The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is beautiful but a little too busy
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is beautiful but a little too busy

With The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Nintendo entered the next phase of its plan to become a different kind of entertainment giant. Though it wasn’t the company’s first go at putting its iconic plumbers on the big screen, the film demonstrated that Nintendo could collaborate with partners like Illumination to produce box office hits. The […]

Red Rooms makes online poker as thrilling as its serial killer
Red Rooms makes online poker as thrilling as its serial killer

It’s rare for a movie to get technology right. And it’s even rarer for that movie to be a thriller or horror, where realism takes a backseat to scares and tension. But Red Rooms mostly gets it. Nothing takes me out of a film quicker than a tech MacGuffin that might as well be literal […]

Project Hail Mary is popcorn sci-fi at its best
Project Hail Mary is popcorn sci-fi at its best

Have you ever wondered what Arrival would be like if it was also a goofy buddy comedy? Me neither. And yet the strange combination somehow fits together in Project Hail Mary. The movie follows a scientist who travels to the far reaches of the universe to save humanity and is forced to work alongside an […]

The AI Doc is an overwrought hype piece for doomers and accelerationists alike
The AI Doc is an overwrought hype piece for doomers and accelerationists alike

We are in the thick of a massive push to incorporate generative AI into almost every aspect of our lives, but it is still easy to be confused about what it is and how it works. It doesn’t help that many of gen AI’s proponents and detractors both speak about it with a feverish hyperbole […]

You need to watch the intensely surreal cult classic Possession
You need to watch the intensely surreal cult classic Possession

Let me just say that I highly recommend you go into Possession blind. Don’t watch a trailer. Don’t even finish reading this. Go watch it now over on Shudder, Criterion, or Metrograph. It’s also available through Kanopy or Hoopla if your library provides access. Then come back so we can talk about it in the […]

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a rollicking parable about this moment in tech
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a rollicking parable about this moment in tech

We are all guilty of pulling out our phones and doomscrolling through stressful headlines or mindnumbing videos when we should be doing anything else. We know it’s bad, but we still do it because it’s hard to resist when much of our time is spent living and working on our devices. And even though we […]

Arco is a brilliant and beautiful sci-fi film inspired by animation legends
Arco is a brilliant and beautiful sci-fi film inspired by animation legends

Classic 2D animation may not be as prevalent as it once was, but some of the stuff we’re getting over the last few years has been incredible. That includes future classics like Mars Express and Scavengers Reign, and now you can add the Moebius-inspired Arco to the list. After making a splash on the festival […]

Send Help is an ode to every worker who has had a bad boss
Send Help is an ode to every worker who has had a bad boss

When it comes to director Sam Raimi’s films, you have to go into the theater understanding that you’re about to experience a piece of cinema that vacillates between being absolute batshit and utterly sublime. Though Send Help is much more grounded than the projects he’s best known for, like The Evil Dead or Drag Me […]

All You Need Is Kill is a dazzling movie with the soul of a video game
All You Need Is Kill is a dazzling movie with the soul of a video game

While Hollywood has repeatedly tried adapting stories from Japanese manga, vanishingly few of them have been as good as Edge of Tomorrow – Warner Bros.’ 2014 live-action film based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s sci-fi light novel All You Need Is Kill. Edge of Tomorrow wasn’t a one-to-one translation of All You Need Is Kill’s original story […]

The Bone Temple turns 28 Years Later into a terrifying crisis of faith
The Bone Temple turns 28 Years Later into a terrifying crisis of faith

Because there was such a long gap between the releases of 28 Weeks Later and 28 Years Later, it was surprising to hear that writer-director duo Alex Garland and Danny Boyle already had plans for their latest collaboration to be the first chapter of a new horror trilogy. Sony seemed keen on fast-tracking the pair’s […]