It’s kind of perfect that the only two successful major shared cinematic universes out there are superheroes and horror. Comics have been telling a sprawling, interconnected story since their inception, while the first connected film universe ever, the Universal Monsters, was a horror franchise. The Conjuring’s Annabelle, Valak, the Nun, and the Crooked Man are no Frankenstein’s Monster or Dracula, but the mission is the same: scaring as many people as possible....

Originally titled The Craft, the renamed The Craft: Legacy does everything a legacy sequel is supposed to: It remakes the original film from a modern perspective while reverently existing in the pre-established universe of the original movie(s). Thus enters Hannah (Cailee Spaeny), the new girl in school whose non-conforming appearance is making her the victim of bullying by some. But to others, she shows potential. Soon Hannah is being recruited by three other girls (Gideon Adlon, Lovie Simone, Zoey Luna) who have a book of spells that’s called “The Craft....

The big winners of the night include Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Parasite, 1917, and Joker. The Quentin Tarantino love letter to 1960s Tinseltown notably pulled a surprise win for Best Picture after missing out on the Best Director prize. Not that Tarantino went home otherwise empty handed, as he picked up the Critics Choice for Best Original Screenplay, as did Brad Pitt for Best Supporting Actor, and Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh for Best Production Design....

And that’s the problem with La Llorona: no one acts like a real person, so it’s impossible to invest in their routine and fairly boilerplate haunting. As the cat’s out of the bag, you should know this whitewashed take on Mexican folklore is part of The Conjuring Universe. Like the Annabelle movies and The Nun before it, The Curse of La Llorona is set in the same universe of James Wan’s still wildly entertaining Conjuring originals, but like so many of the other “shared universe” spinoffs, La Llorona is an exercise in formulaic filmmaking that reminds you there is only one Wan....

Not the Joker. Within our first breath next to Ledger’s clown, one senses a malevolent spirit has been summoned, and he’s chosen to manifest out of thin air at this exact moment, on this exact street corner. He’s come to claim Gotham’s collective soul, but he’ll settle for any individual with delusions of virtue who crosses his path—including you. This is of course just a fleeting moment in The Dark Knight; a brisk tease before Ledger’s shown his makeup-encrusted face or uttered even a word....

Based on the literary franchise of James S.A. Corey (the collaborative nome de plume of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), The Expanse, a production of Alcon Entertainment, first took shape back in December 2015 as a broadcast offering for Syfy, set in a vision of a far-future (roughly in the early 2300s,) in which humanity has widely colonized the solar system, leaving the fate-joined antihero crew of liberated gunship the Rocinante forced to navigate familiar social, political and military dynamics, just on a galactic scale between Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt....

That sure was a grisly ending to an otherwise slow boil of an episode, wasn’t it? The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 4 is heavy on the philosophizing and mostly light on the action…until the end. And while there aren’t as many in-your-face Marvel Comics and MCU references as we’ve come to expect from these Disney+ shows, the events and the weighty dialogue are all steeped in Marvel history....

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 6 Last week’s episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had a weird feel to it. It was almost like a season finale where there was still more story left, but that would be next year’s problem. It was relaxed, it took its time, and it felt incredibly coherent. Then they got to the cliffhanger, including the mid-credits scene, and it left everyone wanting an action-packed final episode....

This is obviously not the first time we’ve seen these two together in the movies. Deadpool 3 will be coming out a sobering FIFTEEN YEARS after X-Men Origins: Wolverine, known as what not to do with the X-Men movie rights. The movie introduced a version of Deadpool that has been met with rightful mockery. Since then, images of Wolverine have shown up in the Deadpool movies as a running gag, including a moment of reused footage from Origins during the Deadpool 2 mid-credits....

The Jane Doe Murders is another in a long line of true crime breakdown procedurals. However, it showcases something rare but obvious in the majority of these video journalism projects. At the heart of the case which is probed on Oxygen’s two-hour forensic investigation special is a personal story. The victim is neither famous nor infamous. She wasn’t at the center of a nationwide manhunt. Parents weren’t told to check on their kids at 10 o’clock because of her....

The series comes from HBO, The Last of Us creator Neil Druckmann, and executive producer Craig Mazin (Chernobyl), and will tackle the events of the first game, re-telling the story that first captivated PlayStation fans in 2013. Bringing the game’s main duo to life will be Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) as Joel and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Ellie, with Anna Torv (Fringe) joining them as Joel’s smuggling partner Tess....

But it almost fell apart, right at a crucial moment. The studio initially showed remarkable confidence in Jackson’s talents, greenlighting three huge movies to be shot consecutively. Even more notable is the fact that they trusted Jackson at all, who scored a hit with the drama Heavenly Creatures, but whose previous work consisted of gross-out horror movies Bad Taste and Braindead (aka Dead Alive), as well as the Muppets-inspired sex romp Meet the Feebles....

In some of the spookiest words ever spoken on The Sopranos, the usually genial and optimistic Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri Jr. wonders aloud what being killed would be like. “You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?” Bobby asks his boss Tony Soprano as they glide down a lazy river in a dinghy. Well, depending on your interpretation of The Sopranos’ final moments, Bobby was right. You don’t even hear it when it happens....

During an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Jon Bernthal, who plays Tony’s father Giovanni “Johnny Boy” Soprano in The Many Saints of Newark, admitted he hasn’t yet seen the film, and couldn’t give too much away even if he wasn’t upholding the tradition of omerta. “What I will say is that it’s different,” Bernthal told Seth Meyers. “I think people are going to go in expecting The Sopranos....

The Mummy Returns came out in 2001 and is set nine years after the original film when it picks back up with Rachel Weisz’ Egyptologist Evelyn “Evie” O’Connell (née Carnahan) and her husband, American adventurer Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser). Getting married and having a kid hasn’t slowed these two down. (You can have it all, ladies!) No doubt driven by Evie’s intense passion for ancient Egyptian culture, the two drag their precocious nine-year-old son Alex (Freddie Boath) from London to Egypt and back again in the pursuit of ancient treasures....

The Simpsons Season 32 Episode 13 The Simpsons Season 32, episode 13, “Wad Goals,” pays homage to the screwball comedy golf classic Caddyshack. More than homage, it takes a full lipped sycophantic approach which some might consider over clubbing. But it’s not a Mulligan. The story line is very different. The similarities lie in the lessons learned, and unlearned, which resonate like “the force in the universe that makes things happen when you be the ball....

And so we arrive at the best Epic Bond of the lot. A great big chocolate fudge sundae of a film with extra waffles and butterscotch ice cream. It begins by making a parachute iconic and cracks on from there. Boasts a henchman, car, and girl to rival Goldfinger, and a villainous scheme even more deranged than You Only Live Twice. Nuclear Armageddon meets Finding Nemo – what’s not to like?...

Recently, Twitch posted an update stating that, on October 18, the company will prohibit all links and referral codes to slots, roulette, and dice game sites, especially those that aren’t licensed in the US. This news might have come as a surprise to some users since Twitch has dragged its feet for the past couple of years despite the questionable legality of these gambling streams. What finally encouraged the company to take the plunge and ban gambling?...

The first time we see the The Walking Dead‘s latest villainous group, The Reapers, is midway through the premiere of the six-episode “season 10C.” In that hour, Maggie’s group comes across the smoked-out wreckage of their latest living space, with two smoldering bodies outside. Immediately, Maggie, Cole, and the masked Elijah all know who is responsible for the devastation. “Shit, it’s them. They found us,” Cole says. The fear in Cole’s voice and his certainty in who sabotaged his crew is definitely a rough sign for the survivors of The Walking Dead....

The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 2 There’s a certain blandness to “The Damned” that is actually symptomatic of a bigger problem facing The Walking Dead season eight. Even though I rather enjoyed last week’s “Mercy” and its tribute to the show’s past, it was exactly that: nostalgia for an era of the show that’s come and gone. “The Damned” brings us back to the present, where nothing really matters. It’s a soulless hour of television that’s indicative that this zombie drama might finally be out of tricks....