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Perhaps simply looking to put food on the table while getting his next project (The Crazies) up and running, Romero was receptive when approached by the Lutheran Society, who wanted to create an educational film about society’s poor treatment of the elderly. With a script by Walton Cook (one of the rare Romero projects he did not write himself), Romero’s only work for hire, called The Amusement Park, was apparently so disturbing that the Lutheran Society never released it....

And if and when we do encounter life that evolved under another sun, with intelligence different, yet equal to our own, how do we kill it? Yes, some films tell us that when we encounter new life and civilizations they’ll heal our wounds with magic glowing fingers, teach us that nuclear war is bad, and misunderstand our local customs in a delightful and heartwarming way. But the movie aliens that have the ring of truth about them only want to eat you, lay eggs in you, or shift your entire perception of reality in a way that forces you to appreciate the true horror of existence....

Always well-crafted, Korean action films are filled with clever plot twists, refreshing characters that are fully fleshed out, and superb cinematography, However, Korean cinema tends to defy being as easily pigeonholed into genre boxes as Western contemporaries. For example, Park Chan-wook’s disturbing Cannes winner, Oldboy, is more of psychological thriller than an action film, and yet the brilliant one-er hallway hammer fight is consistently referenced as one of the top examples of fight choreography from that year....

Plus, if this is your first introduction to Robinson, you’re in luck—we’ve got your guide to where else to find her incisive, irreverent work, from a feminist vigilante TV series to a movie less about “fucked-up soulmates” and more about your ride-or-die best friends in adulthood. Heathers (1988) A dark satirical foil for the John Hughes teen movies of the same era, this iconic 1988 black comedy no doubt contributed to the blueprint of Do Revenge: a brutal clique of social-climbing girls, seen through the eyes of an outsider who can’t help but get absorbed into their psychodrama; a trend of mounting violence among peers, only for the victims to become martyrs; and the desire to blow everything up, whether or not that will actually fix the problems....

But this is actually a Boba Fett story decades in the making. After all, writers were already hard at work continuing the book of Boba just mere months after he took a tumble into the sarlacc pit in 1983. Many of those early stories took place in the pages of the classic Star Wars comics published by Marvel in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s no surprise, then, that the new Disney+ series has already established several connections to Marvel comics, both new and old…...

Surely everyone’s first choice for a parliamentary candidate if he were eligible and willing, Gunnar Hansen (AKA Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw films) this month combines forces with various topless models and a tongue-in-cheek bargain-basement Bogart in the subtly-titled epic we all know and love, 1988’s Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, on Bluray and DVD. Fred Olen Ray, the acclaimed director of Supershark, Bikini Time Machine and Voodoo Dollz (note the all-important ‘z’) has cobbled together something that should have been unendurably bad but in fact turns out to be somehow almost wonderful....

The Boys’ second season has featured everything from some long-awaited superhero faceoffs and multiple exploding heads to literal Nazis and almost everything in between. The season 2 finale “What I Know” wraps up a surprising amount of plot in a single installment, as Stormfront finally gets her comeuppance, Butcher and Becca attempt to rescue a kidnapped Ryan, and Starlight finally gets the evidence that could bring down Vought. That none of these plots turn out the way most of us expected shouldn’t be surprising at this point, and yet… Here’s a rundown of how everything wrapped up – or didn’t – and what we think it all might mean for The Boys season 3....

Less than a decade ago, Warner Brothers was hot off of the success of Nolan’s trio of films that no one would describe as light-hearted or quippy. The Batman of Nolan’s films was not inspired by the kid-friendly or campy iterations of the character found in the Batman TV series from the ‘60s or Joel Schumacher’s films, but by Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One, and Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween....

The Expanse Season 2 Episode 3: Static The more complex The Expanse gets, the more the audience really gets to see what makes each character tick, and with the increasing tension between Earth, Mars, and the Belt, those motivations are becoming key. Now that the consequences of playing with the protomolecule are making themselves known, it’s an all-out struggle to see who gets to it first: those who would destroy it, those who would weaponize it, or those who would surrender to it....

Clarissa Mao was introduced in The Expanse season 3 and only appeared briefly in a video call from prison in season 4, so a reminder of her origins is not only warranted; it also serves to explain what inspired Amos to choose Peaches. Fans probably remember that Clarissa’s father, Jules-Pierre Mao, was the first to try and exploit the protomolecule, and her sister Julie was tragically contaminated with the goo, passing it along to the unfortunate Belters on Eros....

The Flash Season 8 Episode 9 After three standalone “interlude” episodes, the larger story of The Flash Season 8 finally begins to unfold with “Phantoms,” an hour that finally circles back to the ongoing story of Iris’ time sickness even as it ramps up the mystery of the strange black fire that is mysteriously burning Central City residents to a crisp. The revelation that the supposed “Fire Meta” is actually some kind of bizarre new entity that feeds on human emotions—specifically grief and despair—and may not actually be a meta at all leads the show into surprising new narrative territory....

It’s 2005 and you just received an email to your Hotmail account with the subject line “Bet you can’t get out of this maze.” You immediately click the link because you love a challenge and don’t fully understand the internet yet. The first two levels of the maze game are easier than you thought and you fly through them. By the time you reach level 3, however, things get much harder....

While offshoots like the Ghostbusters video games, comic books and especially the animated series The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991) kept the brand alive, and even thriving to some extent over the years, it was 27 years before a new theatrical film–Paul Feig’s much-maligned all-female reboot in 2016–arrived in theaters. And it was a further five years before Ghostbusters: Afterlife, billed as the first direct sequel to the original pair of films on a big screen, found its way to theaters....

The major criticism you could level at The Handmaid’s Tale between seasons two and four was its halting progress. Forward movement was repeatedly compromised by a narrative need to keep our perspective character in Gilead. For June to witness and participate in each of the regime’s sick new twists, she had to stay put and stay alive. That meant miraculous recoveries, stymied escape attempts and a general sense that whatever cataclysmic event happened in an episode, the status quo would quickly resume (possibly the only thing this show has in common with The Simpsons)....

But like so many superhero and comics-based projects during that time–a relative Dark Ages for the genre–Cameron’s vision for the webslinging high school student never swung into theaters. Almost all of it was down to legal issues surrounding the rights to Spider-Man, which kept him off the screen for years. But a glance through the “scriptment” that Cameron worked up–a detailed treatment outlining the story, characters, and even passages of dialogue–indicates that Cameron’s conception of the character and his mythos was very faithful in its own way....

That all changed when the two helped liberate kidnapped citizens from the clutches of the evil aliens and teleport them back to Earth. They even took out the alien’s fortress for good measure! For doing such a great deed the two were honored by the city and Victor was given his 50th trophy (Monty got to share in it.) It was a moment of pure bliss for Victor and a culmination of his arc throughout the entire series....

The Mandalorian season 2 continues its streak of entertaining episodes with “The Heiress,” which brings in elements from The Clone Wars as well as gives us a clear sign of where the show is headed. Along the way, we’re treated to even more guest appearances, including Battlestar Galactica legend Katee Sackhoff, who brings Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze to live-action for the first time, as well as Mercedes Varnado (better known as the WWE wrestler Sasha Banks), who portrays the gun-toting Nite Owl soldier Koska Reeves....

Nicolas Cage had just won an Oscar in 1995 for his breakout performance in Leaving Las Vegas, following that up with two star-making turns in The Rock and Con Air, making the idiosyncratic actor an unlikely action movie star. John Travolta, meanwhile, was enjoying a career renaissance, buoyed by films like Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. He had worked with director John Woo on the helmer’s previous English language actioner, Broken Arrow, but the pair would hit new heights here....

While it refreshingly plays things very close to the chest at a time when most trailers give away 2/3 of the plot, I’ve tried my best to dissect the trailer for some answers. But as you’ll find in the breakdown below, I’ve mostly been left with more questions and a few theories. Before I get to it, have a look at the trailer if you haven’t already: Okay, let’s enter the Matrix....

The Orville Season 1 Episode 9 There’s humorous, and then there’s silly. This week’s The Orville framed what was essentially a love potion farce with a diplomatic mission that spun its wheels long enough to let Ed and Kelly finally work out a lingering issue in their relationship that viewers have all but forgotten about. While all praise is due to the craftsmen behind the wonderfully alien looks of the Navarians and the Bruidians, the main enjoyment came from side plots and jokes that originated outside of the main story....