Movies

At the uppermost level, corporate culture has taken a turn for the New Agey. Silicon Valley has amply parodied the recent fad of nebulously defined spiritualism among the top players in the start-up world, where CEOs journey into the desert for days at a time to trip on ayahuasca and come up with a name for their newly integrated media vertical, or whatever. Corporate types have begun to act like Burning Man attendees, and with his upcoming psychological thriller A Cure for Wellness, Gore Verbinski puts a horrifying spin on this spreading trend.

He’s the best there is at what he does. And what he does is make gritty spinoff X-Men movies.

Back when he was doing press rounds for 2015’s Furious 7, Vin Diesel made some pretty bold statements about the movie deserving to be nominated for an Academy Award (and let’s be real, the only thing more emotional last year than the final minutes of Furious 7 was, maybe, Carol). It, of course, wasn’t, which should come as no surprise, even though it was a critical and box office success, but that hasn’t stopped our buddy Vin, who is now saying that the next film in the franchise, Fast 8, should be Oscar-worthy.

Love all things Halloween but can't stand scary movies? Try these 25 magical, mildly spooky and family-friendly movies on for fun size.

Marvel has been steadily building up the hype for Doctor Strange, which is due out in theaters in only a few short weeks. Today, they released the end credits track off of the movie’s score, composed by Hollywood’s own musical magician Michael Giacchino (Ratatouille, Jurassic World, Star Trek Beyond), and it’s. so. good.

It seems like the only time that people talk about trailers is to complain about them in some fashion. They gave away too much, they gave away too little, they didn’t feature the right colors or characters or soundtrack. It’s tough to cut an enticing movie trailer in 2016, not least of all because of our culture’s increasing hand-wringing about what constitutes a spoiler. A good trailer  —  one that gives you just enough without giving you everything  —  should be celebrated as its own miniature art form.

If you have ever seen at least a couple of Tom Cruise movies, it will come as no surprise to you when I say the guy likes to run onscreen. Like, a lot. It’s his version of Humphrey Bogart’s overcoat or John Wayne’s hat. It’s his calling card, his signature. It wouldn’t be a true Tom Cruise film without it. His hair gets longer or shorter, he gets older and gains a couple of wrinkles. But the running never changes.

When an actor expresses interest in returning to an iconic role, I always wonder whether the actor needs the movie more than the studio needs the actor. Ron Perlman, for example, has spent years talking up his interest in another Hellboy movie, despite it being fairly obvious that the studio had no real interest in getting that project off the ground. So when Ewan McGregor told reporters last year that he would come back for an Obi-Wan Kenobi standalone movie, I wondered: does this make sense for everyone involved? Or was McGregor just doing the Hollywood equivalent of jumping on a trending hashtag?

On my Marvel Unlimited app, I’ve been slowly working my way through the very first Doctor Strange comics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, which originally appeared in the pages of the appropriately named series Strange Tales. At the time, of his introduction Dr. Strange was a backup feature in the book, which was primarily devoted to the solo tales of Fantastic Four member the Human Torch. The stories of these early Strange adventures are pretty hit or miss (one involves a haunted house which is not haunted but is actually - SPOILER ALERT - a house from another dimension. ) but the artwork, even in the earliest issues, is just fantastic. Ditko (who also co-created Spider-Man with Lee) had this amazing conception of alternate dimension and realities that was just incredible.

Watch the first trailer for Lionsgate's 'Power Rangers' move, coming to theaters in 2017.