characters like C-3PO and R2-D2, and even fan favorites such as Bossk and Boba Fett. Admittedly, a sizable chunk of the game roster consists of variants of the same character (e.g., players can unlock 18 different versions of Luke Skywalker), but The Skywalker Saga also includes quite a few obscure characters....

Dower sets the tone of the times before the documentary leaps into the wild. He intercuts an interview with the stewardess on the legendary flight with period airline advertisements and clips from informational shorts. What a difference the flying experience was in the early ‘70s. The food looks edible, there appears to be ample leg room, and airline stewardesses’ weight was monitored more than boarding passengers. There were no metal detectors or security to speak of....

Say what you will about HBO’s latest fantasy series The Nevers, but one thing cannot be denied: it’s got some great names. While original creator Joss Whedon and his questionable legacy have departed the project, he left behind some truly fascinating characters and character names for the show to work with. The series lead is a tough, competent, and confident leader of misfits. What better name for such a person than the sturdy “Amalia True?...

The Orville: New Horizons Season 3 Episode 4 Good science-fiction should challenge us. It should contain subtext that can teach, subvert, and even make us uncomfortable by shining a light on aspects of our world we don’t want to look at. Whether it is the golden standard of this layered writing style such as The Outer Limits, the legendary The Twilight Zone, or recent forays into the genre like Black Mirror, these tiny vignettes of fiction are loaded with political subtext and important morals....

Adapted from a webtoon called Annarasumanara, Netflix’s latest Korean-language release, The Sound of Magic, is a quick watch at only six episodes—much shorter than most K-drama fare. For that runtime, the drama bites off a bit more than it can chew in terms of storyline, which makes the final episode action-packed with plot points, including reveals concerning magician Ri-eul’s past and the identity of Seo Ha-yoon’s murderer. The ending also must wrap up Ah-yi and Il-deung’s respective stories, which it does with a series-ending time jump in which we see Ah-yi’s life several years after the main events of the story....

The late, great, Bob Hoskins, who actually starred as Mario, was one of them. “It was a fuckin’ nightmare,” Hoskins told The Guardian in 2007. “The whole experience was a nightmare. It had a husband-and-wife team directing, whose arrogance had been mistaken for talent…! Fuckin’ nightmare. Fuckin’ idiots.” Time is a great healer though and while Hoskins continued to rank the movie as his worst long after he retired, the bold ambition and inventiveness of Super Mario Bros....

Do you want to meet the greatest film director who ever lived? That would be a loaded question in any context, but it has extra weight in Steven Spielberg’s new release, The Fabelmans. With the film being a semi-autobiographical portrait of the legendary filmmaker’s own adolescent years, the picture feels in many ways like a rare window into meeting the real Spielberg—or at least the Spielberg as imagined in the director’s own head....

Fans of the series will recall that, at the end of season 2, the Hargreeves children’s time-meddling came back to bite them once again – this time in a particularly spectacular fashion. When Luther, Diego, Allison, and company arrived back to the “present” from their journey in 1963 Dallas, they discovered that a whole new team crime-fighting team was occupying The Umbrella Academy mansion. Their former father Reginald Hargreeves announced this new team as the Sparrow Academy, and it featured five human silhouettes, one ominous looking cube, and the resurrection of the Umbrellas’ own dearly-departed brother Ben....

While getting to see Lucille is nice, it also begs the question: what about the other Lucille? Negan’s iconic choice of weapon is a simple wooden baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire that he named after his wife. The barbed-bat helped complete the physically imposing persona that eventually installed him as a ruthless leader of The Saviors. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen Lucille “in the flesh” for awhile now. At least not the original version of it....

The end is nigh for The Walking Dead. And we’re not just talking about the news that The Walking Dead season 11 will serve as the final season of the long-running zombie drama. We’re also referring to the fact that the show will soon no longer have any material from the original comic series to draw from. Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead comic lasted for 193 issues and 32 volumes before concluding in July of 2019....

The Watch Episodes 1 and 2 Anyone who has read science fiction and fantasy novels in the last 40 years has at least heard of Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld,” and it’s with some trepidation and cautious optimism that fans of the books have anticipated the new BBC adaptation, The Watch, which focuses on some of the best-loved characters from the 41-book series. What readers should know is that the series is very much an adaptation, and while there are plenty of moments that are true to the originals, and add details from various books, don’t go in expecting something as faithful as Bridgerton....

The eight episodes of The Watch‘s inaugural season will follow recognizable characters such as City Watch Captain Sam Vimes (Richard Dormer), the last scion of nobility Lady Sybil Ramkin (Lara Rossi), the naïve but heroic Carrot (Adam Hugill), the mysterious Angua (Marama Corlett), the ingenious non-binary forensics expert Cheery (Jo Eaton-Kent), the dictatorial Lord Vetinari (Anna Chancellor), and Pratchett’s iconic personification of Death voiced by Wendell Pierce. The Watch is described as a character-drive, punk rock thriller which will follow the City Watch “as they fight to save a ramshackle city of normalized wrongness, from both the past and future in a perilous quest....