Following a successful inaugural season of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Prime Video’s expensive, big genre series returns in August. And today, out of San Diego Comic-Con, the studio released the new full trailer for the series, teasing that “darkness will bind them” all in Middle Earth. What’s to know about the last season? For one, Suaron (Charlie Vickers) was unmasked, initially disguising himself as the human Halbrand and now posing as the elf Annatar to deceive the people of Middle-earth ..read more

*Yes, Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine” is a minefield of spoilers you’ll want to avoid, but this review will be spoiler-free, especially for any cameos.* Somewhere in the comic multiverse, an ancient superhero proverb says nostalgia is a razor-sharp double-edged katana sword, and if not handled with care, it can cut and wound or worse. In Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine,” heavy nostalgia blades don’t necessarily cause the viewer to bleed, but they arguably come close with a few stings and nicks, feeling fresh and sharply funny at first and a little bit dull and tired by the end o ..read more

Superficially stylishly expressive and dreamy but listlessly placed, overfilled with plot and straining to make thematic connections between its two lead characters, “Lady In The Lake” is a frustrating and often uninvolving series bogged down in too many storylines. Worse, it ambitiously tries to tell too disparate narratives and then weave them together but frequently spins its wheels and never really engages. On paper, it’s abounding with significant talents; it has an accomplished writer/director at the helm, two powerhouse leads (Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram), and a solid supporting c ..read more

It’s safe to rank South Korean horror fans high atop the list of genre supporters the world over, mainly as the past several decades have produced blockbusters the likes of 2010’s “I Saw the Devil,” 2016’s “The Wailing” and even the work of Bong Joon-ho, Oscar-winning director of “Parasite,” with the widely acclaimed 2006 entry “The Host.” With Korean spirituality long held in high regard and scripture overflowing with stories of forces at work beyond the boundaries of humankind, writer/director Jang Jae-hyun (“The Priests,” “Svaha: The Sixth Finger“) has now brought “Exhuma” to the table, a ..read more

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” took the swords-and-sandals action of previous genre-definers “Spartacus” and “Clash of the Titans” and gave it new life, paving the way for further success in Zach Snyder’s 2007 outing “300” and that forgettable 2016 remake of “Ben-Hur.” It’s a tricky world to adapt, extending beyond the over-the-top energy of brutal combat and chariot races and into the realms of a bygone era’s political, interpersonal, and economics ..read more

**Spoilers, please don’t read this piece if you haven’t seen the full season of “The Acolyte.”** All right, the “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte” ended today/late last night. If you’re like us, the entire season was a mixed bag, high on thrills of action set pieces and fantastic light saber duels, but sometimes low on stories and true surprises for what was supposed to be a mystery thriller (read our initial review ..read more

“Oddity,” the latest stab at supernatural unease from director Damian McCarthy (“Caveat”), is an undeniably unique little tale, not far from living up to its title and instead walking a line between conventional horror tropes and a handful of attempts to set itself apart from the crowd in ways that fall ever short in crossing the finish line. It’s a film that wears its potential on its sleeve, with messages somewhat buried under a story that shifts direction as if to suggest a series of deliberate screenwriting pivots or indecision as to the core plot and a slight disappointment as there’s na ..read more

After the subtle, graceful, and sensitively directed humanist drama “Minari,” filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung pulls a massive 180 shift with the blockbuster-sized “Twisters,” a summer event/epic disaster movie that proves he has the chops to create extravagant action set pieces and popcorn-friendly spectacle, but at the expense of his intimate personal touches and affinity for anything resembling complexity. “Twisters” attempts to do it all: cineplex thrills, deadly serious viscerally dramatic treatments to harrowing sequences, light-hearted laughs, a burgeoning romance, and deep trauma from the pa ..read more

If you enjoyed the hyper-violent 20-minute finale of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” and wondered if you could just have that for the whole movie, you have the movie of your dreams in Indian revenge actioner “Kill.” Relentless bloodletting is not novel to Bollywood cinema, but the volume & degree here might represent a dubious new milestone. As might the fact that “Kill” is one of the very few Indian films acquired for semi-wide release in North America, making its way to nearly 1000 screens ..read more

The modern horror film is missing a key ingredient that you seemed to always have in decades past—creepiness. Instead of taking your time and allowing dread and terror to hang around you, creeping inside of your brain, modern horror films rely so heavily on jump scares. Sure, that scares you in the moment, but it doesn’t lead to a truly horrifying experience. That’s where a film like Osgood Perkins’ frightening, wild, and endlessly dark “Longlegs” comes in.  Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a female FBI agent who has a knack for incredibly reliable hunches ..read more