Guy (Ryan Reynolds) discovers that things inside his world look a lot different when you have special sunglasses. [credit: 20th Century Studios ] In video games and computer graphics, the concept of the “uncanny valley” can emerge once something approaches visual realism. The more a virtual character looks like a human, the more our brains […]
Henry Golding, seen here doing one of many unnecessary combat-adjacent poses in Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. Earlier this year, I gave a tepid recommendation to Mortal Kombat‘s latest theatrical reboot. What I didn’t know at the time was how quickly I’d feel nostalgic for its quality and pacing. That’s how I felt after Snake […]
Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) meet after a long separation in this week’s Black Widow. [credit: Marvel Studios ] This week’s Black Widow may have put a new hit Marvel franchise in motion. It’s intimate, aggressive, funny, and brutal in every PG-13 sense possible. It’s an Eastern European Marvel superhero tale that gives […]
Every Fast & Furious film has at least one stand-out car-brand showdown, and in Fast 9, that honor goes to Dodge (left) versus Ford (right). [credit: Universal Pictures ] A few months ago, ahead of this week’s launch of Fast 9, I began pulling myself out of the wreckage that was the COVID-19 pandemic by […]
You can probably hear the title being screamed upon seeing this image. [credit: WarnerMedia ] Mortal Kombat‘s third live-action movie, launching this week after over two decades of cinematic silence, is a weird one. It’s not good. You wouldn’t mistake this for a classic action or martial arts film, and it borrows clumsily from genre giants […]
Recently, I’ve heard the phrase “pandemic fatigue” come up in terms of people getting antsy about returning to “normal.” I don’t know how long we have left to go (though Ars has plenty of articles on the topic), but I can say that even through my vigilance about safety and health, my own patience sometimes […]
Frank Grillo is stuck in a time loop in which he is being hunted by dozens of assassins in Boss Level. A man is stuck in a time loop and doomed to repeat the same day over and over again, all while being hunted by a group of deadly assassins, in Boss Level. We’ve been deluged with […]
(charge: YouTube/Saban Movies ) There is a fine line between humor and tragedy, that explains the reason why black comedy really is still a movie genre that’s notoriously hard to get. Despite great performances and a few pleasant minutes, Fatman–where Mel Gibson plays with a gruff, grizzled, disillusioned Santa–does not really succeed tonally in discovering that […]
Expand / Halloween weekend is the best time to take a look at a few of the greatest horror movies released in October. It is Halloween weekend, along together with the continuing pandemic placing a kibosh on the typical big parties and parties, it is the ideal chance to purchase in and binge-watch terror movies. […]