For as long as I can remember, the holiday season means more than just family, friends, and goodwill toward men; it means James Bond marathons on remote cable channels. TNT and then Spike TV used to pick either Thanksgiving or Christmas and bombard the week surrounding it with nothing but 007. The...

The opening sequence of Die Another Day is a litmus test for James Bond fans. After surfing into a North Korean military base (presumably after watching Point Break for the tenth time), Bond uses his watch to set off a bomb after an arms deal goes south, then engages in a hovercraft chase. He then...

There are plenty of cartoons about holidays like Christmas and Halloween, but the genius-nerds at Pixar saw an unfilled need and came up with Coco, the first major animated film about Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, observed in Mexico and by Mexicans everywhere. Making a film to appeal to an...

Cinema is all about reflecting the human experience, and whether we think about it or not, eating is a large part of our lives. There are many instances of characters eating on film, but what about those times when the food is just tantalizingly talked about, glimpsed, nearly eaten, or even...

Confession time: Despite coming of age in the ’80s and landing in the heart of the target audience for John Hughes’ teen comedies, I never identified with the teenage characters in them — or aspired to be like them, really. Part of this has to do with being gay in the suburbs, an...

Superman is dead. He was killed by a monster (not Batman) at the end of Batman v Superman and is still dead when Justice League picks up the story some time later. The titular coalition of superheroes doesn't exist yet, but Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) -- not generally a team player -- is trying to...

The DC Extended Universe has had a rocky start. Man of Steel divided fans, and Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad were largely disappointments. But Warner Bros. has a renewed sense of confidence after the success of Wonder Woman and the release of this weekend’s Justice League, and they’ve...

November is the month wherein movie lovers, programmers, and critics turn their attention to the genre of film noir — Noirvember as it’s come to be known. While the main impetus for this is undoubtedly the hashtag-friendly wordplay of the name, there really is no time of the year that better...

There have been few career turnarounds and rapid-fire ascendancies in Hollywood as impressive as Taylor Sheridan’s. A working actor for the last 20 years, he subsisted on bit parts almost exclusively (he had a recurring role on the FX biker series Sons of Anarchy, which ended in 2014). He was, by...

Bill Murray was an actor once. Oh sure, he still stands in front of a camera and plays pretend. Very well, when he wants to. But that’s not what Bill Murray is known for anymore – Bill Murray is known for being Bill Murray. Though that’s not a Zen ideal so much as internet folklore. His...

In 1934, when Agatha Christie published Murder on the Orient Express, trains were still a popular means of transportation, and Asia was still called "the Orient." Much has changed in the last 83 years -- for example, in her entire life Agatha Christie never had more than one flavor of Oreos -- yet...

No one will deny Cate Blanchett could play the phone book and it would be amazing. So to say her performance as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok is wonderful is a foregone conclusion. But Hela as a character opens the door to comparing her with the Marvel and DC universes’ other villainesses, of which...

When you hear the words “fan fiction,” you might think of something like a 2,000-word wish fulfillment detailing Luke Skywalker’s happy marriage to Han Solo as they take care of an idyllic forest cottage in a galaxy far, far away. In your head, it’s probably riddled with grammatical...

The mighty Norse god Thor, as played by Chris Hemsworth, is a fun presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe®, but his last stand-alone film (Thor: The Dark World) was the worst of the franchise. The latest, Thor: Ragnarok, regains its sense of humor and gives Thor plenty of entertaining...

Rob Reiner is not exactly the first name that pops up when people list their favorite directors — usually those lists include people like David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, and others with more of an auteur imprimatur. Yet Rob Reiner...