Enlarge / Unsurprisingly, things get strange in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. (credit: Marvel Studios) On paper, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a formulaic Marvel Studios superhero romp. Its plot beats read like sticky notes slapped onto an overpaid executive’s wall: A superhero arrives, seems all-powerful, then runs into an unstoppable […]
Enlarge / Knuckles and Sonic. (credit: Paramount / Sega) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the snappy, fun-for-everyone film that the first live-action Sonic film should have been. It’s allegiant to the source games and comics without getting hamstrung by reverence. Its best laughs are earned. Its cheesiest laughs are easy to shrug off. And while […]
Household robots lock a group of bickering suburbanites in a house to protect them from an android uprising in Bigbug, a new film from visionary French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. There has been a fair amount of controversy in Hollywood about streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Studios, and Hulu shifting from merely showing films to actually […]
Enlarge / Tom Holland stars as Indi—er, as Nathan Drake in Columbia Pictures’ Uncharted. (credit: Columbia Pictures) Imagine a video game sequel where pretty much everything fans liked about the original was gone. Less action; simpler puzzles; boring environments; plot holes big enough to drive the “Hog Wild” seaplane through; and perhaps worst of all, […]
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) When it comes to films in 2021, Ars Technica readers have been more likely to express their feelings about the logistics of seeing new offerings this year than about the films in question. We get it. The past year-plus of world-shaking change has been a stern reminder that some stuff works […]
Enlarge / Keanu Reeves returns as Neo in The Matrix Resurrections (credit: Warner Bros.) After nearly 20 years, moviegoers finally have the change to revisit the imaginative cyberpunk world of 1999’s The Matrix with the fourth installment in the sci-fi franchise: The Matrix Resurrections. It’s not a perfect film, but there’s enough of the old magic […]
Enlarge / MJ and Peter Parker, dropping in one more time. (credit: Sony Pictures / Marvel Studios) My latest challenge: after seeing Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third Tom Holland live-action film in the series, I’m befuddled. How do I fully convey its quality without spoiling even a smidge of its contents? As I left […]
Enlarge / They ain’t afraid of no ghosts. A new generation goes a-busting. (credit: Sony Pictures) The original Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies. Ghostbusters II? Not so much. But I enjoyed the 2016 all-female film (especially the extended cut, which let the cast cut loose a bit more), and I am not […]
The brilliantly nerdy, high-strung German safecracker Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) was a highlight of Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead . Now he has his own prequel origin story with Army of Thieves . [credit: Netflix ] A humble, nerdy bank teller with the secret passion for safecracking finds himself taking on the heist challenge […]
Eternals, assemble! (l-r) Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), Makkari (Lauren Ridloff), Gilgamesh (Don Lee), Thena (Angelina Jolie), Ikaris (Richard Madden), Ajak (Salma Hayek), Sersi (Gemma Chan), Sprite (Lia McHugh), and Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry). [credit: YouTube/Marvel Studios ] For much of Marvel’s Eternals‘ 2 hour 37 minute runtime, I found my consciousness floating out of my body, […]