You wouldn’t want to be a henchperson of any denomination in Gangs of London, and season two ups the bodycount while maintaining the palpable tension and twisty plot audiences will be expecting. And don’t assume your favorite returning characters are safe either. Set one year after the events of season one (here’s a recap to get you up to speed), London is in chaos. With the Wallace family spread far and wide, pulling the strings in the background are the investors, with Alex Dumani (Paapa Essiedu) the acceptable face of the business and heroin baron Asif Afridi (Asif Raza Mir) as the slightly less acceptable one....

If there’s one thing you can’t accuse M. Night Shyamalan of, it is a lack of ambition. With his new film Glass, the writer/director attempts to bring to a close the trilogy of films he began some 19 years ago with Unbreakable and continued, unexpectedly, in 2016 with the funny and frightening Split. Along the way, he addresses the themes and concerns of both of those earlier pictures: how ordinary people can find themselves doing extraordinary things, what constitutes a hero and a villain, whether belief in ourselves is all we need to transcend our limitations, and if devotion to a fictional mythology like those found in comic books can warp our own sense of reality....

God of War games liberally borrow from different mythologies. Back in the PlayStation 2 and 3 days, God of War wove together a world crafted from various Greek myths and legends, while the God of War soft reboot from 2018 and Ragnarok take stories and characters from Norse mythology. However, one mythology reference in the most recent entry has even Norse legend buffs confused. Throughout God of War: Ragnarok, players once again receive aid from the Huldra Brothers, Brok and Sindri, and when it comes time to visit Alfheim, Sindri tags along to improve Kratos’ armor....

After the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been roundly (and rightly) criticized for snubbing women filmmakers for year after year in the Best Director category, Chinese helmer Chloé Zhao won the Director prize for her riveting and raw Nomadland, a film which blends documentary filmmaking with narrative; Daniel Kaluuya was able to (eventually) speak about the glories of Fred Hampton to a global audience after winning Best Supporting Actor with his role in Judas and the Black Messiah; Borat 2 is now a “Best Picture” winner (read that sentence back and let it sink in); and while The Crown again dominated the television Drama categories, audience favorite The Queen’s Gambit picked up the Globes for Best Limited Series or Made for Television Film and Anya Taylor-Joy won for playing Beth Harmon....

The second part of David Gordon Green’s rebooted Halloween trilogy, Halloween Kills, is upon us with more murder, more Myers, and much much more mayhem. This film follows on immediately from 2018’s Halloween—Michael has been left for dead in the burning basement but (surprise!) he’s not dead. Meanwhile Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Karen (Judy Greer), and Allyson (Andi Matichak) are on their way to the hospital to get Laurie’s wounds treated....

“I want to share some notes, some editorial suggestions that were prepared after the screening of a movie I was in,” Ford said with his trademark latter day gruffness. “‘Opening too choppy. Why is this voiceover track so terrible? He sounds drugged. Were they all on drugs? Deckard at the piano is interminable. Flashback dialogue confusing. Is he listening to a tape? Why do we need the third cut to the eggs?...

But the strategy is already garnering a fierce backlash from at least one of the studio’s top filmmakers, as well as a production company that has a major financial stake in several of Warner’s upcoming blockbusters. Director Christopher Nolan, who has possibly made more money for Warner Bros. in the past 20 years than anyone but J.K. Rowling, came out swinging with unusually sharp remarks about the plan. In a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, Nolan fumed, “Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service....

Space Jam: A New Legacy premieres on July 16. will find LeBron teaming up with the Looney Tunes in a Warner Bros. IP-extravaganza. Can ‘Bron and the Looney Tunes beat the Goon Squad before Warner Bros.’ server steals LeBron “Bronny” Jr.’s soul (or something)? Let’s hope so. The two other major WB releases this month, No Sudden Move and Tom and Jerry in New York, both come to HBO Max on July 1....

The code works for new members in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland signing up via Shudder.com Shudder made the announcement via social media and said it would also be posting daily recommendations on Twitter with the #ShudderShutIn hashtag. In the US there’s also a ‘Shut In’ collection featuring people trapped, including titles like Escape From New York and Audition, should you wish to be comforted by the thought “at least I’m not locked in with the Kiri Kiri Kiri lady....

It’s rare when an author concedes that a change made by an adaptation has improved on their work. And George R.R. Martin has all the more reason to be cagey after some questionable decisions made during the final seasons of Game of Thrones—back when that series ran out of books to adapt. Nonetheless, Martin has been effusive in his praise for Thrones’ new prequel series, House of the Dragon. Admittedly, the author had a hand in turning his fictional history of the Targaryen family, Fire & Blood, into the television show, which he co-created with writer Ryan Condal....

“Well, they have to be fun,” says Greg Nicotero, special effects legend, co-executive producer of The Walking Dead, and showrunner of Shudder’s Creepshow series. “My criteria is, when the episode is over, I want the viewer to be like, ‘Oh my God, that was so much fun. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t see it coming, but I had a great time.’” Fortunately for Creepshow fans everywhere, that is exactly what the first season of Shudder’s revival offered....

As far as Syfy titles go, Z Nation was a remarkable hit. The show did well enough to make it five seasons, morphing from something that straddled the line between campy fun and a character study with surprising depth considering its origins. Z Nation was never going to reach the ratings heights of The Walking Dead, but unlike the series it effectively mockbusted, it was fun, inventive, and never afraid of being funny in between ominous mentions of the events of the “Black Summer”....

Thus far, the actor has chosen mostly supporting roles in period pieces, and has seemingly made sure to pick parts that are challenges commensurate with his experience. The result has been an early acting career of choice films under talented directors that build a solid foundation for a bright film future. For absolutely no reason at all, let’s talk about what Styles’ burgeoning film career has looked like so far, and what it will look like moving forward....

After 2017’s It became the highest opening horror movie of all time two Septembers ago, it was a forgone conclusion that we would soon be watching an It Chapter Two. And unlike most sequels, it made creative sense. By adapting Stephen King’s ponderous tome about the childhood terrors and traumas we suppress, director Andy Muschietti wisely cut the nearly 1,200-page book in half. Presented in print as a back-and-forth dialogue between childhood and adulthood, Muschietti opted to tell the story (mostly) chronologically and focus simply on childhood in 2017....

Benchley, who had always had an interest in the water and in sharks, came up with the idea for Jaws when he read about a fisherman who caught a 4,500-pound great white off the coast of Long Island in 1964. Benchley had written one book, a travel memoir called Time and a Ticket, but had spent most of the ’60s as a reporter and editor for outlets like The Washington Post and Newsweek before taking a job as a speechwriter for President Lyndon B....

“Lots of directors, they adapt stage plays into movies,” Anderson says. “But I don’t go to the live theater very much. I play video games…so I always imagined that I would do other video game adaptations.” There was a time when Anderson’s desire to adapt video games felt like little more than wishful thinking. While it currently feels like every video game franchise is scheduled to be adapted into a movie or TV series, that wasn’t always the case....

Nativity! is the story of a primary school teacher (Freeman) who tries to put on a Hollywood-worthy nativity play with help from his young-at-heart teaching assistant (Wootton). Confetti, which stars a host of British comedy talent including Julia Davis, Jessica Stevenson, Olivia Colman and Robert Webb (those last two’s nude scenes proved controversial, as Webb describes from 03:25 in this Graham Norton interview), is a wedding competition in which Freeman played one of three grooms competing with their bride to win a house....

For Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City director Johannes Roberts, the chance to reboot this franchise is less about correcting past mistakes than making the most out of the opportunity to explore what makes the games different. “I had a great time with those movies,” Roberts says of the Resident Evil live-action films. “But as I’ve got older, I’m much more of a gamer than I’ve ever been…I approached this film from a gaming perspective....

Like with the game’s Skyrim-based Greymoor chapter, nostalgia permeates every aspect of Blackwood, including the setup of its story. Mehrunes Dagon, Oblivion‘s diabolical antagonist, takes center stage once again as the chapter’s main villain, but things aren’t as they seem. “The story is about a deal with a devil,” ESO creative director Rich Lambert explains. “When you first arrive in Leyawiin, you’re asked to investigate a threat to a number of Imperial counselors who used to council the Longhouse Emperors....

Even so, Netflix is now banking on recapturing that singular spirit with an upcoming live-action adaptation. However, Cowboy Bebop’s iconic status is not lost on showrunner André Nemec, who was introduced to the anime when, on a family visit, his brother sat him down and had him watch the episodes, all of which he had saved to DVR. “I was hooked,” Nemec says. “It’s poetic, it’s beautiful, it’s artful, it’s funny, it’s violent at times....