Sometimes a movie lands at exactly the right moment. There are many comparison points for You Can See Everything (though, really, there is nothing else quite like it), but to me the movie it most immediately calls to mind is The Matrix—which came along and torched our brains at a moment of immense technological change.

Like that movie, You Can See Everything scratches at our current reality to reveal some perplexing questions. Chief among them: Do real people actually exist anymore? Or have we become so consumed with the idea of who we are and who we present ourselves to be—and how those images can be distorted and manipulated—that we’ve lost the ability to parse what is and isn’t actually real.

That’s just one of the ideas that’s been bouncing around my head since seeing You Can See Everything, a documentary (?) that unfolds as a mystery where you wait to uncover the truth but instead it just keeps unraveling and unraveling (reminding me of this quote from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure). Is this a psychological portrait of obsessive, attention-hungry people? A meditation on an age without real communication or empathy? Or just clever filmmakers creating something out of nothing?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what to make of anything that happens in the enthralling three-hour runtime of You Can See Everything or any of the faces that appear on screen. Is it all just artifice (both the people and the documenting)? I have no idea. But I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Grade: A+

After his overbearing mother is bit by a Sumatran rat monkey, Lionel (Timothy Balme) struggles to keep his romantic life afloat—and the undead from overtaking his home.

Initial Reception

Made on a budget of $3 million, 1992’s Dead Alive (originally titled Braindead in New Zealand) made less than $250,000 at the U.S. box office. But buzz began to build (in his Entertainment Weekly review, Owen Gliberman praised it as “the most delirious bloodbath since Re-Animator”) and the film became a cult hit on video.

Key Moment

The film’s gory grand finale featuring a party full of zombies and a lawnmower.

Killer Line

“You’ve got… the bite!”

Standout Player

The makeup and effects teams. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie with more blood, gore, and bizarre creatures. While the first half doles out enough oozing, spewing body destruction for your average horror movie, the second half goes full throttle with severed parts, rivers of blood, and flesh-ripping zombie mayhem. Whatever these people got paid, it wasn’t close to enough.

Achilles’ Heal

I don’t think anyone is clamoring to see more of the love story between Lionel or Paquita (Diana Peñalver). But it’s not a movie killer, and it does help feed the story.

Subscribe now

Why This Movie Still Matters

When I was in high school, I took a public speaking class. For our final grade, we each had to give a speech using the techniques we learned throughout the semester. One of those techniques was to kick off your speech with an attention grabber.

My speech was on violence in film. So for my attention grabber I cut together a three-minute video featuring violent cinematic images. I included snippets from movies like Taxi Driver, Clockwork Orange, Faces of Death, Re-Animator, Blue Velvet, and, for the final clip, Dead Alive.

It was the perfect end note—just that glimpse of the blood and carnage in Dead Alive was enough to peel everyone’s eyeballs open. But it was really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the widely creative, over-the-top gore the movie has to offer.

Here are 10 things you’ll see in Dead Alive you won’t see in many other movies:

1. Human custard consumption: After being bitten by a rat monkey while spying on her son at the zoo, Lionel’s mother, Vera, begins to decompose. But that doesn’t stop her from hosting a formal luncheon with the president of the Wellington Women’s League and her husband. With Vera gasping and shaking, her wound bursts shooting blood and puss into the husband’s custard. Then her ear falls off into her own custard. Both take big bites—to the horror and disgust of the Women’s League president.

2. A literally unhinged nurse: After a nurse tells Lionel his mother is dead, he starts weeping. She consoles him. Suddenly his dead mother pops her head up and jabs her hands into the nurses cheeks, moving her fingers around inside her face. Then she pulls the nurse’s head back, snapping it from her neck so it’s just dangling by a hinge of skin while blood spurts out the top.

3. Zombie mouth to mouth: Later, the nurse zombie and a priest zombie make out voraciously. Lionel tries to pull them apart but when he does the nurse zombie tears off all the skin around the priest zombie’s mouth. Then she chews up and swallows the skin.

4. An unexpected face off: Two zombies attack a man with glasses at a party. One grabs him by the collar and throws him to the floor. The other comes up from behind him and yanks him backward by the hair, slipping all the skin straight off his head (complete with glasses) like a blanched tomato to reveal the bloody, bug-eyed skull beneath.

5. A legless escape: A man tries to get into Lionel’s house for safety. He climbs through a window, but something grabs him. He screams for help. Two women grab his arms (each taking one) and try to pull him in. They get him in but his legs have been stripped of all flesh. They are just bloody bones (though he still has his boots on).

6. Regurgitating some punch: One of the women screams while staring at the man with the bloody bone legs (see #5). A zombie comes up behind her and punches his hand though the back of her head and out of her mouth.

7. A gut-wrenching performance: Lionel kicks a zombie trying to get in through a hole in the bathroom door. Its stomach is impaled on the splintered wood. The zombie continues pushing forward until it splits in half, its guts falling out onto the floor as it crawls. It jumps on Lionel and its guts drop out of its severed backside… Later, those same guts become its own zombified creature, chasing after Lionel using its intestines like arms to grab him.

8. Playing half-head soccer: A zombie gets hedge clippers rammed into its mouth. The hedge clippers are opened and closed repeatedly until the top half of its head falls off. The head piece then gets punted away… Later the same half-head gets kicked around on a slippery bloody floor. After the half-head attacks Paquita, she puts it in a blender and turns it into a bloody milkshake.

9. A Gallagher-esque spinal twirl: A zombie appears with its spinal cord and head protruding from its body like a giraffe. When it tries to attack Paquita, she rips the spine off the body, spins it around like a lasso, and smashes the head on the counter like a watermelon with a splash of flesh and blood.

10. An open-face birth: A woman who’s been bit by a zombie is in distress. Her neck starts bubbling. Then two little arms pop out the sides of her neck. They proceed to rip her face open at the center, revealing a tiny laughing baby face.

You can see clips from some of those scenes here:

Quick Takes

• Originally titled Braindead when it was released in New Zealand and Europe, the movie was renamed Dead Alive for its U.S. release because there was another film with a similar name released around this time (the decent 1990 mess-with-your-mind flick Brain Dead, starring Bill Paxton and Bill Pullman). Maybe it’s because it’s the title I initially knew the film by, but I think Dead Alive is the better title.

• Before he became a blockbuster, Oscar-winning filmmaker, Peter Jackson showed his ingenuity by making truly subversive, attention-getting low-budget horror films. From 1987 to 1992, he made: Bad Taste, about aliens using people for their fast-food chain; Meet the Feebles, an all-puppet movie that can best be described as The Muppets go to hell; and Dead Alive. After Dead Alive, he inched closer to mainstream Hollywood filmmaking with Heavenly Creatures (starring a very young Kate Winslet) and The Frighteners (starring Michael J. Fox) before getting the greenlight on The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

• Dead Alive is frequently recognized as one of the bloodiest movies of all time. It reportedly used nearly 80 gallons of fake blood for the lawnmower scene alone. The other movie commonly mentioned in the same bloody ballpark (in terms of volume of fake blood used) is 2013’s Evil Dead directed by Fede Álvarez.

With his ratings faltering, a 1970s syndicated late-night TV show host brings on some supernatural guests for a Halloween episode that goes horrifyingly awry.

Initial Reception

After playing festivals like SXSW where it built positive buzz, Late Night with the Devil was unleashed in theaters in March 2024 (a somewhat surprising choice for a movie set at Halloween). With an estimated budget of only $1.5 million, the movie made $10 million in the U.S. and $15 million worldwide—a word-of-mouth indie hit. It premiered on Shudder a month later.

Key Moment

Eager to prove to viewers that what they’ve been seeing is all a ruse, magician and skeptic Carmichael Haig performs a demonstration on the power of hypnosis. Using the show’s Ed McMahon-like sidekick, Gus McConnell, as a volunteer, Carmichael hypnotizes everyone (including us?) to believe Gus has worms borrowing inside him. What happens next is one of the movie’s most terrifying moments.

Killer Line

“You needn’t worry about your TV show, I think you’re going to be very famous soon.”

Standout Player

Ingrid Torelli who plays Lilly, a 13-year-old survivor of a Satanic cult mass suicide. Lilly appears on the late-night show with parapsychologist Dr. June Ross-Mitchell, who is promoting her book about Lilly’s demonic possession. Despite being young, polite, and seemingly innocent, Lilly’s demeanor is immediately off-putting. The way she talks and the look in her eyes as she stares directly into the camera (and at us) take this movie from fun to frightening in an instance.

Achilles’ Heal

The last 10 minutes. Late Night with the Devil crescendos to a “holy shit” finale. It also has a very strong end cap. In between those two things there’s about 10 extra minutes where the movie tries to gel everything together. Thing is, it’s not really necessary. We can infer a lot of this. And it would be much more striking to go right from that powerful finale to that disturbing closing note.

Subscribe now

Why It’s a Classic

To talk about what elevates Late Night with the Devil above the fray of 21st century horror movies, I’ve brought in a special guest who worked on the film. Here’s my interview with Mr. Wriggles, one of the minor deities that serves the demon Abraxas, who possesses Lilly in the movie (it gets its name because of the way it wiggles in and out of her mind)…

Hi, Mr. Wiggles. Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I know you have a pretty busy schedule.

What is this? Where am I? What have you done to me?

We’re here to talk about Late Night with the Devil and what makes it such a great movie.

Oh, excellent. I thought you were another parapsychologist trying to “understand” me. Or, good forbid, a foolish priest trying to conduct an exorcism. Just the worst…

Anyway, Late Night with the Devil, what’s great about it? I think it’s the premise: What if a horror movie took place on a late-night talk show? It taps into what a strange phenomenon late-night talk shows are.

If you were around in the last few decades of the 20th century, late-night TV was this huge thing. I mean, it’s still a thing now—just look at how much Jimmy Kimmel gets under my fellow demon pal Trump’s skin—but back then people like David Letterman, Arsenio Hall, Conan O’Brien, and the godfather of them all, Johnny Carson, were major figures. For some reason, this landscape of TV primarily watched by the very old and the very young had an outsized importance in American culture.

How did it happen? How did Jay Leno and James Corden become notable TV personalities? Even Chevy Chase got a late-night show at one point. I can tell you from firsthand knowledge the only answer is the devil. Usually when things don’t make logical sense, that’s our work.

The movie takes place in 1977. Why is that important?

Along with being in that peak late-night TV period (Carson was in the middle of his 30-year run at this point), it’s important for a couple other reasons:

1. The 70s were just an inherently creepy fucking time. Of all the decades I’ve lived through, the aesthetic of that time period just really gives me chills, you know. Everything looks beat-down, grimy, a little weathered. And the movie really captures that. It’s filmed in a box-TV 4:3 aspect ratio (trapping you in) and the production design is full of those drab browns and dull oranges. It’s great.

2. The decade also calls to mind one of the all-time great horror movies—The Exorcist. With myself taking possession of Lilly, the young girl in the movie, you can’t help but think of that horror classic. So I think the two films are in conversation with each other in a fun way.

Other than yourself, who are some of your favorite characters/performances in the movie?

Well, I couldn’t do what I do without the people around me. They really lift me up.

One of the great things about the movie is, through the talk show format, we get a real sense of the characters we meet on screen. In a lot of horror movies, you just get a cardboard cutout and then they’re running around screaming. I always say, let’s dig into the soul a little before we terrorize it.

My favorite performances probably come from the people I worked with the closest, the ones whose hearts and minds I know oh so well:

• Ingrid Torelli as Lilly (who you mentioned up top). Obviously, we worked VERY closely. She’s a great vessel, letting me cloak my devious scheming in her youthful innocence.

• Ian Bliss as Carmichael Haig, the magician turned skeptic, who second guesses anything out of the norm that happens on the show (until he can’t anymore). Bliss plays a great smug asshole here. I like how he pulls the audience to his side so I get the chance to rip them back to mine.

• Finally, there’s David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, the host of the fictional late-night talk show Night Owls. Dastmalchian, probably best known as Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad, is the secret sauce that makes this whole thing work. He plays the jokes, banter, and reactions of a late-night host expertly, while also giving us glimpses of Delroy’s sadness, darkness, and (self?) deception. David is a dear friend. I helped him get the part of Whistling Marauder in Bird Box.

This is a low-budget movie, reportedly made for only $1-1.5 million. But it never really feels that low budget. How’d they pull that off?

Well, if you’re asking if I had something to do with it, I’ll never tell...

But seriously, there’s nothing more exciting than watching a small movie find creative ways to feel bigger than it actually is. While Late Night with the Devil essentially takes place all in one night and all in one place, it never feels constrained. The movie devises interesting (and cost-effective) ways to expand the universe.

For example, the movie begins with a 10-minute mini documentary that sets up the backstory of Jack Delroy and Night Owls. It talks about the show’s rise during a “time of unrest and mistrust, fear, and violence” in America, Jack’s professional and personal ups and downs, and the show’s current ratings difficulties. It’s a great way to set up the story that immediately grabs you.

There’s also another moment on the show where they share a clip produced by the Psi-Research Center giving us background on Lilly. Along with seeing still photographs of Lilly’s troubling past, there’s a moment where we hear an audio recording of the demon inside Lilly (played by yours truly) and all we see are spinning tape reels and audio gauge needles jumping. It’s so simple, yet I like to think it’s one of the scariest moments of the movie.

There are also some really cool “effects” in the movie, especially at the end.

All of these things meld together to make Late Night with the Devil feel like something bold, thrilling, and different; a discovery you’d come across on late night TV, enveloped by utter darkness other than that glowing box in front of you, unable to look away as it takes possession of your soul.

Great stuff, Mr. Wiggles. Thanks again for doing this.

Not a problem. Now I’ll just need your signature in blood...

Quick Takes

• A whopping nine production, distributor, or PR company logos appear at the start of Late Night with the Devil. One after another, they just keep coming. It takes almost two minutes of screen time for them to finish.

• Upon its release, the movie stirred up controversy for its use of AI to create several “We’ll be right back”-style title cards played during the fictional TV show’s commercial breaks. Directors Cameron and Colin Cairnes released a statement to Variety saying, “we experimented with AI for three still images which we edited further and ultimately appear as very brief interstitials in the film.” As Colin explained to Letterboxd it wasn’t about replacing people but trying to accomplish as much as they could with a small team and shoestring budget: “If we hadn’t made that choice with the A.I., which for us was seriously just trying to be resourceful and experimenting with this very new technology at the time, we would have just ended up repeating some other graphics that our team had done anyway. Our producers also happened to be our VFX artists and graphic designers. That’s how small and tight that our little family is.”

• Late Night with the Devil directors Colin and Cameron Cairnes are brothers. Other examples of notable cinematic sibling behind the camera include Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, No Country for Old Men), Lana and Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix, Bound), Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame), Peter and Bobby Farrelly (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something About Mary), Albert and Allen Hughes (Menace II Society, Dead Presidents), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta, The Promise), and Josh and Benny Safdie (Good Time, Uncut Gems).

Release Details

2024 35th Anniversary Edition 4K UHD Blu-ray from Paramount Home Entertainment

From the Back Cover

They’re the wildest gang of screwballs that ever spit tobacco—a handsome, but hopeless assembly of baseball-playing misfits set up to fail by their scheming new owner. Once they strike-out all season, she’ll move the team from Cleveland to Miami.

Package Appeal

Solid: While the Paramount packaging is pretty much by the numbers, I do give them credit for the cover design—which is new to this release and nods to one of the most electric moments (and characters) in the movie.

Best Extra

Alternate Ending with Filmmaker Introduction: This is not actually an “ending” at all, but rather a surprise twist that would have come near the end of the film. The twist? Margaret Whitton’s evil owner Rachel Phelps is not evil at all but rather an incredibly savvy, baseball-loving businesswoman who handpicked the players for their unique talents and concocted the moving-the-team scheme to inspire them to win. The twist tested well, but audiences were having so much fun rooting against Rachel as the villain they decided to cut it.

Subscribe now

Feature Presentation

Major League is the kind of movie that probably wouldn’t get made today. It’s hard to fathom any Major League Baseball (MLB) team (or the league itself) going for this kind of depiction of the team, ownership, or the sport.

That’s a bummer because the down-and-dirty dustiness of the Cleveland Indians (now known as the Guardians) portrayed here is what makes this movie so good. These are not polished players living with PR teams and personal trainers; these are scrappers struggling to make or stay in the league.

The same goes for the city of Cleveland, which is introduced in the opening credits through shots of dilapidated factories exhausting massive billows of smoke. I love a city with a personality in a movie. And this one’s got a down-on-its-luck Cleveland (is there another kind?) filled with working-class people doing working-class jobs, resigned to the fact their team is never gonna win.

Enter into that atmosphere a pack of lovable losers sent (unbeknownst to them) on a mission to continue losing. By making the team so bad they can’t possibly compete, Whitton’s owner plans to hit new attendance lows—triggering a clause that will allow her to relocate the team to a warmer climate. Whitton is great as villain with a clear and simple goal: get the f**k out of Cleveland.

Equally great is the rest of the cast. Echoing their characters, we get actors at different phases of their careers:

• Tom Berenger, who got some shots but never quite made it as a leading man, plays the journeyman catcher on his last legs.

• Charlie Sheen and Wesley Snipes, both on their way to bigger stardom at the time, play the young upstarts.

• Corbin Bersen, who was a huge TV star with L.A. Law, plays the talented guy coasting on his laurels.

• Dennis Haysbert, who would go on to play the president on 24 and appear in countless Allstate ads, is the talented power hitter whose game hasn’t come together.

• James Gammon, who played a lot of cowboys and had one of the gruffest voices of all time, plays the manager pulled out of his job at a tire repair shop.

• Rene Russo, appearing in her very first movie, is Berenger’s love interest. She would go on to play the love interest in every studio movie made for the next 10 years.

• Bob Eucker—who steals every scene he’s in as announcer Harry Doyle—was an actual announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers (and a former MLB player). Eucker was also appearing on the NBC sitcom Mr. Belvedere at the time (where he also played a sportscaster).

It’s a loaded lineup, and they get every ounce (and more) from writer-director David S. Ward’s solid script—which has a great comic premise but also never really treats itself like a comedy. That enables the movie to both be funny as hell while having air of romance and melancholy.

As a result, we can laugh at Sheen’s zig-zag haircut, his wild pitches, and Snipes’ reaction to seeing him wearing thick glasses for the first time. But when his character comes out of the bullpen during the team’s climactic game, with the crowd exuberantly singing “Wild Thing”, we can also be on our feet, radiating the sheer joy of baseball and cinema.

Quick Takes

• Major League writer-director David S. Ward had an interesting career. In 1974, he won an Academy Award at the young age of 28 for Best Original Screenplay for The Sting. He went on to write and direct Major League and its sequel 1994’s Major League 2: Back to the Minors, 1991’s King Ralph with John Goodman, and the 1993 college football movie The Program with James Caan. He also co-wrote 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle with Nora Ephron and Jeff Arch (for which he received another Oscar nomination). He said his inspiration for Major League came from being a long-suffering Cleveland Indians fan.

• I called this a top 5 sports comedy. So what other four movies make the list? While I don’t a full list ironed out, I’d say the other four slots are between Slap Shot, The Bad News Bears, Happy Gilmore, White Men Can’t Jump, Kingpin, and A League of Their Own. I’m sure many people would undoubtedly add Bull Durham, The Longest Yard (1974), and Caddyshack to that list—but those are all movies I like more than love.

• I saw Major League for the first time when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I immediately started ripping sleeves off my shirts. That’s how powerful a character Rick “Wild Thing” Vaugh is. He’s up there with Han Solo, Conan the Barbarian, and Marty McFly for me in terms of movie characters I just wanted to be.

• Hot take: I’m not sure the Indians should win at the end. I don’t know if the team losing necessarily fits the tone of the movie, or if it’s fair to a city that always feels like it comes up short, but Cleveland winning just feels like a fantasy here. A Rocky ending might have been more appropriate: They lose the game but the team gets to stay in the city (a moral victory).

Starring: Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons Written by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman Directed by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Tom Cruise didn’t have to do this. There’s a pretty clear path for a movie star to nab a late-in-career Oscar nomination: play a weathered, slightly nuanced version of your beloved screen persona. Think Paul Newman in The Color of Money. Or, even better, Newman in The Verdict (which he didn’t win for but should have).

Say what you will about Cruise, he’s never been interested in the easy layup. What Cruise does in Digger is wild and eccentric; real risk-taking. It’s as daring as any stunt he pulled off in the Mission Impossible series, and the most complex role he’s tackled since Vanilla Sky. And, as you’d expect, he goes all in.

While this movie is far more out there than the typical Oscar fare, Cruise more than earns his shot at the gold statue with this one—if only for the sheer boldness of his performance (and the material) alone.

As for the film itself, I don’t know if my opinion of a movie has ever shifted so much from start to finish. One moment I felt like I might be watching a trainwreck; the next a masterpiece. Part of that’s by design; part of it I’m not so sure. Each scene is like a teeter-totter where you don’t know which way it’s going to oscillate next.

But even when you’re not sure if it’s working (or if it’s a better collection of scenes than a complete movie), Digger never breaks the cardinal movie rule: Don’t be boring. The staging, the acting, the dialogue—there’s always something commanding your attention. There are so many movies that leave you thinking “why didn’t they just go for it a few times rather than be mediocre?” Well, ALL Digger does is go for it.

And somehow, almost against all odds (but also not, because it’s so intentional), it comes together in the end. And not only comes together, but slowly clicks into place, layer by layer, in a way that leaves you dizzy and elated.

While they marketed the movie as they should, it definitely turned a lot of people off—as did the movie’s overall aesthetic (which is best described as “Wes Anderson but kinda gross”). Just know that’s not really what this movie is (or not exactly what this is). And unraveling that is one of the best cinematic surprises of the year.

Grade: A-

A24’s Primetime—starring Robert Pattison as Chris Hansen, the host of the controversial NBC reality series To Catch a Predator—hit theaters this past weekend to critical acclaim and Oscar buzz. The movie, the 12th film A24 has released this year, is yet another win for the beloved big-screen brand.

Founded in 2012 as an indie upstart, A24 is now in its teen years. With the success of movies like Marty Supreme ($192M worldwide box office) and Backrooms ($394M worldwide), the studio/distributor has officially leveled up to mid-major. Much like Miramax in the 1990s, A24 has transcended the “arthouse” label to become a major cinematic player—both in terms of box office, audience anticipation, and awards.

Perhaps more importantly, A24 continues to deliver a unique and exciting slate of movies year after year. They work with some of today’s most interesting writer-directors (Alex Garland, Sean Baker, Ari Aster), dabble in both genre and prestige pictures, and pick up buzzy festival favorites (like 2026’s The Invite, which they grabbed out of Sundance). Any movie that comes out with the A24 tag has my attention.

Subscribe now

My Favorite A24 Movies by Year (2021-2026)

Over the past five years, A24 has released 87 movies (and counting). Here are my favorite of those movies from each year, as well as the movie currently leading the pack in 2026…

2021: Zola

While the obvious choice for the best A24 movie of 2021 might be the Oscar-nominated Minari, I fell harder for Zola—a movie probably best known for being based on a Twitter thread. But don’t let that description keep you away. Zola is both smarter and funnier than you might expect, with a lights-out cast that includes Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, Nicholas “Cousin Greg” Braun, and Colman Domingo.

The plot: After Paige’s Zola befriends Keough’s Stefani, they head on a chaotic, increasingly dark road trip to the seedier side of Florida. Domingo, per usual, is stellar. But it’s Paige who really pulls you into this one (why isn’t she a major star yet?). This would make a great double feature with Sean Baker’s Anora.

2021 A24 Releases:

• Saint Maud

• Minari

• False Positive

• Zola

• Val

• The Green Knight

• Lamb

• The Souvenir Part II

• C’mon C’mon

• The Humans

• Red Rocket

2022: X

2022 was a big year for A24. Everything Everywhere All at Once became (at the time) the company’s highest grossing movie ($148M worldwide) and wound up racking up Oscar wins (including Best Picture). Aftersun was another critical darling this year (it has a mighty 95 metascore on Metacritic). Here’s the thing: I don’t really like Everything Everywhere All at Once and the style of Aftersun just really isn’t my flavor. So neither of those are my pick.

My choice is writer-director Ti West’s horror movie X—the first film in a trilogy that also includes another 2022 A24 film, Pearl, and 2024’s MaXXXine. While those movies are fine (Pearl, in particular, gets a lot of love), I think X is on another level. Tracking a crew filming a porno on a Texas farm in the 1970s when they encounter an old couple who are a little off their rockers, the movie is a throwback to exploitation horror past with a modern twist and an excellent Mia Goth.

2022 A24 Releases:

• After Yang

• X

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

• Men

• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

• Bodies Bodies Bodies

• Funny Pages

• Pearl

• God’s Creatures

• Stars at Noon

• Aftersun

• Causeway

• The Inspection

• The Eternal Daughter

• The Whale

2023: Talk to Me

Past Lives was probably A24’s most beloved movie of 2023. And I have to give credit to Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid for being nothing like anything else I have ever seen before and probably will again (a true swing, even if it doesn’t always hit). But the best A24 of this year was once again a horror movie that rises to the top of the genre.

Unlike X, which delivered a fun, playful take on horror films of the past, Talk to Me delivered a truly scary tale grounded in the current moment. Directors Michael and Danny Philippou aren’t afraid to go real dark with this one; but they’re also so creative with the audio and visual elements of the film that it’s more exhilarating than somber. Perhaps the best and freakiest thing about the movie is it feels exactly like how today’s teens would treat a supernatural artifact with the power to unleash hell.

2023 A24 Releases:

• When You Finish Saving the World

• Close

• Sharper

• Showing Up

• Beau Is Afraid

• You Hurt My Feelings

• Past Lives

• Earth Mama

• Talk to Me

• Medusa Deluxe

• Dicks: The Musical

• All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

• Priscilla

• Dream Scenario

• The Zone of Interest

• The Iron Claw

2024: A Different Man

I like a good number of A24’s releases from this year—including Civil War, Love Lies Bleeding, Heretic, The Brutalist, and Y2K. And even some of the ones that didn’t quite work for me—like Babygirl, I Saw the TV Glow, and MaXXXine—I still appreciated the effort. But the movie that has stuck with me the most, and the one I think more people need to see, is A Different Man.

This movie does something far different (and funnier) than I expected. It also changed the way I think about Sebastian Stan, who proves he’s much more than just a Marvel chess piece here. Stan plays Edward, a wannabe actor whose face is covered with tumors—a condition that impacts not only his career but his personal life. After undergoing a procedure that changes his appearance, Edward finds his world shifting in troubling ways. It’s a movie that would make a perfect double feature with The Substance.

2024 A24 Releases:

• Problemista

• Love Lies Bleeding

• Civil War

• I Saw the TV Glow

• Tuesday

• Janet Planet

• MaXXXine

• Sing Sing

• The Front Room

• A Different Man

• We Live in Time

• Heretic

• Queer

• Y2K

• The Brutalist

• Babygirl

2025: Marty Supreme

Here is a year where I have to go with the obvious pick. Marty Supreme was, until Backrooms came along, A24’s most successful movie (earning nearly $100M in the U.S. alone). It also garnered nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Josh Safdie), and Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet).

The accolades were earned, this is a lively, propulsive movie with great music, production design, and the best use of Chalamet as full-fledged movie star. It’s also got an unique and eclectic supporting cast that includes Odessa A’zion, Tyler, The Creator, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O’Leary from Shark Tank, and legendary filmmaker Abel Ferrera. It’s a fun movie to watch (and rewatch) for the all the influences it bakes into an original meal.

2025 A24 Releases:

• Parthenope

• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

• Opus

• Death of a Unicorn

• Warfare

• The Legend of Ochi

• Friendship

• Bring Her Back

• Materialists

• Sorry, Baby

• Eddington

• Highest 2 Lowest

• Ne Zha II

• The Smashing Machine

• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

• Eternity

• Marty Supreme

2026 (So Far): The Invite

The leader of the pack for me at this point is The Invite. Directed by Olivia Wilde and starring Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton, this dinner-party-that-goes-off-the-rails comedy/drama is among my favorite films of the year. Working with a sharp script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormick, Wilde digs deep into the details here (she’s a top-tier director) and gets great performances across the board.

For me this towers over the competition. I liked (didn’t love) The Drama, thought Backrooms was undercooked, and found How to Make a Killing miscast and milquetoast. I haven’t seen Tony, Onslaught, and Primetime yet (all movies I’m interested in). And still to come are Misty Green, The Debut, You Can See Everything, and Club Kid. So any one of those could take the mantle before the end of the year.

2026 A24 Releases:

• The Moment

• Pillion

• How to Make a Killing

• Undertone

• Mother Mary

• The Drama

• Backrooms

• The Death of Robin Hood

• The Invite

• Tony

• Onslaught

• Primetime

• Misty Green (not released yet)

• You Can See Everything (not released yet)

• Club Kid (not released yet)

• The Debut (not released yet)

Starring: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser Written by: Zach Cregger, Shay Hatten Directed by: Zach Cregger

After Barbarian and Weapons—two grab-you-by-the-collar original movies that were a rush to watch (both for the thrills they elicited and the surprise and creativity baked into them) and increasingly successful at the box office (Barbarian made $40M domestic, Weapons made $151M)—I was scratching my head when it was announced writer-director Zach Cregger’s next movie would be an adaptation of the video game Resident Evil.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with video game adaptations (literary adaptations have been a lifeblood of the movie business since day one, why not video games?), it’s just that movies based on video games haven’t historically been very good. And it seemed like a step back for Cregger, one of the few modern filmmakers who has found success producing original material.

But leave it to Cregger to not only make a good “video game movie” but also a damn good movie. While Resident Evil isn’t necessarily an elevation from what he gave us with Weapons, it’s a solid victory lap; a filmmaking flex to make sure everybody knows he’s truly got the goods.

Like his previous movies, Cregger shows a rare patience and confidence behind the camera with Resident Evil. He delivers a barrage of jump scares and (amazingly) none of them ever feel cheap because he’s so good at building tension. There’s also a heavy dose of comedy (when we’re not wincing, we’re laughing—and sometimes we’re doing both). Cregger knows how to use laughs to inflate the scares rather than deflate them.

As a writer, Cregger (along with co-writer Shay Hatten) also constantly zags the story away from cliche. He knows how filmgoers (especially horror fans) are trained to anticipate story beats, or even familiar moments like shooting off a lock or driving through a fence, and he expertly plays against our expectations. That’s just such a satisfying thing to watch.

Perhaps most impressively, Cregger understands that video games are inherently about atmosphere, being inside a world, and adapts that experience better than any movie I can think of. He uses cinematic techniques to put us in the shoes of the protagonist in a world where strange things jump out at you in the dark. The approach is both incredibly simple and incredibly effective.

If there’s a knock on the movie, it’s the fact that, despite its unique and gooey visuals, it’s wall-to-wall CGI. And not CGI that blends seamlessly, but CGI that is always clearly CGI. You could argue that fits with this world and the movie’s video game origins. But I could only think how much better this would look with practical effects (a la John Carpenter’s The Thing).

In the end, that’s a small price to pay for a 90-minute movie (remember those?) that’s this fun, surprising, and exhilarating. While I hope Cregger will return to original material with his next movie, no matter what he does you can preorder my ticket now.

Grade: A-

The summer of 2026 was a return to form at the box office. There were 18 major studio movies released—including big hits like Toy Story 5, The Odyssey, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day. And that doesn’t even include releases from smaller studios like A24, Neon, Angel, or Bleecker Street.

Still, summer 2026 has nothing on the summer movie season from 35 years ago when the big studios released 39 films—including Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Point Break, Thelma & Louise, Backdraft, Boyz n the Hood, and City Slickers. And that doesn’t even include movies from mid-majors like Orion and New Line Cinema or the Disney rerelease of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (which raked in more than $60M).

And it wasn’t just the summer that ruled, 1991 was actually a sneaky great movie year. It had action, comedy, movie stars, and sleeper hits. It had Spielberg and Scorsese. It had a Disney classic, a horror thriller that won Best Picture, and multiple Jean Claude Van Damme movies. It really had it all.

To pay tribute to this exceptional movie year on its 35th anniversary, here are some awards (and honorable mentions) for a handful of the notable 1991 films…

Subscribe now

Best “Pump Up the Jam” Movie

For a movie with a song that became part of its identity

WINNER: New Jack City

This is admittedly a little bit of a swerve. There were movies with bigger songs (see the two honorables below). But no movie captured the vibe of the movie it was in better than “New Jack Hustler” from the New Jack City soundtrack, which was written and performed by Ice T—who was in the movie. And, guess what, this song still rips.

Honorable Mentions:

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves — When this movie came out, you could not escape Bryan Adams’s “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.

• Terminator 2: Judgement Day — The biggest movie of 1991 featured a great song from one of the biggest bands of the time: Guns N Roses’ “You Could Be Mine”.

Best “Carried Entirely On Their Back” Movie

For the movie that was all about star power

WINNER: Sleeping With the Enemy

Sometimes fortune smiles on a movie. Sleeping With the Enemy started filming in April 1990, right after Pretty Woman was released, before anyone knew what a smash it would be. By the time this rolled into theaters in 1991, Julia Roberts was a megastar. She takes what is basically a “from hell” movie (granted, a pretty good one) and makes it one of the biggest hits of the year—earning over $100M at the domestic box office.

Honorable Mentions:

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves — While this movie has a strong supporting cast, a hit song, and a big budget, it became the second biggest movie of the year almost entirely because of Costner, who was scorching hot coming off the Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves.

• Double Impact — Jean-Claude Van Damme plays two parts in one of his best movies, which earned $30M domestic.

Best “You Had to Be There” Movie

For the movie that feels most like a product of the time

WINNER: Cool as Ice

Try explaining Cool as Ice—which stars Vanilla Ice as a rapper who gets stuck in a small town and falls for a girl whose family is in witness protection—to any one under age 30 and watch their face contort in complete bewilderment. But this is a thing that happened. And Ice’s hair is mesmerizing.

Honorable Mentions:

• Ernest Scared Stupid — Between 1987 and 1998, Jim Varney made nine movies as Ernest. Sometimes comedy really exists in a vacuum—know what I mean, Vern?

• The Pope Must Diet — This forgotten movie received such a backlash upon its release that they changed the title from “Die” to “Diet”.

Best “Still Doing the Work” Movie

For the movie that has stood the test of time

WINNER: Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Tough category. But I’m giving T2 the slight edge over the honorables listed below because I think this is an all-time summer action blockbuster—like Jaws or Back to the Future—where almost anyone will watch it and like it at any time. I recently named it the number-one James Cameron movie (on a list that includes several all timers). The effects still look great. The action still rocks. And Schwarzenegger, who was at his movie star peak in 1991, has never been better.

Honorable Mentions:

• The Silence of the Lambs — Considered by many to be one of the best Best Picture winners of all time. About as iconic a movie as you can get. Remains just as thrilling and terrifying as it was in 1991.

• Beauty and the Beast — Disney movies hold their value over time like no other. Coming out during one of the great periods of Disney animation, this remains a fan favorite. Somehow you know all the songs even if you don’t know the songs.

Best “Lost to Time” Movie

For a movie no one really talks about much anymore

WINNER: Toy Soldiers

Colombian terrorists hold teens at a U.S. military school hostage to get their demands met… until the students decide to fight back. The plot feels like an 80s movie even though we got it in ‘91. It was notable back then for featuring the kid from The Goonies, the kid from Stand By Me, the kid from Adventures in Babysitting. Now it’s notable for just being a fun B movie. This is the type of movie we’re sorely missing in theaters now because they just get sent to streaming (and they’re garbage).

Honorable Mentions:

• Late for Dinner — Two young men (one is Peter Berg) are cryogenically frozen in the early ‘60s and then wake up in the ‘90s. We must’ve had a thing with freezing around this time because we got the similar Mel Gibson movie Forever Young a year later.

• Rush — Not the 2013 race car movie, but the movie about two undercover Texas cops (Jason Patrick and Jennifer Jason Leigh) in the 1970s who go in too deep and get hooked on drugs.

My 10 Favorite Movies of 1991

Highly subjective and significantly impacted by both extreme nostalgia and decades of rewatches, here’s my 1991 top 10…

1. Point Break

2. Terminator 2: Judgement Day

3. The Doors

4. Barton Fink

5. Cape Fear

6. The Silence of the Lambs

7. Double Impact

8. Hot Shots!

9. Backdraft

10. Slacker

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

• Boyz N the Hood

• Doc Hollywood

• Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead

• Father of the Bride

• JFK

• The Last Boy Scout

• New Jack City

• Out for Justice

• Toy Soldiers

And one (maybe) hot take…

• Hook might be the worst movie Spielberg ever made

Starring: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Patton Oswalt, Keegan-Michael Key Written by: Casper Kelly, Jamie King Directed by: Casper Kelly

Sesame Street is a goddam miracle. It might be the only live-action children’s program in history that doesn’t have some subtle throughline of creepiness running through it. Chalk that up to the genius of Jim Henson.

But outside of the Street, children’s television is a cringe fest. Buddy is about that off-putting vibe you can’t help but pick up from Barney, Teletubbies, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse or, gulp, Blippi. That feeling that watching adults skipping around creating an alternate children’s reality—even with the best educational intentions—just somehow feels fucked up.

The movie takes that idea to its logical conclusion, with Buddy—a big, goofy orange unicorn who likes to sing songs—snapping when the show’s children break from his feel-good, lessons-learned routine. His rage takes aim at the kids on the show, anthropomorphized objects like clocks and mailboxes, and adults playing “grown-up” professionals like mailmen and nurses.

The way Buddy drops you into the world and quickly establishes the storyline is a lot of fun. The movie recreates the look of a 90s-style kid’s show (complete with 4:3 aspect ratio), blending in-show and off-show action in a way that keeps you on your toes. And just as the setup begins to lose its luster, the movie unlocks another facet of its story featuring Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace. Unfortunately, as the movie trudges on, and its novelty falls away, both the comedy and horror start to fade too.

In a year that has seen a number of YouTube creators score feature film success, Buddy—whose co-writer and director Casper Kelly is not actually a YouTuber (though his great Adult Swim short Too Many Cooks did go viral on the channel)—might be the most YouTube-ian of the bunch. This feels like a supercharged YouTube series playing on the big screen.

I think that’s part of the reason it’s playing so well with young audiences (it has earned over $20M at the U.S. box office on a $3M budget). But it has a similar problem to YouTube-creator films like Iron Lung and Backrooms where it’s more concerned with mythology than all the narrative threads fitting together.

In the end, while Buddy is wildly unique (you won’t see another movie like it in theaters this year), I still wanted it to go a little more bonkers. If our starting point is a murderous unicorn, you’d think it’d really go for broke and grab that golden horn.

Grade: C+

Release Details

2024 Criterion Collection 4K UHD + Blu-ray Special Edition

From the Back Cover

Home from college, Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) makes an unsettling discovery: a severed human ear, lying in a field. In the mystery that follows, by turns terrifying and darkly funny, writer-director David Lynch burrows deep beneath the picturesque surfaces of small-town life.

Package Appeal

Masterpiece. The Blue Velvet Criterion 4K doesn’t break new ground or blow you away with its cover art, but it captures the feel of the movie perfectly. The slipcase recreates the eerie undulating blue velvet of the film’s title sequence, evoking both a sense of mystery and foreboding (it’s like a dark curtain with something hidden behind it).

The front of the disc case resembles Dorothy’s grey apartment door (another visual barrier to the secrets contained within). The interior of the case shows the inside of Dorothy’s apartment, while the back shows a robin holding a beetle in its beak. The case also includes a booklet featuring the chapter “A Suburban Romance, Only Different” by Kristine McKenna (excerpted from the book Room to Dream, authored by McKenna and Lynch).

Best Extra

The Lost Footage (53 minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes assembled by Lynch). This footage is fascinating not just for how much there is but for how complete it is. This is not just rough-cut material, it’s edited and processed (which makes sense since the original version of the film ran nearly four hours long).

We get to see Jeffrey at college; learn about his relationship with his girlfriend, Louise; see more of his house and family (there’s a lot more of his mom and aunt Barbara); get more information about what’s happening with his dad; spend more time with Sandy’s family; and take a longer ride with Frank.

All of this is interesting character building—but none of it adds anything to the movie. It’s a great example of the power of editing and how less can become more (a lesson more directors need to heed today). Blue Velvet is likely a better movie because these scenes exist, allowing the cast and crew more time to inhabit these spaces and explore the characters. But it’s also a movie that’s so much better for what it cut out.

Subscribe now

Feature Presentation

Blue Velvet was unleashed in theaters 40 years ago this month. In the decades since, the internet has cracked the world open to a geyser of freaky shit. And still there’s nothing quite like Blue Velvet; nothing that digs so gleefully and horrifyingly into the dark corners of the American dream.

That’s because there’s no one else quite like writer-director David Lynch. Some film fans like to call Blue Velvet “starter Lynch”—an easy entry point to dip you’re toes into his work before diving headfirst into more challenging material like Eraserhead, Lost Highway, or Inland Empire.

For my money, Blue Velvet is not just a good Lynch starting point; it’s his best movie (and I like every movie he’s made). A big reason for that is because it’s tethered to traditional storytelling (playing on our expectations of it, really). Lynch still has one foot in a conventional movie narrative here.

Lynch is at his best when he keeps things a little more grounded (or at least grounded in the plot mechanics of popular fiction)—as he does with this, early Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, and Mulholland Drive. The madness, darkness, and surrealism are much more striking when they sneak up on you rather than when you’re immersed in them.

Leading up to Blue Velvet, Lynch had made three full-length features:

1. Eraserhead (1977): A grab-your-attention midnight movie

2. The Elephant Man (1980): A prestigious, step-up-to-the-big-leagues gig that scored Best Picture and Best Director Oscar nominations

3. Dune (1984): A high-profile, big-budget sci-fi flop that nearly derailed his career

Those stepping stones are crucial to what he does with Blue Velvet—scaling back and getting more personal, but without completely abandoning his commercial sensibilities. He creates something quirky and unique (unlike any other director—or writer—would concoct), while showing how technically adept and in control of the medium he is.

From the slow pan inside the severed ear to Laura Dern stepping out the darkness to Dorothy Valens singing at the Slow Club, there are numerous showstopping shots in Blue Velvet. And how about the transition from the coroner talking about the ear being cut off with scissors to a shot of scissors cutting police tape? Or Frank disappearing in a blink to the sound of screeching tires? These are bold editing strokes that work.

There’s also the production design of Dorothy’s apartment. The mesmerizing (and often terrifying) use of sound. The integration of pop music. And the performances (many of them career peaks for the actors). All these elements are employed for maximum effectiveness. Because Lynch is so often showing us unusual things on screen, it’s easy to miss what a fantastic director he is. This guy just had it.

Blue Velvet might also be where his writing and directing gel together the best. The way he lays out the thematic idea in the opening scene and then progressively takes viewers deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole is masterful.

In the first 10 minutes, we get the discovery of the ear, opening up the mystery to Jeffrey and Sandy (and us). Then, 30 minutes in, we get the introduction of Dorothy, which takes us to a different, more disturbing place. Then, at the 45 minute mark, we’re introduced to Frank Booth (the scariest movie villain of all time) and suddenly the ground drops out beneath us.

This culminates with what might be my favorite moment in all of cinema, when Jeffrey meets Frank face-to-face for the first time in the hallway of Dorothy’s apartment:

What transpires after that can only be described as a road trip into hell. Hilarious and unsettling, Lynch takes us from the safety of the suburbs to the underworld right next door. It’s one of those rare moments in a movie when you legitimately have no idea what’s going to happen next (and this is true no matter how many times you watch it).

As a child of the 1980s, not a lot of content was off limits to me. I grew up in an HBO house. I saw Woody Allen movies and Bonnie and Clyde before I was a pre-teen. But when I walked into the room when my parents were watching Blue Velvet, that was one of the rare times I was instructed to stay away. This was not a movie for children.

I had probably seen worse things at that point (more gratuitous things anyway). But something about this movie was different. Inside our suburban home, with the green lawn out front, Blue Velvet was best kept hidden in the dark.

Quick Takes

• Siskel and Ebert had one of their most famous splits over Blue Velvet. Siskel named it one of the best movies of the year, saying: “This did for me what Psycho did, which is ‘Oh my god, we’re really getting in over our heads.’ And that’s an experience, which is challenging, shocking, but mesmerizing.” Ebert, on the other hand (or thumb), hated the movie, saying: “I think this movie is cruelly unfair to its actors. It was directed by David Lynch, the same man who made Eraserhead and Dune, and he’s a talented director—you can see that here in scenes that have a lot of power. But he asks Isabella Rossellini in this movie to be undressed and humiliated on the screen as few actresses ever have been, certainly in non-porno roles. Then he tries to take the edge off her scenes by turning the whole thing into a joke.” You can watch their full review here.

• In the early 1980s, Dennis Hopper’s life and career were in rough shape. While he was still getting work in movies like Rumble Fish and The Osterman Weekend, his drinking and drug use were spinning out of control. He told Cigar Aficionado in 2001, “My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn’t crawling around drunk on the floor.” After finally getting sober in 1983, Hopper didn’t know if he would be able to act anymore—and then he ripped off a trio of career-best performances in Blue Velvet, Hoosiers, and River’s Edge. He received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Hoosiers (a worthy nomination—though he should’ve been nominated and won for Blue Velvet).

• After Lynch passed away in January 2025, The Guardian published this article where fellow directors shared memories of the legendary director. Among them was a blurb from writer-director Paul Schrader, who noted his contribution to Blue Velvet. Schrader states: “David couldn’t get Blue Velvet made. Dino De Laurentiis told David he’d pay me to rewrite the script and David gave it to me. It was one of the best scripts I’d ever read. I told Dino there was no way I could improve it. David thanked me and Dino financed the film. The rest is film history.”

Full Disclosure: I typically take pride in not using AI for my Substack posts. But for this one, where math was involved, I did lean on ChatGPT and Claude to crunch the numbers.

Back in May—before audiences flocked to the Backrooms, before the live-action Moana sank like a stone, and before Spider-Man swung to new moneymaking heights—I took a crack at predicting the numbers for the biggest summer movies at the U.S. box office (read my original predictions post here).

At the time, I felt pretty good about my predictions. I thought things through, reviewed historical data, and employed sound logic. While I knew it was unlikely I’d hit every movie dead on, I thought I’d at least be in the ballpark. Turns out, in most cases, I wasn’t even in the same zip code.

Of course, things always look much clearer after they happen. How could I be so low on The Odyssey? How could I be that high on Supergirl? What was I thinking with One Night Only? The game plan makes a lot more sense after the game has been played.

With that in mind, I share the results of my summer 2026 box office predictions…

How My Scoring System Works

Rather than just throw a bunch of numbers at you that may or may not mean much, I created a way to score my predictions. Below is what that looks like. Each score is based on how far my prediction landed from what the movie actually made. It’s pretty simple—the higher the number, the better the prediction.

5 — Bullseye: 0–10% off actual box office

4 — On Target: 10–25% off actual box office

3 — In the Ballpark: 25–40% off actual box office

2 — Missed the Mark: 40–60% off actual box office

1 — Way Off: 60%+ off actual box office

So, for example, if I predicted a movie would make $100 million and it made $85 million:

% Error = (Actual − Predicted) / Predicted × 100

-15% = (85 - 100) / 100 x 100

15% lower than predicted → Score: 4 (On Target)

Subscribe now

Scoring My Summer 2026 Box Office Predictions

All box office figures below are domestic only as of September 8, 2026 (my summer movie timeline runs from Memorial day weekend to Labor Day weekend).

Let’s start with my “potential breakouts”. These were movies that didn’t make my top 10, but I thought had a chance at being surprise hits:

Backrooms

Predicted: $80 Million

Actual: $198 Million

What I Said: “I have it just outside the top 10, but there’s a decent chance it sneaks in.”

What Happened: It did more than sneak in, it was one of the summer’s biggest hits (and one of the few real surprises of the season).

Score: 1 — Way Off

Evil Dead Burn

Predicted: $70 Million

Actual: $32 Million

What I Said: “Evil Dead Rise made $67 million… the horror audience will show. And July is a desert for the genre.”

What Happened: Some say lack of marketing left many horror fans unaware the movie was hitting theaters.

Score: 2 — Missed the Mark

One Night Only

Predicted: $50 Million

Actual: $12 Million

What I said: “With few summer movies catering to women and August light on releases, this one could have a spark.”

What Happened: Meh reviews (46% critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes) and word of mouth (75% audience score) kept this from building Anyone But You-style buzz.

Score: 1 — Way Off

Young Washington

Predicted: $45 Million

Actual: $47 Million

What I said: “...a patriotic film released on 4th of July weekend in the year of America’s 250th birthday. This could be catnip for middle America.”

What happened: Indeed, this played very well over the holiday—opening to almost $20M on Fourth of July weekend.

Score: 5 — Bullseye

The Invite

Predicted: $35 Million

Actual: $26 Million

What I said: “The Invite will provide some fun, adult counterprogramming to the bigger summer fare.”

What happened: The Invite had great word of mouth and did solid indie business, but couldn’t quite reach Materialists level at the box office ($37M domestic).

Score: 3 — In the Ballpark

My Predicted Top 10

Here’s what I thought the summer domestic box office leaderboard would look like—and how it really played out

10. The End of Oak Street

Predicted: $85 Million

Actual: $52 Million

What I said: “It’s clear from the release date and marketing that Warners Bros. is positioning The End of Oak Street to be this year’s Weapons.”

What happened: Weapons opened to $43.5M in August 2025. The End of Oak Street opened to less than half that ($21M). I think people were more intrigued by this when it was mysterious than when it was revealed it was about dinosaurs.

Score: 3 — In the Ballpark

9. Scary Movie

Predicted: $95 Million

Actual: $108 Million

What I said: “...there’s a lot of new material to mine and an audience that grew up with these movies.”

What happened: While Scary Movie didn’t have great legs or reviews, it opened with a whopping $54M—taking advantage of an early-summer release date an riding off the horror wave of Obsession and Backrooms.

Score: 4 — On Target

8. Disclosure Day

Predicted: $110 Million

Actual: $117 Million

What I said: “Ready Player One, a more commercial film released in a pre-2020 world, capped out at $137 domestic … Still, it has a great cast and a legendary director …”

What happened: This did solid business for an original film in 2026, but amid good-not-great word of mouth couldn’t quite break out and go next level.

Score: 5 — Bullseye

7. Supergirl

Predicted: $145 Million

Actual: $72 Million

What I said: “Just last summer, Superman made $354 million in the United States … This one has a fairly uninspiring trailer and the burden of comparison.”

What happened: I thought I was shooting low with my projection, but apparently not low enough. This one just never built enough positive buzz, feeling like another superhero cash out rather than a must-see event.

Score: 2 — Missed the Mark

6. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Predicted: $265 Million

Actual: $178 Million

What I said: “...many are predicting this to only do Solo numbers ($213 million domestic). I think there will be a little more love for this movie with Jon Favreau at the helm.”

What happened: This did less than Solo numbers, a major disappointment for Disney. But the fact that it did as well as it did is almost impressive considering the buzz on this was it just felt like two episodes of the TV show stitched together.

Score: 3 — In the Ballpark

5. Moana (Live Action)

Predicted: $295 Million

Actual: $126 Million

What I said: “While I don’t necessarily think this will be a Snow White-level bomb ($87 million), I called this closer to The Little Mermaid ($298 million) than Lilo and Stitch ($423 million).”

What happened: This was a Snow White-level bomb. Whether it was too soon after Moana (2016) and Moana 2 (2024), there were too many other big family movies this summer, or it didn’t look unique enough, families did not turn out for this.

Score: 2 — Missed the Mark

4. The Odyssey

Predicted: $325 Million

Actual: $589 Million

What I said: “IMAX has also become much more of a powerhouse … this movie has a stacked cast of old and young stars … $300 million+ not only seems reasonable, it might be the floor.”

What happened: This movie opened strong ($124M), owned IMAX screens for a large part of the summer, and had phenomenal legs (it’s still going).

Score: 1 — Way Off

3. Minions & Monsters

Predicted: $350 Million

Actual: $183 Million

What I said: “In 2022, Minions: The Rise of Gru made $370 million. In 2024, Despicable Me 4 made $361 million … I think Minions are about as reliable a box office bet as you can find.”

What happened: Either Toy Story 5 just swallowed the summer moviegoing for families or we may be finally starting to see signs of franchise fatigue with the Minions.

Score: 2 — Missed the Mark

2. Toy Story 5

Predicted: $425 Million

Actual: $480 Million

What I said: “Toy Story 4, which had a near identical June release date, ended up making $434 million … should we expect Toy Story 5 to put up better numbers than its predecessor?”

What happened: Toy Story 5 put up better numbers than its predecessor—though not by much (and not when you adjust the numbers for inflation). But this was THE family movie of the summer.

Score: 4 — On Target

1. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Predicted: $550 Million

Actual: $923 Million

What I said: “... if there’s one thing we know about Spidey, he puts butts in seats. So if Spider-Man: Homecoming made $335 million and No Way Home made $814, I’m looking at this one to split the difference.”

What happened: Brand New Day broke the record for biggest opening weekend EVER—raking in $360 million domestic—on its way to (likely) becoming the top-grossing domestic movie of all time.

Score: 1 — Way Off

My Prediction Scorecard

• Overall Score: 2.6/5

• Close Predictions: 4/15 within 25% (Young Washington, Disclosure Day, Toy Story 5, Scary Movie)

• Closest Prediction: Young Washington — 4.4% off

• Biggest Miss: Spider-Man: Brand New Day — predicted $550M, actual $923M (largest dollar gap, +$373M)

• Biggest Underestimate: Backrooms (+147.5% — you predicted $80M, it made $198M)

• Biggest Overestimate: One Night Only (−76.0% — you predicted $50M, it made just $12M)

• Top 10 Hit Rate: 9/10 correctly predicted

Overall, if there’s one takeaway from this summer it’s that predicting the box office is hard. Even when you know that a movie is going to hit or miss, determining by how much is a challenge. But that won’t stop me from trying again next summer.

Starring: Will Forte, Lana Condor, John Cena, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn Written by: Samy Burch Directed by: Dave Green

I’m one of those lunatics who was raised on Looney Tunes (this Nickelodeon promo plays in my brain on loop). I can’t get enough of cartoon animals out to maim, kill, and blow each other up.

Of the Looney Tunes, the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner ones were my favorite. I could watch that devious dog plot to murder that beeping bird in elaborate ways and have his plans foiled (with painful consequences) in perpetuity and it would never get old.

But the episodic nature of the Coyote and Road Runner cartoons don’t exactly scream “movie”. They are the definition of one note. This guy does the same thing over and over. The only variation is the method of attempted murder and the different ways the Acme products he uses backfire.

Which is why the premise of the long-shelved Coyote vs Acme is so ingenious. For those who don’t know, the plot is this: Wile E. Coyote hires a lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation over their many product malfunctions. On the surface, this is a movie about being fed up with doing the same thing day in and day out without making any progress. It’s also a movie about the corporations who rule our lives and treat us like shit.

That second idea is amplified by the movie’s real-life story—it was shelved by Warner Bros. as a tax write-off in November 2023 after the company’s merger with Discovery (AKA the moment in which any creative spirit remaining at Warner Bros. could be seen screeching into the sky like the ghosts at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark).

But the truly amazing trick Coyote vs Acme pulls off is what it does with Wile E. Coyote. While keeping him both stylistically and psychologically 100% true to the original Looney Tunes—and without having him ever utter a single word—the movie finds a way to give an added layer of depth to this character.

When Wile E. first shows up at the law office of Kevin Avery (Will Forte), one of Avery’s associates describes the coyote as appearing “unhinged”. That’s unquestionably the look in Wile E.’s eyes for most of the movie. But, as we move through his arc, there were multiple moments where I found myself choking back tears. As crazy as it sounds, Wile E. Coyote might be one of my favorite movie characters of the year.

The movie also benefits from taking a fairly Looney Tunes approach to its story. Rather than get bogged down in complexity, it keeps things straightforward. There’s a court case. Avery, a lawyer who likes to do the least amount of work and settle, and Coyote, a total maniac with a one-track mind, have different goals. Then there’s John Cena and Foghorn Leghorn as their corporate adversaries.

It’s a simple premise effectively executed, delivering solid laughs and some fun Looney Tunes action, with a Sisyphus theme that speaks to all of us (aren’t we all just chasing a roadrunner every day?). And what the movie has to say about that theme is worthwhile.

I’ll take IP like this on the big screen any day. And those corporate devils like David Zaslav and Warner Bros. who would trash a good movie just to save a couple bucks can fall to the bottom of a canyon with a whistling sound that grows louder and louder before they disappear in a burst of dust.

Grade: B+

Director James Cameron was back in movie theaters this past weekend for the 35th anniversary of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. This marks the third time this year a Cameron-directed flick could be seen on screens nationwide following the release of Avatar: Fire and Ash in late-December 2025 and the documentary Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft in May (which Cameron co-directed with Eilish).

The spirit of Cameron was also present in theaters this summer with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Nolan feels to me like the closest heir to Cameron—with his penchant for betting on himself with big, high-concept movies that continue to expand both in ambition and scale (and have proven to pay off time and time again).

“Big” and “ambitious” are certainly two words I’d use to describe Cameron’s movies. Since he made his directing debut with 1982’s Piranha II: The Spawning (which he has since disowned), Cameron has continually conceived more expansive and challenging projects—often involving technology and aquatics. While not everyone may love his dialogue, you can’t deny he’s a singular filmmaker who always aims to bring something new to the screen.

Subscribe now

Ranking the 5 Best James Cameron Movies

Cameron isn’t a volume director—his filmography includes 13 full-length feature films (10 fiction + 3 documentaries) over the past 44 years—but the movies he’s made have had a nuclear impact, grossing nearly $10 billion worldwide. So which of Cameron’s movie are the best?

I imagine even if the top movies are similar for most people, the order might look very different. Here’s my official James Cameron top five (in reverse order for dramatic purposes):

Just Outside: The Abyss (1989)

When I planned on making this list, I thought for sure The Abyss would be on it (maybe even near the top). But after re-watching it, I didn’t quite love it as much as I loved remembering it. This is unfortunate because 1) it has some of Cameron‘s best ideas and 2) it’s the skeleton key movie to all the movies he would make going forward—from T2 to Titanic to Avatar. But, alas, even if it doesn’t completely gel together, there are many great Cameron moments (including the best resuscitation ever captured on film) and a real wildcard Michael Biehn performance.

5. Avatar (2009)

By all means this spot should go to The Abyss, which is a more interesting movie (and a movie I would rather watch on almost any given day over Avatar). But here’s the thing: Avatar is one of the greatest—if not THE greatest—theatrical filmgoing experiences of my life. When I saw this movie in 3-D, it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I actually thought movie watching had changed forever, that’s how unique and innovative it was. I went into the sequels desperately looking for that hit again (only to be let down both times). But the first Avatar, which still has one foot grounded in humanity, is a pretty thrilling ride—especially on the big screen.

4. The Terminator (1984)

Made for only $6 million, The Terminator feasts on its ideas—catching fire with a sci-fi premise that still lives on decades later. The concept of a “Terminator”—an unstoppable cyborg sent from the future—remains an iconic pop-culture reference that almost everyone recognizes whether they’ve seen a Terminator movie or not. Cameron not only conceived it and loaded the movie with fantastic action sequences (on a budget), he also nailed the casting by unlocking Arnold Schwarzenegger—whose superhuman physique made him the perfect killing machine. Forty-plus years later, this movie still rocks, barreling forward through bullets and mayhem in an exhilarating way.

3. Titanic (1997)

It’s fun to mock Titanic now but that’s just because it’s become so ingrained in movie culture. Anyone who was alive at the time this came out remembers what the tidal wave it was. It dominated the box office for months (it was the number-one movie in the U.S. for 15 straight weeks—almost four months!). The Celine Dion song was on the radio every minute. It made superstars out of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. And it swept the Academy Awards, winning 12 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. This was a movie that, before it came out, everybody said was a disaster that cost way too much and could never be successful. While some of the dialogue is a little stilted and some of the Billy Zane is a little insane, once that boat starts going down I challenge any pair of eyes not to be glued to the screen.

2. Aliens (1986)

Following up the surprise success of The Terminator, Cameron decided to take on a nearly impossible task: Making a sequel to the beloved 1979 space horror movie, Alien. But rather than retracing Ridley Scott’s footsteps, Cameron blazed his own trail, doing something entirely different with the series. It was a master stroke, adding more of the creatures and making it an action movie (a war movie really) versus a contained horror movie like the first one. Cameron, who might actually be sneaky great with actors, got a career-best performance from Sigourney Weaver—nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (which is actually a pretty insane occurrence for the mid-80s when sci-fi/action movies NEVER got any Academy love in top-line categories). This is a director out to show the world he’s got the juice.

1. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

In its time, T2 was a phenomenon—smashing box-office records and bringing special effects into a new era. But it also holds up remarkably well. I’ve rewatched this movie periodically over the years, showing it to my kids multiple times at different ages, and it hits every single time. It’s one of those movies like Jaws or Back to the Future that everybody loves. It just rips. To me, this is Cameron at the absolute peak of his powers—blending amazing action stunt work, groundbreaking CGI (that still looks better than most CGI today), note-perfect performances from Schwarzenegger and Hamilton, and a dark tone. The move to switch Arnold from bad to good (as he was now one Hollywood’s biggest stars) could’ve really backfired. But instead of playing it for novelty, Cameron baked it into the script in an intelligent and rewarding way. He also brought in a fantastic new villain (and all-time great movie runner) in the T-1000.

After being released from prison, Doc McCoy (Alec Baldwin) wastes no time reteaming with his wife, Carol (Kim Basinger), and former partner, Rudy (Michael Madsen), for a heist. But things don’t go according to plan and they end up on the run.

Initial Reception

Universal dropped The Getaway in theaters on February 11, 1994 (a month commonly referred to as “Dumpuary” because studios unload movies they have little confidence in). While it opened in second place at the domestic box office with $5.8M, the movie quickly sank like a stone—earning just $16M total (on a reported $37M budget).

Bad reviews likely played a part in the movie’s performance. In his Entertainment Weekly review, Owen Gleiberman gave the movie a “C” grade, calling it a “true throwaway”.

Key Moment

In the middle of a city street with cops hot on their heels, Baldwin and Basinger jump into a dumpster to hide. A garbage truck comes around the corner at that very moment. The pair are dropped into the truck, where they have to scurry around to avoid being compacted. They are then unloaded into piles of trash at the local dump.

Killer Line

“Well, you should’ve married a dentist.”

Standout Player

Michael Madsen (and his wild mullet). This movie was made in the middle of Madsen’s peak and he really sinks his teeth into the role. Playing a ruthless, abhorrent criminal, Madsen uses his craggy voice, squinty eyes, and sheer heft for maximum menace. He’s like the younger, scrappier, less-beaten-down cousin of his Kill Bill character—a wildcard where you never know what you’re going to get (which is why he’s so much fun).

Achilles’ Heal

It’s a minor one, but the movie could use a better Harold. James Stephens is nebbish enough, but veers too much into caricature. He’s out of step with the rest of the movie.

Subscribe now

Why This Movie Still Matters

There’s a long history of real-life couples appearing in movies together. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Hell, Zendaya and Tom Holland are doing it right now in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Along with being a publicity boom, the bleeding of real life into fiction can add layers of verisimilitude, subtext, and voyeurism to a movie. This can be an alluring proposition for studios, filmmakers, and audiences. For actors, they get to spend more time together (for better or worse) and flex their power couple aura.

So it was with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. The two met on the set of The Marrying Man in 1990 and were married in 1993. Shortly after their wedding, the duo stepped into the roles made famous by another Hollywood couple (Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw)—remaking 1972’s The Getaway, based on Jim Thompson’s 1958 novel.

The 1994 film uses the bones of Walter Hill’s screenplay for the 1972 movie (with updates by Amy Holden Jones). Unfortunately, aside from a steamy sex scene where we get glimpses of boobs, butts, and some silhouetted bush, Baldwin and Basinger are probably the least interesting thing about The Getaway.

While they both look great—Baldwin has amazing hair and Basinger might be at her blonde-tanned peak—their characters (or characterizations) are pretty bland. Baldwin occasionally has to deliver some old-timey gangster dialogue and it just doesn’t work. Basinger does a good breathy look, and not much else.

Their characters are a lot more sketched out in Thompson’s book (though, in fairness, a lot of that comes through internal monologue). You also get a better sense of the tension and mistrust between the husband and wife in the novel—something that doesn’t really have any weight in the movie (though this scene of them slapping each other is fun).

Still, despite the leads not really revving up the movie like you’d hope, The Getaway is an enjoyable ride. This is a fast, violent, adult crime movie like we used to get in spades in the 90s. It’s got a lot of tough-talking characters, a pretty exciting heist at a dog track (that, expectedly, doesn’t go according to plan), and a high-speed car chase that includes vehicles flipping over and exploding.

It’s also got a great cast. Along with Baldwin and Basinger, we get James Woods, Michael Madsen, Jennifer Tilly, David Morse, and a very young Philip Seymour Hoffman. When Tilly enters the movie in the second half, becoming entwined with Madsen’s Rudy, The Getaway really takes off. Bringing these two performers together creates a sort of wild electrical storm.

Watching Madsen and Tilly—two subversive, inherently interesting actors who are more in line with the down-and-dirty nature of Thompson’s material—you get a glimpse of an alternative version of The Getaway. While it would never have happened with a major studio involved, if the roles were flipped, and Madsen and Tilly took the leads and Baldwin and Basinger played the supporting roles, this would be a much better movie.

Baldwin and Basinger would get to dive into the types of character roles they later proved more adept at—while also getting to play against type and still getting to portray lovers. And Madsen and Tilly would automatically bring a more dangerous and unpredictable vibe to Doc and Carol. We all would win in this scenario.

Quick Takes

• Neither Basinger nor Baldwin had a major hit as a lead in a feature film after The Getaway—though I would argue they both found more of their mojo as actors. Basinger experienced success with smaller parts in 8 Mile, Cellular, and L.A. Confidential (which won her an Oscar). Baldwin found his groove with supporting roles in movies like The Departed and It’s Complicated, and playing iconic character Jack Donaghy on seven seasons of TV’s 30 Rock. The couple separated in 2000 and officially divorced in 2002.

• Michael Madsen appeared in a whopping 37 movies in the 1990s, along with a number of TV movies and the series Vengeance Unlimited. In the early 90s, following parts in The Doors, Thelma & Louise, and Reservoir Dogs, Madsen had some heat. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the Vincent Vega role in Pulp Fiction (which Tarantino wrote with him in mind) because he was already committed to Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp. A few years later he would miss out on another key role—turning down the part that eventually went to Russell Crowe in L.A. Confidential (which also starred Kim Basinger). Madsen passed away in 2025.

• Nine of Jim Thompson’s novels or short stories have been made into movies. Two of them have been made twice. The movies are: The Getaway (1972, 1994), The Killer Inside Me (1976, 2010), Série Noire (1979), Coup de Torchon (1981), The Kill-Off (1989), The Grifters (1990), After Dark, My Sweet (1990), Hit Me (1996), and This World, Then the Fireworks (1997). The only significant box office hit of the bunch was 1972’s The Getaway—though both The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet earned critical acclaim.

After her former team, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, led by her one-time paramour Bill (David Carradine), attempts to murder her on her wedding day, “The Bride” (Uma Thurman) sets out for bloody revenge.

Initial Reception

When the original cut ran too long to be released as a single movie, director Quentin Tarantino and then-Miramax-co-chairman Harvey Weinstein made the decision to chop Kill Bill in two.

The first movie, released in October 2003 as Kill Bill: Volume 1, was a hit, earning $70M at the domestic box office and $180M worldwide. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, writing: “‘Kill Bill, Volume 1’ shows Quentin Tarantino so effortlessly and brilliantly in command of his technique that he reminds me of a virtuoso violinist racing through ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’.”

Released six months later in April 2004, Kill Bill: Volume 2 earned another $66M domestic and $152M worldwide—and another four-star review from Ebert (“I liked it even more than ‘Kill Bill, Volume 1’.”).

As noted in this post, shamefully neither Kill Bill movie received a single Academy Award nomination.

Key Moment

There are so many memorable moments throughout the four-hour-plus duration of Kill Bill. But the key moment, THE moment really, is the House of the Blue Leaves fight sequence—an insane, chaotic, bloody ballet where The Bride takes on the Crazy 88, O-Ren Ishii’s yakuza army, in a Japan restaurant. This wild, inventive, and kinetic 20-minute barrage of non-stop attacks and hacked limbs might be the most impressive thing Tarantino has ever put on film (and that’s saying something). It also includes the amazing Go Go Yubari.

Killer Line

“If on your journey you should encounter god, god will be cut.”

Standout Player

I’m gonna whittle it down to five nominees (presented in alphabetical order):

• Michael Madsen — This is Madsen’s best movie performance. Whether he’s taking shit from a strip club owner or pulling one over on The Bride, he’s cloaked in a defeated weariness that gives his character a depth beyond all the other baddies (even Bill).

• Sally Menke — Menke, a two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Editing (for Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds) does her career-best work here—a tour-de-force that requires her to both match the rhythms of different film genres (sometimes simultaneously) and make it feel modern.

• RZA — A big part of what makes Kill Bill such a roller-coaster ride is the music. RZA’s score is doing so many different things from moment to moment, nodding to kung fu movies past while creating something original and unforgettable. He takes us to the perfect place as we stare into The Bride’s fiery eyes.

• Quentin Tarantino — This might not be the best screenplay Tarantino’s ever written (though, to be fair, that’s a VERY high bar). But it might be his best directed movie. Tarantino throws the kitchen sink at this thing, along with dozens (if not hundreds) of the movies that made him, to bring it to life.

• Uma Thurman — I wouldn’t necessarily count Uma as one of my favorite actresses. But she’s incredible here. Whether she’s waking up after four years in a coma, fighting 50 yakuza members, or being buried alive, you always feel her pain. I’m not sure who else could have pulled off both the physicality and emotion of this part.

For me, this comes down to Menke and RZA. I don’t know that this movie works without either one of them. But RZA really brings something special, so let’s hand him the trophy.

Achilles’ Heal

This might be an unpopular opinion, but, for me, it’s Carradine as the titular Bill. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not bad. I’ve just never felt he had enough of the weight or gravitas the character required. This is someone who is built up throughout the entire movie (or two movies). He should be larger than life. While Carradine brings the Kung Fu connection, he doesn’t bring that total intimidation factor.

Or maybe the Achilles’ Heal is actually just the final Bill-Bride encounter. I almost never say this about Tarantino, but I think this scene is overwritten. If it was trimmed by a monologue or two, would Carradine’s performance work better for me? It’s very possible.

Subscribe now

Why It’s a Classic

Every Quentin Tarantino movie is inherently about movies. The movies that leave an imprint, how they exist in our minds, and the role they play in our lives. But Kill Bill might be the Tarantino movie that’s the MOST about movies. And the most Tarantino too.

Appearing on “The Church of Tarantino” podcast in August 2025, Tarantino stated: “I think Kill Bill is the ultimate Quentin movie. Like nobody else could have made it. Every aspect about it is particularly ripped, like with tentacles and bloody tissue, from my imagination and my id and my loves and my passions and my obsessions. I think Kill Bill is the movie I was born to make.”

The movie is set up in chapters. And almost every chapter is like the best part of a movie you once saw at the drive-in or watched on VHS or caught on cable; the part that made the whole movie worthwhile. It’s an original album that plays like a greatest hits collection. And, goddam, does that make it fun to watch.

There are few movies that deliver the sheer joyous cinematic thrills of Kill Bill. We already covered the clash with the Crazy 88 as one of my favorite things ever put on film. In honor of The Bride’s “Death List Five”, here are five more of my favorite moments in the film…

1. Pai Mei’s Training — Pai Mei (Gordon Liu) is my favorite character in all of Kill Bill. I love his disdainful, make-them-earn-your-respect teaching method and the way he flips his beard. Funny, endearing, and essential to the plot, his training scenes are a highlight of the film’s second half—giving you a glimpse (as the Hattori Hanzō scenes do) of how The Bride can kick so much ass.

2. Origin of O-Ren — Seeing Kill Bill for the first time, the sudden submersion into anime with this sequence was one of the movie’s great surprises. This is a prime example of Tarantino throwing the kitchen sink at the screen to make this movie 1) functionally work (on a budget) and 2) just really fuckin’ pop. Every time I rewatch the movie I’m blown away by how seamlessly this sequence fits in with the film and its storytelling.

3. Budd Buries The Bride — The truly exciting thing about this chapter (even beyond tapping into the absolute terror of being buried alive) is how it puts our protagonist in a position where you’re thinking “how in the hell is she gonna get out of this?” That’s always a thrilling feeling for the audience. And the scene where The Bride walks into a diner and asks for a glass of water might be the film’s comic highlight.

4. Elle’s Trailer Trash — I love in movies when people get into a fight and just trash the place; smashing into this and breaking through that. With this sequence, Tarantino takes that thrill and condenses the environment—adding a whole other element of challenge and creativity. It’s a great example of using a setting to add to the action. And how the fight concludes is a real eye-popper.

5. O-Ren Snowy Swordplay — I talked about the massive bloodbath that takes place at the House of Blue Leaves. While that’s a big, loud fight involving dozens of bodies, it’s really just a prelude for The Bride to get to O-Ren Ishii. When she does, the chaos of what came before is contrasted with the serene setting for their skilled, deliberate samurai sword fight. Taking place outside as snowflakes gently cascade through the air, it’s as beautiful as it is deadly.

Quick Takes

• How does Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair—Tarantino’s unrated cut of the two Kill Bill movies as a single unbroken film with some added footage—stack up to Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2 as standalone movies? My take: I like Kill Bill better as one connected whole. I think it’s a better experience and a more impactful way to watch the movie. But I don’t love some of the changes—specifically the extended O-Ren animated sequence (which throws off the pacing of the movie) and the all-color House of the Blue Leaves fight (which feels a little less stylish than the black-and-white version). If I were showing the movie to someone for the first time, I’d still show them Volumes 1 and 2. But there’s really no bad version.

• I mentioned David Carradine not totally working for me as Bill. Tarantino has stated he originally wrote the part of Bill for Warren Beatty. Would that have been better? It’s hard to picture Beatty in this version of the role (Tarantino supposedly reworked the part once he cast Carradine), but I do think he might have played the final scene better. And it would have been fun to see Beatty devour a true villain role. Tarantino has also said his third choice for the role was Bruce Willis.

• Gordon Liu, the legendary Hong Kong martial artist and actor, plays Pai Mei. With a completely different look (closer to his true appearance—minus the mask), he also plays Johnny Mo, the leader of the Crazy 88. One other actor also has a dual role in Kill Bill: Michael Parks plays Texas Ranger Earl McGraw, who comes to investigate The Bride’s murder in Volume 1, and Esteban Vihaio, a pimp who was a mentor to Bill, in Volume 2.

I recently watched a pair of horror sequels released in 2026:

• Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the sequel to 2019’s comic-horror gem Ready or Not, directed by the Radio Silence guys (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) and starring Samara Weaving.

• 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the fourth sequel in the series that started with 2002’s 28 Days Later, written by Alex Garland, directed by Nia DaCosta, and starring Ralph Fiennes.

While both of these were better-than-average sequels that did middling business at the box office, what really stood out to me about them was their titles. Here were two horror movie sequels—released in the same year, employing the colon convention—doing very different things:

• Ready or Not 2: Here I Come takes a fun approach to its title that reflects the tone of the movie. It uses the post-colon subtitle to create a familiar phrase that harkens back to both the game of hide-and-seek (appropriate for the content of the film) and this great Fugees song. It’s also notable that the “2” is not present when the title appears on screen, but it’s on the poster and in all the marketing (a smart move).

• 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is attempting to pull off something a little trickier. It’s breaking the established titling structure of this series (28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, 28 Years Later) to tie itself to a specific film in the series (essentially creating a sub-series within the series). Trouble is, the title was too similar to the previous movie, which came out less than a year prior and also featured the bone temple in its marketing, confusing the hell out of audiences.

It’s a tale of two titles—one leaves you smiling and maybe even humming a tune; the other leaves you scratching your head. Seeing these two titles and their varying degrees of success got me thinking about sequel titles in general. What is the goal of a movie sequel title, and what sequels most effectively (and creatively) accomplish that goal?

The Job of a Movie Sequel Title

A title is one of a movie’s first and most essential marketing tools. It sets the tone, creates an identity, and establishes initial perceptions.

A strong title (Jaws, There Will Be Blood) can pull people in before they get a gander at a frame. A weak title (John Carter, The Bye Bye Man) can keep people away.

The job of a sequel title is a little different. Audiences already know something about the movie. They already have a sense of identity, tone, genre. Perceptions have been established.

What a sequel title needs to do is tell audiences they’re getting something similar but different; familiar but new.

Subscribe now

10 Examples of Memorable Movie Sequel Titles

So what makes a great movie sequel title? While there’s no exact formula, titles that feel fresh, creative, or like a natural/logical extension of the previous movie score points with me.

Here are some of my favorites (spoiler: you won’t find anything that just adds a number or roman numeral after the original title on this list—that shit’s for the birds):

1. Aliens

There was one alien. Now there’s more. Sometimes it’s just that simple. The plurality of the title also speaks to how James Cameron’s 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic expands the universe.

2. Beethoven’s 2nd

There are a select few movies where it seems like they only really made the first movie so they could one day make a second movie and use that perfect title that’s just sitting right there. This is one of those movies. No notes. Chef’s kiss.

3. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

While the movie wasn’t great, the title raised my hopes for what it might be. It perfectly captures the spirit and concept of the first film, and eschews the typical colon structure for something more dangerous and exciting (while also promising more of the Juice).

4. Before Sunset

I’m a fan of sequel titles that denote changing time. The 28 Days Later series is an example of this. So is The Night of the Living Dead series (Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, etc.). But this one is my favorite not only because it reflects the time span in the movie—in the first movie they had until Before Sunrise to be together, in this one they have until Before Sunset—but because it also reflects the different life stage of the characters.

5. Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo

It’s a proven fact that 99% of all sequels could just adopt the “<First Movie Title> <Number>: Electric Boogaloo” template for their naming convention and be better off. Example: Dune 3: Electric Boogaloo.

6. Happy Death Day 2U

Employing a similar technique to Ready or Not 2, Happy Death Day 2 builds off the original’s title in a “yep, they had to do it” kind of way by making the follow-up title something clever, familiar, and musical.

7. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Here is the rare instance of the series title coming AFTER the colon. Even more impressive, this title gives us both the introduction of a new killer and a rhyming structure. It has such a memorable cadence (which sounds even better if you read the “II” as “Part II”), I still vividly remember the movie voiceover guy saying the title at the end of TV ads like this one from way back when I was a kid.

8. Hot Shots! Part Deux

The best of the funny sequel titles that include Airplane II: The Sequel and Naked Gun 33 ⅓: The Smell of Fear. It’s stupid, absolutely in line with the movie, and fun as hell to say—especially when you exaggerate the “deux”, letting it linger on the tongue.

9. House II: The Second Story

This movie played a lot on HBO when I was a kid. I remember absolutely nothing about it. But I will remember the title until the day I die. It not only works on two levels (see what I did there), it works INGENIOUSLY on two levels. If I had to pick a single greatest sequel title, this would be it.

10. Step Up 2: The Streets

There are a lot of titles that use the “2” as sub in for the word “to”. But none have employed this technique better than the Step Up sequel, which crucially inserts a colon so the title can be read two ways. Either way you read it, it’s hilarious. This is a first-ballot hall of famer.

Release Details

Vinegar Syndrome standard edition 3-disc 4k UHD/2 x Blu-ray release

From the Back Cover

After losing his job, girlfriend, and apartment, lifelong prankster Mitch moves in with his childhood best friend Sam, and Sam’s cantankerous father, Pops. When Pops has a heart attack, his surgeon, Dr. Farthing, delivers grim news: Pops needs a new heart, which Farthing will gladly secure in exchange for $50,000 to pay off his gambling debts. Desperate for a lot of cash quickly, Sam and Mitch realize that their joint love of causing mischief could be the perfect means of raising funds, thus opening a revenge-for-hire business named “Dirty Work.”

Package Appeal

Solid. While I have the standard edition of Dirty Work (pictured above), Vinegar Syndrome also produced a limited edition slip box that included a 40-page booklet. It looked like this:

Unfortunately, that hairy-bodied, thick-nippled version was limited to 10,000 units and sold out. While the standard edition has no booklet or slip cover, it does have a reversible cover (which I always appreciate), so you can change it from the typical poster image cover (shown up top) to this much better cover:

The discs themselves also have original artwork on them (in similar style to the reversible cover). These touches give the package just enough dirty personality.

Best Extra

The Dirtier Cut: The long-lost, newly restored R-rated version of the movie. Chopped down from its original cut to get a PG-13 rating upon release (trying to give the movie more commercial appeal like other “SNL comedies” Billy Madison and Tommy Boy), this version is the way star/co-writer Norm Macdonald and director Bob Saget intended the film. Unlike some other extended cuts or director’s cuts, this is actually the better version of the film. It’s the essential way to watch it.

Subscribe now

Why You Should Add This to Your Collection

Norm Macdonald always seemed to delight in baiting and confusing the audience. He rarely took the most efficient route to a laugh. Instead he zigged or zagged, dizzying and misdirecting you, before coming in for the knockout punch.

Take this scene in Dirty Work where Norm approaches a group of unhoused men to help him with a prank. It’s the turn away from the joke, then back into the joke, mixed with Norm’s delivery that kills. This is how Norm—and Dirty Work—get you.

Dirty Work stands out among 90s comedies in that it’s not particularly interested in being a movie. Rather, it’s a dismantling of the typical studio comedy (or even movie formula in general) from the inside out.

Sure, Norm has a love interest (played by Traylor Howard from the Ryan Reynolds sitcom Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place). There’s a plot to save a family member (the legendary Jack Warden as Pops). There’s a bad guy that needs to be foiled (Shooter McGavin himself, Christopher McDonald). But the movie doesn’t really care about any of those things. It just wants to get to the next joke.

Even the movie’s revenge-for-hire plot—which should be a great trampoline to set up different comic sequences—really isn’t milked for much (other than one outstanding gag that’s the basis for the fish-holding cover above). This just goes to show the movie is on its own comic wavelength, which is what makes it so great.

A lot of the movie is just rolling in different guest stars and letting them cook—from Don Rickles and Chevy Chase to Gary Coleman and Adam Sandler (doing some of his weirdest schtick ever). Chris Farley, who has an extended cameo in the movie as a barroom regular who had his nose bitten off by Saigon prostitute, may actually give his funniest film performance of all time. He’s throwing 1,000 miles per hour with every pitch.

The script (written by Frank Sebastiano and Norm Macdonald, with some polish work by Fred Wolf) is also filled with countless gems of dialogue like:

Sam: You thinking what I’m thinking?

Mitch: No, no, no, I have a plan.

Of course, a lot of it wouldn’t work without Norm’s one-of-kind deadpan delivery. With that mischievous twinkle in his eye, ever-present half-smile, and his deliberate, delayed cadence, he makes pretty much every line funny (including the amazing mic drop that ends the movie). He was gone too soon but at least we have this cinematic classic to remember his comic genius.

Quick Takes

• Released in theaters on June 12, 1998, Dirty Work opened in ninth place at the domestic box office with $3.6M—coming in behind the fifth week of The Horse Whisperer. Though it only had a reported budget of $13M, the movie would cap out at $10M in its theatrical run and be considered a disappointment. But like a lot of movies of this era it would find an audience on video and cable, and gain a cult following over time.

• After Dirty Work, Norm would get just one more shot as a lead in a feature film with 2000’s Screwed, where he co-starred with Dave Chappelle, Danny DeVito, and Sarah Silverman. That movie was also a box office disappointment, earning just $7M on a reported budget of $10M. After that, Norm largely stuck to Happy Madison cameos and voice acting in movies while concentrating more on TV and standup.

• In his interview on the Note to Self: Doing Dirty Work documentary, actor and comedian David Koechner says of Norm: “Norm was unconventional. His strongest suit was not acting, let’s just say that. He would agree to that I think. But you are seduced by his tone, his elocution, and that very special delivery.”

• Norm is also famous for being a great talk show guest. One of his greatest moments was this appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1997 (about a year before the release of Dirty Work), when he hung around the couch after his interview as Conan talked to actress Courtney Thorne Smith about her new movie with Carrot Top. Norm goes to town, delivering zinger after zinger. Watch to the end of the clip to see one of Norm’s greatest comic moments.

Starring: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, John Leguizamo, and every other actor in Hollywood Written and Directed by: Christopher Nolan

To be present and conscious at a moment in time when a director transcends the medium is a special thing. Name brands like Scorsese, Spielberg, Cameron, and Tarantino don’t come along every day. Even more rare is the director who continually keeps leveling up.

Christopher Nolan—who broke through with the 2000 indie Memento, took the superhero movie to unprecedented heights with 2008’s The Dark Knight, and went nuclear with 2023’s Oppenheimer (a three-hour biopic about a physicist that earned almost $1 billion worldwide and took home Best Picture and Best Director Oscars)—has gone full-on supernova with The Odyssey. This guy is now on a tier all his own and even Zeus should be impressed.

That’s not to say The Odyssey is a flawless movie—or even a great movie—but it is a movie you should run out and see. It’s cinematic craft of the highest order delivered by an elite craftsman at the top of his game. This movie feels immediate, essential, and made for the big screen.

Now about those flaws… There is some fat on the bone in this three-hour epic. The first part is a little slow to get going and the last act takes its time setting up the finale. We’re introduced to many characters (played by a lot of big names), but we get to know very few of them. That makes the movie sometimes feel like Hollywood dress up (who will pop up next in Greek garb with a name like Menelaus, Calypso, or Agamemnon?).

To that end, Samantha Morton gives far and away the best performance in my favorite sequence in the film (which might feature the most squirm-inducing movie transformation since An American Werewolf in London). Her demeanor and way with the dialogue really bring this character to life. She’s probably one of the few faces in the cast a lot of people won’t know and she smashes it out of the park.

Matt Damon also does a fine job carrying the heaviest weight of the movie. He’s well suited to be king, warrior, journeyman, and lost wonderer. While he’s saddled with a few bits of clunky dialogue, he also has several great moments of Matt Damon delivery—like when he finds his shipmates doing the one thing he warned them not to do.

But for all the star power on screen this is ultimately Nolan’s movie. And he delivers without ever making the mistake of trying to overdeliver. Yes, there are a number of showstopping sequences in this movie—including one in a cave, the pillaging of Troy, and an almost John Wick-style extended fight scene—but they always feels like they’re part of a larger, connected whole.

And while this movie is undoubtedly filled with CGI, it’s to Nolan’s credit you never feel it. His commitment to making something so grand largely through practical filmmaking really pays off on screen. You feel like the characters are in actual places—on islands, in caves, in boats—which grounds the movie in a critical way. In fact, looking back on his entire filmography, one of Nolan’s greatest skills is making the fantastical seem down to earth, which he really does effectively here.

The Odyssey is not a perfect movie by any means—it could be tighter and I don’t really know how invested I was in most of the key characters—but it sure as hell entertains. You can’t ask for much more than that in a summer movie (or any movie really).

Grade: B+

Two Victorian London magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) engage in a bloody rivalry that escalates as they both pursue the greatest magic trick ever performed.

Initial Reception

Released on October 20, 2006, The Prestige opened at number one at the domestic box office (narrowly edging out The Departed in its third week of release). The movie would go on to gross $53M domestic and $109M worldwide. It received good if not great reviews, with Roger Ebert giving it three stars and A.O. Scott of The New York Times calling it “a triumph of gimmickry”. The film also received two Oscar nominations: Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction.

Key Moment

Just when things seem to be going pretty good for Jackman’s Robert Angier (AKA The Great Danton), with his stage show becoming a sensation, Bale’s Alfred Borden (AKA The Professor) hijacks his performance in a violent and humiliating way. As the turn becomes painfully clear to Angier, Borden appears with a full Van Dyke beard, letting it be known that the pendulum has swung.

Killer Line

“Now you’re looking for the secret… but you’re not really looking. You want to be fooled.” (shoutout to the spoiler bumper for The Filmcast)

Standout Player

David Bowie. Every actor in this movie feels right, they all fall easily into character—from Bale and Jackman to Michael Caine, Rebecca Hall, and Scarlet Johansson. But Bowie is the chef’s kiss, a perfect piece of casting that feels essential rather than novel. He brings something otherworldly that adds just the right flavor to what Nolan is cooking up.

Achilles’ Heal

None to speak of.

Subscribe now

Why It’s a Classic

For every great director, there’s a moment when their id spills like blood onto the screen. For Martin Scorsese, it was Mean Streets. For Steven Spielberg, it was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And for Christopher Nolan, the Oscar-winning director of 13 feature films including the recently released The Odyssey, it was 2006’s The Prestige.

In weaving this tale of two warring magicians, we get a lot of Nolan staples—a high-concept idea, fractured storytelling, a dead wife (or two). But we also get a peak behind the curtain at what makes Nolan tick.

Adapted by Christopher and his brother Jonathan from a 1995 novel (of the same name), The Prestige is a movie about obsession. About wanting, nay, needing to be the best. And about going to great lengths to create something magical—often at great cost. It’s also about being pulled in different directions, between love/family and the compulsion to create.

It’s clear from the movie’s beginning narration—which makes the bold move of explaining how a magic trick works on the audience while ingeniously pulling that exact trick on the audience—that Nolan is the magician.

But he isn’t just one type of magician. In a movie with dueling illusionists, where the leads play multiple roles, he is all faces of the showman—using talent, cunning, technology, storytelling, bravura, and manipulation to feed his obsession to entertain the audience.

That obsession can be seen onscreen in The Prestige more than any other movie Nolan has made. Every frame is meticulously designed and crafted to feel lived-in. Every seed that’s planted in the screenplay—from the birds to the magician living his act—sprouts up later on. Every edit feels deliberate.

It’s no coincidence the marquee magic trick in this movie is called “The Transported Man”. Nolan’s goal is (and has always been) not only to make people’s jaws drop, but to take them somewhere they’ve never gone before. Himself included.

Quick Takes

• The Prestige is Nolan’s fifth film, slotted between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It’s the last modestly budgeted movie he made (with a reported budget of $40M), before he became a brand name. It was also his last movie to earn under $500M at the worldwide box office (not counting Tenet, which was the first movie released in theaters after COVID and still somehow managed to pull in $376M). There are few directors consistently working at this level.

• Much was made at the time of its release about the battle between The Prestige and another movie that came out a couple months before it. The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti, was also about an early-19th century magician. When two movies with similar story aspects are released in close proximity like this, they’re called “twin films”. Other examples include: Armageddon and Deep Impact, Antz and A Bug’s Life, and Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.

• This movie is a major contributor to the online conversation around the number of dead women in Nolan’s movies, particularly as a source of pain or motivation for the male protagonists. While I’m not sure I buy that as something significant to Nolan beyond other male (or even female) directors, it is notable that Following, Memento, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, and Oppenheimer all feature key female deaths (although in Batman Begins and Interstellar those deaths occur off screen).

A superior court judge (Harvey Keitel) and his young wife (Cameron Diaz) vacation at her family’s Maine summer home, where they’re all alone—except for her childhood friend, Lance (Craig Sheffer), who lives nearby, and an unexpected stranger whose appearance rocks the bock.

Initial Reception

Head Above Water is one of those movies that barely made a sound on the big screen, never playing in more than 10 theaters and earning just $32K total at the domestic box office. The small number of people who have seen it likely caught it late at night on HBO.

Standout Player

It’s all Diaz, all day.

Key Moment

Diaz’s character, Nathalie, sits on a boat launch. Her hands tied, her feet in cement. Like a game of Mouse Trap, she uses a long hook to reach a gun to shoot a water bottle that tips a board that allows a chainsaw to slide to her. She then hangs the chainsaw from a hook, starts it, only to have it spin wildly and cut off the top of the boat launch… with deadly consequences.

Killer Line

“I eat the best sausage so I keep it in the best box.”

Achilles’ Heal

It’s painful to say, but it’s Keitel. He doesn’t singlehandedly sink the movie (there’s a lot wrong here), but almost nothing he does works. When he’s playing nice, it feels like someone’s feeding him lines. When he turns into an asshole, he feels inhibited (where’s the Bad Lieutenant?). Worst of all, not for a millisecond do him and Diaz ever seem like a believable couple.

Subscribe now

Why This Movie Still Matters

Let’s start here: This movie is bad. Not in a completely unwatchable way. More in a “how is that car even running?” kind of way. Almost every part of it is not up to snuff.

It feels like it was directed by someone with a concussion (that someone: Dances With Wolves producer Jim Wilson, making his directing debut). The movie starts with bad ADR and ends with an iris shot (fading into a shrinking circle) where it’s unclear what we’re supposed to be looking at. Simple things like insert shots are boggled.

The script isn’t much help either. This is a contained movie with only five characters and none of them have anything interesting to say. You might even say it has four characters because Craig Sheffer’s Lance barely registers as a human being. And you know you’re in trouble when even Billy Zane can’t stir things up.

Despite all that, Head Above Water does have one thing going for it: Cameron Diaz. This is Diaz in her mid-90s climb to the top of Hollywood, when she was cutting her teeth on oddball indie fare. Along with being a magnetic screen presence, she might have been the best looking person in the world at this point.

Diaz’s IMDB during the Head Above Water period is super interesting. After debuting in 1994 with The Mask (which made more than $100 million at the U.S. box office during Jim Carrey’s historic three-movie heater), she rolled off a series of low-budget movies (mostly comedic, mostly dark)—The Last Supper (1995), She’s The One (1996), Feeling Minnesota (1996), Head Above Water (1996), and Keys to Tulsa (1997)—before hitting the big time in ‘97-’98.

While we may think of Diaz mostly as the bubbly presence from hits like Charlie’s Angels (2000), her 90s indie flicks may be more in line with the material she’s actually interested in—a little darker and more offbeat than we probably give her credit for (her resume is peppered with these movies, from Very Bad Things to The Box to The Counselor).

Unfortunately, in Head Above Water, she doesn’t have a lot to work with. The what-to-do-with-a-dead-body plot mixed with twisting relationship dynamics promises a lot more fun than it delivers (mostly because the movie tries to play it tame when it should be sexy, subversive, and violent).

But watching a blisteringly hot Diaz run around the Maine coastline trying to anchor this sinking black comedy is a reminder of what a star she was—which she would prove to the world two years later with another dark, offbeat summer comedy (this one a smash hit): There’s Something About Mary.

Quick Takes

• The movie is based on the 1993 Norwegian movie Hodet Over Vannet. Nils Gaup, the director of the original, said about it: “Twice Hollywood has remade my films, and both times they have managed to make the worst movie ever.” (The other Gaup is referencing is 1987’s Ofelas, remade in 2007 as Pathfinder with Karl Urban).

• Though she has four Golden Globe nominations, Diaz has never received an Academy Award nomination. He closest calls were probably Being John Malkovich (1999) and Vanilla Sky (2001). If there was any justice in the world (and the Academy respected comedies), Diaz would not only have been nominated for There’s Something About Mary, she would have won.

• Craig Sheffer may be a net negative as an actor (or at best a net neutral). He’s been in some decent-to-pretty-good movies (Some Kind of Wonderful, Nightbreed, A River Runs Through It) and he’s unexceptional in all of them. Maybe that’s his gift (being a void), but I’m hard-pressed to think of any movie that wouldn’t be better with another actor in his place.