The final scene in 2017’s Split revealed that the movie, thought to be a self-contained M. Night Shyamalan thriller, had been a secret sequel to the writer-director’s own Unbreakable from 17 years earlier. While that twist was a very novel one at the time, it has been recently revealed to me...

Christmas stories and tales of space exploration both appeal to an audience’s sense of wonder, so it’s only natural that filmmakers have occasionally gone to both wells simultaneously. There’s a world of difference, however, between crass kiddie fare like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians...

You know how some movies end with freeze-frames of each of the main characters and a brief summary of where their lives went after that? And you know how most movies don't do that but should? We want to fix that. We'll start with A Christmas Story. (We're ignoring the two sequels, which cancel each...

It’s a specific kind of agony: You’re holding court at a party and synopsizing your favorite episode of Clarissa Explains It All. Naturally, everyone is interested, but then you go and accidentally call Melissa Joan Hart “Melissa Michelle Gellar.” The party guests’ faces fall. It’s bad....

I have a VHS problem. They are my Chapstick; bought frequently, replaced before sufficient use, and lost from my pockets as collateral damage when I retrieve change overzealously. Adventures in Home Video™ is an attempt to subsidize that problem and justify its consuming ruin by digging into...

Fans of A Star Is Born are already listening to the soundtrack on repeat, but here's something new to add to the mix! Warner Bros. has released this demo recording of one of the songs, originally written and performed by Randy Newman. Why they changed the lyrics and style to the version heard in...

A Star Is Born has changed from the story of an actress (1937) to the story of a musical actress (1954), then a rock star (1976), and now a pop diva. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is the casting of a gay icon and a hot leading man in the central roles. Since that formula works, we’re...

A Star Is Born, the story of a romance between a fading male celebrity and a rising female artist so good it’s been told four times already, is in theaters now. Based on the incredible buzz the film has been getting from critics on the festival circuit, Warner Bros. smells Oscar gold as well as...

Like all film fans, I was ecstatic when the lineups for the Toronto, Venice, and Telluride film festivals were announced. There were so many movies to sink my teeth into that I knew I had to go. So, I set up a GoFundMe to pay for my trip, and agreed to write a report for Crooked Marquee. As it...

This weekend, the female guerrilla rises again with the release of Peppermint, the story of a woman who wakes from a coma to get jacked and find the people who killed her family. Peppermint, aka Riley North (aka Jennifer Garner), hunts down and kills a lot of bad guys with knives, guns, and her...

Here at Crooked Marquee, we are open to pitches from all writers, regardless of experience. Why, the number of pitches we get per week must be somewhere around ! Many of these ideas are excellent, but a few bad ones slip through, too. Here's a sampling of some of the pitches we rejected this...

If you faced The Meg (opening this weekend), a 75-foot prehistoric shark properly called “Megalodon,” odds are you wouldn’t survive. In that spirit, let’s remember some of the aquatic killers that have scared us since the 1950s and calculate the odds of surviving an encounter with...

Now that Black Panther has dispelled the long-held belief that African-American movies don't do well overseas, Hollywood is scrambling to green-light more black-led projects. But they don't always get these attempts to cash in on diversity quite right, as evidenced by these titles and log lines now...

The sixth Mission: Impossible movie was released 22 years and two months after the first one — say what you will about this franchise, they're not crankin' 'em out like sausages. There's always a gap of at least three years between entries, as that's how long it takes a new Tom Cruise clone to...

Jukebox musicals have been popular on Broadway for years, and some — like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys — have successfully been turned into movies. With the upcoming release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, I thought I’d see if I could come up with some jukeboxes of my own. Since the songs...